Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 59

Raggedy Rory Finds the Sonic Screwdriver

When I first saw "The Girl Who Waited," I wanted immediately to write a series of middle grade novels about Amy and Rory (who was forced to pretend to be the raggedy doctor) in those years before the doctor returned, trying to fend off aliens on their own. Amy was just the sort of character who would NOT wait to do wonderful things, would NOT wait to save the world if she had the chance. And Rory was the sort of character who would follow after her and valiantly make sure she didn't kill herself in the process. But I didn't write it, and I didn't write it. What could possibly be the purpose of writing fan fiction for Doctor Who?

Four years later, we watched "The Angels Take Manhattan," the last of Amy and Rory's adventures with the doctor, and I realized I had been waiting four years to tell a story I wanted to tell. And why? Because I was embarrassed to be writing fan fiction? Well, I sat down and wrote this story over the last couple of days and decided to share it with anyone who loves Doctor Who and is going to be sad that the Ponds are gone.

“I’m not putting on that stupid raggedy coat,” said Rory Williams for the third time that day. He pointed at the homemade thing that Amelia had laid out for him. One sleeve was shorter than the other, the color was a drab brown that looked like a curtain or possibly couch material, or possibly curtains that had been made into a couch. It was also too big for him and made him look like he was someone’s grandfather.

“If you don’t put it on, then you can’t be the doctor,” said Amelia, who was his best friend.

His only friend, come to think of it. But that was only because he had just moved to town and Amelia was the only person who had noticed him yet. She didn’t have any friends, either. Rory had a good idea why. For one thing, she was the bossiest kid he had ever met. For another, she had ginger hair and spoke with a horrible Scottish accent. She was also awkwardly tall at ten, towering over all the girls and the boys their age. And she could beat anyone at any sport they dared to compete with her in.

Rory had learned the hard way when he thought he could beat her at cricket on the first day of school. She had hit the ball right into his face. He was so surprised he didn’t feel any pain until he woke up with her face over his.

“Good. You’re not going to die, then,” she said.

He got to his feet. “Of course I’m not going to die,” he said, trying to brush himself off. “I was just—pretending.”

“If that was you pretending, I’m going to buy tickets to your first play,” said Amelia.

“I don’t want to be an actor,” said Rory. “I’m going to be a doctor.”

Amelia had stared at him then and that was when he knew he was in trouble. “A doctor,” she said, tapping her fingers on one arm. “If your hair was a little darker, and you put some mousse in it, you could be a fine doctor. And if you had the right coat.”

He thought she meant a white coat, and when she invited him over to play doctor, he was hoping for something else entirely than what she explained when he got there and tried to kiss her. Well, after she punched him in the face again.

“What’s wrong with you, then?” she asked. “Why’d you go and do that?”

“You said you wanted to play doctor,” said Rory.

“I do want to play doctor. You’re going to be him. The one in the raggedy coat. The one with the police box that flies.”

Now Rory stared at her. He had heard talk about her not being quite right in the head. At first, he had thought it was just because people were jealous of her, because she was so pretty—in a kind of awkward way. Or because she was smarter than they were. Rory was pretty sure she was smarter than anyone he had ever met. But he also was more than a little afraid of her now.

“I don’t think I want to be the doctor,” said Rory. “Can we play something else?”

“What? Cricket?” said Amelia, laughing at him.

  “But what kind of doctor is it, anyway, if he wears this raggedy coat and has—what did you say—a flying police box?”

“He’s the best doctor you’ll never see,” said Amelia, her eyes suddenly fierce. She was always a little dangerous, Rory thought, but she was more dangerous than ever now.

“What is he a doctor of? Does he heal people?”

“He heals whole planets,” said Amelia. “Or he will, anyway.”

“How can a doctor heal a planet?” asked Rory. “How can a planet be sick? Or are you talking about someone who solves global warming problems and such?”

“Nothing like that. Although he could if he wanted to. He solves problems with—aliens. Creatures and things that want to destroy Earth.”

“Aliens? Seriously? You want me to believe there’s a doctor who saves the Earth from aliens and rides around in a police box that flies? What else does he do? Travel back in time? Or forward in time?”

“He can do whatever he wants to do, Rory Williams,” said Amelia. “And he’ll come back for me.” There was a hint of a tear in her eyes, and that scared Rory more than anything else about Amelia. Getting hit in the face was easy in comparison to when a girl cried. He had no idea what to do with her if she started with that.

“Fine, then I’ll put on the stupid raggedy coat. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Then we go out to find people to save,” said Amelia.

“I thought you said that the doctor didn’t save people? He saved whole planets.”

“Well, you’re not the real doctor, are you? You’re just pretending to be him. And not very well, either. So you just have to keep your ambitions a little lower, eh,” said Amelia.

Rory shrugged and put on the raggedy coat. It made one of his shoulders pull back. “Did you make this yourself?” he asked.

“What if I did?” she asked.

“Nothing!” said Rory. “Nothing.”

#

He didn’t look much like the real doctor, thought Amelia, staring at the ragged coat she had made now on Rory. She had tried so hard to make sure that it looked like what the doctor had worn. It was two years now since he had promised to come back, and Amelia was still waiting for him. Her aunt told her never to trust a man who asked her to wait, but Amelia knew the doctor wasn’t a man. He wasn’t human, either, though she hadn’t told Rory that part yet.

He wasn’t tall enough to be the doctor, and his hair was too fair. But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was the way he held himself. The doctor had always been so confident. Even when he’d been spitting out apple pieces and eating fish fingers with custard, he had known who he was. It wasn’t the way an adult was, either, or at least, not any adults Amelia knew. He hadn’t given up and decided that he had as much of what he wanted as he was going to get. He was—hungry. That was it.

He said he was nine hundred years old and there was still a hunger about him. It made him like a child, but not like a child, either. He had demanded all those foods and kept at it until he got what he wanted. That was what Amelia loved about him. Wherever he was from, it was a world where people were hungry, and they got what they were hungry for. Otherwise, he wouldn’t still be expecting it, would he? Amelia wanted to live in that world, too.

It was why, after two years, she kept holding the image of the doctor as he climbed out of the police box in her mind, why she refused to believe that he wasn’t real. How could she have made up someone as wonderful as the doctor? He was too different from anything she had ever seen. Yes, he was just what she wanted and just what she needed. What was it he called her, the Scottish girl in the English town? He was even more different than she was. But she knew that with all her imagination, she could never have imagined someone like him. He was beyond imagination.

“Now what?” asked Rory.

“Now we go into the backyard,” said Amelia.

“And do what?” said Rory.

“You’ll see,” said Amelia. She knew very well what Rory had thought when she told him she wanted him to come over and play doctor. But she wasn’t going to snog him in the backyard, either.

Instead, she showed him the strange scorch marks that she had found there two nights before. “What do you think those are?” she said.

“I think someone lit a fire and then tried to stomp it out,” said Rory.

“No one lit a fire. I would have seen it. And it wasn’t me,” said Amelia. Rory wasn’t as smart as she had been hoping, sadly. On the other hand, he was the only person she had ever convinced to go so far as to put on the doctor’s coat. And he was nice. She thought she might be able to train him to be smarter. It was useless trying to train people to be nice. They either were or they weren’t, in her experience. But people could become smarter.

“So you think it’s what, some sign of another alien doctor come to Earth?” said Rory.

“Not another doctor. There’s only one doctor,” said Amelia. She wasn’t sure why she knew that, but she did. He had seemed lonely, like she was. But more than that. She wasn’t the only human left, but she knew enough about loneliness to see it when she recognized it.

Rory was lonely, too. She had noticed that about him the first time she had seen him. He wasn’t a Scottish girl in an English village. He was English, and he was a boy. It seemed to Amelia that boys were never lonely. Or they never noticed it. But Rory did. He was alone, because he was the only kind boy in the world as far as Amelia knew. And that was why he had made friends with her, because he was alone and he didn’t want to be.

Amelia knew Rory deserved kindness like he gave to her, but somehow it never came out when she talked to him. She wanted to be kind, but mostly she was bossy and loud and annoyed. It was so hard to be kind.

“What are you going to dress up as?” asked Rory, looking back at Amelia as they walked around the scorch marks.

“Me? I’m not going to dress up as anything! Why would I dress up?”

“I thought we were doing costumes,” said Rory. “And you’d dress up as some alien creature. I don’t know, Darth Vader or something.”

“Darth Vader is a man,” said Amelia.

“I know that, but you could hardly be Princess Leia,” said Rory.

Amelia stopped where she was and turned around. She was nearly a head taller than Rory and she could make the most of it. “Why couldn’t I be Princess Leia?” she demanded.

“Well, because she wears dresses and does her hair around her ears in donuts,” said Rory, stepping back in fear.

“I could wear a dress if I wanted to,” said Amelia. “And I could do my hair around my ears in donuts.” Though not right now, because she had just cut it. She hated her long hair getting in her way when she was running, or fighting someone at school, so she had hacked it off herself. But she knew it would grow back, and even if it didn’t, she knew the doctor would recognize her anyway. No matter what she was wearing or how different she looked, she knew the doctor would know her. When he came back, that is, which he would, when he could.

“Right, fine,” said Rory. “You’re Princess Leia, then.”

“I am not Princess Leia,” said Amelia.

“Fine, then, what are you?”

“I said already, I’m not doing costumes. I’m just me, Amelia. But if I were going to dress up, I would be that robot creature. What’s his name?”

“R2D2?” asked Rory.

“No, not that short squat one, stupid,” said Amelia. “The tall one made of gold.”

“It’s C3P0,” said Rory. “And he’s not made of gold.”

“If I say he’s made of gold, then he’s made of gold,” said Amelia.

“Fine,” said Rory. “He’s made of gold. Since you know everything. I’m surprised you don’t already know what these scorch marks are from.”

“I do know what they’re from. Something alien,” said Amelia.

“Then let’s go see, shall we?” said Rory.

He walked a good pace back from Amelia as they entered the woods behind her aunt’s home.

“It’s just a car,” said Rory, about ten minutes later when they stopped near the brook.

It did look like a car, Amelia admitted to herself. But aloud to Rory she said, “Of course it’s not a car. Why would a car fall into my backyard and then burn a trail into the woods behind it?”

“Well, what else could it be?” said Rory.

A space ship, thought Amelia. Or—the doctor’s police box in disguise?

“Hello?” said Amelia, moving closer to the car. She put out a hand and tapped it on the window.

“I say, that’s dangerous, isn’t it? You don’t know who could be in there,” said Rory.

“I thought you said it was just a car,” said Amelia.

“Well, it could be. Or it could be something else. No reason not to wait to find out.”

“Waiting?” said Amelia scornfully. She had waited plenty in her life already. She was not going to wait to see what was inside this car. Not if it could be the doctor.

She knocked on the window again, and when that did nothing, she tried the door. It felt a little stiff, but if she pulled hard enough—the door swung open.

Rory gave a little scream.

Amelia looked back at him and he quieted.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just—getting ready in case there’s a reason to be scared later.”

“You wait,” said Amelia. “I’ll check inside the car.”

But the car seemed empty. It seemed an utterly ordinary car, an American Ford or something, utterly devoid of style, but functional enough. It was heavy as a tank, which Amelia supposed Americans liked in case they needed a car to act like a tank at any moment. But there was nothing inside of it.

“Well, then, that’s that,” said Rory. “We can go home now.”

“We’re staying here,” said Amelia. “We’re figuring out what this car is doing here. And who brought it here.”

“What’s wrong with a few mysteries in life?” said Rory.

Amelia glared at him.

He swallowed and moved closer to the car. “Hello?” he said tentatively. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

“Of course there’s no one in here. I already told you that,” said Amelia.

But as soon as Rory leaned into the car, there was a flash of something—like a shifting of light. Amelia thought she saw something for just a moment, a vaguely humanoid shaped creature, but with no eyes, and a head full of mouth, gaping open.

“Doctor, we’ve been waiting so very long for you,” said the thing. “We’re so hungry and only you can feed us.”

Its mouth opened wider and wider until it swallowed Rory whole. Then Rory was gone, and so was the gaping mouth creature.

Amelia leaped out of the car, closed the door, and told herself to be reasonable. “This is probably just my imagination. I should go back inside the house and I’ll see Rory again at school tomorrow morning. There is a perfectly reasonable, non-alien explanation about all of this.”

Amelia was aware at some point that she was starting to sound very much like her aunt. And she hated sounding like her aunt. Her aunt was, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot.

“So, Rory was here. And now he’s gone. There was an alien in the car. And now it’s gone, too. Unless it isn’t gone,” Amelia said to herself. “Unless maybe I just can’t see either of them anymore, but they’re still there.” She crept back to the car and prepared herself to be surprised.

Although how to prepare yourself to be surprised when if you’re expecting to be surprised and you are surprised, then it isn’t really a surprise, is it?

Stop thinking, Amelia told herself. And just reach out to touch that same spot that Rory touched.

Or had he touched it? It seemed more like it had touched him.

It was all her fault, Amelia realized. She had put Rory in that raggedy doctor’s coat and the alien in the car thought that Rory was him. Her doctor. The real, alien doctor with the police box that could fly.

Only Rory wasn’t the doctor. He was just a stupid ten year-old boy, and English boy at that. And he was likely going to be useless when it came to aliens who wanted to hurt the doctor. He probably wouldn’t even be able to explain that he wasn’t the doctor properly so that they believed him.

Amelia would have to save him. She sighed.

#

Rory had seen the ghost-like creature with the head full of mouth reach for him. He had screamed. Or he had tried to scream. There was no sound wherever he was now. He didn’t know where it was, but he knew one thing. It wasn’t on Earth anymore. There was no sense of gravity. There was no sense of anything, really.

He might not be as smart as Amelia Pond was. He might not be nearly as smart as this alien doctor of hers who rode around in a flying police box. But he was smart enough to know that.

And he was also smart enough to know that he was in enormous, terrible trouble.

“Amelia!” he tried to shout. “Help me!” But again, there was no sound.

It was as if there was no air here, and no gravity, as if he were floating in the vacuum of space. But he couldn’t be in space. He might not be as smart as Amelia or her doctor, but even he knew that he couldn’t live in the vacuum of space. Wasn’t he supposed to be blown into little pieces in space without a space suit on? Or was that just in the movies?

Where was that creature that had brought him here? Why had it put him here? Was this—some kind of ice box for him to wait in until the creature got hungry enough to come eat him?

The creature had said something about him being the doctor, though.

“I’m not the doctor,” he said. “I’m really not. It’s just a simple case of mistaken identity.” He had no idea if anyone could hear him, probably not since he couldn’t hear himself. But he pulled on the sleeve of the stupid ragged coat he was wearing and tried to pull it off. He yanked it and then there it was, floating away from him and he was wearing just a T-shirt underneath. He almost wished for the coat back.

“Anyone else here?” he called out. “I say, is there anyone else out there?” It was difficult to talk when he couldn’t hear himself. He didn’t know if he was shouting or not.

And then suddenly he saw something, in the distance. It looked like a motorcycle. He had no idea what a motorcycle was doing in space, but he tried to swim after it. It was hard work, moving through space and in the end, he wasn’t at all sure that he had gotten closer to the motorcycle and not the other way around. But he climbed onto the seat, his feet dangling over the sides, and tried to turn back the throttle. It didn’t make any sound, either, or move.

But the ragged coat came back and slammed into Rory. He grabbed hold of it and was surprised to discover that his nose was bleeding. “That coat is vicious. What did Amelia put into it?” he asked, mostly to himself now, since there was no use otherwise.

He patted around the pocket of the ragged coat and inside of it he found a very strange tool. It was like a screwdriver, but it was round on the one end and on the other end, there was nothing that looked like it would fasten onto a screw. In fact, it looked like it would open up and turn into some kind of fan. But why on Earth would someone make a fan shaped like a screwdriver and heavy as hell, when they could just make a regular fan?

Rory put the coat back on and felt in all the pockets. He hadn’t noticed the pockets before, but there were a lot of them, and they were very large. Amelia said she had made the coat herself. Did that mean she had made the screwdriver fan, as well? Did it have any other uses besides thwacking him in the head and making Amelia feel superior? Well, Rory was going to have to guess at them, much good it would do him. He hadn’t much hope of figuring out anything about a girl like Amelia Pond.

He looked more closely at the screwdriver and pressed a button in the center. The thing buzzed weakly, turned slightly blue, and then turned off again. Useless thing. It wasn’t even much good as a torch, though the blue light had been interesting.

Then the motorcycle started to move. It still wasn’t making a sound, but it was zipping through space. Rory nearly fell off, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he had tied his shoelaces so badly and they had come undone and caught on the underside of the motorcycle, he would certainly have never seen it—or the screwdriver thing again.

It was definitely not just a screwdriver, thought Rory. Then he was hanging on too tightly to think clearly again. He didn’t stop until he saw something ahead of him that seemed dangerous. It was bright and it looked rather like fireworks, only it didn’t seem to have the rhythm of fireworks. There was no pause to admire the sparkly things. There was just sparkle, more sparkle, and then even more sparkle.

For one long, terrifying moment, Rory felt as if the motorcycle was being pulled in to the sparkly bits ahead of him. He fought, kicking with one leg, trying to give the motorcycle more power, which was ridiculous, he knew. And then, suddenly, the sparkles got a lot bigger. They looked like they were streaming toward him. He thought that he would end up getting sucked in, but then he was being pushed away, and it seemed like the motorcycle was going even faster than before.

Rory kept tight hold of the screwdriver during all of this, sure that it was the only thing that could possibly save his life, and he tried to scream. Just the sound of his own voice screaming would have made him feel better, he was sure. It would have made him feel as if he knew what was going on, as if he could fight it. But there was still no sound, and the sparkles were now not just behind him, but shooting ahead of him.

Not sparkles at all, he realized dimly. They were stars. Stars being born all around him, but of course that was impossible.

Rory concentrated as hard as he could to take one hand off the motorcycle handles and hold up the screwdriver to the stars. He pushed down on the button, and it light up weakly again. But nothing else. It did nothing to stop the stars. He slumped forward, let his head rest on the motorcycle handles.

That was it, then. He was going to die and no one would ever even know he was dead, and it was all Amelia’s fault. Hers and that stupid doctor of hers.

#

“Oy there!” Amelia called, poking her head inside the car.

She was patient this time, waiting for several minutes with her eyes focused on one spot, then turning slowly until she was staring at another spot. When she caught the first glimpse of the ghostly creature with a huge, gaping mouth, she thrust her foot into the mouth to hold it open, because while she knew that a creature could appear not to be where it was, it couldn’t not actually be where it was. If she could see it, then she could surely touch it. And if she could touch it, she could hurt it.

Amelia had never been given formal lessons in self-defense. Her aunt would have abhorred the very idea. She thought that Amelia should learn proper etiquette and how to sit quietly with her legs crossed in church.

Amelia had taught herself what she needed to know on the playground. And it came in handy now. She slammed her hand into the place where the creature’s eyes should be, though she could not actually see any eyes there. It might not have eyes, she thought. That would be very inconvenient if it needed to see anything, but she supposed there were other creatures without eyes. Snakes saw with their tongues, they said.

Well, her foot was already in its mouth. She kicked with it. Then, just in case that didn’t work, she kicked it in the general area of the stomach. She couldn’t see any legs to aim between, or she would have.

Amelia did not fight fair, as she had been told many times by boys her age. Then again, that kept them from picking on her, so she didn’t think much of fighting fair.

In this case, the gaping mouth creature made a sound like a high-pitched shriek. Amelia struggled not to put her hands to her ears to try to muffle the sound. The mouth kept trying to bite down on her foot, and every time it did so, she punched it again.

“Slow to learn, aren’t you?” she asked it.

But after four times, it stopped trying to swallow her foot.

“You want the raggedy doctor?” she asked.

It let out a gargling sound.

“But you don’t have him, do you? Have you realized that yet?” She stared at the gaping mouth and wished very much it had eyes. It was so hard to read a creature’s expression without eyes.

“You have Rory Williams, my friend, and I want him back, do you hear that?” asked Amelia.

The creature opened its mouth wide and Amelia was about to pull her foot out when she realized that the mouth allowed her to see into a completely different part of the world. Or the universe, really. She could see stars falling left and right. It looked like a very dangerous part of the universe.

Was that where the raggedy doctor was from? It might make sense, considering what his police box had looked like, and how he had been covered in soot and streaked with black marks on his face.

“Is Rory in there?” asked Amelia.

The mouth seemed to nod.

“I don’t see him,” she said, careful not to stick her head so far in as to give the mouth a temptation.

In fact, she pulled far enough back that the mouth could open and close on its own and she could speak to it once more. It had spoken before, so it must understand English. Why English Amelia did not know. Something about the stupid English. They thought the ruled not only this little island, but the entire universe, with all its intelligent species.

“You wanted the doctor, is that right?” she said.

“We need the doctor,” said the mouth.

It was so disconcerting to have only a mouth to look at, and not even a face.

“Well, it seems as if you planned to eat the doctor, so I can’t say I wish he was here to give to you,” said Amelia. Though on the other hand, it might serve the doctor right, for saying he would come back and not doing so.

“We are hungry,” said the mouth.

“Right. You said that before. Hungry and you need to eat the doctor.”

“Not the doctor. His energy. He breathes time gases. They are all around his Tardis. He does not even know that he is taking them in and letting them out every moment of the day. We need those gases and we know nowhere else to find them.”

“And so you weren’t even going to ask politely? That’s almost as bad as trying to eat him. And what happens to him when you’re finished eating his time gas or whatever it is?”

“We send him back. We are dying. We live on the edges of every universe. We survive by eating the energy as the universe begins and ends. In between, we must live on the energy of those who learn to move between beginning and end. As does the doctor.”

“So you big mouthy things are all going to die if the doctor doesn’t come help you?” said Amelia.

“Yes. Do you know where the doctor is?”

“Well, first of all, I want Rory back. The one you thought was the doctor.” Though how anyone with eyes could make such a mistake—well, there was the answer right there. The mouth creature didn’t have eyes, did it? It must have been working on smell or some kind of taste.

Amelia felt a stab of guilt as she realized that Rory had the doctor’s screwdriver inside his pocket. That must have been what the mouth creature used to identify him as the doctor. And it was all her fault. She had put the screwdriver in the pocket to make the doctor seem more real. She had used it once or twice, but it seemed to be getting lower in power, and she had planned to save it for an emergency.

If only she had it now, she could try to use it in this emergency, though she wasn’t sure what she could do with it against this mouth except hit it. And she didn’t need the screwdriver for that.

“He is gone,” said the mouth creature.

“What do you mean, he is gone? He’s inside you somewhere. In that—whatever that mess of stars is. You find him and bring him back. I won’t even give you a hint about the doctor until then.” In truth, Amelia had no intention of telling the creature anything about the doctor anyway. She had no idea where he was or when he would return, and she didn’t intend for him to end up as a meal to this mouthy creature, even if it was dying.

“He has fled. He has found his own ship—of sorts. And he is far from the place where he began.”

“But you have the whole—universe or whatever it is inside of you,” said Amelia. “Just spit him back out or whatever it takes.” If Rory Williams returned to this earth covered in alien saliva, Amelia would think it would serve him right for running away when he should have stayed put. Didn’t he know that when you were lost, you should always stay where you were and wait until someone found you?

Oh, yes, the waiting thing. Rory wasn’t any better at that than Amelia was. It was one of the reasons they got along so well. The time they had eaten her aunt’s cake before it was fully cooked came to mind. And the time they had tried to get a cat and a dog to mate (that had been Rory’s idea, by the way). And the time that they had tried to get Rory to grow taller by stretching his arms and legs (that had been Amelia’s idea and Rory had not liked it particularly, either before, during or after).

“It is not inside of me. It is a window to the beginning of the universe which I am quickly losing a link to. The hungrier I become, the less the window shows. And I fear that Rory has moved out of my range. Until I find something more essence of time to eat again, your friend will not be returning.”

It was a bluff, thought Amelia. “Bring him back right now or I won’t help you and then you will die!” she threatened.

“I will die in any case, and soon. I am sorry for the trouble I have caused your friend, and you. Please give my regrets to the doctor.” The mouth closed, and Amy had a glimpse of the teeth. She was afraid that it was going to disappear again, but it seemed not even to have enough energy to do that.

“Isn’t there anything else that you can feed off of?” Amelia asked. “There has to be something. You can’t just chase the doctor around everywhere.”

“We do not eat very often,” said the mouth creature. “Once every thousand years or so, and that is all we need to live on. The true problem here is that the doctor has ensured that this universe has continued to live on long past the limit of other universes. It should have ended already, and begun again.”

“Ended already? You mean—everything ended?” asked Amelia.

“Except for us, of course,” said the mouth creature.

#

Rory nearly lost the screwdriver when a star screamed by the motorcycle so closely he could feel the heat along his sleeve. The screwdriver tumbled, turned bright blue, and then seemed to hold still for Rory to catch it. Almost as if it was alive.

Hesitating a moment to consider what it meant if a screwdriver was alive, Rory picked it up anyway. It was the only thing he had any control over in this—wherever he was.

He pushed the button on it, and this time it started turning in his hands. The fans came out and flashed light and then the motorcycle began to buck and jerk.

This is it, thought Rory. This is really it.

I wish I had snogged Amelia at least one time.

But the motorcycle didn’t fall. It led Rory toward more and more stars. There were many close calls, and each time, the screwdriver opened up and seemed to get lighter and brighter. It glowed so that Rory had to stop looking at it, and if he could have let go of it, he might have done that very thing. It was so hot, his hands burned and he tried on several occasions to shake it off. But it stuck to him like glue. Hot glue.

He did not realize he had stopped chasing stars until sometime later. He had stopped screaming, which he had been able to hear on certain occasions, when he passed near enough certain pockets of space which appeared to have air. But even when he hadn’t heard the screaming, he had been able to feel his vocal chords, straining and growing inflamed. He was sure they were very badly damaged. He would probably never speak again, and that only made him sad because he wouldn’t be able to tell Amelia what he thought of her.

I will write her a letter, he thought. He could spell some words right, anyway. The words that would matter when he told off Amelia.

But then he saw her. Amelia herself. She had found him somehow. Her mouth was open, but he couldn’t hear her shouting at him.

She was beckoning to him, pointing urgently. She pulled him off the motorcycle, or whatever it was, and grabbed hold of the screwdriver. He fought her for it, and then it spun off away from them.

Then she was tumbling to reach it, and he was doing the same. They scrabbled for the screwdriver, and Amelia ended up with it. Of course. She held it out, and suddenly Rory could see a mouth ahead of them. It opened and seemed to unswallow them, or spit them back out. Whatever it was.

Then they were back in the car, or half inside of it and half out of it, on the ground. Amelia was lying on top of him.

“Get off of me you big oaf!” she shouted.

Sound again, thought Rory. Oh, joy. “You’re the one on top of me,” Rory pointed out.

Amelia was red in the face. She still held the screwdriver in one hand and she acted like it was a sword or something, like it could hurt him if he touched it.

Just to prove her wrong, he touched it.

“Stop that!” she said.

“Why should I?” asked Rory. And he touched it again.

“I said, stop that!” said Amelia.

Rory touched the screwdriver again.

This time it pinched him, and the light flickered. “Ouch!” he said. “How did you get it to do that?”

“As if I would tell you!” said Amelia.

“You don’t even know, do you?” he said.

“Of course I do. It’s the doctor’s. I know everything about it. You’re the one who doesn’t know.”

“I know that it has power in it,” said Rory. “And it’s from some alien. And you probably aren’t supposed to have it.”

“He gave it to me,” said Amelia.

“Did he? Or did you take it from him when he wasn’t looking?”

Amelia made a face. “He had another one anyway. This one was the one that wasn’t working very well. So I figured he would never miss it.”

“You stole it from him, more like it. Admit it, you’re a thief. This raggedy doctor of yours is never coming back because he’s afraid you’re going to steal something else of his.”

Amelia’s face went pale. She lifted a hand to slap Rory, but he moved to block her, the first time he’d been fast enough to do that. “Don’t say that. Don’t say he won’t come back. He has to come back. He has to.”

“And until then, you’re going to keep this for him, is that it?” asked Rory.

“I’m going to use it the way he would use it,” said Amelia.

“And how do you know what way that is?”

“Because it’s the way that would help the universe. And the creatures in it. All of them, not just us humans,” said Amelia.

“Fancy, then, isn’t he? Doesn’t just save the world. Has to save the universe.”

Amelia stuck her tongue out at Rory, then slipped back into the car.

“Hey, don’t do that!” said Rory. That was what had started everything in the first place. Why would she go off and do something as stupid as that?

But when he poked his head in, he could see Amelia was holding the screwdriver out in front of the mouth. She wasn’t being sucked in. She was feeding the gaping mouth creature somehow. It was eating whatever it was the screwdriver had collected from the stars.

“Are you going to give it all of that?” asked Rory.

“What do you care? You never wanted to be the raggedy doctor for me, anyway.”

“I care because it’s a handy tool. We might use it again. Who knows when we’ll meet up with more aliens?” said Rory.

“We?” said Amelia.

“Well, someone has to keep you from haring off in all directions,” said Rory.

“And you’re going to be that person, are you?”

“Well, until the doctor returns, the real raggedy doctor, I suppose I will,” said Rory. He handed Amelia the raggedy coat back. “But not wearing that. I don’t want to deal with mistaken identity again.” And obviously the doctor led a dangerous life.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” asked Amelia.

Rory imagined trying to tell his parents. His dad might listen for a little while. Then he would call the police and Rory would end up trying to explain everything to a room full of men who already thought his dad was crazy.

And if he told kids at school, they would treat him the way they treated Amelia. Like she was crazy.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said.

And he never did.

END

         

Monday Book Recs--Harry Connolly's Twenty Palaces

This is a prequel to Child of Fire series and I loved it! Connolly has published it himself, but to me it had everything I wanted from a new book in the series and more. I wanted to know how Ray Lily got the ghost knife spell that he uses so brilliantly in the other books in the series, and that story is there. I wanted to know why Ray Lily is the way he is, cynical and yet so heroic. He is such a dark character, so unable to see himself in any good light, and this new story shows exactly why he is that way. It also shows me why his relationship with Annabelle is the way that it is.

The temptation here would be to start the magic too early, but Connolly doesn't do that. I can see why he thought the other books with the magic earlier and Ray's action more heroic were the more commercial choices to begin an urban fantasy series. But in this prequel that starts more quietly, there is some really great character development, and not just Ray Lily's, either. His family, his world, his friends, even characters who are on stage briefly are shown with deft strokes. I also loved the small town feel which is changed in horrific fashion once the magic does show up.

I wanted to see Ray win. I was rooting for him in this book, and somehow despite what Connolly has already revealed about Ray in the later books (in the series timeline), there was still plenty of suspense as to what happens here. I felt sick as Ray took the wrong turns, made horrible mistakes, and ruined everything even as he was trying to save it. I believed absolutely in his motives to help his friend, and yet there was the underlying fear that Annabelle was right, that he could do nothing but stop the evil from progressing. Connolly is a great writer and this is a series that ended too soon for me. I don't know if he has any other books to offer us in the future, but I hope he does and I hope that the early success of this book continues to make it viable.

Friday Tri: Atkins and Low Carb Diets

I read the Atkins book about ten years ago, when my father-in-law was on the Atkins diet. He had lost weight on it, and many, MANY people have, which seems to lend respectability to a diet that seems to go against everything that the government has been telling people about healthy eating for years. I thought the book was filled with anecdotal evidence, and not much science, but I actually tried it for a few days. For me, personally, I felt ill on the diet and went off it a few days later. I like to be healthy and I'm willing to make some sacrifices, but a diet has to avoid making me ever feel hungry. This one didn't do that for me.

Since then, I have been pretty militantly vegan for a couple of years, and then vegetarian, and am probably now closer to something like a pescatarian, mostly because I find myself too often in situations where eating fish means I get to eat something at least, and I'm an athlete, and not on a low calories diet where just a salad works for me. But I recently spent an evening with several people I like and respect who swear by a low carb diet. It made me reconsider a little what seems to go against everything I know about healthy eating. So why are they happy with it?

Some thoughts:

1. People who are on low carb diets are suddenly eating a lot more vegetables and fiber. They have to to fill their stomachs. And this is a GOOD thing. Getting serious about eating more actual fresh vegetables is an improvement in some important ways. You're getting fiber and lots of nutrients that Americans seem to think we can just sprinkle over our cereal. People DO feel more full if they eat a lot of vegetables. They DO get by on fewer calories. They DO see health improvements.

2. For years, low-fat meant buying low-fat ice cream, low-fat cookies, low-fat bread. And yeah, low-fat processed foods are pretty empty carbs. I don't much care for the way that people talk about bread and potatoes as "bad carbs." As an endurance athlete, I need carbs. Lots and lots of carbs. There are plenty of times when I purposely eat low fiber carbs like white bread. I think potatoes are great for you. I also think you can't eat too much fruit, despite the fact that fruit is filled with "sugar." And when I am racing and training, I drink Gatorade and down gu's--straight sugar. On the other hand, I never drink soda and rarely even have sugared tea. I do have a sweet tooth, which I indulge on a regular basis.

3. A lot of Americans think that potato chips, donuts, and candy are bad for you because they are "bad carbs." Nonsense. They are bad for you because they are loaded with fat and calories and have no nutritive value. They are made for when you NEED extra calories. But most Americans don't NEED extra calories these days. We're not spending twenty hours a day out in the fields and losing pounds week after week. It's not that these kinds of food are so bad for you as that they aren't what you need right now.

4. In American, we've done a great of of making sure that calories are cheap. Many of the poorest Americans are overweight, and in some ways, that is great news. It means we've conquered the hunger battle. Unfortunately, the way we've done it is to make lots of easily stored, easily transported foods cheap. The problem? Well, for all the added vitamin sprays we put on white bread, people need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, which haven't really gotten cheaper. So we have people who get plenty of calories, but aren't really satisfied because they're not getting the nutrients they need which we can't add as well as we think.

5. I suspect that most people on an Atkins diet would find that a vegetarian diet would leave them as satisfied, as full and with even more of the health benefits (Since as far as I can tell, a high plant, low animal products diet lowers your risk factors for disease in a way that losing weight with high animal products does not). But vegetarianism tends to have a bad image as being radical, annoying, and snooty. You don't have to be a vegetarian all the time, actually, to get many of the benefits. You don't even have to tell people you are, if you choose to be only vegetarian at home.

6. There are some people who probably need animal products on a regular basis for nutritive needs that are not clear to me. When I was pregnant, I found I craved meat. I ate steak and eggs for breakfast every morning in the last trimester. If you need it, I'm not going to say you're a bad person. But I'd like to believe that you tried something else. For me, the cost to the planet of being a big meat eater is something to be considered pretty strongly.

Book Ratings: An Open Discussion

John: My wife came home yesterday piping mad. I guess she started reading Divergent to the  class, and they were loving it. But then my 14 year old told her that the second book had some objectionable stuff in it, which was of a  nature that meant Nellie wasn't going to be able to offer it in her class. She's finding like 5 books a year that she can use, and the abundant profanity and  mature/objectionable content is really starting to annoy her.

 We talked about it, and we decided that we need is some kind of kids-in-mind like rating service for books. Or some MPAA rating system, as imperfect as that is. This will allow her to easily find
 what she wants. Publishers should voluntarily come up with this to improve their customer service. For example, Scholastic at least labels "mature content" books in their catalogs, which is still very
 general but better than nothing. But even if publishers are idiots and don't see that a huge swath of their customers want this, there should be a service somewhere. I can't imagine Nellie is the only teacher (or school librarian) frustrated with this part of YA. Do you know of any YA
review sites that perform this service?

Me: Everyone in the industry is really pushing back against the idea of a rating
system. Let me see if I can explain why.

A friend of mine, wrote a book recently that has a homosexual character in it. It's a soft, quite, sad, moving book. And it would be part of the "rating" system and banned from a bunch of schools in Utah.
So would her book about teenage pregnancy. Also beautifully written, kind, compassionate. But it would get tagged by schools as "inappropriate." Schools here in Utah say that teachers are not allowed to "promote" homosexuality or anything other than abstinence. I think this actually means they can't
normalize homosexuality or teen sexuality. But who decides where the line is? I think it's a tricky call, and I don't want some rating system to do it for me or my kids. But you can bet that teachers afraid
for their jobs are going to steer clear of anything that remotely resembles something they
might be challenged on.

I don't see any way to have a system that distinguishes between books that I see as anchors to kids who need help and those books which I see as genuinely offensive and encouraging bad teen behavior by glorifying it. The only system I know is me recommending the best books I see. And I'd much
rather see librarians and school teachers go through books on a case by case basis, deciding whether they personally think it fits the values in their community than to have someone else not attached to the community do the same thing.

John: As for the industry push back, it reveals a bit of arrogance, I think. And a lack of imagination :) And it suggests their true concern is sales.

Here's what I mean by lack of imagination. Look at the kids in mind rating system. It rates movies 1-10 on sex, violence, and profanity. There's no age stipulation. No children under 13 not admitted. No recommended range for this or that group. No good or bad. It just rates the content and gives it a
number. You as the user determine what level you're comfortable with and then find the movies that fit. I'm a 4-10-4 on sex, violence, and profanity. That's not good or bad, just what is. If they were to use something similar, every librarian could peg the levels they wanted in their school and be
done. Write about homosexuality, rape, whatever. You can write a story about those themes that scores low on explicit sex and profanity.

Here's more on their lack of imagination. If librarians wanted to know about books with special themes, or strong themes, or sensitive themes, then flag them. Just give them the information. Homosexuality, rape, etc.

Here's where they show their arrogance. They seem to think librarians are mindless idiots. If a librarian is tuned into the needs of her community but thinks homosexuality would be important, should could search on that sensitive theme and her svp ratings. Problem solved.

Here's where they show their arrogance again. Who are they to override parents? Someone in an office in NY city knows what's best for my child? It's true that being a parent doesn't mean anything goes. Just because you're a parent that doesn't mean you can beat, pimp, or starve your child. But we're not talking about that. This holier than thou attitude is a bunch of nonsense. They've got a book they want to sell. That's it. And they don't give a damn about what a parent thinks. If they did, and they realio trulio cared about the topic, then they'd publish a book on it that the majority of parents and school districts would be comfortable with.

You can see I think the industry's stance is a crock. Sounds to me like the issue is money. And a disregard for their customer.

Me:

I think I will still have to disagree with you. Perhaps there is some arrogance involved.

Two comments:

1) When I was a kid I read lots of stuff my parents would have disallowed, if they'd had any idea what I was reading. I loved the freedom that gave me. They wouldn't let me watch TV shows I wanted, but they didn't screen the voracious number of books I read. Since they never bothered to tell me anything about sex AT ALL, I have to say that I was glad to find out at least something from the books I read secretly. I read many of the books my kids read, but not all of them. I assume this is good for them, on both ends.

2) If you don't watch the ridiculous lists of banned children's books that come out every year, you may not realize what happens when people get it into their heads that the "language" or "content" of certain books is objectionable. Huckleberry Finn is banned constantly because of the ironic use of the "n" word. I still remember trying to explain to a friend of mine why Shakespeare's plays were worth watching, even though they had "dirty words" in them. And thinking that if only people understood what Shakespeare was saying most of the time, they would probably ban him a lot more often.

I tend not to trust book banners as good readers of content. And I suppose that makes me sound pretty arrogant, too. I'd prefer readers to be in charge of decisions about a book's value, and I have no problem with people creating sites where they share information about books. You think I should be doing this myself as a writer, or that my publisher should be doing it for me, but I hate what has happened to the movie industry, where the creators purposely add or subtract content because of a particular target audience. I don't want other people to decide what should go into books. I hate that The King's Speech, for instance, got an "R" rating when it was the best movie that year for families. I also hate that Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the most offensive and immoral movie I have possibly seen in my life, gets a PG rating. Judging books on a checklist of content ends up with superficial judgments.

John:

It’s not superficial. It’s just how people make choices. You want food, you make choices based on cuisine type—Thai, Italian, etc. It’s just one piece of data that goes into the decision. And people are already using it. It’s just that publishers are making it hard to find.

As for sneaking books in under parent’s noses. Mette, is this really what’s this is about? Then we should put porn in Little House on the Prairie covers. Start a clandestine defy your parent program. A book underground. Come on. This is a business. It’s about servicing the customer. If you think some book needs to be sneaked into kids hands, then start movement. But if you want to sell books make it easy for the customer to find and buy.

You can see John's final ideas here: http://johndbrown.com/2012/09/ya-book...

I don't know if it's cynical of me or arrogant, but this is what I see happening as soon as a rating system is agreed upon and systematized:

My local school board decides that any books with a homosexual theme are immediately banned from all school libraries across the board. Ditto any book that has any rating above a "5" on any of the three areas John suggests. I don't want that to happen. I want people to at least try a book out before they decide whether or not it offends them. I also want kids to be able to read books in libraries and schools that they choose for themselves.

You can see that he and I are both very passionate about our opposing points of view, but we are trying to be reasonable and respectful to each other. Hopefully this will inspire others likewise.

Juvenilia: The Adventures of Holmes and the Amnesiac

My dear wife,
I am well aware of your great dislike for the danger that accompanies my friend Holmes. It is due to that that I regained from writing of this incident earlier. I had rather hoped to keep the whole of these facts secret, however, I find my mind unable to release the scene of late occurred, playing them back with continuing intensity, similar to a broken phonograph. I therefore am setting to paper these latest events in the hopes of clearing my mind. I hope they do not upset your delicate nerves. I will remind you that all the excitement is now passed and you need no longer fear for my well being.

I was in Oxford, attending an assembly of the medical profession, as I said before I left. We were hearing a lecture on the effects of long term amnesia (loss of memory) when I heard a familiar voice interrupt the speaker. Looking in the direction from which it came, I found it was indeed my friend Sherlock Holmes who was so vehemently attacking the theory in question (which was, that long term amnesia patients may adjust to a completely normal life, thus lessening the strain on their overworked brain and hastening recovery). I myself had had qualms concerning this very subject and Holmes proved me quite correct, as you shall see.

"I beg to differ, my dear sir," said Holmes rather too loudly to be ignored.

The speaker, not to be outdone by this upstart replied with even more alacrity, "You beg to differ with me, Sir? And who are you?"

Never to lose an opportunity to preen himself, Holmes continued. "I, Sir, am Mr. Sherlock Holmes. And I would like to put a few questions to your theory."

The speaker could hardly refuse, as all his esteemed colleagues sat with eager eyes upon the two. He nodded.

"Suppose," argued Holmes. "Just suppose that our amnesia patient was from a remote corner of the earth. A part so different as to have no similarities with present-day England at all. Yet at each step an eerie sense of recollection seems to haunt him. Continually he is reminded by unfamiliar scenes that he is not where he should be, but for the life of him, he cannot remember where it is he came from. Spontaneous reactions for our hypothetical case are quite different. So different as to make everyday life dangerous, new things a hazard. Using your prescription for this patient, naught would occur but a continual feeling of ill ease, growing daily until either suicide or natural causes killed him."

I agreed with every word Holmes said, and in fact had been about to interrupt and ask a similar question. The Speaker, however, was not at all pleased. He appeared to be turning different shades of red, and when Holmes ended his speech, bowed out rather ungracefully by attacking Holmes' own question.

"Sir, I would not hesitate to ask, if I thought an answer could be forthcoming, where such a place is that is so totally different from England yet nostalgic to the patient. I certainly have never encountered such a case. I also doubt that any of my distinguished fellow workers would come across such a case." And with that, he retired.

I ran over to catch Holmes and congratulate him on his brilliant strategy as the group broke up for a short break. My old friend seemed delighted to see me and took my arm, propelling me outside.

"Ah, Watson. I should have known you'd be here. Well, what do you think?"

I quite agree with you, Holmes, but may I ask you where you came across such a case, for I know you must be speaking of a particular person," said I.

"Quite correct, Watson. Quite correct. Must you stay here?" I shook my head, glad of a chance to retreat from the odor and heat of 200 fellow doctors in so small a space."

14 Questions to Ask Yourself About Race In Your Novel:

Are your characters all one race?

Do you have only evil characters who are of a non-white race?

Do you have only minor characters who are of a non-white race?

Do your non-white characters ever object to the way they are treated?

What fears about race do you show?

What are the superstitions about race? What legends and stereotypes have grown up over the years?

What assumptions underlie the dynamics between race? Are they the same assumptions that our culture uses?

What are the rules about interracial relationships? Between same sex and opposite sex?

Who are the heroes of each race? Why are they heroes?

What secret worlds exist within each race, invisible to the other? Or is there only a one-sidedness to this secrecy?

How are class and race intersected?

Are there any people who try to “pass” as not of their own race? What happens to them?

What happens to collaborators or those who are seen as traitors to their own race?

What are the internal arguments within each race about race?

Making Heaven Part 4

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, or for knowledge or for power or for anything really—they are filled. I have noticed that people who want something tend to consciously or subconsciously do things to get it. And they are more often than not rewarded with that which they seek for. But the ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness are perhaps a special category. In seeking for righteousness, for goodness, for morality, they define it. They become that which is righteous. They become the Mother Teresas of the world. They fill the world with that which they seek.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

If you create a world of mercy, you will be given it by that same world. I think this has a lot to do with Christ's constant disgust with the hypocritical actions of the Pharisees, who saw themselves as above needing to follow the rules. Christ harps on the need to look inward to find sin rather than outward to point it out in others. If you recognize your own flawed state, you will begin to feel more sympathy for others who are in that same state. The bonus for this, especially in a modern world where democracy exists and we get to vote for our leaders, is that we can have a government that shows mercy, as well.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

The pure in heart are those who do not seek for their own selfish benefits in other relationships. They do not deceive. They are honest. These are the people who see God reflected in the faces of others. They are without guile, and thus they assume the best of others. While the best may not always be true, if you have been around someone like this, you know how wonderful it is to be with them. We feel at peace and we want to live up to these better expectations. Any teacher who has seen a child suddenly blossom when the old labels are taken away knows what I mean here. You see God in the face of those who are given a second chance.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Those who are peacemakers, the ones who end war, are given one of the highest monikers in the Sermon. Christ himself said he as come not to bring peace, but to bring war. And Christianity has certainly done that. But by making peace, we create a world where people can live—and thus work to change the world here and now. If people are dead, they cannot make this heaven in the here and now.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I think here is a promise to those who do not live long enough to see the fruits of their goodness in this world. Whether or not you believe that they live again after this life, they will be remembered and their good deeds will help change this world even after they are gone.

Monday Book Recs--Sarah Beth Durst Vessel

This was such a tricky novel. The premise is that the main character, Liyana, has been trained to be a vessel for her goddess. When she reaches a certain age and her people are desperate enough for the magic of the goddess, she is to dance all night and call the goddess into her body. Then she will die and the goddess will live on with her people. So Liyana dances all night--and the goddess doesn't come. While this may seem like it would be a relief, it isn't. Her people need this magic. They live in a desert and they aren't going to survive. And everyone assumes that somehow Liyana must be unworthy of her goddess, so they leave her in the desert alone to die. Which could also be an interesting start to a novel--about Liyana going off and doing her own thing and not looking back. But that isn't this novel.

Durst instead decides to take us on a difficult ride that is constantly throwing questions about her own world setup at the reader. And she doesn't always give us easy answers like some fantasy novels try to get away with. Liyana meets other vessels from other tribes who have also not been killed to give way to the gods and goddesses these tribes worship. They go on a quest to find the deities, a quest which if successful will ultimately lead to all of the vessels dying so that the deities can inhabit their bodies. What kind of success can this possibly be? As I turned pages, I kept wondering how in the world Durst was going to end this in any satisfying way. But she does. Oh, yes, she does. I could not stop turning the pages even though I had a sick feeling in my stomach. If Liyana wins, then she dies. If she loses, then she lives, but under what circumstances? And what about the god she is partly falling in love with, who has already taken the body of a boy like her?

Thursday Juvenilia: Thane's Heir

I wrote this in grad school, when I was trying too hard to be very, very deep with genre. I used it to get into one of the audition only creative writing classes and still wonder why I got in, since the teacher was no friend of genre writing. About 1992.

Escha Maar, Thane’s heir, lay on the elaborate antique, Victorian bed in her living chambers and dreamt sleepily of someday, somehow, and somewhere. Her long, straw blonde hair had tangled itself up in a frothy concoction of draped lace, but she was content with the restriction. The exhausted expression on her smooth, boyish eight year-old face was shadowed by the array of translucent canopies above her.

She had just finished a long game of pretend. She had been Guinevere to the computer’s Lancelot, then Siegfried to the computer’s Brunnhilde. As a finale, Escha had played Aphrodite rising from the computer’s sea. Now, in the middle of the enormous plush lavender and pink caprte that covered the floor of her room lay a stack of discarded, multi-colored costumes.

At the sound of the computer’s soft tinkle, announcing the presence of a servant outside her room, however, Escha moved off hurriedly, extricating her hair only after leaving bunches of it still attached to the bed’s lace. She smoothed down her rumpled clothes, and sighing, called to the computer to restore the room’s true appearance.

The lace bed became black flannel and the canopies disappeared altogether. The costumes vanished as well, while the soft, feminine hues of her walls darkened into more somber maroon and navy versions of the same. As for Escha herself, her hair grew suddenly short, her purple dress grew into a plain, gray robe.

Escha didn’t really mind the sudden transformation she was forced to go through. It was part of another game she had realized she was meant to play. The rules were simple. Whenever she was not alone, Escha was to pretend that she was a boy. The rest of the time, she was free to use the computer to the best of her ability to create whatever she wished.

When there were no more signs that the frivolous playthings of a young girl had once occupied her room, Escha called for the computer to open her door.

A page stepped inside her room and she noticed enviously the soft satin blue ruffles that adorned his uniform. He knelt before her, and waited for her to acknowledge him.

“Yes?” Escah inquired politely, not noticing the flicker of resentment in the raised eyes of the page. At twice her age, he was still shorter and slighter than she, his body boyish in comparison to hers.

“The Thane requires the presence of his heir in his chambers,” the page responded, lowering his eyes finally, in a combination of respect for the Thane’s heir and shame at his own envy.

“My father,” she whispered excitedly, more to herself than to the servant.

“I thank you for your message and for your service,” Escha dismissed the inferior with the ritual words and stiff nod of her head that she had learned from her father.

“It is I who am thankful to serve the Thane and his heir,” the page said as he bowed again. Eyes still lowered, he exited the room as quickly as he had entered it.

Escha restrained herself from bouncing all the way to her father’s quarters, down the dimly lit underground corridor and to the left. It had been more than a week since their last visit and she was always happy to see her playful father. Her made the game seem ever so much more real than the computer could.

At the familiar black door, Escha stopped and waited. Normally, it simply slid open. But this time, something was wrong. Nothing had happened.

Puzzled because her father’s door had always been open to her before, she searched for the manual bell. Eventually she found the small red light and flashed her hand across it.

“The Thane requires the presence of his heir in his chambers,” the computer intoned, then displayed a map of the underground palace complex before her eyes. A bright green light marked the path from where she stood to the other side of the complex. It was nearly a kilometer’s distance.

Hoping that she had misunderstood the message, Escha tried to open the door to her father’s chambers once more—with no luck. She flashed her hand again over the red light. No message this time. If her father meant her to follow the path the computer had displayed, he would not repeat his orders.

She shrugged and turned around to begin the trek to her father’s new chambers, pretending as she went to make the time pass more quickly. She had just finished staging Napoleon’s last battle in her mind when she reached the new door to her father’s chambers. Pausing a moment to look at it, Escha noticed the door’s new appearance. Rather than plain black synthetic steel, this new door was a darkly staned wood, nearly black, carved with scenes of death from history.

A better door, Escha thought, then stepped forward over the sensor. Again, the door did not open to her. Again, she flashed her hand over the red light that had been affixed, chest-high to the natural stone wall to the right side of the door.

“Wait,” the computer commanded her. Escha waited.

When the door finally opened, Escha could not contain herself. She rushed into her father—and found tha the was not there. The room was entirely empty, at least as far as she could see. It was nearly pitch black inside as well, except for a small dais several yards away that was lit.

Seeing no other option, Escha moved towards the dais. The moment she crossed the outer line of the circle, a figure appeared inside the circle. The computer-generated image was about Escha’s height, though he crouched closer to the ground. He was weightier than Escha, each ounce in added muscle rather than fat. In each hand, the image held a battle ax.

Intrigued by this new game of her father’s, Escha moved cautiously forward to get a better look at the figure.

A slash at Escha’s head with the left battle ax was the figure’s response. Escha ducked, then turned to see the ax crash against an imaginary wall that had arisen around the perimeter of the dais. She inched a hand out towards the lit edges of the circle, trying not to arouse the sleeping monster, and felt that the wall existed for her, too.

It was a fight, then. Another part of the game that her father had arranged. Escha had never been in a fight before, but her father had told her about his battles often enough and the computer had generated sequence after sequence for her to practice. Of course, when she programmed the computer, she had always provided herself with a weapon, something her father seemed to have forgotten in this case.

Her mind would have to be her weapon. Escha’s father had always told her that the computer could never compete with the human mind in combat.

Taking her advantage while she had it, Escha’s left swung out at the figure’s unprotected abdomen. He took a step back and winced in pain. His left arm, and battle ax, moved down to protect the area from a second attack.

Escha attacked again while the figure was still recovering. Swinging in the opposite direction, she let her legs go directly at his left arm. The grip on the axe loosened just enough for Escha to grab it as she grab it as she stepped back and allowed both competitors to relax.

She was pleased with herself. In only two moves, she had evened the odds. Now holding the same weapon as her opponent, she would easily beat him.

But she did not even have time to slow her breathing to normal. Suddenly vastly more vicious than before, the computer-generated image threw himself at her again. Escha did not move quickly enough to completely evade the headward blow. She felt blood trickling down into her eyes from her forehead and something else, something she had never felt in a simulated battle. Pain.

Angry, Escha tried the same maneuver on her opponent. He quickly countered, then brought his ax down on her arm as she passed. Blood welled again, and pain with it, but Escha stubbornly refused to look down at the wound. She focused her mind completely on the battle, on her next move, and on his next move.

Anticipating an attack on her weak side, Escha turned sideways to protect herself. She guessed wrong. The figure had moved to the far side of the circle as she had been busy thinking. He ran towards her, battle ax held high, and fell fully into her. He knocked her down with his weight and broke open her skull with his ax. Then he disappeared.

But Escha remembered nothing for a while. When she awoke, her father stood before her. The dais had disappeared, the lights had come on brightly, and she could see the expression of disappointment on her father’s face without a problem. She also saw clearly the scars his face bore, scars of honor against honorable enemies, unlike hers. She saw his mountainous grandeur in comparison to her slight child’s body. And she wondered consciously for the first time how this man, this Thane, could have fathered her.

Ignoring the pain in her arm and head, she stood up and came to attention. He did not return her salute.

“The computer was programmed for level one. You failed,” he told her instead.

Escha swallowed and said nothing.

“Computer, called the Thane. “Replay seconds ten to fifteen.”

The dais and Escha’s opponent reappeared, as well as an image of Escha herself. Escha watched her embarrassingly sluggish movements with her father.

“Play again,” the Thane said coldly. “Erase the second image.” Escha watched as her father stepped into the ring and without a weapon, easily defeated the opponent who had nearly killed her.

“Again,” he said, then demonstrated a second method that would have beaten the computer’s program. His fluid movements needed no thought. They came instinctively to him.

“Again,” a third method.

A fourth, a fifth.

Ten methods later, Escha was desperately trying not to sway on her feet with the loss of blood and pride. But still she watched as her father did everything right that she had done wrong.

When he was finished, the Thane turned away from his heir. He said nothing more to her, though Escha wished fervently that he would forigve her, that he would tell her she could try again and do better. He did neither.

Escha waited then for dismissal, but he gave none. Emboldened by her disgrace—surely she could do no more wrong—she stepped towards him and asked him formally, “My father, my Thane.”

He gave no response to sanction continuing her question. Escha continued anyway. “My father, my Thane, why are we apart?” she asked, though there were a hundred more important questions to her.

Still, the Thane did not answer her. Back still towards her, he moved further away, towards the view screen in his chambers. He communicated with the computer instead, pretending to be occupied with the state’s business.

But Escha knew that it was a pretense. Her father had not forgotten that she was there. She could tell by his silent, averted eyes. When her father was deep in thought, he was transported to another world. His regal, pale blue eyes roamed his chambers freely, staring and devouring the imaginary scenery. He spoke softly to himself in contemplation, only slowly coming back to the real world after he had found the elusive answer and shouted it rock the skies.

She asked the question agian, wondering as she spoke if this was her father and her Thane. He seemed suddenly to have become a man she did not know.

Only silence answered her.

Finally, Escha crossed the distance between them to reach the stern, black field of her father’s back. She touched him lightly and felt a strange trembling beneath her fingertips. And she asked the question for the third and last time.

For long moments, Escha was certain that her father would ignore her yet again—perhaps forever now that hse had failed him. She was frightened of him, not because he had never been angry with her before, but because she had never seen him show his anger with this silent shaking. He was the Thane and did not need to hide his emotions.

In the end, the Thane answered her, though his answer came not from his beloved, scarred face, but from his cold, black back. “Because my son, my heir,” he said, his voice hoarse, broken, and infused with a pain hidden so deeply that Escha had never caught a glimpse of it before. “Because I cannot risk you, as well.”

He said no more than that, but Escha knew that she was to leave. For the first time, she was glad to go. Despite her wounds, she practically ran the entire distance to the safety of her own warm, soft chambers.

Looking around her at the girlish chambers, she suddenly hated them. She hated the softness of the purple, the happiness of the blue, and the lightness of the pink because she knew that they were false. They were not colors that existed in the real world.

Escha instructed the computer to activate the view screen in her room, to fill it with a picture of the outside world she had never glimpsed. She gazed on both sides of the forbidding planet’s surface. The side facing the sun was swollen with its gravitational attraction, a parched desert, sun-bleached of color and life. The other side, the dark twin, was a punctured balloon of frozen blackness, as sterile as its brother, and as forbidding. She knew then, as she had always known, that the misshapen, unmoving asteroid planet called Exile was her prison. It was also her only home, for the ship that had been made to bring the exiles from Earth had crash-landed and long since been cannibalized for parts. She could as easily leave the artificial air that kept her alive far beneath its surface as she could leave her body, or her father’s presence.

The room that had once been her playhouse was an anathema to her now. There was no place for her pretense in her world anymore.

Rampaging, Escha incinerated the bright, vibrant colors of her walls. She ripped and tore at the plush carpet beneath her feet until it was little more than a ball of ragged threads. She erased the computer’s program for her stuffed toys and the imaginary friends she had made of them. Finally, she destroyed all the stories she had once told herself through the computer.

Then at last, Escha allowed herself to cry a storm of bitter tears. She knew it was for the last time, for tears also would have no place in her new world. Tears were for those who had a hope of something better. Tears were for those who could still pretend.

Escha cried and for the last time, allowed herself to fantasize. She wished that she might have been different, that her father might have been different, that her world might have been different. For the last time, she allowed herself to think that life was not fair. And then she accepted it. And then she grew up.

A couple of business items

I will be at the Orem, Utah B&N from 4-8 pm this Saturday, September 22. I will not even have a race to do beforehand, so I should be fairly cheerful.

Also, I heard that I was mentioned on Writer's Almanac on my birthday this last week (September 13) by Garrison Keillor. Very cool, eh? If you're interested, you can go here to the end of the page to see a transcript:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/09/13