Wordzzle 76 - Masks

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the twentieth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

superlative,
flea market,
falling leaves,
disinformation,
who was that masked man?,
keeping kids out of trouble,
I'm a believer,
bonnet in the attic,
staff,
generation

Falling leaves blew through the deserted flea market. Before it had been a flea market it had been an amusement park, and before that a place for circuses and fairs. It had been one thing after another, for generation after generation. Right now it seemed to be between incarnations, haunted by the ghost of its former self and without any indications of what might come next. I walked through it, looking at the remains of what it had been.

Eventually I became aware of someone walking beside me. We talked for a bit, about various things. When I turned to look at him, he was wearing a clown mask and a clown costume. It seemed odd, but I didn't say anything about it. We continued walking.

"Too bad this place is closed again," I said. "It used to be popular, but the owner ran out of money."

"Yes, times are hard, many places have closed. This one will reopen eventually, as something else. It always does." He wore a cowboy mask and a cowboy outfit now.

"There's not many places for kids to go, now," I said. "Not many jobs for them either. I'm afraid a lot of them are going to get into trouble."

"I'm a believer in keeping kids out of trouble," he said, dressed like a ringmaster now and wearing a mask with a long curly mustache.

"You seem to have a lot of costumes," I said.

"I also have a bonnet in the attic."

"Oh? Which attic is that?"

"I have many bonnets, in many attics. Some are quite nice, but I wouldn't mind being seen dead in any of them," he said, wearing a leprechaun mask and costume.

"I have no idea how you do it, but you do the best job of switching costumes I've ever seen."

"I accept your compliment, but there's no need for superlatives. It's easier than it seems, and not entirely what it appears," he said, looking like a magician.

"You're speaking in riddles."

"Perhaps, but I speak as I think. Misunderstanding may induce misdirection, but I give out no disinformation," he said, looking like an old wizard carrying a staff.

We had reached the other edge of the flea market. He turned to me, looking like trapeze artist. "I have to go now."

"What shall I say when people ask 'who was that masked man?'"

"We all wear masks. Tell them what you like."

"I don't wear a mask."

"Then here, take one of mine."

Then he handed me a mask that looked like me.


Mini Challenge:

deep in the forest,
government,
charming,
heirlooms,
flabbergasted

Deep in the forest, away from the cities, away from the government, away from anyone who knew him and anyone he knew, he found an old trunk. He stood there looking at it, wondering why someone had left it there, in the forest. He felt he should probably open it, but it wasn't his, and though it had apparently been abandoned, it might not be. He rubbed his upper lip with his finger, a nervous habit of his. He couldn't just go away and not see what was in it. There might be something valuable, something that shouldn't be left out here and lost.

When he opened it, he saw that it had a wide tray across the inside, formed into sections for holding different things. The tray held a variety of items, old letters and keepsakes and heirlooms, some charming and some not. He lifted the tray out, and saw that underneath it the bottom of the trunk was gone, and the ground under it as well. A wooden ladder led downward, changing into a steep staircase as it went. He heard distant sounds, distorted, and caught glimpses of bright pinpoints, like eyes reflecting light.

He stared, flabbergasted, then suddenly put the tray back over it and stood there leaning on the edges of the trunk, trying to catch his breath. Then, trembling a little, he slowly took the tray back off. The trunk was now filled with a variety of items. There were old shoes and old dolls, and pieces of dolls, and old boots and old gloves.

He also came across an old wallet, very old. He opened it up and looked inside. It didn't have any money or credit cards, but it had a driver's license. The driver's license had his name and his signature, but the wrong address. It also had his picture, but not the one he had on his license. It was a poor picture, and faded, but he seemed to be older in it.

He finally put it back, and put the tray back in and closed the lid. He leaned on the lid for a while, trying to absorb what he had found and what had happened. He couldn't make it work, though. Nothing fit in, nothing made any sense.

He straightened up and stared at the trunk. It shouldn't even be here. What would a trunk be doing in the middle of a forest? He felt he should leave, really felt he should leave, but somehow couldn't bear to. He couldn't leave like this, with everything making no sense.

Finally, he hesitatingly opened it up again, and slowly took the tray out, almost afraid to look. As he took the tray out, he could see that what was inside had changed again. He held the edge of the tray against his stomach and peered over it. The trunk now held a body. It was on its back with its knees by its face. The eyes were staring outward, the mouth slack, the face blank and expressionless. It looked much like him, but instead of being clean-shaven, it had a long mustache that curled up at the edges.

Suddenly the eyes turned toward him and winked. He screamed and dropped the tray back down on it and backed up a few steps. He stared at it, his eyes big, his face in a grimace. Then he went toward it and quickly closed the lid and moved the clips into place to latch it. Then he backed up again and stared at it, breathing hard, a shudder running through him.

Something tapped him on the shoulder. He recoiled and turned away from it and ran mindlessly through the woods. Suddenly something big was right in front of him and he tumbled over it, hitting his head on a rock on the ground. Dazed, he dimly saw the trunk again, beside him, and heard voices talking around him. They all sounded alike and it was hard to follow the conversation. Consciousness faded, then, and his sleep was troubled by strange dreams.

He finally awakened, late in the day, and sat up and held his head and groaned. Beside him on the ground was the massive trunk of an old tree. A squirrel came out on top of it and scolded him. He stared back at it, then began to move slowly closer, softly talking to it. The squirrel ran along the trunk to the base, where the tree spread out in a tangle of broken roots, and ran over the edge into them and disappeared.

The man got up and followed it and found that the tree was hollow. Deep inside it he saw two eyes shining in the darkness, looking back at him. He wondered if squirrels' eyes were supposed to shine in the dark. It didn't seem right, but he wasn't sure. It was hard to think with his head hurting like this. He started to move in closer, to stick his head inside the tree, but then he paused, and finally drew back. The eyes looked back for a while, but then were gone. He started to go into the tree then, without even thinking about it.

He crawled in on his hands and knees into the darkness, his head and back scraping the top of the tunnel, the air full of the smell of rotting wood. Then suddenly the space seemed to open up quite a bit. He could feel the change in the air and in the way sounds came to him. He seemed to be close to the edge of a vast underground area, though he couldn't see much in the darkness, just occasional distant pairs of pinpoints that could have been eyes. He paused, unsure what to do or whether it was safe to go on.

Suddenly, something grabbed his hand. He screamed and tried to pull his hand away, but it wouldn't let go. He screeched and pulled and pulled, and finally yanked his hand away and hastily backed out. Standing up, he backed away from the trunk, staring at the hole, breathing hard. This was a very strange place. Whatever was in there, he really didn't want any part of it.

He twirled the end of his long mustache, a nervous habit he had, then turned and walked quickly away.


Mega challenge:

superlative,
flea market,
falling leaves,
disinformation,
who was that masked man?,
keeping kids out of trouble,
I'm a believer,
bonnet in the attic,
staff,
generation

deep in the forest,
government,
charming,
heirlooms,
flabbergasted

"Are you a believer?" a voice said. "Are you a believer?"

"I'm a believer in some things," I said. I was deep in the forest, and no one was around, but it didn't seem important somehow.

"Are you a believer in me? Are you a believer in us?"

"I don't know who you are or what you want me to believe in, but I guess I can say that I believe I'm hearing you."

A tiny woman flew out from among the trees, on long dragonfly-like wings. "Perhaps that will be close enough," she said.

I suppose I should have been flabbergasted, but I was only a little surprised. It seemed strangely normal. "You look quite charming," I said.

"Thank you," she said. "You said the same thing the last time, but it's always appreciated."

"I saw you before? I don't remember it."

"Yes, humans are frequently like that."

"If I saw you before, why did you have to ask if I believed?"

"It helped to put you in the proper state of mind. Humans sometimes need prompting."

"I suppose I should ask you to take me to your leader."

"We do have leaders, but not governments as you think of them. However, it is not necessary to see one at this time."

"Do you have cities, then, or something else you can show me?"

"We do not have cities. What would we do with them? We live in homes in the forest, in trees or under rocks or behind waterfalls, and whatever other place that we may like."

"Can you take me to your home?"

"Yes, but it will be a more difficult journey than you think."

"Let's go, then. I want to see it."

She turned, then, and led me on a winding journey through the trees and underbrush. Things got more dense and tangled as we went, and soon I was fighting my way through branches, with falling leaves hitting me on the head and shoulders. "Is it going to be much longer?"

She turned and looked at me, hovering in the air. "Do you believe?"

"I guess so. I'm here aren't I?"

"Then let's continue. We still have a little ways to go."

Soon I was finding the path through the branches easier, as they grew mostly above me, but I was having trouble with tree roots, as they seemed to be increasingly in the way and of enormous size. After a while I was actually having to climb over them.

"Here we are," she said, landing by a hole in the base of a tree. "This is where I live."

I walked up. "Can I go in?"

She turned to me, and I realized that I was now her size. "Yes, you can. For a while."

We went into the tree, into a little room that had been carved out of it. Giant spoons hung on the walls. In the middle was a little wooden table with thimbles around it to sit on.

"You don't sit on mushrooms?"

"We sit on whatever's convenient. Sometimes it happens to be a mushroom, but usually it's something else. Not everything is as it is in fairy tales. There's a lot of disinformation out there."

"Do you live here alone?"

"I have some children, but they're not here now."

"What about your husband?"

"Our customs are not your customs. The father sometimes visits and sometimes not. He was here more often in the early days."

"I see, I guess. What do your children do? Where are they? Are they in school?"

"We don't have schools, though we have teachers. Perhaps the children are being taught something now. I don't know. We don't have schedules."

"You just let them learn when they feel like it?"

"We let them learn when they are ready."

"I would think that if left to themselves, they would more often choose not to, and would spend most of their time playing and maybe getting into trouble. Discipline is a big part of keeping kids out of trouble, and there doesn't seem to be much discipline in what you describe."

"We do not have much of a problem with them getting into trouble. Our definitions of trouble differ, though."

I walked up to the walls and looked at the spoons. They were evidently made by humans, for the use of humans.

"We like to collect things," she said. "The things in here have been collected over many generations. We tend to regard them all as heirlooms, even the newer ones. We do not regard time as you do."

"What else have you collected? Can you show me?"

She led me deeper in the tree, through winding corridors to other rooms, and sometimes up stairs carved into the wood. Many things had been collected, of a wide variety. Much of it seemed like flea market or garage sale type of stuff, but not all of it.

"You don't seem very interested in collecting the best or the greatest or the most valuable."

"We tend not to think in superlatives, thinking more of what is needed, of what will work or may work, and of what we like or may like. Sometimes this does result in collecting something valuable, such as jewels or something in silver or gold, especially if the item is very pretty. Usually our needs are filled with lesser items, though."

We continued our tour. After a while I came across a giant black band hanging on a wall, with huge eye holes in it, like a mask for Zorro or maybe the Lone Ranger. I went behind it and put my head through one of the eye holes. "Who was that masked man?" I said.

"Who do you believe that he is?"

I blinked. "Does my belief make a difference?"

"You are here and you can still say that?"

We continued on. In one room I saw a long wooden rod hanging on hooks on the wall. "What's this?"

"It's a staff, a walking stick."

"You mean like a cane? I didn't think you people needed such things."

"We usually don't, but this one has special significance."

She didn't say anything more about it, and I moved on, looking at the other things. Finally, after looking in a far room that contained a collection of giant shoelaces and king and queen playing cards, I sat down on a giant spool of thread there and rested for a while.

"You have quite a bit of stuff."

"Yes, and there's even more. We have underground rooms, too. They can wait for another time. There's a bonnet in the attic that you might be interested in seeing now, though."

She took me up some more stairs, which wound around and around and finally ended in a large room. It was mostly empty, but contained a few things. She led me over to what was apparently a small jewelry box, looking very large here. I had no idea how they managed to get it in here, or up the stairs. She opened it and took out a small, fairy-size green derby hat, and handed it to me. I looked it over. Inside I saw a name on the band. It was my name. I looked at her, then put it on. It fit perfectly.

"I guess this is my hat."

"Yes. You have worn it many times."

"I'd look at myself in it, but I don't remember seeing any mirrors."

"We sometimes find pieces of mirrors that we can use, but the ones I have are all in the underground rooms. They don't always show what you would expect, though."

"I see. Well, it's been a fascinating experience and I'd like to stay longer, but it must be getting late. I wouldn't want to have to go through the forest in the dark, so I'd better get going."

"Time works differently here, and doesn't always correspond to what is happening in the outside world, but yes, it's probably time to go."

"Can I keep the hat?"

She looked at me. "Do you believe?"

"Do I believe? In the hat? In the experience? It all seems real. I guess so."

She led me down, and through the rooms and the other stairs, until finally we were in the first room. I looked around it, looking at everything, trying to fix it all in memory. I was starting to feel a little light-headed for some reason. Perhaps it was all that going up and down the stairs, though it wasn't as tiring as I would have thought.

"We should go now," she said.

She led me out and I followed, as if in a dream. Outside, the wind had picked up a bit. Giant leaves blew across the ground in front of me. Beyond the tops of the trees, far above me, the sun passed behind a cloud. Things suddenly felt more threatening, ominous. I shivered. She urged me on, back across the giant roots that grew smaller as I went, and back through the tangle of branches. Finally, we seemed to be back somewhere in a more normal part of the woods, though I didn't recognize where I was. I guess one part of the woods looks too much like another.

I noticed that she was small again, and the trees seemed normal size to me. I reached up and felt my hat. It was still there, and still fit me. I was feeling funny, though, and disconnected from things. I wasn't sure I could find my way out of the woods from here. I looked at her. She hovered in a beam of sunlight, looking back at me. She looked as she had when I first saw her, but she seemed different somehow, more distant and unreal.

"Will I see you again?" I asked.

"You always do. Just remember to believe."

A wind slowly swept through the trees, making a growing roar. I heard a hooting sound, and turned my head and saw on a branch nearby an owl looking at me. I shivered, and a wave of fear went through me. I turned back and looked at the unfamiliar forest. Why had I stayed out so late? I felt I had to leave, to get out of here, but I wasn't sure which way to go. I scratched my head and something fell, something like a tiny hat. Something swooped in and caught it, something like a strange oversized dragonfly, and was gone.

I stared at the empty air unbelievingly, open-mouthed. I had never seen a bug that big. And where did that little hat come from? Well, I would have to think about it later. I needed to find my way out of the forest before it got dark, or before something else happened.

Whatever that meant.

My Word Imperfect entries, Part II

A little over two years ago, I came across a blog called Word Imperfect, which is run by a person known as the Word Imp. At that time, the blog was normally updated every day, but for quite a while now new posts have been rare, due to the blog owner being busy with other things.

Originally, each day the Word Imp put up a new word and a made-up definition, and readers submitted comments with their own made-up, "wacky" definitions of that word. The next day, the Word Imp revealed the real definition and chose three finalists from the entries submitted. Readers voted (in a poll) for what they thought was the best one, and the next day the Word Imp announced the winner. The only prize was the glory of being chosen.

This is the second group of my Word Imperfect entries. The times given are the approximate times of my posts, in Arizona time(MST), from the clock on my computer.


Squacco:

1:18 PM 6/21/2007

A squacco is a stool pigeon, an informer, but one who makes no attempt to hide this and actually brags about it. The usefulness of such people is not as great as it could be, as they tend to suddenly disappear or meet with an unfortunate accident before being able to testify.


Limbate:

12:10 AM 6/23/2007

A limbate is a thicket so overgrown with branches (limbs) that a person cannot get through it. The word is a combination of "limb" and "hate."


Tortile:

3:59 AM 6/23/2007

A tortile is a general term for any item that goes into or on a tortilla.

Example: He was greatly enjoying the tortilla when several tortiles fell on his shirt.


Crambo:

11:54 PM 6/24/2007

A crambo is a type of machine used in the dairy industry for separating cream from milk. The word comes from a combination of cream and boy.


Holothurian:

11:06 AM 6/25/2007 *** finalist

The Holothurian is a subdivision of geologic time within the Eocene epoch. During the Holothurian, a short period of cooling occurred that lasted approximately 1.5 million years. Numerous plants and animals disappeared during this period, but it is considered only a minor extinction event. The Holothurian began 38 million years ago, and ended with a worldwide return to warmer temperatures.


My entry for holothurian was chosen as one of the three finalists. It's allowable there to vote for yourself, and I did. I didn't win, though.

The vote count the last time I checked it:

8:02 PM 6/26/2007

Choose a winner for holothurian
Brian O Vretanos 47.06%
Stephen 17.65%
Gregg Mattocks 35.29%

Total votes : 17


Moxa:

8:31 PM 6/26/2007

Moxa is the plural of moxie, and is used when referring to a group of people who all have moxie.

Example: The mountain climbers were full of moxa.


I don't know whether my definition of moxa was a finalist or not, as I didn't get back to the site in time to check.


Incubus:

3:57 AM 6/28/2007

An incubus is someone who is really into doing Rubik's cubes.


Aboulia:

12:45 AM 6/30/2007

Aboulia is an abnormal fascination with ghoulish films.


Eudiometer:

3:05 AM 6/30/2007 *** winner

A eudiometer is a device for measuring yodeling. It records variations in loudness, the frequency range used, the speed and intelligibility of syllables, and the tolerance level for the average non-Swiss listener.


My entry for eudiometer was chosen as one of the three finalists. It's allowable there to vote for yourself, and I did. I ended up the winner.

The vote count the last time I checked it:

8:29 AM 7/1/2007
Choose a winner for eudiometer
Stephen 100%
Shari 0%
K 0%

Total votes : 6


Crankle:

5:32 AM 7/1/2007

A crankle is a group of cranky people. They may be cranky about the same things or different things, and some may be cranky about many things. Some or all of them may also be cranky with each other. Approach a crankle with caution, as its affliction can be contagious.

Dream - Chased through a forest of giant stalks into another dimension by the robot

A few years ago, perhaps in 2006 or 2007, I had a long dream that seemed interesting and important, but I didn't write it down until a year or two later. By that time, I had forgotten most of the beginning and the rest had become somewhat condensed.

In the dream, it was daytime. I went down into a low, wide place, something like a dry sunken riverbed. The surface was mostly dirt, mostly firm but a little soft, perhaps looking like a mostly dry mud flow, mostly flat but a little uneven, a little wavy. It was filled with tall pole-like plants. They each had at most a couple of stalks, six to ten inches thick, narrowing slightly as they rose. The stalks had occasional large leaves, perhaps a foot or a foot and a half long, set close to them. I crossed the riverbed to the other side and climbed back out onto normal land.

On this side were some old abandoned wooden buildings in disrepair, perhaps two or three of them. I walked slowly among them for a while, looking at things. A time or two I kicked the debris around them a little with my foot, just nudging it a bit. I may have briefly gone inside one or more of them, but I'm not sure. At least one or two of them seemed to be places I had known in the past, places that had been owned by my parents or had been in the family somehow, though they didn't exactly correspond to anything from real life. I think someone may have been with me for a little while, perhaps my brother. If so, he came separately, and possibly from a different direction.

Earlier, on the other side, the side I had come from, I had been with a few people, but I don't remember what was happening then. I had some concern about someone there who was trying to get me, some concern that he might realize I was here and come over, or send someone over. I think I might have come over the dry riverbed, past the tall pole-like plants, to escape. It was a distant concern now, though, a worry, something to be aware of. I seemed safe here for the moment.

After what seemed like a few hours, I could see out in the riverbed the distant figure of someone coming after me. He was sent by the person who was trying to get me.

He made it across to the buildings, and there was a period of time when I tried to escape him there, going back and forth and hiding behind the buildings and other things. I may have also sometimes gone inside the buildings.

At some point I went back into the broad, dry, sunken riverbed with the stalks, to try to get away. I think I made it most of the way to the other side, but I couldn't get away from him, and I turned back at an angle. He may have been around fifty or sixty feet behind me, though the distance varied somewhat, and he tended to get closer over time. Trying to better escape, I went up the plant stalks, getting perhaps thirty or forty feet up, and then went directly from plant to plant. Unfortunately, the person chasing me also climbed the plant stalks. I was also now distantly followed by a second person, who also climbed the stalks.

I went back across the riverbed to the side where the old buildings were and then back down in the riverbed, going along it, still going from stalk to stalk. They continued to follow me. The riverbed eventually became an actual river. The first person fell behind and the second continued.

I eventually turned to the left, to a small side channel at right angles to the main one, and landed at a small dock or pier, where it turned out I had crossed to another dimension. There was green grass, and beyond that a ways was a house. I met a few people at the dock. Some children were playing there, and one or two adults were standing there, though they seemed unconnected with the children. They were all dressed in old fashioned clothes, like from the 19th century, though the adults were dressed somewhat formally, wearing greenish brown pants and vest with perhaps a slightly lighter shirt.

The children took me to the house, where some more people were outside, and a few more came out to join them. The adults here were dressed more casually, in frontier style clothes. The children who had brought me and the people at the house were related to me somehow, or perhaps most of them were. The people were glad to see me, though a little surprised. I think I might have originally come from there, long ago, or at least that was my impression.

I had some adventures there, including at a nearby small town, but I kept worrying about the people chasing me and if they would catch me. I thought they might have a hard time finding me in the other dimension, though.

Finally I had to leave, even if they were still out there. I'm not sure now why I had to leave. It may have been some trouble that had happened to me there, perhaps somebody there chasing me now. The family members were sad to see me go.

I went back through into my dimension, and was in the water in the middle of the river, it seemed without anything to float with or on. There was someone in front of me a ways off, but he seemed harmless, somebody who had gotten in from the other side. He seemed happy, and there was a feeling that I knew him from somewhere, or that he knew me or knew about me. To the left side, in the distance, I saw the second figure that had been chasing me. He was on a small raft of some kind, maybe a rubber raft. He had passed the entrance to the other dimension and had now turned around and was coming back toward me, rowing.

The second figure was now clearly the robot with the fixed smile, a figure that has appeared in other dreams, and I had the feeling it was on my side now after all. In this dream it was normal sized, although in some dreams the robot was giant.

Wordzzle 75 - In their image

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the nineteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

reluctant,
sacrilege,
territory,
humiliating,
master of ceremonies,
gesture,
dirty deed,
crumbling,
thaw,
token

The dirty deed was done, but not quite finished. He walked through the ancient concert hall, a reluctant master of ceremonies to an empty house. He put a hand out to a crumbling pillar and felt it. It still seemed strong, but soon it wouldn't matter.

He sat down in one of the seats and ran his hands along the arms. One of the arms came off. He stared at it, turning it over in his hands. It seemed almost a sacrilege. He carefully put it back as best he could. It was only a token gesture, he knew, but he had to do it.

He got up and slowly walked up the aisle, over the dusty, decaying carpet, and finally reached the outside.

He looked at the almost deserted streets, and pulled his coat closer about him, trying to keep out the cold wind. He looked at the buildings of the city, and the darkened windows, some broken, the pieces hanging at odd angles. It seemed an humiliating mockery of the city he knew, set in a foreign territory. He turned and looked at the wall of ice, only half a mile away now. He would not live long enough to see it thaw. Neither would his children, or grandchildren.

He turned and sadly walked away, joining the others, the few who were still left, walking through the icy, snow-covered streets, away from the city.


Mini Challenge:

official portrait,
personal bank account,
shoulder bone,
unbearable,
widow

"This is the official portrait of my shoulder bone," he said sadly. "The X-ray almost cleaned out my personal bank account. The insurance wouldn't pay for it."

"What's that white thing?"

"That's the implant the aliens put in me."

"It looks like a screw. Did you ever have your shoulder bone broken?"

"Yes, but that was long ago. I'm sure this is an implant. No one will believe me, though. Not even my wife. I just know they are going to come and take me away and no one will ever see me again. Maybe she'll believe me when she's a widow." A tear rolled down his face.

"Come on, it's not that bad. I'm sure it's just a screw that was used to hold your shoulder bone together."

"No! The aliens did it! See? No one believes me, not even my best friend. It's simply unbearable. You'll all be sorry when I'm gone."

"Look, relax, relax. Even if what you say is true, if the aliens did put an implant in you, that just means they're monitoring you, keeping track of you. It doesn't mean they'll come and take you away."

"They wouldn't monitor me for no reason. They must have something in mind. They must have something planned for me. I just know they do, and it's going to happen soon."

"Just relax, I'll get us some more drinks, and maybe something to snack on. We'll watch something on TV. After a while you'll feel better." He tossed the remote control to him and turned around and walked toward the kitchen. As he neared it, he saw light patterns on the walls from the TV and heard sounds and voices. He was glad that his friend had decided to go along with his suggestion.

When he came back from the kitchen with the food and drinks, however, he found he was alone, and the TV set was off.


Mega challenge:

reluctant,
sacrilege,
territory,
humiliating,
master of ceremonies,
gesture,
dirty deed,
crumbling,
thaw,
token

official portrait,
personal bank account,
shoulder bone,
unbearable,
widow

I ran my hand along the crumbling shoulder bone of the pharaoh, and wondered if there could possibly be any usable DNA in there, or in any of the other bones. If we could do it with a neanderthal, we should be able to do it with a pharaoh, even one over 5,000 years old. There were never any guarantees, though. An awful lot of the attempts failed, or were only partially successful.

We had developed techniques where we could put together the complete DNA for a person by combining DNA from the remains of lots of his cells, so we didn't have to find a cell that had everything, though it was easier if we did. If we had to, we could also fill in generic sections from DNA taken from other people. When we had the complete DNA, or had recreated it, we attempted to clone the person. Some of the attempts succeeded, but most of them failed, either not living at all, or dying long before birth. Then there were those that got to be three or four years old before we realized that they weren't quite right. We were getting quite a collection of them and I wasn't sure what to do with them yet.

The clones didn't have any memories of the people they had been, of course. They were just like other babies, and as they grew up they learned to speak English, even the neanderthal, though he sounded a little odd.

I had also managed to clone some people from the strangely shaped skulls found in the Mediterranean area. I had been curious as to whether the skull shape had been induced by some form of head binding or grew naturally. It turned out that it was natural, and the people were definitely different, enough so that I was a little concerned about them, afraid that they might be dangerous in the future.

So far all the clones were made from DNA that was from bones or tissue, or partially fossilized bones. We hadn't been able to obtain enough DNA yet from completely fossilized bones, but we were hoping to be able to refine the process enough to make it work. We had also recently gotten some samples from a body that was found frozen on a mountain. The body was only a few thousand years old and didn't seem to be anyone important, but we had never done it yet with material that had been frozen for that length of time and then thawed, and we just wanted the challenge.

There had been some hope initially that memory might somehow be encoded in the DNA, and we could find out what life was like when the original people lived. That hope had now faded somewhat. If DNA memory existed, we had so far failed to find it or decode it. It was too bad, really. We could have learned a lot of things.

The Abraham Lincoln clone was in its teens, now, and was a pretty homely kid and was depressed a lot. He liked to read and study, though, and there was some chance he might be destined for greatness. He had no idea who he was, of course. None of them did.

Not even the neanderthal kid. He was by far the ugliest of the lot, and covered in coarse hair. He was old enough now to worry about such things. We told him it ran in his family. He was then asking about his parents, of course. We told him they were both dead, which was, of course, true. He then wanted to know how they died and if they loved him, and we had to make something up.

Making stuff up wasn't a problem, as long as everyone told the same lies. We had extensive fictional histories of all of them in the computers, now. A couple of kids got confused in the early days, before we started keeping track of such things. They were told two or three different stories by different people, and in one case different stories by the same person. We got together after that and settled on particular stories, and then pushed that at them. They seemed to accept it, though their eyes looked a little unsure. It's been a long time since then. They don't ask about the earlier stuff anymore, and hopefully don't think about it.

In the earliest days it had been hard scraping up the money, particularly since we were kind of operating outside of things. It was hard to even gain access to things. No one would normally let you take samples of Abraham Lincoln or even a pharaoh, not for cloning purposes. We couldn't officially clone any human, there was too much of a stigma attached. A lot of people would simply call it sacrilege. I had to sneak around, getting my samples, pretending it was for other things, sometimes grabbing things when no one was looking. It was a lot harder now, with all the cameras watching, but it was hard enough then.

Part of the money I siphoned off of other projects, and part of it even came from our personal bank accounts. It was not nearly enough, though, to do what we needed to do, and we began to locate, by friends of friends of friends, shady people who would invest in us. It felt humiliating at first, for a scientist to have to do this. The first few times it was almost unbearable. Then I began to feel differently about it. I began to feel that it was something owed to us, and something owed to me. Let these strange people pour their money into it. It was probably all crooked money anyway. At least I was putting it to good purposes.

Several years ago we had gotten especially lucky, securing a mystery investor who provided enormous sums. I had never met him, but I would today. We had a meeting scheduled for this afternoon. He had asked for it, not me, and I didn't know what was coming, or why he had finally decided to reveal himself. That's something that kept bothering me. Why now? What did he want? I put the pharaoh's bone down and went to my office. I had to think about things, and try to prepare myself for anything he might ask about.

It was finally time for the meeting, then, and the secretary showed him in. He turned out to be a tall man in late middle age, with hair that was gray on top and white on the sides. He was wearing, of course, a very expensive suit, much more expensive than mine, as I still had modest tastes in that area.

"So, I finally get to meet the master of ceremonies for dirty deeds," he said, extending his hand.

"Well, that's one way to put it," I said, rising up to take his hand. "It's good to meet you, too, though I'm afraid I still don't know your name."

"That's intentional. I'm not ready to give that out yet. By the way, I noticed that picture of da Vinci out in the hall. Have you cloned him yet?"

"No, but we did do his widow."

"His widow? How odd. Why?"

"I'm just kidding. We haven't done any gods either, despite the statue of Apollo out in the courtyard."

He looked at me blankly for a moment, seemingly caught in mid-thought, then got jubilant again and tossed me a penny. "Have you shown Honest Abe his official portrait yet?"

I picked up the penny and looked at it. "He's still young and probably wouldn't notice any resemblance, especially with an image that small. Though he may have seen better pictures in some history books."

"Possibly so. And I'm sure there are others you've cloned, no I know there are others, famous leaders, artists, writers, musicians, etc., of which we also have pictures."

"Yes, though some are fairly obscure, and others would normally be found only in history books. And as with Abe, they're too young yet to really look like the normal pictures of them."

There was a little bit of a pause in the conversation then, as the topic seemed to have run it's course. I finally broke the silence. "Well, what is it that brings you here today, then? Is there something you wanted to see? Is there some aspect of it that you're particularly interested in?"

"As a matter of fact there is. It's come to my attention that you're scaling back the research into genetic memory."

"Yes. We're not making any progress in it right now. There may not even be anything to it. I'm only keeping it going at all because I think there's still a slight possibly of something happening, some kind of breakthrough that would let us move forward. I've come to doubt, though, that there's anything to find at all."

"There's got to be something to find. That, along with the cloning, is why I'm funding this thing."

"Hmph. Well, I can increase the funding some, but I'm not sure it will have any effect. Right now we're not making any progress at all in that area."

"You don't understand. You've got to make the progress. You're not getting this money out of altruism. You have to get the job done."

I stared at him. This had suddenly gotten a lot more complicated. "Is there a pet you're trying to bring back, or perhaps a family member? You understand, don't you, that even if they have the same memories, they won't be the same? They will just be copies that have the same memories."

"Yes, I understand. But I still want you to do it. I still have to have you do it."

"Who is it we are talking about, if I may ask."

"It's my great-grandfather. I only saw him a few times before he died. I'd like to have the opportunity to spend some more time with him."

"You barely knew him, yet you want him back instead of people that you really knew and loved, who have passed on?"

"Yes. I had time with them already. I didn't have any time to speak of with him."

I stared at him some more. Something didn't seem right. "You understand, don't you, that he won't look like he did when you knew him? He will be younger than you, much younger. In fact, he will start out as a baby, and by the time he's an adult you will be an old man." A really old man, I thought, assuming you're even still alive. "And that's if we were able to start now, which we're not. It's likely to be several years before we have any kind of success at getting back the memories, if we ever do."

"You've got to! You've simply got to! And it's got to be soon!"

"What is it really, Mr., um, X? What is it that you're really trying to do? It's got to be more than you've said."

There was a pause. He leaned back in his chair, looking nervous and upset, his head turning to the side, one hand rubbing his mouth. He finally turned back to me and said, "Look, it's got to be done. There are high stakes involved. My great-grandfather knew things, important things. I didn't know about it until much later, long after he had died. I came across a diary where it was hinted at, where he gave just enough that if you could read between the lines you knew what he was saying, but didn't dare really say. You've got to bring him and his memories back."

I looked at him, trying to digest what he had said. It still didn't seem to make any sense. "Whatever it was, it doesn't seem like you really need it. You're obviously wealthy, and it wasn't anything like immortality, because he wasn't able to save his own life."

"What you say is true, but it's more than that, it's, it's..."

"It's more than wealth and immortality?"

"Yes."

"But you can't tell me?"

"No. Not Yet. Maybe never."

"I see. Well, I'll increase the focus on the DNA memory. We'll do all we can in that area. If it turns out to be a dead end, we'll try something else, get the memories a different way."

"A different way? How?"

"I don't know yet. We'll think of something."

"Thank you! I knew I could count on you!" he said, rising out of his chair to shake my hand again. Then, as he was leaving he turned around and said, "I'm donating another 25 million. Make sure it's well spent."

"Oh I will, I will. Thank you."

He nodded, and turned and left, leaving me alone with my thoughts. It still didn't seem to be the complete story, even leaving out the fact that he had admittedly not told all of it. It might not even be the real story. I had wondered if perhaps he might be wanting to clone himself. Even knowing that the clone is not really you might not be enough to prevent the longing for something to survive, even if it's only a copy. But why not tell me, if that's all he wanted? He must have known that I wouldn't consider it an unusual request. What could it be, that would be so outrageous, or so dangerous, that he couldn't mention it to me? There wasn't much I was reluctant to do, if I thought it could be done. And if it couldn't be done, I was willing to spend the money to find out.

I picked up the penny he had left. I hadn't really thought about any problems that might occur with the clones seeing images of the originals. If they noticed a resemblance, they would have to assume it was just a coincidence. What else could it be? It's possible they might gain inspiration from the resemblance, and try to make their lives match up to the inspiration, even if they didn't actually end up playing the same roles in society.

Although a lot of them, almost all of them in fact, had shown themselves to be very similar to the originals, having similar tastes, and similar likes and dislikes. It wasn't quite the same as genetic memory, though it did show that a lot was encoded in the genes. If memory was encoded in the genes, what would be the purpose of it, if we couldn't access it except as a family history of likes and dislikes? If it was there, surely there must be a greater evolutionary purpose than that.

Many things were passed along, eye color, hair color, height, build, etc. Some of these could also be affected by environment, and sometimes it took generations for a change in environment to totally change people to the maximum extent. It could be a change for the better, like better nutrition making successively healthier, taller generations, until the maximum amount was reached. Or it could be something detrimental, like increasingly scarce food and resources sending people in the other direction.

Some things were less affected by environment. Thin or fat, small or large, a person could still adorn himself with whatever was at hand, whether it was gold and silver or colored plastic beads or even bone necklaces, if the person had the innate desire for adornment there was always some way it could be fulfilled. Woven grass could even be used, and if there was nothing at all in the surrounding territory, the person could use mud or ashes or make cuts with sharp stones.

It was a good thing to know that such genetic traits existed, and important in my line of work to know it, but was it saying that there was something more under it, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, or was it only what it appeared to be, and no more?

The extra money wouldn't be enough to find out. I knew that when it was offered, and so did he. It was much more than a token gesture, of course, and would be enough to start a lot of things going. Maybe one of them would produce a lead, something that would take us in a new direction. If not, I would think of something. Some new thing to do, some new thing to try. Something to keep the money flowing. I always did.

I flipped the coin in the air for a while, brooding about the man and what he said. It still didn't make any sense. I'm sure he knew that. He must have hoped to convince me easier than that, and had to come up with some reasons at the last minute. It's possible that he did really have a great-grandfather that he hardly knew, but the rest just didn't make any sense. Not unless the part he left out, or said he left out, really was crucial to understanding it.

I put the coin in the desk and got up. I might as well do some more work on old pharaoh, take samples from various places and see if anything could be done with them. No worries about him seeing portraits of himself. None existed that were anything more then vague cartoonish engravings on walls.

Outside, in the courtyard, I paused and wondered about the mystery man again. I was feeling more and more like I'd seen him somewhere. Perhaps a picture of him when he was younger. I couldn't be sure, but I couldn't shake the feeling. I stared for a while at the statue, at it's graceful form, and at the power it displayed. It was good inspiration for the work, but it didn't seem to offer me anything today.

My Word Imperfect entries, Part I

A little over two years ago, I came across a blog called Word Imperfect, which is run by a person known as the Word Imp. At that time, the blog was normally updated every day, but for quite a while now new posts have been rare, due to the blog owner being busy with other things.

Originally, each day the Word Imp put up a new word and a made-up definition, and readers submitted comments with their own made-up, "wacky" definitions of that word. The next day, the Word Imp revealed the real definition and chose three finalists from the entries submitted. Readers voted (in a poll) for what they thought was the best one, and the next day the Word Imp announced the winner. The only prize was the glory of being chosen.

Only one post was devoted to each word. The post initially introduced the word and gave the Word Imp's made-up definition. The next day the post was modified to give the finalists, and a poll was set up on the right side on the blog so people could vote. The third day the post was overwritten, removing the fake definition and giving the real one, and announcing the winner. Since a new word was given each day, each day the site had a post with a new word, a day-older post with a different word that people were voting on, and a two-day-older post with a different word in which the real definition was given and the winner announced. Plus, of course, the older posts with the previous words and winners.

My entries have won or tied a few times, and have also sometimes been nominated and not won. In the current vote (for conterminal), which has been going on for several months now, I am a finalist but am unlikely to win.

I have decided to reprint my Word Imperfect entries here in occasional posts. The first group of entries is below. The times given are the approximate times of my posts, in Arizona time(MST), from the clock on my computer.


Quaquaversal:

6:44 AM 6/8/2007

Quaquaversal is something that is true throughout the strange and magical land of Quaqua, a land that is reached by putting one's arms over one's eyes, stepping through the looking glass, and shouting, "Duck! Duck!"


Asperity:

10:09 AM 6/10/2007

Asperity is the branch of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of the asper. The asper is a flower related to the aster, but much more troublesome to grow and much less rewarding. Those who undertake such adventures are known as aspersions.


Horopter:

4:53 AM 6/11/2007

A horopter is a helicopter that is believed to be haunted or jinxed.

Example: After being tapped on the shoulder too many times and finding no one there, the pilot refused to ride in that "horopter."


Mattoid:

10:42 AM 6/12/2007 *** finalist

Once a year, people named Matt gather for a special celebration called MATT (Matts All The Time). Those who attend but are not actually Matts are referred to as Mattoids.


My entry for mattoid was chosen as one of the three finalists. It's allowable there to vote for yourself, and I did. I didn't win, though.

The vote count the last time I checked it:

11:39 PM 6/13/2007:

Choose a winner for mattoid
Stephen 26.92%
Karoline 46.15%
Bloodboughtme 26.92%

Total votes : 26


Nonage:

9:37 PM 6/13/2007

Nonage is a term used to describe the remaining capacity of a ship that has been fully loaded, one that already contains its maximum tonnage.

Example: "I can't put any more in her, she's at nonage now."


Jobation:

5:02 AM 6/14/07

Jobation is a general term for the activities taking place on St. Jobat's day, which include the First Feast of Jobat, Comments on the First Feast of Jobat, the Second Feast of Jobat, Comments on the Second Feast of Jobat, the Third Feast of Jobat, Comments on the Third Feast of Jobat, and naptime. St. Jobat was a 7th century monk who didn't believe in fasting, and though now little known, was very popular in his time and for several centuries afterward.


Kymograph:

9:45 AM 6/15/2007

A kymograph is used as an aid in the adjustment of chimes. It is a device containing multiple narrow extensions of different lengths, which have been set to vibrate when tones of the appropriate frequency are reached. To check a particular chime, strike the chime and see if the kymograph portion designated for that particular chime vibrates. If it does not vibrate, or if it vibrates poorly, or if more than one vibrates, readjust the chime and try again.


Splenius:

2:16 AM 6/17/2007

A splenius is the jar in which the ancient Egyptians kept the spleen and other organs when mummifying a person.


Pilose:

8:58 AM 6/17/2007 *** winner (2-way tie)

Pilose is the state of mental numbness brought on from calculating PI to too many decimal places.


My entry for pilose was chosen as one of the three finalists. It's allowable there to vote for yourself, and I did. I ended up in a 2-way tie for first place.

The vote count the last time I checked it:

12:40 AM 6/19/2007
Choose a winner for Pilose
Stephen 43.24%
Melissa 43.24%
Dan 13.51%

Total votes : 37


Wivern:

12:46 AM 6/19/2007

[I wrote this too late to be used. When I rechecked the site before posting the entry, I found that the finalists had already been chosen, so I didn't post it. I'm posting it here, though.]

Wivern means "woven fern." It is a type of fern whose branches are so woven together that they almost resemble a climbing vine.

Dream - Iced tea with Paul Newman

On Wednesday, October 29, 2008, I dreamed I was at Los Arcos Mall, a place that was torn down several years ago. While there, near the end of the dream, I had iced tea with Paul Newman.

In the dream, I was in the parking lot at Los Arcos Mall, on the side toward McDowell Road. I was talking to someone and looking toward the mall. A lot had happened before that that I don't remember. I then entered the mall. Going down the aisle I found that lots of stores were boarded up. Various little displays were set up in the aisle, generally offering various kinds of food, maybe sometimes selling it and sometimes giving it away. The aisle got to be more of a hallway size in places because of the boarding up that had happened, and the path through it was sometimes irregular.

I came to an area near the middle of the mall, close to where another aisle crossed this one. A very large squarish table had been set up, with a room constructed on the far corner at the side toward the middle of the aisle, and several people were around the table, widely spaced, eating some food. Some kind of presentation was being given, and I felt it was some kind of thing where something was being taught or promoted. A middle-aged woman was in control. She wanted me to stay and eat something with them.

I looked at her but didn't say anything. I kept on moving, still looking toward her part of the time, while she looked back still looking hopeful. The offer was somewhat attractive but I was unsure of the situation and didn't feel that I should.

The corner of the table toward me and on my right had a wooden keyboard with long light oak-colored keys. The keys were perhaps a foot long and tightly packed together, with the group of them perhaps a couple of feet across. I felt they were some type of musical instrument, perhaps something like a piano, though I didn't know if they sounded like one. I wanted to get past the table and to the other side of the aisle, and to save time I quickly walked over the corner of the table and across part of the keys. My feet were bare at the time. I think I was carrying my shoes in my hand, having for some reason taken them off earlier in the mall. I felt a little bad about getting my bare feet on things, but I didn't have any shoes on right now so there didn't seem to be any help for it.

A little past there I went through a blocked off area in the middle of the mall and found a large open area on the other side, to the right of where I had come from, where several tables had been set up and people were eating a holiday dinner. Some of the people were relatives and some were apparently friends of them, while others were evidently just other people. The tables were widely spaced and there seemed to be plenty of room left at them for more people. Some other tables to the left had food on them.

I was greeted happily, like they were expecting me, and taken to the tables where the food was, to get a plate filled for me. Some thick juicy slices were cut off the side of a very large, somewhat flattened and looking almost boneless turkey and made into a sandwich for me. Some other food was being put on a plate, too. I was given the sandwich and taken to a wooden booth to one side of the room.

The booth had big windows along the front and enough room to comfortably fit two people with plenty of space around them. The windows had a bench in front of them, attached to the booth like a broad shelf. Two tall stools were set in front of it. One stool was empty. On the far side of the booth and sitting on the other stool was Paul Newman, looking younger, like he was in his early sixties. I was surprised to see him, since he was dead. I guessed this a little was before he died. I wondered if I should tell him he was going to die soon, but I decided against it.

I bit into the sandwich and found that it was actually a ham and hash sandwich, with the ham in medium thin slices with black edges. I wondered about that and thought that I still had to get the rest of the food that they were putting on the plate for me, somewhere outside in the room. I hoped they were holding it for me.

The man who brought me in then brought a big bottle of iced tea, though it wasn't actually iced, just slightly cool. The bottle was heavy glass and contained maybe about a quart, maybe more. It was stuck in a holder on the wall on the other side of Paul Newman. The holder held it upright at a slight angle, and a long curved metal spout was stuck in the neck, which was slightly larger than normal, having maybe an inch and a quarter opening. The spout also seemed to be stuck right through a cork in the bottle. In spite of the spout being stuck in the top, a large glass was put underneath the bottle and somehow filled with iced tea coming out the bottom of the bottle. The glass was given to me and I drank some.

I told Paul Newman that I thought he had done a lot of things in his life, all the things he had done while making the movies. I was a little uncertain and thought that what I was saying sounded kind of lame, but I tried to say it as positively as I could. I felt I had to say something to him.

He looked a little amused and replied, in a somewhat hoarse but loud and firm voice, that he had done just about everything. Then he took the bottle away the holder and the spout, which stayed where it was, apparently attached somehow to the wall, and took a drink directly from the bottle through the large hole in the cork while looking out the window at the scene outside. At that point I was awakened by my mother.

Dream - God of storms

Sunday morning, November 23, 2008, I had a dream in which I displayed godlike powers and attempted to control the weather, and received retribution from above for my daring to do such a thing.

The dream was a lot longer than what is written here, but the first part of it has been forgotten. There seems to have been something about superheroes and superhero comic books and dolls, but it may have been part of a different dream.

At some point I was with a group of people. It was night and we had traveled across some areas like broad fields or yards with a few trees and bushes bordering them, perhaps in part across the area around a school, a school similar to an elementary school I used to go to, and then into some countryside beyond. My impression is that we flew through the air under our own power.

After going a few miles we landed outside a large building, in the parking lot near some wide steps leading into the building. It was still night but the area was well lit, particularly near the building. Some other people were nearby. They were scattered a bit, though some were within a few feet of each other.

They were discussing among themselves some task they had to perform there. It was some kind of hush-hush thing, involving secretly getting into the building, or fairly secretly, and taking some things from there, enough that several boxes were involved, which were being loaded into a big truck. I don't think it was quite like stealing, it felt more like it was some kind of secret mission, though I don't know if it was actually sponsored by the government. I was a little distance from the others.

I felt that I had to show them my power, I had to show them what I could do and what was possible. Happy and smiling broadly, I called out to the others to look and I pointed my arm at the sky, my hand holding high a large stick or scepter/wand/cane, pointing it at the sky as an extension of my arm. It something dark and made of wood and smoothly varnished, with a wider section eight to ten inches long fitted onto it toward the end, like it was something that could move back over the thinner part I was holding, to make a shorter object. It also had some rings, probably made of brass, at the edges of the sections. I was moving it and my arm in a large circle. A thin overcast was moving across, lit partly by the lights below and partly behind it by the stars and maybe the moon. The sky was faintly visible through it, though the clouds were thicker at the edges.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but I kept it up. Then the thin overcast slowly started to turn in the area of the circle. "See, see!" I cried, jubilant. Then, still smiling, I started to wonder about consequences, what might be required of me as payment for the energy I was using.

Then suddenly a thin smoky bolt came out of the sky at an angle and hit a heavyset man about a hundred feet ahead. He was wearing bulky clothes that had an ornamental feel to them, and was just a dark silhouette. The man was a leader of the group, maybe even my father. A burst of smoke or fog or cloud appeared at the spot the beam hit, like an explosion, and then the beam retreated and took him with it back into the sky.

"No! No! Take me instead," I cried, bending over double in guilt and anguish, still looking toward the spot where the man had stood. The sky gave no response, and I was no longer concerned about making a twister.

After a bit of a pause, the other people in the group mainly continued what they were doing, if anything. Perhaps some looked toward me and what had happened. If anything, I felt they were very slightly amused, perhaps also with a feeling of life goes on and to continue what they wee doing as best they could without him. The project seemed mostly done, though part of it now seemed to have been abandoned and they were getting ready to leave, and some were already leaving.

Dream - My grandmother's birthday party, and old cars disappearing into fog

Saturday morning, November 15, 2008, I had a dream in which I was at my grandmother's house in Arizona, but it was much bigger, and she was having a birthday party. It's hard to say for sure what time period the party would be in, except that it was probably somewhere in the 1970s or early '80s. The family members there generally seemed younger than they are now, though maybe not always by the full amount that would be required.

There were a lot of plants at the far wall and on the walls that joined to it. Some of the plants were very small and some average-to-large in size. Some of the pots were the size of little Styrofoam cups and others were large. All were overflowing or filled near the brim with water. My youngest sister was watering them and just went along them with the pitcher, pouring it out, getting some on the floor.

My grandmother, a little later, was given two books. She was sitting in a chair just on the other side of a wide doorway that led into the kitchen area. They were medical books of some kind. One was much smaller and thinner than the other. She was looking through the larger one, which was a tall, thick, oversized paperback that evidently dealt with herbal remedies. The other book was on the floor near her. She had evidently already looked through it some. She seemed fascinated by the one she was reading and asked me which one I bought for her or something like that. I had been out of town working and didn't actually buy them. I leaned over forward to be down near her. Though I faced her, my eyes went to the right and I was saying, "Uhhhhhhh........" My mother came up and rescued me, saying it was time to eat or something like that.

My brother brought in something like a pale cake that was partly composed of pudding, almost like a soft bread pudding except that it was uniform inside and didn't have any visible seams or components. Whatever it was I thought of it as cake. My grandmother seemed to have somehow moved a few feet into the family room, still in her chair. Both books were now on the floor. My brother had a big spatula and was using it to cut a long thin rectangular piece of the cake, which was in a rectangular glass pan. I worried about the cake dripping as it was a little wet, especially on the bottom. He was talking in a slightly loud sarcastic voice with an edge in it, and was getting the piece of cake out for my grandmother while holding it over one of the books. I went over to the book and moved it aside, whereupon he immediately turned and held it over the other book, which I also then moved. I complained to him about what he was doing, holding it over one of the books and then when I moved it holding it over the other one. He continued to talk in the sarcastic voice, ignoring me, though I think his eyes turned from side to side a little.

We went into the kitchen area to eat, to kind of a second smaller family room that corresponded more with how the house was in real life. My aunt, my mother's sister, came down to serve part of the food. I think someone had to go and coax her. She had wild hair that stuck out all over in long thick tapering curly light brown tufts. I think she had a big bowl in front of her that she was scooping portions out of for people, some kind of vegetable I think. There was also a second cake as well as other things. She talked while she worked, I think about something fairly matter of fact, but the way her head and mouth and eyes moved it was evident that she was a little upset about something and tears were in her eyes.


Some time passed then, and I came back what seemed like a couple of days later, though it may have been a week, to care for the plants. The house was dark. Everyone seemed to be gone, though I wondered if someone, maybe my aunt, was in the back to the house, in one of the bedrooms. I looked out the window at the back, standing a few feet away from the window I think, not really looking closely at things, just wanting to look some out there for a while.

I went over to the kitchen table and sat there, reading a technical book. The book was at least partly about cars, but it also seemed to be about science, maybe even physics or astronomy, and was in small print. I was maybe two-thirds through. I decided to skip through it some and see what it looked like further on. I was looking at some pages near the back, and then leafed through to the back and found that the back of the book had some of the pages damaged. Some were torn off vertically, some near the seam and some both near the seam and near the edge, with most of the middle missing.

I had the pages that had simply been torn off near the edge. They were still in the book and could be taped back together. The ones with the missing middle still had the outer edge, a strip of the page with a black plastic strip running down the outer edge. The plastic was perhaps 3/8 of an inch wide, with a slight ridge running down it near the inner edge. I didn't know why the book was made with plastic strips on the edges of the last few pages. It seemed awkward and they would be in the way. There wasn't much I could do with the pages with the missing middle. I decided to tape them to the back cover for now, in the hope that someday someone might find the missing middle sections and then be able to properly repair it.

I was afraid I was a little too late in coming back to care for the plants, that they had suffered from lack of water, and I felt a little guilty because of it. At the far end of the family room was a black upright piano, with plants across the closed keyboard cover and on both sides of the piano. Water was dripping on the black wooden keyboard cover, from a hose or perhaps even some kind of thin copper pipe with a small shutoff valve. Because of the plants it was hard to see exactly what the water was coming from, particularly from the other side of the room.

At some point a psychiatrist showed up. He felt something like the one I once had, though he seemed a little older and didn't really look like him. I don't recall him coming in. It seemed like he was just suddenly there and the assumption was that he had come into the house and sat down, in the kitchen in a chair near the door to the carport. I was on the other side of the table from him, still fiddling with the plastic strips, trying to get them secured to the back cover. I finally gave up on it for now and just closed the book. The pressure of it being closed would have to be enough hold the strips inside. The psychiatrist sat there frowning and we talked back and forth. I talked to him about the house being dark and how I was supposed to care for the plants, and about the general situation.


Then the situation changed, and I went back to Nevada and to the place in the desert where I worked. I talked with some people for a while, at various places in Building A, going probably from the north end toward the south end, and probably spending the larger part of my time in the south half of the building. At some point someone came and kept telling me, maybe more than one person telling me, that I needed to go to the conference room, that there was something important there. It seemed to have the force of an order, that it was an order from a manager that was being relayed to me. I think it was a general thing, that other people were also supposed to come, and that it was something that had been planned. I didn't feel a great sense of urgency about it, perhaps because I no longer really worked there. I finally went to see what was happening, though.

Going with a few other people, maybe including some who had made the request, I went down the long hallway, going north, away from the south entrance to the conference room, heading for the north one. When we got to the northern entrance, the doors were either already opened or were opened as we arrived. A few people were there, evidently waiting for us, perhaps especially for me, though I think they were also talking to each other when we came up. They were managers, I think, and directed our attention to inside the conference room.

There were a few cars in the conference room, on the side near the hallway, and one or two even outside the room. Some were owned by relatives, I think, but some weren't. They were small cars mainly, though some may have been midsize.

Just beyond the cars, running the length of the conference room, was an impenetrable fog. The cars were already dimmed by it and some were moving sideways into it, fading into the fog and disappearing. The cars were too old now, they had been cared about and cared for, but now they were too old and needed too much work, it was too expensive to keep them. It was sad but it was time now to move them on, maybe to car clubs or collectors or something like that, and people needed to realize that and should accept it, but I didn't know if all of them would.

Wordzzle 74 - Judgment

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the eighteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

"I'll give you fair warning," the psychiatrist said. "This will probably end up costing you a lot. Each session, in fact, is too expensive for most people."

"That's okay," I said. "I'm not wealthy enough to be a philanthropist, but I should be able to handle it, at least for a while."

"We should get started, then, to make the most use of your money. What seems to be your main concern right now?"

"I have had a lot of strange dreams. Sometimes of good things happening, but usually of very bad things. I feel that they are trying to tell me something. In fact, sometimes I am actively looking for things in the dreams. Sometimes I am going down corridors full of locked doors, and I try key after key in them but none of them work. Other times I am in a maze of rooms that I can't get out of. And sometimes it's a maze of mirrors, where I keep seeing my own reflection over and over."

"That is odd, but we all have things we hide from ourselves. What about the other dreams, the ones about the disasters?"

"They tend to be about battles being fought, in what is apparently a horrific worldwide war. I hear the whine of bullets and the sound of explosions. Sometimes I see, from somewhere in the air, saturation bombing. Sometimes I even see mushroom clouds. And sometimes I'm just looking at a vast screen, watching the arcs of missiles going across a map. Sometimes I see refugees gathering outside ruined cities, some dying and the rest facing starvation. All I remember, though, is just fragments. I don't know how it got that way, how things had deteriorated so much that something like that could happen."

"What about the dreams with the good endings?"

"In those, the war never happened. The world is almost like an Eden, with burgeoning greenery, plants everywhere, everybody has enough to eat and all the nations are at peace."

"Very interesting. You do know, don't you, that dreams are normally about us and our situations, and shouldn't be regarded as saying something about the world at large, although sometimes current events can be incorporated in them."

"Yes, I figured that. I used to be in the journalism business, but had to get out. I was afraid I was putting the news in my dreams, or at least fears brought on by the news. It didn't stop after I left, though, and years have passed since then. I really feel that they are trying to tell me something, not just about me but about the world. I do feel that I will be a part of it, though. An important part."

"Hmmm. We are all major figures in our own dreams. Perhaps it's simply that."

"I feel that it's more than that. It's been going on for a long time, and though I don't really remember much of any dream, a sense of things has settled in, and I feel that they're trying to tell me something important, about something that will really happen, and about the role I will play in it, or should play in it."

"What is it that you want from me, then?"

"I want you to help me find out what the dreams really mean, but not in terms of dream symbols, unless they can be translated to show what the dreams are saying about the real world. I also want to know what my part is. You are a trained hypnotist. I want to be hypnotized to find out what they mean. I'm sure my subconscious mind knows more about them, and I could probably remember more of them under hypnosis."

"Yes, I could hypnotize you, but we should have a few sessions first, to give me a chance to know more about you and for us to become more comfortable with each other."

"I understand, but we really need to speed this up. I don't know how much time I have. The war might happen soon, or it might be years from now. The dreams don't give me any indication, except that since I seem to be important in some way, it will be sometime in my lifetime. However long that is."

"I guess we could have a preliminary hypnosis session, then. Probably more will come out in later sessions, though, after we've had more time to establish trust. Okay, now look at me, pay attention, I'm going to put you under..."

I opened my eyes. It didn't feel that anything had happened. I looked at my watch, and found that quite a bit of time had passed. "I guess you really did hypnotize me, though I don't really feel much different. Did I say anything interesting? I hope it didn't include too many indelicate details."

I looked over at him, and found he was asleep. I was unable to awaken him, and finally left. I never received a bill from him, and was unable to contact him for future sessions. He never answered the phone, and wouldn't return my messages. At first I thought he had simply tossed in the towel on me and given up, but later I began to think that it was something else.

There were always people, somewhere, who wanted war. Some just wanted to rule over other countries, perhaps even wanted to rule over everything. Others just regarded it as a game, almost a test of manhood, like running the bulls. Sometimes the bulls won, though. Sometimes things didn't go your way, but they never really believed that would happen. Not unless they simply wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. And sometimes everything would look fine, with the world heading toward peace, and a tiny spark would send everything the other way, with clouds of war quickly burgeoning. Sometimes it seemed that people simply had too many hormones.

I had begun to see my place in all this. Although I didn't remember anything from the hypnosis session at first, as time passed more and more of it came to me. I was remembering more of my dreams, too, and remembering other things. I did have a crucial part to play in all this. And there was a plan. In fact, it dated to before I was born. It was not something that would happen right away, though I did have to get started at it. I had years to go, but I had to be at the right place at the right time, and the world had to be ready for what I had to do. Sometimes, the road taken is more important than the road not taken. It all depends on what you want the ending to be.


Mini Challenge:

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

"90 days hard labor!" the judge said, slamming down his gavel.

"Wow. Wow. What are the charges?"

"Failure to make sizable contributions to my account, and playing your trumpet late at night."

The man looked at him blankly. "I don't own a trumpet."

"You don't? But then, who..." He peered at the papers in front of him, and shuffled through them, looking confused.

"Um, it was me, Dad, I'm practicing for school, remember?"

"What? But, Timmy, but, but... Well, okay, we'll talk about this later." Turning back to the man he said, "If it wasn't the trumpet playing, what are you here for?"

"I was just passing through town, and I was under the impression I got caught speeding."

"You got caught speeding? How? The place is too small to have a police department, and we're too out of the way for state troopers to bother setting speed traps. It's too small to have a judge, too. I'm normally the mayor, when I'm not at my normal job, running the general store and service station. Where's the arresting officer?"

"I didn't get arrested, and the officer didn't stick around. He just told me to come here."

"Hmm. Do you at least have a ticket?"

"Just this," he said, handing the judge a paper.

The judge took it and stared at it. "This isn't a regular ticket. It's just something written on paper. It doesn't even have the officer's name. Rather childlike lettering, too." He stared at it for a few moments, rubbing his chin. "What did this officer look like?"

"I don't know. He kept his hat pulled down low and wore big dark glasses. He was pretty short, though."

"Dang. I knew we shouldn't have gotten Billy that police uniform for his birthday."

"But he was driving a car, with lights and a siren."

"That doesn't mean anything. Everybody around here can drive, as soon as they're tall enough to look over the dashboard, and usually before."

"But the light and siren?"

"There's a junkyard a few miles off. All kinds of things there."

"I'm, um, free to go then?"

"Well, there is the matter of speeding."

"But he wasn't a real police officer! And that's not a real ticket!"

"Doesn't matter, you've pretty much admitted to it."

"Actually, I didn't. I just came here because I thought I had been given a ticket for it, but the person who gave me the ticket was impersonating a policeman and in any case couldn't be relied on to give correct information regarding that. He was just play acting."

"Are you calling my son a liar? Maybe you deserve some hard time after all."

"For speeding?"

"For speeding, reckless driving, wasting the court's time, whatever else I can add on."

"Wow, this is really great!" a woman said. The man turned and looked at her, and saw she was busily writing on a pad of paper.

"Oh, no," the judge groaned. "Not another lurid headline!"

"Yes, but this one will really fit the story," the woman said.

"You have a newspaper?"

"Just a newsletter she mails out every few weeks or so. It's usually full of ordinary things with fantastic headlines."

"Well, I have to make it sound like something people want to read! But I don't have to try very hard with this one! How about 'Judge Throws Book at Imaginary Speeder'?"

The judge groaned. "Look, maybe we can just do a quick fix on this. Mow my yard and we'll call it even."

"'Judge Sentences Crazed Speeder to Quick Yard Work'"

"Alright, alright! Go ahead, you're free to go."

"Um, there is one other thing."

"Oh? Well, what is it?"

"He confiscated my car."


Mega challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

The sign shone luridly through the smoke and fog. It was only a gas station sign, but I couldn't even tell that until I got close. I thought of using the pay phone and trying to find directions, but it wanted a sizable contribution to use it, more than I had with me. It was probably for the best anyway. I felt too exposed at it, even with the dim visibility. It could have been just the general mood of the place, I guess, the overall foreignness of it. I picked a damp newspaper out of the trash and tried to read it in the dim light. It didn't have anything useful in it, except showing how much journalism had slipped since I stopped reading them.

I heard the whine of a car approaching and hid behind the trash bin till it passed. No point asking for trouble. The last incident hadn't worked out well, and I had learned to be a little more cautious. I decided to sit down there for a while and try to get some sleep, even though I really didn't have the time for it.

I had been on the run for days, and I wasn't used to such hard labor. Not anymore. The wound in my side was hurting, too, the one I told the girls I got from running the bulls. I had never done such a thing, but it was a better story than the real one. I had a lot of things like that in my past, with plenty of indelicate details that no one needed to know.

The sound of a trumpet woke me up, but it turned out to be just a kid on a bike with a fancy horn. I started to get up, and a burgeoning pain spread throughout my body, and I fell back on the pavement. I had to get up, though, and finally did, gritting my teeth.

I had to get some money, too. I needed to go out and search for a philanthropist, but the bums along the street had probably passed the saturation level. I wouldn't blend in with them, though, and would stick out like a sore thumb, which could be good or bad.

It felt like almost anyone else would have tossed in the towel, but I knew that I couldn't. Not yet. There would be no quick fix for me, and no quick fix for this. I had been given fair warning before all this started. Quite detailed warnings, in fact. My head was in the clouds, though, and I didn't think of them. Not really. I never thought it could be like this. Never thought it could get this bad. All I could see was the celebrity and the money, or the possibility of it. It was like an injection of hormones. If so, it had pretty much worn off now.

I looked at the ever-present cameraman, and wondered how my partner was doing, wherever she was. I had never known that "The Amazing Race" could be so rough.

The second Great Imagination Award

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, I was given the second Great Imagination Award by Akelamalu on her blog Everything And Nothing. This is also the second time I've won it.



She had written a short story for a Portrait of Words, and wanted readers to leave comments supplying the ending. She then had people vote, in another post, by leaving comments saying which one they liked the best. The ending I wrote received the most votes.

The post below is the one in which the winner was revealed and the award handed out:

Everything And Nothing: Who won....

I made a comment there thanking everyone, which I'll repeat here:

Thanks everybody. And thank you, Akelamalu, for having the contest and for the beautiful award. I am very happy to accept it.


This is my winning entry:

Dolly continued to work at the diner, waiting for Geoff to return. He sent her an occasional letter, which she cherished. She wrote him back, and sent letters much more frequently than she received them. He spoke about the strange places he was visiting, and about how much he missed her. She spoke about how nice it was to hear about such things, places and customs that she never dreamed existed, and told him about life there in the hills and about how much she missed him.

Although he had said he would be back in a short time, months passed and then years, and still she waited. The hill people were starting to feel sorry for her, she knew, but she still kept waiting. She even turned down the men who wanted to date her. As time passed, her brothers and sisters grew up and all got married. Still she waited. Finally a man came in, a stranger, who still looked somehow familiar. Then she realized it was Geoff, years older, his hair streaked with gray.

"I'm sorry it took so long," he said. "I meant to come back earlier, and almost did several times, but I was afraid that if I did I couldn't bear to leave again. I was trying to save up enough money so that I could retire and stay here with you. We could still travel sometimes, but then it would be for fun, and we could go wherever we wanted."

She looked at him, wanting to hug him, wanting to throw her arms around him and never let him go, but somehow reluctant to make any move toward him. She said, softly and with a little sadness, "Did it really have to be so long? Couldn't you have come back at least sometimes? You did get vacations, you know."

He looked back at her, then turned his face to the side. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't. I couldn't bear to come back and then have to leave again. I thought of you almost constantly, though." He turned his head toward her again, fear and pain showing in his eyes. "There isn't someone else, is there? Someone who has taken my place?"

Several seconds of silence passed between them. She almost started to say something, but then stopped. Her face was unreadable.

Then she finally said, "There is someone else, but he has not taken your place. Come in Tommy, and meet your father." A little boy came in, who looked like both of them, and they all hugged each other, tears of happiness running down their faces. He had come home, and he would never leave them again.

A dog without a... toilet paper holder?

We have a tan and white Pekingese, large for that type of dog but still small as dogs go, and a Boston terrier. One day the Pekingese found something out in the yard and started chewing on it. I went closer to see what it was and found it was an old wooden toilet paper holder, painted black with most of the paint gone. It was the part that goes inside the roll of toilet paper, with a spring inside so it could be pushed in to fit into the holes and then pop back out to lock in place.

I thought it might not be a good thing to chew on, so I decided to try to take it away from him. He knew I wanted to get it, though, and kept looking at me while he softly crewed on it. Every time I started to get close he got up and ran to another part of the yard. Finally he was back by the cedar tree, laying down under the edge of it. I slowly got closer to him, talking softly while he eyed the hand I had way out in the air, slowly moving it closer to him. His mouth opened slightly, ready to bark or bite, his eyes looking to the side and upward at my hand. Suddenly I grabbed the toilet paper holder with my other hand, and flung it toward the side of a large bougainvillea bush.

He gave a startled yap and walked over there to try to find it. He nosed around the tall grass there for quite a while, looking disappointed but hopeful, and perhaps a little embarrassed at having fallen for the trick. He didn't find it, though. A while later I looked for it too, but didn't find it either. Over the years since then I've kept an eye out for it as I've cleared the grass away and raked the area, but I've never seen it. Maybe it got raked up with some grass and leaves, and was hidden by them. Or maybe it's still out there somewhere, in a place I haven't looked.

Several days ago I was telling the story again to my mother, and she suddenly looked very interested and said she was thinking about that toilet paper holder a few days ago and wondered what had happened to it.

Dream - The computer in the sky

Around June 7-8, 2009, I dreamed I was sometimes outside or in an open area, and I accessed at least twice some kind of computer or computer program out among the stars. It was night and the scene expanded to some stars and gas clouds/nebulas and/or large galaxies that spread across a significant portion of the sky, and the computer or program or web site was somehow encoded in the information there, in the arrangement of things, which were not quite static, but had a slow movement.

I was smiling and pointing at it, showing it to people standing near me, and I was talking about it. I think my mother was there and maybe my sister, but I don't remember who else. There might have been maybe four or five people in all.

Other times in the dream I was inside a mostly empty dimly-lit building, a medium large building probably, probably not more than two stories and maybe only one. There was some sadness at times, something to do with accessing things on computers, old sites or places I used to go to years ago but didn't much anymore, maybe something about old radio shows, too. A lot more happened but I've forgotten most of it.

Dream - Driving back home and also following the car in a small plane

On November 29, 2008, Saturday morning going into early afternoon, I had a series of dreams. In one of the later ones I was driving back home, and later in the dream was also in a small plane, following the car.

In the dream I was on a freeway, apparently in the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile, driving back home from Nevada. I was in a city, or on the outskirts of one. I think I had already gotten to Arizona and was somewhere in the Phoenix area, somewhere on the north side.

I got to where several sections of freeway were coming together, crossing in a mess of lanes. The road rose up and the car slowed down. I hit the cruise control button a couple of times to give it more power and increase the speed, seemingly reaching down and hitting it from way up in the air outside the car. Indeed, it was like I was watching the whole thing from high above. I wanted to get past some other cars in the right-hand lane, some of which were turning off to the freeway to the right, but some were going or might be going to merge with my lane. I got past them, or some of them. My speed, which had earlier been around 57 or 58, and had been dropping to near 55, now increased to near 60 as I approached the top of the rise in the road. I worried some about getting caught by the police, but it didn't seem important or likely.

Suddenly I saw where booths had been set up in the lanes, with policemen in them. They were there to catch speeders, but in fact people couldn't get past them without slowing way down, whether they were speeders or not, and they seemed to be checking and processing almost everyone. I slowed way down. They were talking to each other and though I think I stopped there for a while, they didn't seem to be concerned with or care about me so I went on, still wondering about the situation and whether they would decide to come after me. I was not alone in the car now. There was at least one other person there, maybe another, too. I'm not sure if they were there before, but it seemed normal.

The road turned left, then, and went into some ornate tunnels. There were many lanes, some going the other way, with high walls going to the ceiling every couple of lanes. The ceiling was not very high, barely enough room for a tall truck.

I was also flying a small plane with someone, watching over my car. After the car went into the tunnel we discussed whether we could follow it, whether it was safe and whether there was room in the tunnel. I finally decided to go and do it, we had to follow the car. Apparently we couldn't be seen by anyone.

We somehow slowly swooped in, the wings somehow getting a little smaller, contracting enough to barely fit inside the tunnel. We got over the car, or almost over the car, and then saw something ahead. It was a tall truck filling the lane to the top. At first it seemed to be the back of the truck, but as we got closer to it, and it got closer to us, I could see that it was somehow coming our way, in the same lane we were in. It seemed very ominous in the dream, but it didn't quite sink in that the truck was going the wrong direction.

The dream scene seemed to flash several times, both at the time we initially saw the truck and as it got closer, and as the truck and the car and the plane got closer in things seemed to move in slow motion, and finally I saw that there was a huge ornate projection to the left that protruded way into the lane just above the cars, going almost to the ceiling. The plane wouldn't be able to get past it, and the truck couldn't either.

Everything was slowing to a stop, it was almost as if time was slowing down, and I slowly woke up. As I woke up or just after, while I was still a little in the dream, I decided that among my other powers I now had the power to shrink the plane to the size of a toy (why not?), and the tiny plane now flew high and to the side among the ornateness of the ceiling, out of danger of being hit by the truck.

Dream - An angel beside me?

Late Tuesday afternoon, December 16, 2008, I fell asleep while sitting in a chair, and had a nightmare about driving while sleeping, unable to stay awake, with a presence in the passenger seat driving for me.

In the dream it was night and I was in Nevada, driving back toward Arizona. It was late, perhaps the middle of the night. Earlier in the dream I had been driving more normally I think, and I think some other things had happened, maybe something in small rooms. Now, though, I was very tired and kept falling asleep. I was driving while sleeping, trying hard to wake up, but my eyes would close almost immediately and my head would fall forward and to the side, and I would droop over to the side.

In a bend of the road where it curved sharply to the left and then back out again, I came across, on the left side, at the innermost part of the bend, two women in a very small open room sitting at a table. The room was an opening in a very large dark wall that went by that section of the road. The wall partly followed the contours of the road, but in straight, slightly angled sections. The road curved in close to the wall here, so I was right by the room where the women were.

As I came up to them, they turned to each other and giggled. They seemed to be giggling at me and my situation. As I drove by, I leaned my head out of the window, my eyes pleading, and spoke to them. Even though I said only a few words to them, asking for help I think, I got the impression that they were already aware of me and had been following my situation, monitoring me in a way, though I'm not sure for what purpose.

I was quickly past them, then, and turned my attention back to driving, trying desperately to wake up. For a while, a thick ridge a couple of feet high ran by the side of the road. I sometimes reached out my hand and hung onto it, my hand rapidly sliding along its rough, lumpy surface in the darkness. I was able to see the wall-like ridge but not much else, and was driving almost totally blind.

At some point, I became aware that someone was in the car with me, on the right, driving. The person shouldn't be there and was not always visible. I thought it must be an angel or a ghost. I guess I was glad it was there but I didn't feel that I could or should trust it to continue driving for me. I didn't know who or what it was or what it was capable of doing and under what conditions, and how long and reliably it would continue to do it. Perhaps it only operated temporarily or in emergencies, and couldn't continue doing it for long periods, especially if I simply gave up control and let it go on unattended.

I thought of how I must have gone around the terrible curves of this section of road in the darkness, not even realizing it, just following one curve after another without realizing where I was, picturing in my mind now a point in the trip in mid Nevada where the curves were. I was afraid I was headed for them again and tried to open my eyes but they kept shutting again. I was going very fast and just getting glimpses of things. It was light outside now, but it was very hard to keep my eyes open for more than a second or two at a time.

I could see some giant forklift-like thing ahead moving slow, evidently some kind of farm machinery. I was coming up very fast on it. I swerved around it at the last second, but it wasn't me doing it, not my current awareness. Though I seemed to be at the wheel sitting up straight with my eyes fixed on the road ahead, I wasn't actually in my body, I was just a dim, dark, foggy, reeling presence behind and to the side, with maybe my hips and legs partly overlapping my body.


I woke up and thought I heard the phone ring, but it evidently didn't. If the phone rang, it was important to answer because my mother was still in the hospital. She was going to have the operation today, Tuesday, to deaden the part of her heart that had been racing. The day before, Monday, they had put in a pacemaker.

Dream - Space aliens are coming to get us

Early on Sunday, December 7, 2008, I had a strange dream in which we were invaded by aliens from outer space.

In the dream, it was night and I was at home. The rest of the family was there, including my father and everyone else, as far I can remember. Some other people were there, too. We were about to be invaded by extraterrestrial aliens. It had happened earlier and somehow we had gotten out of it, or it was perhaps just a preliminary thing, but now they were coming back and it was going to be very difficult, almost impossible to escape them. We were going to be totally controlled by them. They had machines to control our minds, and I think drugs too.

I was loading boxes of stuff from the back yard into the station wagon, which was parked in the side yard by the fence. Other cars were there, too, and the rest of the family was also working at loading things. The other people were, too. We were also loading food. Time seemed to be getting desperately short. We were going to my younger sister's house, because they were expecting us to be here instead and it would give us a little more time until they figured it out. We were going to make our last stand there at her house.

Then we got word they were coming. They came before we had totally left, though I think some of the cars were gone. They were strange figures that seemed to be part of the darkness, that would partially melt into view. They didn't seem to understand about the leaving. Cars could drive away right in front of them and they didn't understand what was happening. They seemed to be just concerned about what was there. I went around to the opposite side yard, toward the back, and hid. It was getting light now. The back yard was much bigger now than in real life and was huge, though earlier it had been the same size. The house was much bigger now, too, and might have even been two story.

There was an electrical line that went to a house evaporative cooler out in the yard, a line that was taken down by someone, perhaps even me, to try to delay the alien takeover. It seemed an important part of blocking the electricity use. I was hoping to sneak out before the aliens got their own stuff set up there, but now I saw that a thick light gray rubbery cable had been attached to it, with shallow light gray rubber collars at each end. The cable went through the air between the two attachment points, sagging some between them.

I went forward into it. It seemed that part of getting away was getting past it for some reason, or maybe I just had to take it down to delay things some more for them, as well as hampering their capabilities, and to increase my chances of escaping. I was a little nervous about doing it. I didn't know if I would get zapped by electricity or how hard it would be to break it loose, and I also worried about being seen.

Surprisingly though, when I pressed against it, it easily came loose at the end toward the house. The line wasn't very long, perhaps six to eight feet. It didn't attach directly to the house but to some intermediate structure. I went past it and eventually got to Scottsdale Road and then to Thomas Road, though I went back and forth from the shop to the Thomas Road area.

The aliens were out and about now, and now looked, in the daylight, like humans, though somewhat on the short side. A lot of them looked something like Keanu Reaves (probably because in real life I had recently been seeing ads for the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still" movie with him in it). I was trying to avoid them and stay out of their reach. If they got too close, especially if they could grab you, they could take you over.

There were various structures by the road and in the median, things like huge tall shelves, frequently with things on them, generally metal things I think. There were also stacks or structures of tall metal boxes. The various things were usually painted white or light gray.

I went back to Thomas Road, going there above the ground. I was partly climbing up things along the way and partly just using them as aids in hovering. I guess I was eight to ten feet up, trying to keep out of the reach of them. There were quite a few of them, but they didn't really seem interested in chasing me. They mainly just tried to get me when they happened to be close, though they did seem to be in the process of slowly tracking me, as well as anyone else not yet taken over.

Then some much taller ones appeared. I became aware that these were the real rulers, the real people in control, the others were just workers. These seemed much more intelligent, to the point that they were even a little bored by the whole thing. They were making their way down to Thomas Road now.

One of them, maybe ten or more feet tall and looking again like Keanu Reaves (I marvelled that he could be so tall and yet only look slightly more heavily built), kept absent-mindedly reaching for me while he talked to someone else, some other alien. I had to get much higher but it was very hard to get high enough. I seemed to lack the power to get that high. He was reaching up, looking up at me now and then, his hand almost able to get my legs, sometimes even slightly brushing my feet. I kept trying to get higher.

Wordzzle 73 - Life on the river

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the seventeenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

The film stars on the riverboat drank heavily, haunted by demons visible and invisible. The movie was supposed to take just a few weeks to film, just a short summer job, but it was dragging on forever. The director kept reshooting scenes, and having new ones written, and then demanding the rewrite of half the script, but it never seemed to be enough. When it came time to shoot the scenes, though, many times he would just sit there, looking like he was afraid to do anything. It was starting to seem like it would never be finished. Even the stars were getting late to show up now, not caring much about it any longer. Procrastination was rampant.

Then the computers and all the electronic equipment got flooded when the riverboat hit a rock. The movie was being shot digitally and all the scenes that were shot were lost. Even the latest versions of the script were lost. All that remained were paper copies that were largely outdated.

The scriptwriter sat on a rock on the river bank in the darkness, frantically trying to write down all he could remember. Beside him, a few candles burned, giving off a dim light. Nearby, the director paced. Every now and then he would say, "Why don't we do this instead..." and the scriptwriter would write down the new suggestion, then try to come up with a way to work it in that seemed halfway believable. From somewhere in the darkness, surrounded by a greater darkness, a hand, or something like a hand, reached up toward the sky.

It began to rain. The candles went out. The scriptwriter began to weep, silently, the tears mixing with the rain. The director continued to pace. "You know, we could work something like this into the script. I can just see it. The riverboat hits a sandbar, and they all have to get off, to lighten the boat and make it easier to get it unstuck, then a big storm comes up..."

The rising water washed over the scriptwriter's feet, and he got up and moved away from it, clutching his soaked pages, when he tripped over a root and fell, then slid into the river. The pages floated away. He floundered around and finally caught a projecting root and pulled himself back on the bank. It came to him then that the pages were gone. He had been writing on the latest printed copy of the script, which meant that that was gone, too. He felt his pockets. Even his pens were gone. All he had left was a strange little idol his cousin had given him, something he had picked up in South America.

He sat on the bank and wept some more, than got up and cautiously made his way back through the darkness. The director was still talking. "They heard the distant sounds of banjo playing, and they went toward it, hoping to find shelter..."

In the darkness something laughed, silently, unheard.


Mini Challenge:

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

The general demeanor of the invisible masked man didn't reach the standards of most people, but he figured, not surprisingly, who could tell?


Mega challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

I drank some more, and watched the riverboat go by. I hadn't been much for procrastination before, but I seemed to be getting a handle on it. Not too much had happened lately. Calling it lately may have been optimistic, as it had been going on for years.

Film stars walked by, pretending not to be film stars. Some kids went by on skate boards. No summer jobs for them, I guess. A bum walked by, talking animatedly to an invisible friend. I thought of saying something to him, but he seemed far enough gone already.

Then a masked man came by and pointed a gun at me, and demanded all my money. I told him I would have to get back to him. He hesitated, but evidently sensed something, or saw something in my general demeanor, and surprisingly turned around and left. I had plenty of money of course. More than enough for me and anything I wanted to do. I could have created an interesting little situation with the would-be robber, but I couldn't seem to get up much enthusiasm for it. Maybe next time.

I reached for the bottle and poured another drink. There was a time when I had better standards, but it was in the receding past, becoming a blur of memory.

The day was fading into evening. I lit a candle and gazed into it for a while. It didn't tell me anything new. Out in the river, another boat went by, mostly invisible in the darkness. I didn't have any trouble seeing it, of course. There wasn't much I missed, if I cared to take the trouble to notice it. I was caring less and less about taking the trouble, though.

A man came to a table, then, not far away, and started working on something on his laptop computer. I raised my glass in a toast to it, and took a sip. The computer screen turned blue and a cryptic error message appeared. The man cursed, and slammed it closed and threw it in the river. I grinned, and had another drink. The day wasn't a total loss after all. I had managed to do at least one good deed.

At least good as far as demons went.