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Home Row

Random short story:

I type 85 words a minute. I had to give a presentation at work. Those things can get into your head without you realizing it. The computer I had to type on was being projected onto the wall for everybody to see. People are always impressed by my typing speed. These people are ignorant of this however.

So I put my head down to look at my paper and my fingers start sending sparks from the keyboard. Watch me fly. Three sentences in I look up and see a bunch of red squiggly lines on the wall and realize that my fingers had been off home row. All my typing was a bunch of gibberish.

Nobody told me. They wanted to see how long I’d keep going before I figured it out myself. It got a good laugh.

Why don’t we tell people when they get off home row? Why do we assume they’ll figure it out themselves?

Recent Reading: Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

Harrison Bergeron (a short story), by Kurt Vonnegut

This short story depicts a dystopian world in which all men are equal (America in 2081). All men being equal, however, it turns out, is not easy to accomplish. Equality is accomplished through government-imposed handicaps.

For instance, if you are more intelligent than the average person, you are fitted with a mandatory ‘earbud’ (if you will) that pumps in random loud noises every few minutes to make sure you can’t sustain a train of thought. Or, say you’re too beautiful, then you are required to wear a mask. You can always know who’s beautiful, since they’ll be the one wearing the ugliest mask.If you’re too physically able, maybe a fast runner, then you have to constantly wear a heavy load on your back.

As with Player Piano, which I also read recently, the book ends with the promise of a messiah that will deliver the world from its bondage to equality, and the ultimate failure of that messiah.

The story turns out to be a fairly good parable for a culture still coming to grips with what equality truly means – a culture that rejects the notion that God desires unity, not uniformity – and a culture that always rejects those (him) who would save it from itself. You can read the story online HERE.

Recent Reading: The Visitor, by J.L. Pattison

The Visitor: A Short Story, by J.L. Pattison

Before I write a food words about the book, let me make a couple of notes: First, the book is available for free on Amazon for Kindle until tomorrow, September 6th. I’d encourage you to download it. Second, Mr. Pattison is a regular commentor on this blog, and has one of his own HERE.

The book itself is a short story set in the late 1800s through the mid 1900s. It blends science fiction with real history. I’m not always a fan of such, but he actually pulls it off quite well. It tells the story of how an American from some point in ‘the future’ attempts to travel back to warn the founding fathers of the United States of the future actions of the nation and the tragedies it will be involved in. The time traveler doesn’t quite make his destination of late 18th Century America, but he does manage to give his account to a former slave, now farmer, in late 19th Century Georgia. Leroy Jenkins, our Georgia farmer, has a hard time getting anyone, including a fairly well known journalist, to believe his story about the future of America. But by the end of the story, the assassination of a president makes at least one believer out of the long-dead Leroy’s story.

Pattison manages to weave some interesting themes and allusions into the story. I personally enjoyed this aspect of the narrative, though he is kind of scratching where I itch on these.  I’m not sure if the Leroy Jenkins of the story is somehow a nod to the Leroy Jenkins of viral video-game clip fame (not linking it because of questionable language), but it made me giggle upon reading the first line of the story. The Leroy of the story is actually sort of opposite to the Leroy of the video game, since he doesn’t go storming into anything, but actually remains overly passive in some sense. [Edit: Mr. Pattison tells me this was no meant to be an allusion]. There is also an allusion to the tension between the sovereignty of God and the outworking of history in relation to time travel. I find that to be an interesting thought experiment. Finally, there’s a big nod given to Neil Postman and his vision of the American future given in Amusing Ourselves to Death; Pattison even manages to give a bit of a nod to Aldous Huxley, though I know he’s not a huge fan of Brave New World. The needle-in-the-arm-sedation ending is quite Huxlean, and I thought it was a brilliant ending.

I recommend the story. It’s a very short read, but quite intriguing. The weaving of an interesting fictional narrative with theology, history, political commentary, media ecology, science fiction, and pharmaceuticals in such a short space is impressive.

Short Story: The UFO

It’s Monday or Tuesday. He can’t remember. He’d been on a World of Warcraft bender for a few days. Two? Three? Some chemicals may have been involved.

He’s gone stir crazy. He has to get out. It’s dark outside. It’s dark inside. He has been juggling with his sanity for a while now. He was bound to drop a ball. So he starts to drive out into the darkness. He doesn’t know where he’s going and he doesn’t really care.

What time is it? Who knows? Who cares? It all blends together in an electronic world. He can turn the lights on at night. He can duct tape the curtains down during the day. Whatever.

The road is nearly deserted for some reason. He sees a few cars pass by. The headlights give him Warcraft shell shock.

The windows are rolled down. The air breezes through. The open road! Is this true freedom? No. Freedom is a headset and a screen. In there you can die without dying. That’s freedom. But he needs something to break up the monotony.

He slows down near a curve. He hears strange noises. Strangely familiar noises. Yet unfamiliar. They give him that kind of uneasiness that makes your stomach tighten up just so much.

As he rounds the bend he sees a bright light ahead in the distance. It’s too big to be a headlight.

Wait! This is that crazy dream he’s always had. He always felt it would slip into reality. He’s dreaded it while half hoping it would happen. He knew it. It’s so post-modern. It is going to end perfectly! The aliens are coming to take him away. Bliss.

The UFO rises in the distance. It hovers. Its engines chirrup outside his windows with a sweet melodic twitter. How sweet the tweet. The kind of sound you hear as you stand homesick in alien corn.

He’s ready for this. He’s been ready for this for a thousand gamer years. He’s imagined this before – just this scenario. He knows they’ll accept him. Yes, for the first time in his life he’ll be accepted. He has a Tralfamadorian tattooed on his calf, that’s got to count for something, right?

He stops the car to await his destiny.

And the sun rises, and the birds keep singing.

Short Story: Picking Up the Phone

Pick up the phone! That’s what I used to say.

We were dating. I couldn’t get enough of him. I could talk to him for hours. I could spend half of that time just saying ‘I love you’ over and over again.

I love you more. No, no, really I love you more. I love you the mostest of the most.

Sometimes he wouldn’t answer when I called. I’d be devastated. Pick up the phone!

We didn’t have text messaging back in those days. No LOLs. No Twitter. No GPS position reporting. Not even email.

Pick up the phone! Where are you? I really need to talk.

And then he would, and we’d talk for an hour, and I’d go to bed already dreaming before I fell asleep. Dreaming that I would wake up to a ringing phone and it would be him on the other end. Good morning.

Now we’ve been married for over 10 years. And he watches football on his phone. And he plays Clash of Clans. And he emails his boss. And he Skypes with his clients. And he texts me from upstairs and asks me to bring him up a manila folder. I’m trying to make dinner.

And I find myself saying, ‘Would you please put down the phone?’

Short Story: She Walked Away with the Psychologist

I’m in the fourth grade. A girl in my class doesn’t show up. She doesn’t show up for days. For weeks. There are rumors. I don’t understand them. She didn’t move away. Is she coming back?

Then one day she shows up. She’s not alone.

A man I’ve never seen walks to the front of the class and tells us he’s a psychologist. I don’t know what that means. He tells us the girl has something to say to the class.

She stands up at the front of the class. She’s the teacher now. She seems confident for a fourth grader. A little nervous, but hardly showing it.

“I tried to hurt myself,” she says. “I took a knife out of our kitchen. I cut myself.”

“I’m getting counseling to help me so I won’t hurt myself anymore.”

I don’t remember the rest of what she said. I thought she said she was coming back. I don’t know. It is the disappearance that I really remember. She walks away with the man. Where are they going? Will she be back?

The next day she’s not there. Or the next. Or ever. I’m still here. I still don’t know why she did it. Or where she went.

Did she try again? Did she succeed in her next attempt? Is she now a well-adjusted mother of three? Does she take Prozac? Is she the next Mother Theresa?

I don’t know. Google doesn’t even know. Does that mean she is as good as dead? If she’s Facebook dead, then she must be dead, right?

The man gave her back to us for a moment. Fourth grade girls cried. Fourth grade boys didn’t understand.Then he took her away. Do people always disappear when they walk away with the psychologist?

*Note* This story may self-destruct in a couple of days. If you want it to stay up, you may want to tell me.