Alexander Ferrick's Blog, page 3

The Storyteller’s Tale

Hello there, little one, my name is… well… I don’t have a name in any language that you would recognize. You call me Narrator. I am the one, who sits in this little room set on some hill where no one like you has ever been, and I look in on all of the little people going about their business, and I tell you their stories.

It is a damn miserable task, I assure you. I am powerless to intervene, powerless to live any life of my own, but rather, sit here, in the dark and the damp, waiting for one of you to call upon me to tell you the story of some poor sap who saved the world. Which world? Who knows! Who cares! There are so many.

Take this twit, for instance. His name is Gunther, and I am supposed to tell you the story of how Gunther mutinied against his Nazi commanders and saved a bunch of children from certain death, and Gunther did do that, believe me, but why should I tell you about that and only that when I could tell you how after that, Gunther’s mind was so bent from PTSD that he slapped around his wife for thirty years after the war before she finally stabbed him in the neck with an ice pick? Who decides which of these damn blasted stories you will hear? And WHY? Is the noble honorable Gunther so much more interesting than the real man? The flawed broken man who did good and evil both! Read that story, why don’t you? Because it is complicated, and you don’t want complicated. You want simple black and white stories, that is why you read them as words from a page. Black ink on white paper makes the world seem so damn convenient, doesn’t it?

Well it isn’t so convenient! I know the stories. I know all of them. After you closed the book I saw what else those children did in that wardrobe, and I am sure Aslan would not have been pleased.

So today, my friend, instead of giving you some narrow view into some other world, I instead think you should take a moment and appreciate the silent agony in my mind.

Good Day.

The Other Side – II

I stood and tried to get my bearings. Passing between dimensions is never pleasant, no matter how many times you have done it. My bones ached, and my head throbbed. Somewhere off in the distance, through a bank of thick, ugly looking fog, I could just make out the outline of a figure walking toward me. Walking may not be the best term… Inhabitants of the Other Side don’t walk quite so much as they shamble along. It is disconcerting at first, but they cover ground amazingly fast for how slowly they appear to be moving. It is an odd illusion.

Before long my headache had almost subsided, and I could make out the gray, slightly disfigured face of, Zed. He was doing his best to smile, but it’s a hard thing to manage when your face is stuck partway through the process of decomposition. In case you aren’t following, Zed is a zombie. I try not to use that term, because it has kind of a derogatory connotation. For the world he came from, Zed is just a mild-mannered farmer. It’s only to our world that he is terrifying. I prefer to call them Othersiders.

I smiled back at Zed, but out of the corner of my eye, I could just make out the damn portal turning red. I looked at it, green. Something was definitely wrong.

“How are things, Zed?” I asked politely, “Looks like you’re about ready for harvest.”

“Yeah, Will. It’s gonna be a good year, I think,” Zed managed. The muscles in his face didn’t quite work, but if you listened carefully, very carefully, you could just make out the words. As far as Othersiders go, Zed is about as articulate as it gets.

“Have you noticed anything funky going on with the portal?” I asked. Zed was a busy man. I didn’t want to distract him any more than necessary.

“Whenever I look at it, it’s green like it should be, but I don’t know, Will… It feels wrong. I don’t know how to explain,” he managed.

“Alright, Zed,” I reassured, “I’m gonna take a look around. Don’t mind me.”

“Okay, Will. Are you hungry? Sosha has a brain stew going,” the farmer offered. He was genuine, but my mentor had been vague about how the brain trees worked here, and I could never bring myself to sample the fruits of Zed’s labor. When I looked at them there on the tree… Let’s just say they hit a little too close to home for my taste.

“No thank you, Zed. The portal always manages to wreck my appetite.” Zed nodded his understanding, and tried another grotesque smile. I thought I might have seen some of the spongy muscle tear from the effort, and then the old Othersider shambled off to check the brains for ripeness.

According to my training, Othersiders are not undead exactly. There is no correlation between a dead human and an Othersider. It is just their resemblance to our corpses that caused that theory. I don’t know any more than that. What I did know there in the brain farm was that the portal was acting weird, on both sides, and that was a damn serious problem. It might mean there was someone messing with the barrier. I couldn’t convene a meeting of the mediums without proof of that though, so I needed to investigate. I walked down the dirt path between the hideous black trees that sustained the citizens here, and as always the path seemed to go on forever. Zed’s farm was hundreds of acres of neatly planted trees. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I mostly just needed to think.

Suddenly, as I stood there, surrounded by the unsettling sight of all of these brains, I began to feel warmth on my face. The Other Side isn’t warm… What the hell was that? I looked up, and saw the sun hanging in the sky. The Other Side doesn’t have a Sun. Shit. Before my eyes the noxious-looking yellow fog began to clear, and the brain trees faded away, and after a few horrifying moments I was standing on a suburban sidewalk, under an idyllic blue sky. This was my neighborhood. Moving from one side to another without a portal is not possible… Not supposed to be possible, but here I was. I looked up and down the street, with my mouth hanging open, and sprinted as fast as I could to my house.

I arrived at my front door panting, and, of course, locked out. I didn’t take my keys with me through the portal. I live alone, in a small house an hour outside of Los Angeles. I didn’t have a spare key, because the last thing I needed was some kid finding it, waltzing into my house and falling through the damn portal, so now I was going to have to break in. I needed to see the damn portal and figure out how I had been dropped back in the middle. I snuck around to the side where no neighbors would see me, put a rock that had lived here longer then me through the window, and crawled in after it. I cut my arm on the glass and didn’t notice until I almost slipped in the blood on my wood floor.

With a towel held to my arm clumsily, I practically fell down my stairs and laid eyes on the most horrifying thing I have ever seen. The portal was gone. This couldn’t be happening. How the Hell could this be happening? As I made my way back up the stairs, there was a siren in the distance that I only half heard. Once I reached ground level, though, a movement in the window caught my eye. It was my neighbor screaming hysterically and running out of her house and down the street. I stepped outside and looked back in the direction she had come from. My eyes settled on her porch and my mouth fell open again. There was a figure standing on her porch.

It was Zed.

The Other Side – I

My name is William, and if you’re reading this, then I failed. I hope I didn’t… or don’t. It’s hard writing this way… Anyway, I hope you don’t read this, but if I do fail, then someone will need to know what happened, so that maybe they can fix it.

You see, I am what’s commonly known as a medium. Not the kind that burns incense and tells you your grandma loved you for 50 bucks. A real medium. There are seven of us, at all times. Each born with a particular power and trained by our predecessor for 7 months before they are allowed to pass on. Our job, contrary to popular conception, is not to communicate with inhabitants of other dimensions; it is to make sure everyone stays in the right one. You’d be surprised how often somebody tries to make a break for another dimension

Probably the most famous instance of a successful breach occurred a little over 1000 years ago. His name was Vlad, and they still make movies about him. Each dimension has a name. You and I live in The Middle. That is, as you might imagine, the warm, nice hospitable dimension that sits right in the middle of all the others, and where everyone wants to be. The Middle has 7 sides, each with a dimension bordering it, and each of those dimensions has a particular creature that inhabits it.

Vlad came from the Dark Side, where vampires live, and the rivers run red with blood… because they are blood, which is great if you’re a vampire. Every creature you have ever heard of comes from one of the seven sides. Werewolves, for instance, come from the Wild Side. Angels come from the Bright Side, and so on.

I am responsible for maintaining the barrier between The Middle and The Other Side, and I am writing to let you know that what happened was not my fault. I only ever traveled to the other side to make sure there were no humans trapped there, and I took care of every stray breach to this side according to protocol… But that wasn’t enough.

I guess I should start at the beginning. One day, about a year ago, I went down into my basement to check the portal, and it was glowing magenta. Magenta is good. That is the correct color for the Other Side. However, just as I was getting ready to head back upstairs, the portal turned red. I looked back… magenta… I turned my head: red. The portal is not sentient, but sometimes it is temperamental. Under no circumstances, though, should it have been doing that, so I climbed the creaky stairs back down into my basement, and I knelt over the murky pool of purple light. I closed my eyes, and stepped down into the portal as if it were a hot tub. I felt the familiar tingle of energy crackling up my spine, and soon found myself sitting in a pool of green energy, on the Other Side.

I looked up at the murky, yellow sky. It was a nice day by this dimensions standard. I climbed up out of the portal and looked around at the familiar grove of trees, where this portal lived. The trees were in neat rows, carefully planted and cultivated. Their black trunks were sturdy and thick. The owner of this farm, Zed, was a good friend of mine, and his crop appeared to be ready for harvest, because the branches of the ancient trees hung heavy, and at the ends of them, were brains.

The Sound of Silence – I

“Hey… Did you hear that?” Nick asked

“I don’t hear anything,” Jennifer answered.

“Exactly,” he said. His face twisted into a severe grimace, even under his beard. “There is something missing… more than that. Something stopped.”

Jennifer sat up in bed. Her husband heard a lot of things she didn’t. At first, she was tempted to blame this disturbance on the PTSD along with the others. She couldn’t, though. Something didn’t seem quite right to her either. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but Nick was right… Something was missing.

In the distance, glass shattered, and a woman screamed. Sirens began to blare… slowly at first, and then building in intensity as more fires started.

Nick stood and went to the window. “What the hell is going on out there?” He asked the air around him, and suddenly, inexplicably, the sound of Nick’s voice infuriated Jennifer. The sirens did too. She longed for complete absolute silence, but she couldn’t find it. She groaned, and Nick turned to see what was wrong. Whatever he saw must have unnerved him, because his mouth fell open.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Be quieeet!” she shrieked. Nick recoiled from his screaming fiancé. He had never seen her do anything like this before, but it was not at all different from what the people in the street were doing when he looked out the window.

Luckily for Nick, Jen was no physical match for his girth. He wrapped her in as gentle a bear hug as he could manage, and tried to soothe her.

“It’s alright, Jen, it’s alright. I’m here. Shh,” he tried every trick he knew to bring calm to her just as she had calmed him so many nights before, but nothing he did seemed to help. He stuffed her squirming form into the closet and locked it. He needed to figure out what was going on.

Nick turned on the television and turned to the news, hoping that they would at least be able to report how widespread this sudden spat of violence was. It certainly seemed to have consumed all of Chicago. The sirens and screams were now incessant from the city around him. It drew back familiar memories of his days in Kuwait. Still, though, it felt like something was missing.

Nick turned the TV to CNN, and found that the anchor chairs were empty, a few droplets of blood were visible on the camera lens, and the banner bore one word: Silence.

Elegant

In the jungle, animals generally stick together, unless one of them is different; if one is different, it is singled out, separated from the rest, alone. High school is a lot like the jungle. I’m James, and I am different. People try to be nice, but even to them I’m “The Smart Kid” or “Einstein”. That is, to everyone but Ann. To Ann, I am James, just James. I love Ann, I think; love is one of the few things that I don’t know very much about. One thing I do know about is math; I know a lot about math. I know so much about math I got to go do it at MIT, but then they wouldn’t let me do math anymore, and now I’m really different, because I’m in a little room wearing a funny shirt. Whoever made this shirt wasn’t very smart, because I can’t move my arms.

It all started about a year ago, in one moment, and in that moment I was happy, because I was with Ann, and I was nervous, because I was at a party, a real party, with normal people and everything. Then nervous turned into confused, because Ann’s friend handed me a cup and winked; who was she winking at? I can never tell. Ann gave her a dirty look, or did she give me a dirty look? No, it was her, because she smiled at me. My attention went back to the cup, it was one of the plastic ones that the country people sing about, and it had a funny brown liquid in it; I set it down without drinking.

“So, how have you been, James?” Holy crap Ann is talking to me.

“Umm… Not bad,” I managed, “I got a letter from MIT today, but I haven’t read it. It’s probably just one of those letters they send to be polite when they think your work is crap.”

“James, your math is not crap! Where’s the letter; we’ll open it together,” she barked, barked, really? She’s not a dog! Oh well, it sounded like a bark. I got the letter out of my backpack and started to read.

“Blah, blah, blah, all that polite stuff they say before they reject you, ‘it was a pleasure to’ blah, blah- wait, what? Elegant? Elegant? Ann they said my work was elegant!”

“Elegant is good?” she asked; god she’s pretty.

“Elegant is great, elegant is fantastic, elegant is the highest compliment they could possibly pay!”

“Great,” she exclaimed, “so we’re celebrating!” She handed me the cup.

“No, I don’t have time to celebrate; I need to go home and get to work on my formulas. This is the biggest opportunity of my life!” and then I ran out the door and never looked back.

2 Weeks Later

I was walking through the halls on my way to class. Things had started to go downhill. I found the first of the grey hairs that morning, and I had lost ten pounds since the party, when up walks Ann. She smiled at me, and I felt like my heart was lodged in my throat; this was the beginning of the end.

“Hey James, I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

“I’m alright; I’ve been working on this theory.”

“Look, James, I know this math stuff is important, but you need a life. I mean, you have a gift, but that doesn’t-“

“A gift?” I cut her off, “you think I have a gift? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“James, what are you talking about?” she looked scared. Am I scary?

“Ann, in nature, when an organism is injured, whatever part was broken heals thicker. That’s what a scar is. That’s how muscles get bigger; when you break a bone, they can see the spot on X-rays even after your dead. I think the same thing happens in a mind. When something is broken, the mind grows thicker, stronger, and then you’re different. Genius isn’t a gift, Ann, it’s a scar,” and then I walked away, and I never saw Ann again.

1 Month Later

“James, I think you need to stop; have you eaten?”

“Just one more minute.”

“How long has he been like this?”

“48 hours now, he hasn’t slept or eaten, but from the smell of it I think he used the bathroom.”

“Did he just make a mistake? I’ve never seen him make a mistake before.”

“The mistakes started 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon; I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid of what he might do.”

“Just one more minute.”

“Get me a phonebook; we need the emergency number for the nearest mental hospital.”

2 weeks ago

“Hey James, how are we doing today?” That’s Miss Jane; I like her; she always asks about me by using “we” instead of you; I like that.

“I’m okay.”

“You got a letter today.” She said, “It’s from someone named Ann, would you like to read it?”

“Sure,” I said, and then I read it.

Dear James,

I heard about what happened to you a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure what to say for a long time. It’s gotten to the point now where I feel like I just need to get it out. I loved you, I really did, and I think you loved me too, at least I do now. That day in the hall I thought you were a jerk, but now I realize that you couldn’t help that. I think I understand what you meant about genius being a scar, and I want you to know that I’m sorry if I made it harder for you.

Very Truly Yours,

Ann

“Thank you Miss Jane. Can I answer her?” I asked.

“You really aren’t supposed to write anymore James. I can’t let you do that.”

“Could you write for me?”

“Do you promise there won’t be any math?”

“I promise: no math.”

“Okay then, I guess that would be alright. What do you want me to say?”

Ann

You don’t understand, but thank you.

Maple Syrup

“You can’t have breakfast without maple syrup!” Jimmy giggled. His mother smiled and nodded as she slathered his pancakes in the savory nectar. They always had breakfast together. Every Sunday. At the same time. In this house… My house. My name is Jack, which is short for James, and the kid Jimmy is my son, you see, James Jr., or Jimmy. The spoiled little brat wouldn’t even take my name. Had to change it.

 

Anyway, where was I? Oh that’s right. They were eating breakfast. Just like they do every Sunday in my house. With My alimony footing the bill. Did I ever get a thank you? NO, of course not. I didn’t even get a Jack Jr. The Kid had to call himself Jimmy for Christ’s sake… So they’re in the kitchen, eating their damn breakfast, and I am in the hallway listening. Carol changed the locks a few times since they sent me away, but the locksmith, see, he was a friend of mine, and I got a key from him, because he owed me a favor because of this thing with the-

 

“Jack,” The court-ordered psychiatrist broke my train of thought… “Jack, what did you do with the bodies?”

 

“You can’t have breakfast without maple syrup…”

Beating My Head into the Wall

In the time since my last blog post, the deadline for the book I plugged in it, CHESS, has passed. CHESS's name has now changed to The Crystal Helix, and i hesitate to promise a release date, as my editor and I have very nearly come to blows about how this story will be told.

This brings me to the subject of this post: the business of writing. Not the art, not the writing, but the editing, polishing, grinding, and selling of writing. Why is it that the more prolific I feel myself to become in the expression of my art, the more dismal the business venture of my self-published work looks?

Even as my friends continue to rant to their friends about HACK3R, I now have multiple manuscripts piled up on my editor's desk, and even more ideas clogged in my head, struggling to get out simultaneously. I find myself feeling a little unfulfilled, like there should be someone else to tell the world about my stories. For as fond as I usually am of tooting my own horn, I find it hard to do that about my writing. The writing is too personal, and too important to brag about, even if that bragging is true, but how do I convince anyone else of the merit of my work, when I find the act of selling it sickening.

I don't just want people to read my work. I want them to want to read it. That, I think, is the fundamental problem with being an artist.

CHESS, and of course, Chess

My next book is a science fiction departure called CHESS, where the reader is shown a rather bleak future, near the end of the twenty-second century. It has aliens, lasers, genetically enhanced super soldiers, and even a starship narrowly escaping a black hole, so it's safe to say it isn't quite as "hard" as hack3r was.

That, however, is not the subject of my current blog post. The subject of the current blog post, is the board game, chess. I am wondering how it is that this game holds such a fascination for so many people, especially science-fiction writers. The game makes no sense on a practical level. The rook, which is presumably a castle wall, tower, or rampart, is one of the most mobile and aggressive pieces. The bishop, which is a priest, kills without regard. The King is utterly defenseless, and perhaps most realistically, the Queen pretty much runs the table.

So why is it so beloved, even by me, a crappy chess player? Why is it heralded as such a meter for intellect? Why is it practiced, and taught, and studied by many in more depth than religion.

And then, as I wrote CHESS , I figured it out. There is something very human about this game. Something intangible, which connects it to our souls. It provides a feeling of control, but even in the absence of control, hope. A hope to improve, a new challenge to overcome. And it is that hope that makes chess great, and I hope it will make CHESS great to. Keep an eye out for it: it's less than a month from release.

First Post

I have to be honest. The whole blog thing is still new to me. In fact the whole author thing is still new to me, but bear with me. I think I'm getting the hang of it.

I want this blog to be an all-purpose writer's blog. I will give advice to aspiring authors, recommend books (mostly my own), and vent my frustrations about the writing process. For example: In the past several weeks I have found myself conflicted about the nature of my work. My debut novel, Hack3r, was very ideological (at least I thought so), but I don't know if the book I am currently working on meets the same standard.

Can an author have favorites among his own work? That's like a parent picking a favorite child isn't it? I don't know.

That concludes my first blog post. It wasn't much, but you needn't worry: my books are better.