Ada Maria Soto's Blog, page 10

Clean Reader – won’t somebody please think of the children

In all the noise being made about Clean Reader I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the kid. For those who missed it Clean Reader is an app that changes dirty words in ebooks to clean ones. According to their website-

One day our oldest child came home from school and she was a little sad. We asked her what was wrong and she said she had been reading a book during library time and it had a few swear words in it. She really liked the book but not the swear words. We told her that there was probably an app for this type of thing that would replace profanity with less offensive words and perhaps we should get her a tablet that she could use to read books with.

First off I don’t believe this story for a second. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid came home and said ‘there were bad words in this book’ but even for a kid that must be living a massively sheltered life the idea that she came home ‘a little sad’ about a book doesn’t fly with me. At no point do they say how old the kid is but she must be old enough to be out of picture books and into the kind that might have a swear word in it. And seeing as how middle school was the last time we had library time I’m making a guess between 10 and 13.

And here is where I scratch my head, what kind of kid tattles on a book? Well, obviously the kind of kids raised by parents who think that taking out the swear words will somehow make Game of Thrones clean.

When I was in middle school most of us went looking for the books with swear words and sex bits. It was with the same kind of juvenile intent we looked at the topless pictures in National Geographic but we still did it. Our middle school librarians were either wonderful, awful, progressive, or apathetic. It’s hard to say. For some reason we had the Clan of the Cave Bear series which has stacks of graphic sex, but seeing as how each book was 400 pages in hardback only the major book nerds (all two of us) ever checked it out. And we certainly didn’t tell. We read them, returned them on time, and since we were also lunch volunteers we made sure they got shelved in the right place.

I’m not saying we were all looking for that stuff. I remember one girl telling me about how she wouldn’t read Piers Anthony books because there was one with a character masturbating. She’d apparently gotten it at the public library. That’s absolutely fine and fair enough. If it bothered her then it bothered her. There are plenty of books that bother me as well. She put it back on the shelf and didn’t read it again. She didn’t go waving it at the librarian or her parents and if she had I seriously doubt they would have taken a pen and blacked out the bits that bothered her then handed it back.

And that is exactly what these parents are doing and I feel sorry for that kid because if she’s bothered by swearwords in literature at this point wait until she gets to high school. I got stuck reading 1984 twice in high school and twice more at university. There are whole big chunks about sex in there. There is the dreary Catcher in the Rye which is an English class standby. In seventh grade we had a whole poetry section where I memorized Tommy Atkins by Kipling and read Howl with its ‘waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls’, and men ‘who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors,’

Middle school and high school sucked for social and psychological reasons but no one tried to censor or even clean up my reading material. We got a talking to if we swore in front of the teachers but most of us snuck into R rated movies (I know one who snuck into Kids). And it was generally assumed that if we had a question or a concern about something we’d ask.

I can only hope that that kid is watching what’s going on around her parent’s app and perhaps starting to question some things so she doesn’t come home ‘a little sad’ when a teacher drops Catch-22 on her desk and assigns a ten page analysis by the end of the month.

Why I Effing Hate Little Critters (it’s for literary reasons)

This is basically a short rant concerning a part of parenting.

If you are a parent you can probably understand how it is easy to come to loath perfectly good children’s books. They can be wonderful, sweet, interesting, beautifully illustrated stories and after the 300th reading you want to burn the fucking things but it wouldn’t matter because you will know every word until the day you die. Green Eggs and Ham is the classic for this. My father swears that even after 30 years and several strokes he can still recite Elephant Goes to School. At present I can get through Zog in my sleep and about 95% of Slinky Malinki. I get a sinking feeling in my gut when my kid comes toddling over holding out these books because I’m not sure if I can get through them one more time without screaming. Parents understand this. In truth there is nothing wrong with Slinky Malinki and I rather like Zog which carries an important message about persistence, bucking gender roles, and carrying a first aid kit.

Then there are the Little Critter Books by Mercer Mayer.

I fucking hate these things. They make my teeth ache. At first I thought it was just the usual response to multiple reading but then I realized that I hadn’t actually read them all that many times. It took me a while to work it out but recently I realized that what gets me is that the voice is all wrong and the narrator is unreliable but not in an interesting way.

If you’re not familiar with these they are a set of picture books about a family of… things. They’re anthropomorphic and live in a recognizable modernish world with animals as people. The family is a group of not anything specific furry things. If you stuck a skinny bear on its hind legs and make it into a rodent of some sort you might get close.

The family is a mom (who is always dressed in a late Victorian style), dad, little boy about 7ish who is the narrator, little sister, and baby brother.

The books are written, like many children’s books, in first person past tense. I’m guessing it’s supposed to read as though it was written by a little kid but it’s just wrong. There is a snotty passive aggressive tone and little lies that contradict the illustrations. I’ve worked with kids and spent time as a substitute elementary school teacher. Yes children are aggressive, and lie but at seven they are blunt and if you ask them to write a story about what they did with their mom on the weekend you get things like-

“Mommy and me went to the park. I pushed my brother because he was mean. Mommy yelled a lot. Daddy stayed at home with Mike his special friend and they have a thing that looks like the thing mommy puts flowers in but daddy never puts flowers in it.”

And you better believe these gems get passed around staff rooms.

Little Critters read like Mommy was standing over the kid’s shoulder saying “Just write that you played with your brother, and I didn’t yell”. Mike never gets a mention. But then the kid gets to school and is asked to draw illustrations and there is mommy yelling and daddy with his special friend.

I’ve tried to sell picture books and never managed it, and I get that it’s hard to write a story that will appeal to kids that parents will actually buy, and they are arguably cute stories but on a literary level the things just drive me nuts.

It’s like the difference between the teenaged dialogue in Buffy the Vampire Slayer verses Juno. Teenagers never actually spoke like the Scobby Gang but there was just enough slang and reference that you could believe that teenagers somewhere actually did speak like that. Juno on the other hand has dialogue that seems to be nothing but slang to the point of alienation from the audience. I get about five minutes in before I want to yell at the television ‘we get it she’s cool but weird move on’. And while we’re there what kind of parents let their kid drive around in a very unsafe serial killer van? Probably the same kind who don’t explain condoms.

Back to Little Critters.

Kids don’t talk like that. Kids don’t write like that. I can’t buy that some hyper-intelligent furry bear rodent thing talks or writes like that. I recently finished The Rum Diary and was talking with a friend about The Hobbit. In both cases Paul Kemp and Bilbo Baggins were writing from a distance and probably trying to cover their own sins to a certain extent giving them the position of the unreliable narrator. This is a fine literary choice when you’re writing from the point of view of an adult for adults, or at least older children.

When you’re going for the POV of a child for a child it just doesn’t work. I was honestly surprised to learn that Mercer Mayer has his own children because the books read like someone who has never met a child tried to imagine how a child might write.

(Insert scholarly paper/self-righteous blog post/angry tumblr rant about who should and shouldn’t be allowed to write what/gaze/representation/assimilation/post-colonialisum/fitishiztion/cultural appropriation/isums/phobias)

Anyway I could be completely wrong. The bloody books have sold about a billion copies and I’ve got 60 rejections for my story about a Martian child making friends with a human child.

Or it could be an example of first person story telling done wrong that only bugs a handful of people and not enough of them to hurt sales numbers.

Whatever it is I’ll end this post here. I’ve got a shit-ton of laundry that needs to be folded and some books I need to hide before I’m forced to read them again.

In Which I Won a Few Things and Lost a Few Others

Show Day.

First off I forgot the plum jam at drop-off time. There was only a two hour window and the show was 40 minutes away. This is depressing because the plum was the best thing I made all year. Of course this year was really about feeling out the judges and competition.

The big success was my marmalades. First, Second, and Third for lemon ginger, lemon, and mandarin. There was only one other entry in marmalades but it obviously wasn’t up to scratch.

My Jelly did okay. I got second and third for my chardonnay/green apple jelly and my merlot. My cherry jelly didn’t place and the first went to a hot pepper jelly.

Raspberry jam took a third. Neither my blueberry or apricot jam placed. There was a lot of competition in those sections. Those were also the sweetest of all the jams I made.

My takeaway for next year is not too sweet and think outside the box.

Baking went a little different.

That beautiful loaf of bread I made only took a second. I guess I must have lost points on taste or texture. It was hands down the most complicated looking loaf there.

My fruitcake got nothing. That was a bit of a surprise. It had to be a minimum of 3 pounds and mine was four. I baked it in a bunt cake pan and dipped it in rum. I figured it would be an easy place. Nope. The winning one was decorated and very pretty. The other two were just huge. I mean absolutely giant bricks of cake. I have no idea how they were baked, they had to be at least five pounds each.

My chocolate cake, which took three tries to not come out half raw didn’t place and was probably too dry. I tried to pass off my excellent banana bread and banana cake but they didn’t buy it. My Victoria sponge cake took a third. I think that was an aesthetic thing. The jam squeeze out of mine but the winners were quite tidy.

I got a second in the Genuine Flop category for a sponge cake that came out the same size, shape, and texture as a Frisbee. The winner looked like a giant fruitcake that had been dropped.

Then there was the cookies. These pissed me off. I entered two cookie sections, chocolate chip and shortbread. For my shortbread I entered my dark chocolate/cranberry shortbread. It is awesome shortbread, everyone loves it, I’ll post the recipe near Christmas and I don’t think the judges so much as nibbled it. The winners looked like the shortbread that comes in the big tins around Christmas.

As for the chocolate chip, I made the best fucking chocolate chip cookies you have ever had. Perfectly golden brown, chewy, dark chocolate chips that stayed soft, plenty but not too many, nice rich flavor and not too sweet. Perfect. The winners looked like the kind that sit in glass jars at chain coffee shops that no one ever buys. They looked like oversized anemic shortbread with a sprinkle of chocolate in it.

Bah! And I say again Bah! Those judges obviously have never had proper chocolate chip cookies.

So the baking take away was traditional and tidy.

Next year shall be total domination.

My Mother, Myself, My Daughter, and Spock

I was woken up at seven this morning by a text from my mother informing me that Leonard Nimoy had died and that she was crying in her office. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my mother cry and I don’t have to use all my fingers. Star Trek was a big part of her life. She watched it regularly when it was first on air and when she couldn’t watch it she had a friend record it. And by that I mean the friend had a tape deck, pointed a microphone at the TV, then would describe to my mother what had been happening on the screen.

Spock was her favorite. She was a nerd, she was in honors society and wanted to be an astronaut (unfortunately she is blind without her glasses and a woman which was two big strikes against her). She also had a difficult relationship with her older sister but instead of giving her the satisfaction of an emotional reaction she’d ‘go Vulcan’. To this day she reacts to stressful and highly emotional situations by becoming very logical. She also thought Spock was cute.

I was raised in the church of Star Trek. I don’t know when I learned how to spread my fingers like a proper Vulcan, or when I first heard the words live long and prosper. They are just things that always were. My first Star Trek convention was when I was seven. It was a Nimoy/Shatner double bill. They were running late due to a delayed flight and Bay Area traffic. The poor conference head did her best to keep the crowd from getting ugly. Nimoy told stories about how Shatner would hide his bicycle. I got to stay up past my bedtime.

The end of Wrath of Kahn is still one of the few things that can regularly give my mom the sniffles. Though anyone who doesn’t feel gutted at those scenes needs their head examined.

When Next Generation kicked off it was family TV time. Other households gathered together for schmaltzy 80’s sitcoms. In my family it was a double billing of Original Series followed by Next Generation once a week.

My mother probably had a hundred of those Star Trek paperbacks. She was always reading one and her favorites always involved Spock. I did book reports on those instead of Babysitter’s Club in elementary school. I didn’t think there was anything odd about this. Normal is what you grow up with.

My mother came down to New Zealand a couple weeks before I had my daughter to help out and stayed for a few weeks after. As a former special ed teacher she has always been very big on language and reading development. On a shelf in my apartment my mother found one of her favorite Star Trek novels and after I got home she decided it should be my daughter’s first book. Not Hop on Pop or Hairy Maclary or even Peter Rabbit. A Pocket Books Star Trek novel with yellowed pages and a brittle cover. I have pictures.

I also have pictures of my kid in a science officer blue Star Trek onesie. I couldn’t manage to get her to give a Vulcan salute. At that point sitting up was still a pretty clever trick but we’ll get there. She might end up a popular girl and queen bee, or she might be a giant nerd like her parents, but either way she’ll understand the importance of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations and what it truly is to Live Long and Prosper.

In Which I Will Attempt to Win All the Things PART 2 – Baking

This’ll mainly be a picture blog because I’m still baking and don’t really have time to write much.  Right now I have a chocolate cake in the oven and a sponge cake in a pan waiting.  It’s 2pm right now and my oven has been running since 8am.

Did up some of the cookie and brownie dough the night before to save time. Also did a prebake cookie crumb crust.

I tried to bake my brownie recipe in the cookie crust. Bad idea.

Peanut Brownies and Chocolate Chip Cookies.

My cranberry dark chocolate shortbread cookies. I’ll post a recipe for these around Christmas.

Banana Cake

Bread dough.

One of the few good things about baking in New Zealand in summer; the dough rises really effing fast.

I tried to do a four strand braid but it was a mess. Three strand is less fancy but at least tidy.

My challah bread out of the oven. Prettiest thing I’ve made today.

 

Got the chocolate cake out of the oven. Beautiful on the outside, completely liquid centre. I think I got distracted and didn’t put in the second cup of flour. The cooked bits are yummy though.  Or possibly my oven is running a little hot.

Brownies Take 2. I’m a bit worried it’s too warm out for them to set up right. Might have to wait until this evening to try to cut them.

Victoria sponge number 2 ready to go.

 

I am on a seriously intense sugar high just from taste testing things. I think I’ll let my oven cool down a bit before putting in the next cake.

Oh, and why did no one tell me about two piece spring cake pans two decades ago?

 

On Saturday I’ll do one more update and announce how good or bad this all went.  Though if my plum jam doesn’t win then something is rigged because that is some fucking good jam I made. 

In case anyone was wondering this is the grand total of jam, jelly, and marmalade I made over the past few weeks.

Chocolate cake take 2. I let the oven cool then come back up to temp. Hopefully this will avoid the liquid centre.

 

In Which I Will Attempt to Win All the Things

I am taking February off from writing. Instead I will be spending this month preparing for the local A&P (Agricultural and Pastoral ) show where I will attempt to win everything.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Next year will be domination.

For those wondering A&P shows are a bit like county fairs. There are random things for sale, food booths, livestock competitions and also section called ‘home crafts’. Growing up my family would enter our local county fair all the time, usually in jams, jellies, preserves, and baking, though my father also took some awards in the gardening section. This has continued since my sister and I moved out and it’s gotten to the point where my parents were politely asked to maybe not enter for a year, give someone else a chance.

My family (read mother) is highly competitive. She’s even competitive with her own children and we’re competitive right back. When we were entering the kids sections she would help us with our jams and jellies, making sure we didn’t scald ourselves too badly. As soon as we were in the adult sections with her it was game on. I lost. I always lost. We could use the exact same recipe and she would get first and I would get second. My poor diabetic father did not enjoy the time of year when jams were being made. My mother and I would shove spoon fulls of the stuff at him and demand he tell us which was better. He got very good at giving positive, balanced, and non-committal feedback. At some point I will write a blog post about my family and mental health and I discuss the year of the seven angel food cakes. When my mother sets out to win she sets out to win.

I haven’t entered any kind of contest in about a decade due to living in a little apartment, working weird shifts, and the fact that the central Auckland shows don’t really do any home crafts. Then I moved to the suburbs, and into a house with a proper kitchen. The thing you need to know about living in the suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city is that you are always a twenty minute or less drive from farm land. I pass by a small alpaca farm, a couple of sheep, and some wild chickens on my ten minute drive to the mall.

This means the local A&P is a bit bigger, and I have a bigger kitchen.

I got the schedule back in November and worked out that I have the skills to enter about sixty different categories.

I Will Win All The Things And Not Have To Compete With My Mother!

Okay, no. I have a toddler who is not compatible with scalding hot jam and my two days a week off is taken up with trying to have a writing career. I also have no idea what the competition will be like. There might be little old ladies who have won every year since 1840 and will cut anyone who gets in their way. There might be hardcore hipsters who are rocking cam sành marmalade (actually that sounds good). I need to just dip my toes in, scout out the competition and gage the tastes of the judges. Are they hardcore traditionalists or would they be up for some chili flakes in the mango jam?

I’ve already crossed off all of the knitting sections which I just haven’t had the time or detailed focus for. I’ve also dropped all the canned and pickled vegetables since I’ve only done those once before and I think I need more practice. That leaves the old standbys of jam, jelly, marmalade, and baking.

I’ve already knocked out a merlot jelly and a cherry jelly. Jelly isn’t really a thing in New Zealand. You can’t buy it in the stores. If you ask for jelly you get pointed to what Americans would call Jell-O or gelatine. I was actually a bit surprised to see it on the schedule.

Mmmmmm… jelly

After that an apricot jam, plum jam, lemon ginger marmalade, regular lemon marmalade, possibly the mandarin marmalade I made before Christmas. I’ll have to take a look at it and crack one open for a taste.

I have run into a couple of problems. One is that it’s really hard to find seal and ring canning jars and when you do they are fucking expensive. I mean 6 bucks a jar, though you can buy replacement tops and rings in the grocery store for dirt cheap. Makes no sense. I ended up finding a place that sells wholesale jars and bottles. This means I will be using one piece lids which I’ve never used before and are in fact against the rules at my old county fairs. Also New Zealand pectin is crap. Unbelievable crap. I can get nothing to set up with it. I got my mother to send me Sure-Jell and imperial measuring cups over Christmas. (Mom can be very supportive as long as we’re not in direct competition.) Do I have any New Zealand readers? Does anyone know where I can get good pectin? That Chelsea jam sugar is okay but not what I really need and that stuff you get at Pak n’ Save just doesn’t fucking work.

Lemon Ginger Marmalade

I’m also taking on the baking section. I’ve dropped myself down from every baking option to just 10. Sponge cake, chocolate chip cookies, peanut brownies, shortbread, raspberry brownies, banana cake, chocolate cake, fruit cake (1.5kg minimum weight), sponge sandwich with jam filling, and loaf of bread. I’ll probably do my rosemary bread and my challah bread. And before you all say I’m nuts you should see my Christmas baking. I’ll post pictures of the baking next week.

I’ll be doing all the baking on the 26th, drop off on 27th, and comp on 28th.

I’ll end this post now because I’ve got jam to make but I’ll post pictures next week of me winning all the things or perhaps losing painfully and getting obsessed with romping through next year.

Rule One of competitive jam making; always skim the foam.

Oh please let the lids seal correctly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: Just finished the apricot jam. Too sweet. Too much sugar, not enough flavour in the fruit. I’ll enter in anyway but not betting on my odds. Hopefully the plumb will turn out better.

Me, New Zealand, and Rugby (you know that game kinda like football but with no pads, no timeouts, and no touchdown dances)

I did a guest post over at Lissa Kasey place last week.  It’s about rugby and a bit about being an expat American in New Zealand.  Go take a look at it.

Me, New Zealand, and Rugby (you know that game kinda like football but with no pads, no timeouts, and no touchdown dances)

Two Eight Two (free read)

Quite some time ago I wrote a little post about my first attempt to write science fiction and today felt like a good day to dust off that story and present it to all of you. So here it is, I hope you enjoy it, feedback in always appreciated.

Two Eight Two

By Ada Maria Soto

The sounds of too bright drunken laughter and shouts of anger mingled to drown out the soft hum of the dirty bronze chip spinning on the bar top. The twirling color seemed to blend into the wood as John gave it another twist. The bartender had long ago moved on to more decisive customers, of which there were plenty. John looked up at the screen over the bar as the chip wobbled and fell flat. The news was on mute, but it didn’t matter. There was only one news story anymore: the Two Eight Two and the imminent extinction of the species Homo sapiens. And judging by the footage of blood soaked riots and burning cities blinking across the screen, the human species had no intention of going out with grace and dignity. He didn’t care. Grace and dignity had certainly never gotten him anywhere.

He started to raise his hand to wave the bartender over when another hand settled across his; thin and delicate with carefully manicured nails. He looked up to a woman in a dress of skin-tight blue. The dress should have been raw sex, hugging sculpted curves, but it failed against warm dark eyes, smooth brown skin, and a soft braid of deep black hair draped casually over the woman’s shoulder. She smiled at him. It was beautiful; the smile of someone who cared. As a young man he might have been tempted to write epic poetry describing that smile. A thousand words at least.

“Hello.” Her voice was sweet, with just a hint of an accent John couldn’t quite place.

“Hello to you.” He tried to find the old smile women used to find charming, while leaning in close so he wouldn’t have to shout.

“What’s that?” The woman gestured towards the chip laying were it fell on the bar top.

He has forgotten it for a second, distracted by beauty. “That is a chip that says I managed to stay sober for two years and I’m about to throw it away. Would you care to join me?”

The woman’s smile faltered. “You shouldn’t do that. Not today.”

John removed his hand from under hers. Any other day he might have cursed at her, sent her running, told her to save her pity, but she was the first person to make any effort to speak to him in months. “Miss, do you know how long I’ve been sober?”

“Two years?”

“Two years, eight months, and two days. Two Eight Two, the end of us all. Today is the perfect day to start drinking again.”

She leaned in closer, her lips nearly to his ear. She smelled of oranges and fresh cut grass. She shouldn’t. No one smelled clean anymore. He could feel the warmth of her breath. “What if I told you I know how to survive the Two Eight Two?”

John jerked away, his bark of hard laughter snapping across the bar. Even the bartender glanced over for a half second.

“Lady, I don’t know what you’re selling, but I ain’t buying. No one is getting past the Two Eight Two. This is the end of the line. Game over. Humanity zero, the universe… everything else. Now if you don’t mind I am prepared to die the same way I lived. Drunk.” John waved the bartender over turning away from the woman in blue, her scent of living things still lingering in the air around him. “Vodka martini, stirred, plenty of vermouth and two olives.”

“Make that two.”

He looked over to the woman who was, somewhat surprisingly, still there.

She smiled that same caring smile that begged for poetry and art. “You did ask me to join you in a drink.”

“I guess I did.”

The drinks arrived quickly. John looked at the clear liquid just slightly clinging to the inside of the glass. He could smell the vermouth and olives. He looked inside himself. He’d fallen off the wagon before, usually with a large, hateful crash into a deep canyon of pathetic misery and self-pity, but this time he felt nothing. No disappointment, no self-loathing, no anger for himself or the pretty girl by his side, he was ready to take that first drink just as he was ready to die with the rest of humanity.

He raised his eyes to the woman in blue and lifted his glass in a silent toast. Then he tipped his head back and drank.

^^^^^

Long pathetic experience had taught John to get an idea of his situation and surroundings before opening his eyes to the light that was trying to press its way through his lids. He knew his head ached, that was a given. He was lying on his back, which was somewhat unusual. His skin felt damp and sticky like he’d been laying in a puddle of something. Not good but not the first time. But he was fairly certain he was wearing pants, which was a plus. He tried to sigh in relief then realized he couldn’t. He snapped his eyes open then squeezed them shut against the light as panic set in. He had a tube in his mouth, he had a tube going down into his lungs. He could feel it pushing air in and sucking it back out. He tried to grab it but his arms didn’t respond. They just twitched half dead at his sides.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ a pleasant sounding computerized voice said from somewhere.

He tried to kick his legs but they were about as responsive as his arms.

‘You have been in suspended animation.’

He wanted to scream at the voice but the tube was still in his lungs.

‘You have been chosen by the Committee for the Ark Project. As a result you have been placed into suspended animation. You may find you have muscle weakness, limited coordination, blurred vision, vomiting, and headaches.’

‘It’s called a hangover,’ he tried to yell.

‘These are all natural reactions. Do not be alarmed.’

John’s vision was starting to clear, allowing him to glance around. He was in a white plastic tube, not much bigger than a coffin. The walls were dripping with something thick, clear, and slimy. Raw, blind, panic took hold. His heart raced beyond anything he had ever experienced as desperation set in.

‘Please exhale and your oxygen tube will be retracted.’

He tried to exhale. The tube was pulled from his lungs with a long slurping sound, leaving his throat scraped and raw. The tube vanished into a sliding panel above him.

‘Please breathe slowly and deeply. A revitalization specialist will be in to see to you shortly.’

He took a deep breath. “I’m claustrophobic!” he tried to scream. “Get me the fuck out of here!”

^^^^^

John slumped into the first of the hard folding chairs he could reach, barely focusing on the thousand other people around him. The walk from the recovery center to the assembly hall had been brutal, all five minutes of it. If he wasn’t so weak and exhausted, he’d be angry. He, and apparently a few thousand other people, had been attempting to get answers for the last week. The only thing the very helpful and pleasant staff would tell them was that everything would be explained once everyone was more or less back on their feet. There would have been revolt if anyone could raise their arms for more than 30 seconds.

The stage at the front of the hall had a small podium and a large screen. It felt a bit too much like a school assembly day and he started to worry that he was going to realize he was naked then wake up screaming, but not before his grandmother showed up wearing a banana costume. A tidy little man with a cheery smile approached the podium. John sat up as much as he could.

“Good morning everyone.”

The perkiness of the man’s voice grated in John’s ears. As far as he was concerned he still had the mother of all hangovers. He’d shaken off full blown alcohol poisoning quicker than this suspended animation bullshit.

“My name is Jacob and I am here to answer as many of your questions as I can. I know you are all still feeling a little under the weather. I’ve been there myself, so I will try to keep things as quick and to the point as possible.”

“What the hell is going on?” someone from the crowd managed to shout. A thousand other people tried to shout their own questions but it was more a wave of groans and mumbles drowning each other out.

Jacob clasped his hands politely behind his back until everyone ran out of energy, which took about 45 seconds. “Please, let me give you my little talk and then I will endeavor to answer any remaining questions you may have.” The audience just nodded weakly.

“Good, let us start from the beginning. I’m sure the last thing most of you can remember is the Two Eight Two. For the vast majority of the world the Two Eight Two came as a surprise. However, there was one group prepared: The Committee.”

A logo came up on the screen towering behind Jacob. It was the same logo that was on everything he’d seen since waking up. To John, if he squinted, it looked like a set of stylized arched gates.

“Over a century before the Two Eight Two a multinational, nongovernment, nondenominational group of scientists and thinkers realized the possibility of something like the Two Eight Two, and that it would be a catastrophic blow to humanity.”

Murmurs rolled through the crowd. The Two Eight Two had caught everyone flat-footed and no response would be strong enough or fast enough to save humanity. At least that’s what everyone had been told in the last days. The idea that someone knew the Two Eight Two was coming and did nothing was not going to be a popular one.

“This group knew that something had to be done to preserve humanity in all its richness and so The Committee was formed and the Ark Project was conceived.”

An old photo of a few dozen men went up on the screen.

“The first ideas were primitive. A few hundred people on ice. But with each new generation of technological advance the scope of the Ark Project grew. The plan became one to preserve as many people as possible who could be the start of a new humanity. At the end, The Committee managed 50,000 individuals plus another 400,000 fertilized human embryos. And before anyone starts thinking of eugenics please look around. Their goal was not just to save people, but to preserve as much solid genetic diversity as possible.”

Everyone, including John, looked around. He was surrounded by every possible shade of skin, facial shape, and body type. He took some comfort in the idea that he hadn’t been kidnapped by Nazis. He also started to wonder what the hell he was doing as part of the lucky 50,000. His family line started with plague-ridden pig farmers and went downhill from there.

“So how long were we out?” someone called from the crowd followed by a collection of other voices wanting the same answer.

Jacob looked uncomfortable. “You are all part of the fifth wave of awakening. The first wave was scouts, followed by engineers, farmers, doctors, individuals who could build general infrastructure. As the fifth wave, you, are our academics. You are our scientists and thinkers. You can build and staff our new schools, and libraries. You can assemble the T-Rex skeleton we’ve got in a crate next to the Mona Lisa as soon as the first museum is built. And the schools do need to be built. The next wave is young adults and families with children.”

Now John knew there had been a mix up. He was no scientist. He’d nearly failed high school and dropped out of university, twice. “That doesn’t answer the other guy’s question,” he called out.

“As I said you are the fifth wave. The first wave was woken automatically when sensors determined Earth was once again fit for human habitation.”

“How long!” came yet another shout.

Jacob cleared his throat. “Twenty thousand and nineteen years.”

There was silence as the number slowly sank in. Once it had sunk the shouting started. John didn’t bother. He was still contemplating the number. Twenty thousand years. He was twenty thousand years removed from his joke of a life. From his bills, double alimony, and triple mortgaged house. Millennia way from grand expectations he could never rise to. He was free from it all. He waited for the lightening of his soul or something like that but all he felt was tired and numb. As for the rest, for a group of people who could still barely walk, they were doing their best to form an unruly mob. Jacob waited until people were out of breath and collapsing back into their chairs.

“Everyone got that out of your systems?”

There were some cranky grumbles. The woman sitting next to John was sobbing into her hands.

“Good, because we have a lot more to cover. It won’t all be fun and games. There are expectations. You will be given jobs and expected to undertake certain duties. I know most of you were taken against your will and everyone left people behind, but we could not risk the Ark Project becoming public knowledge. There would have been riots. Well, more riots. But The Committee chose all of you to receive this gift of life because they believed there is something each of you can provide to help advance humanity while keeping us from repeating the mistakes of our past.”

Now John knew there had been a clerical error. He was a mistake of the past. He had no business being part of a second humanity, except perhaps to be held up as a horrible warning. He’d already decided the woman in blue must have drugged him, or at least scraped him up when he blacked out, but she must have grabbed the wrong person.

He pushed himself to his feet. “Excuse me, what if we think we know someone who might be on ice around here?”

“There is a citizen directory you may access.”

“What if we don’t know their name?”

There was the creak of chairs as every person turned to look at him. “Do you know anything about them?”

“She was in a blue dress?”

Jacob blinked at him for a couple of second then turned back to the crowd flipping to a new slide which showed a group of people with smiling, sympathetic faces. “There will be counselors available to help you adjust to this new life. And it will be an adjustment. But try to remember, at the end of the day, this is better than the Two Eight Two.”

^^^^^

The afternoon sun through the leaves of a spreading oak and a light breeze were lending themselves to create a green dappled light that danced across John’s face. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He’d been awake almost four months before he was declared fit enough to be freed from one of the arks. He’d been told that Earth now had more oxygen and his body would need a bit of time to adjust. It did feel nice, breathing air that didn’t taste of the residue of humanity. He leaned against the huge oak that sat in the courtyard of the library.

Birds fluttered in the branches above him. He recognized the one on the branch nearest to him from its twisted foot. It looked a little like a large sparrow but with a tail that fanned out and dark purple feathers. He’d named it Frank. John knew it was things like Frank that had the scientist all excited. Some things were exactly the same. An oak tree was still an oak tree but there were birds, bugs, and weird little rodent creatures that hadn’t existed when the Two Eight Two hit.

John hated the weird little rodent creatures. They scurried around trees and sat on their back legs and had fluffy fur like squirrels, but also had thin bald tails like rats. He was a New York boy. Both squirrels and rats disturbed him more than a bit and the combination of the two had pulled a yelp from his lungs the first time he saw one.

He heard the library door open and knew break time was almost up. When he’d been assigned to the library he thought he’d be shelving books, and he was. He just wasn’t expecting to be shelving a half million of them. The great unknown Committee had ordered the looting of major libraries, museums, and research centers. It was rumored there was an ark that held the Library of Congress, British Library, National Library of India, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It was going to take a couple of generations to sort it all out, but the start was John, a half dozen other guys, and his half million books.

Toby, one of John’s fellow book shelvers, leaned against the oak and tipped his fair freckled face towards the sun. He twisted a small stick in his fingers that would have been a cigarette twenty thousand years earlier. “You know John, I used to love books. Devoted my life to the things. Protecting them, preserving them, worshiping at the altar of them.”

“And now you’d kill for a little crappy TV?”

“Oh God, yes! At this point I’d actually watch Strictly Come Dancing. I can’t wait for them to start unpacking the movie reels. I don’t care if they brought some of the worst films ever made. I just need a break from books.”

John stretched his back. Only a step away, some little green and white parrot-ish birds pecked at the grass like they were pigeons. Nothing on Earth feared humans anymore. “I hear next year they are going to thaw out some real librarians, other than you.”

“They’re also thawing out the children,” Toby grumbled.

“Don’t like kids?”

“I had nine brothers and sisters that turned into twenty seven nieces and nephews.” John gave a small whistle. “I could have happily gone for a very long time without dealing with children.”

“You already went 20,000 years. I don’t think you can get away with it much longer.”

^^^^^

The small stadium was packed, but John methodically scanned across every row, trying to take in every face. It had become a habit, or maybe a compulsion, every time he was in a crowd. Unlike most, he’d left none behind that he missed. But always in the back of his mind there was still the woman in blue from the bar. He knew she had to be part of it all, she had said as much, but he’d downed that drink before even getting her name.

He knew she could still be on ice, or at one of the outlying colonies, or maybe she didn’t even make the trip, but he knew he needed to find her. He wasn’t yet sure what he’d say, but that had never stopped him from opening his mouth in the past, and he’d always had a gift for words.

The crowd cheered and clapped as a red ball flew into the air. Toby elbowed him and John clapped as well. He couldn’t pretend to understand short-form cricket, or any cricket, but entertainment was entertainment and it was going to be another three months before intramural baseball started.

^^^^^

The warbling calls of the purple sparrow-things surrounded John and a dozen other men and women who had gathered in a corner of a park. It was an unofficial gathering. It could have been official. The Committee was willing to give space for any group to form. But in a brave new world where people were chosen for good genetics and an ability to contribute, people were a little leery of admitting to any fault.

John stood and wiped the grass from his hands. “Hi, my name’s John, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for 20,019 years, 3 months, and 4 days.”

A chuckle went around the group.

“Truth is the last thing I did before all this was to take a drink. I’d been sober for two years, eight months, and two days, and I figured if there was any day to take a drink that was it.”

There were some nods of understanding.

“And when I say it was the last thing I did, I mean it was the last thing I did. There was some woman next to me at the bar, she was in blue and telling me there was a way to survive, and I guess she worked for the great Committee or something, but I tipped back that drink and next thing I know I’m waking up in a giant Pringles can with a tube down my throat. Now I’ve woken up in some strange places before but…” John shook his head and got another chuckle. He took a deep breath of clean air and looked up into the perfectly blue sky. A purple sparrow-thing flew overhead.

“The thing is, I don’t know why I’m here. And I don’t mean here at this meeting. I know that. God I know that. And I don’t mean in some metaphysical of philosophical sense. I mean here in general. I was part of the wave of scientists and thinkers but I am neither and as for good genetics… I’m an alcoholic, my mother was a drunk, my father was a pill popping closet case, my uncle Rob was part of the foil hat brigade. I lived my life as a sad caricature of my chosen profession. And now… now I shelve books and try to retroactively earn this little trip, but dear sweet god do I want a drink.”

^^^^^

Claustrophobia was starting to weigh down on John’s chest as he pushed through the tight group of people milling around the foyer of his library. After months of work by John, Toby, and their little team, shelving books day and night, the library was formally open. They didn’t have even a quarter of the books up, and there was an entire wing that was still being constructed, but it was decided that there were enough to start letting the public in.

Someone on the City Council had decided to make an Event of it. John found Toby lurking by the food table giving general dirty looks to the crowd.

“Who the bloody hell are all these bloody people eyeing up our books?”

John randomly grab an hors d’oeuvres from the table. “I was just thinking the same thing. I saw some of them actually touching the books.”

Toby snorted at him but John understood. He’d been granted one of the most wonderfully antisocial jobs in the colony and now there were strangers in his space touching the books he had so carefully examined, repaired, and arranged.

“It’s the bloody Council wanting to make a bloody Event out of every little thing,” Toby ranted. “All the politicians died 20,000 years ago! Why the hell do we have to revive the whole mess?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.” John was about to take a bite of something that looked like fish on bread when he saw a flash of blue fabric and dark hair in the crowd. He dropped the bread and pushed into the mingling horde, ignoring Toby’s complaints about crumbs on the clean floor.

He elbowed his way past the Council Head then saw her face. Twenty thousand years may have passed but he recognized the sweet smile and soft brown eyes and she was just turning to step out the door.

He didn’t bother to see who he knocked over as he sprinted after her. Outside the summer sun was blinding. He shaded his eyes and looked up and down the street desperate to see a swirl of blue, but everyone in sight was dressed in the light browns and greens favored by most of the colony. He took a gamble and started racing towards the center of town looking down every side street until his lungs burned.

He stopped and gasped for breath before kicking the trunk of a nearby tree. But at least he now knew two things, the woman in the blue dress was alive and she was here.

^^^^^

There was a banging on his door that woke John from a dead sleep. The clock by his bed said midnight. He threw back his light blankets and stumbled the few feet from his bed to the door. As a bachelor, he had been assigned what was basically a studio apartment. He opened the door to Toby, looking wide eyed and terrified.

“Do you have anything to drink? I need a drink.” Toby pushed his way in.

“It’s midnight, and I’m an alcoholic, so no.” Toby started pacing, nearly bouncing off the bamboo walls. “What the hell is going on?”

“It came,” he hissed. “My list.”

John rubbed at his face trying to wake up a little more. He hadn’t been sleeping well since the library opening and this was the first night he’d made it to sleep before one in the morning. “What list?”

An official issue tablet was thrust into John’s hands. “My. List.”

On the tablet was a list of names next to pictures of pretty faces. “Oh, your list.” Everyone of breeding age was supposed to get a list sooner or later. Some great Committee computer was set up to play match maker, working not just through personality but apparently genetics as well. It had been over a year since he and Toby were defrosted, so it was about time. “You have told them you’re gay, right?”

“Many times. They say they’re fine with that. They say they wanted to preserve all possible human diversity. But apparently they still want me to breed.”

John scrolled down the list. “There are some really nice looking women here. Smart by the looks of things too.”

“Everyone here is smart if you haven’t noticed and if you think they’re nice looking then you can choose one for me because I haven’t the slightest idea.” Toby was rummaging through John’s cupboards. “For fuck sake, if you don’t have alcohol do you at least have tea in this place?”

John grabbed the back of Toby shirt and shoved him down into a chair. “I have what they claim is coffee, and why don’t you tell them that you want to be in some sort of relationship before having kids?”

“They already thought of that. Go to the next page.”

John swiped over a page. There was a list of smiling, reasonably attractive men. “Ah. The Committee does think of everything, doesn’t it?” Toby snorted and crossed his arms building himself up to have a full blown sulk. “Okay, I don’t know about you but I haven’t gotten laid in 20 millennia. Why don’t you go on a couple of dates? Even if none of them work out long term, you still might get lucky.”

Toby shifted around in his chair. “Hadn’t really thought about that. Just saw the list and panicked.”

“And think of it this way, all of these women could take one look at your face and decide they’d rather take a roll on some sperm on ice then have anything to do with you.”

Toby smiled. “Hadn’t thought of that either, and I will gladly take that blow to the ego if it will save me from having children.”

^^^^^

John squeezed his hands tight around his tablet in an attempt to keep them from shaking. He stared at his List. It had been waiting for him after he’d thrown out Toby too close to dawn. He had been starting to believe he’d never get one; that The Committee had realized its mistake and was just quietly trying to write him out of the new gene pool.

There were half a dozen women on the list, all intelligent, and pleasant looking, but it was the one at the top he couldn’t take his eyes from. Her name was Anju and she was the woman in blue. He’d caught a glimpse of her a few times over the previous year but always in crowds or vanishing around corners. For a while he was sure he was losing his mind; that she was some sort of trauma induced hallucination.

He had been sitting under the oak in the courtyard for most of the morning while the purple sparrows went about their business. He was meant to be shelving the crate of biology books that had come in. He heard steps across the courtyard and looked up, expecting Toby. Instead, it was Anju walking towards him in a gauzy summer dress of blue that formed to her curves and cascaded over the soft swells of her hips.

She sat down in front of him, tucking her legs neatly beneath her. John struggled to find something to say. After a year of thinking about her, of composing epic poems in his head and never writing them down, of planning exactly what to say, his mind went completely blank. She smiled that same knowing smile she’d had in the bar.

“I told you I knew a way to survive.”

“Yes.” John was very proud his voice didn’t squeak. “Yes, you did.” he held out his hand. It trembled ever so slightly. “John.” He forgot his own last name. “Quinn. John Quinn.”

“Yes, I know. Anju Das.” Her hand was fine but not fragile as it slipped into his. “It’s nice to meet you again.”

“So…” John looked down at his tablet. “I take it I’m on your list?”

Anju grinned. “Right at the top.”

“We’re that good a match?”

She grinned at him. “Not in the slightest, but my brother is part of the computer team that sends out the lists. Things can be… shifted around a little if you know how.”

John was once again lost for words. His ex-wives and a stack of ex-girlfriends had made it quite clear that he was a drunken loser, and even sober he wasn’t much of a man. Even his own mother had said as much after a couple of drinks of her own.

“You wanted me on your list?”

Anju hadn’t stopped smiling. “I have a gift for you. Think of it as a courting present.” She reached into the cloth carry bag she had slung over one shoulder and pulled out a slim, worn, paperback book. She handed it to John.

The Scream of the City by John Quinn.

His hands began to violently tremble and he fought not to accidently crush the cheap paper. “I didn’t think this survived.”

“A couple of copies made it. That one is mine.”

He brushed his fingers over the title. The New York Review of Books had called him an urban Walt Whitman and hailed him as the next step in American poetry. The New York Times called it so much adolescent tripe. Either way it launched his career. “I wrote this when I was nineteen.”

“And I read it when I was ten.”

The answers to so many questions started to click into place. “You. You got me on whatever list. You got me here. You saved me?”

“You were already on the list of possible candidates. I just made sure you floated a little higher up it. I couldn’t see your talent die with the rest.”

A flash of anger stilled his hands. He hadn’t come twenty thousand years to have his career mocked. “What fucking talent? I’ve been a hack and a joke for decades and everyone knows it. Did you even read the reviews of my last three books?”

“Did you? The reviews of Holy Rain were glowing, every one of them.”

John had been proud of Holy Rain. It was the first thing he’d written sober for a while, but he hadn’t looked at a single review. After the thrashing his previous two books had gotten he was sure another hit would just send him back to drinking. He tried to keep up the anger but it was fading quickly under Anju’s serene smile. “That still doesn’t explain what the hell I’m doing here shelving books.”

A flash of confusion and a little sadness crossed Anju’s face. “Has no one told you?”

“No one has told me shit since I woke up.”

Her hand covered his just as it had that night at the bar. “The book shelving is temporary.” She leaned in close, her lips to his ear. He breathed in her scent, still oranges and green grass. “You are the poet laureate of Eden.” John’s heart stopped. “You are charged with the responsibility of telling us where we came from, and where we are going. You get to scream about our past and muse on our present. You get to be the namer of things we’ve never seen.”

He looked down at her hand, so soft and warm, so very alive. He wanted to somehow shrink himself down and curl up in that hand. “I haven’t written a thing in a year.”

“I thought you might say that.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a pad of yellow legal paper and a number 2 pencil. The same objects he was crouched over in the photo at the back of all his books; his writing instruments of choice, originally stolen from his mother’s divorce lawyer. “I squirreled a few pads away. Not enough to last forever but enough to get you started again.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. He picked up the pencil and rolled it in his fingers. A sense of peace slid into his bones at the familiar hexagonal shape and the slight smell of yellow paint, wood, and graphite. He ran the edge of his thumb across the cheap, once mass produced paper with more care than he had ever touched any woman.

He looked up into Anju’s face, finally giving it proper study. He took note of the tiny scar on her chin, and the first few lines at the corner of her eyes. He knew the questions he wanted to ask: why did she save him, him of all the poets in the world? What was he to her and who was she, beneath that smile and brown eyes?

“So… how’d you get this ride? I mean aside from being obviously intelligent and very beautiful.”

Anju blushed a little and John fell just a bit in love. It had been a long time since he’d known any women capable of that. “I have double doctorates in biotechnology and environmental engineering.”

“So you’re a completely pathological overachiever.”

“No, just the daughter of completely pathological overachievers. I wasn’t given much of a choice.” She ran her fingers across The Scream of the City. “The arts were not encouraged in our home, but still I read you under the covers at night. You, Ginsberg, Kerouac. You were my rebellion.”

“Those are some big names. I’m touched.”

She smirked. “Not yet.”

John laughed, sounding strange to his own ears. The purple sparrows were startled up to higher branches. “By any chance do you know what those purple birds are called?”

“Rhipidura Passer Motitensis Purpureum. ”

“Wow. Do they have a name that doesn’t require advanced Latin classes?”

“Most of the new birds don’t have common names yet.”

John watched as little Frank with his twisted foot hopped back down to a lower branch and flashed his tail feathers. He’d been watching the Rhipidura Passer Motitensis Purpureum for a year now and knew the male mating dances. “You said I get to name things?”

“I did.”

John raised his hand to poor desperate Frank. “I hereby dub you… a grapekoolaid.”

Anju’s bark of laughter sent the grapekoolaids fluttering from their perches towards the library. “A grapekoolaid?” she sputtered through giggles.

“Who outside our generation is ever going to know what the hell Grape Kool-Aid is?”

“Okay.” She was still giggling. “Are you going to name all our birds after beverages?”

“Well, I have been calling those green and white parrot pigeon-things mojitos.”

“Mojitos and grapecoolaids. I’ll be sure to pass that along.” Before John could make any other declarations Anju leaned in a put a peck on his cheek. He felt them burn in a way they hadn’t since he was a child. “I need to get going. Society fell and was rebuilt and still we have meetings.”

“Humans are humans. Cave men probably had meetings to discuss mammoth population management or something.”

“I’m sure they did.”

They fell into a silence that John didn’t want to break. He was still half afraid she was a dream. “Um… So… Do you want to get coffee or tea or something, considering…?” John waved to the pad with his list.

“I’d like that a lot.” She stood then leaned in close. “You’ve got my number now,” she whispered before heading back across the courtyard. John watched her go, nearly hypnotized by the soft swing of her blue dress.

He placed his list aside and took a deep breath of the clean air, trying to catch a lingering hint of Anju scent. He listened to the song of the grapecoolaid seeking a mate. He looked down at the yellow pad of paper and rolled the pencil between his fingers. He placed the tip on the first line and wrote… Song of a Blue Dress. He paused and moved his pencil to the next line. In Two Hundred and Eighty Two Words.

#END#

Two Eight Two

Quite some time ago I wrote a little post about my first attempt to write science fiction and today felt like a good day to dust off that story and present it to all of you. So here it is, I hope you enjoy it, feedback in always appreciated.

Two Eight Two

By Ada Maria Soto

The sounds of too bright drunken laughter and shouts of anger mingled to drown out the soft hum of the dirty bronze chip spinning on the bar top. The twirling color seemed to blend into the wood as John gave it another twist. The bartender had long ago moved on to more decisive customers, of which there were plenty. John looked up at the screen over the bar as the chip wobbled and fell flat. The news was on mute, but it didn’t matter. There was only one news story anymore: the Two Eight Two and the imminent extinction of the species Homo sapiens. And judging by the footage of blood soaked riots and burning cities blinking across the screen, the human species had no intention of going out with grace and dignity. He didn’t care. Grace and dignity had certainly never gotten him anywhere.

He started to raise his hand to wave the bartender over when another hand settled across his; thin and delicate with carefully manicured nails. He looked up to a woman in a dress of skin-tight blue. The dress should have been raw sex, hugging sculpted curves, but it failed against warm dark eyes, smooth brown skin, and a soft braid of deep black hair draped casually over the woman’s shoulder. She smiled at him. It was beautiful; the smile of someone who cared. As a young man he might have been tempted to write epic poetry describing that smile. A thousand words at least.

“Hello.” Her voice was sweet, with just a hint of an accent John couldn’t quite place.

“Hello to you.” He tried to find the old smile women used to find charming, while leaning in close so he wouldn’t have to shout.

“What’s that?” The woman gestured towards the chip laying were it fell on the bar top.

He has forgotten it for a second, distracted by beauty. “That is a chip that says I managed to stay sober for two years and I’m about to throw it away. Would you care to join me?”

The woman’s smile faltered. “You shouldn’t do that. Not today.”

John removed his hand from under hers. Any other day he might have cursed at her, sent her running, told her to save her pity, but she was the first person to make any effort to speak to him in months. “Miss, do you know how long I’ve been sober?”

“Two years?”

“Two years, eight months, and two days. Two Eight Two, the end of us all. Today is the perfect day to start drinking again.”

She leaned in closer, her lips nearly to his ear. She smelled of oranges and fresh cut grass. She shouldn’t. No one smelled clean anymore. He could feel the warmth of her breath. “What if I told you I know how to survive the Two Eight Two?”

John jerked away, his bark of hard laughter snapping across the bar. Even the bartender glanced over for a half second.

“Lady, I don’t know what you’re selling, but I ain’t buying. No one is getting past the Two Eight Two. This is the end of the line. Game over. Humanity zero, the universe… everything else. Now if you don’t mind I am prepared to die the same way I lived. Drunk.” John waved the bartender over turning away from the woman in blue, her scent of living things still lingering in the air around him. “Vodka martini, stirred, plenty of vermouth and two olives.”

“Make that two.”

He looked over to the woman who was, somewhat surprisingly, still there.

She smiled that same caring smile that begged for poetry and art. “You did ask me to join you in a drink.”

“I guess I did.”

The drinks arrived quickly. John looked at the clear liquid just slightly clinging to the inside of the glass. He could smell the vermouth and olives. He looked inside himself. He’d fallen off the wagon before, usually with a large, hateful crash into a deep canyon of pathetic misery and self-pity, but this time he felt nothing. No disappointment, no self-loathing, no anger for himself or the pretty girl by his side, he was ready to take that first drink just as he was ready to die with the rest of humanity.

He raised his eyes to the woman in blue and lifted his glass in a silent toast. Then he tipped his head back and drank.

^^^^^

Long pathetic experience had taught John to get an idea of his situation and surroundings before opening his eyes to the light that was trying to press its way through his lids. He knew his head ached, that was a given. He was lying on his back, which was somewhat unusual. His skin felt damp and sticky like he’d been laying in a puddle of something. Not good but not the first time. But he was fairly certain he was wearing pants, which was a plus. He tried to sigh in relief then realized he couldn’t. He snapped his eyes open then squeezed them shut against the light as panic set in. He had a tube in his mouth, he had a tube going down into his lungs. He could feel it pushing air in and sucking it back out. He tried to grab it but his arms didn’t respond. They just twitched half dead at his sides.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ a pleasant sounding computerized voice said from somewhere.

He tried to kick his legs but they were about as responsive as his arms.

‘You have been in suspended animation.’

He wanted to scream at the voice but the tube was still in his lungs.

‘You have been chosen by the Committee for the Ark Project. As a result you have been placed into suspended animation. You may find you have muscle weakness, limited coordination, blurred vision, vomiting, and headaches.’

‘It’s called a hangover,’ he tried to yell.

‘These are all natural reactions. Do not be alarmed.’

John’s vision was starting to clear, allowing him to glance around. He was in a white plastic tube, not much bigger than a coffin. The walls were dripping with something thick, clear, and slimy. Raw, blind, panic took hold. His heart raced beyond anything he had ever experienced as desperation set in.

‘Please exhale and your oxygen tube will be retracted.’

He tried to exhale. The tube was pulled from his lungs with a long slurping sound, leaving his throat scraped and raw. The tube vanished into a sliding panel above him.

‘Please breathe slowly and deeply. A revitalization specialist will be in to see to you shortly.’

He took a deep breath. “I’m claustrophobic!” he tried to scream. “Get me the fuck out of here!”

^^^^^

John slumped into the first of the hard folding chairs he could reach, barely focusing on the thousand other people around him. The walk from the recovery center to the assembly hall had been brutal, all five minutes of it. If he wasn’t so weak and exhausted, he’d be angry. He, and apparently a few thousand other people, had been attempting to get answers for the last week. The only thing the very helpful and pleasant staff would tell them was that everything would be explained once everyone was more or less back on their feet. There would have been revolt if anyone could raise their arms for more than 30 seconds.

The stage at the front of the hall had a small podium and a large screen. It felt a bit too much like a school assembly day and he started to worry that he was going to realize he was naked then wake up screaming, but not before his grandmother showed up wearing a banana costume. A tidy little man with a cheery smile approached the podium. John sat up as much as he could.

“Good morning everyone.”

The perkiness of the man’s voice grated in John’s ears. As far as he was concerned he still had the mother of all hangovers. He’d shaken off full blown alcohol poisoning quicker than this suspended animation bullshit.

“My name is Jacob and I am here to answer as many of your questions as I can. I know you are all still feeling a little under the weather. I’ve been there myself, so I will try to keep things as quick and to the point as possible.”

“What the hell is going on?” someone from the crowd managed to shout. A thousand other people tried to shout their own questions but it was more a wave of groans and mumbles drowning each other out.

Jacob clasped his hands politely behind his back until everyone ran out of energy, which took about 45 seconds. “Please, let me give you my little talk and then I will endeavor to answer any remaining questions you may have.” The audience just nodded weakly.

“Good, let us start from the beginning. I’m sure the last thing most of you can remember is the Two Eight Two. For the vast majority of the world the Two Eight Two came as a surprise. However, there was one group prepared: The Committee.”

A logo came up on the screen towering behind Jacob. It was the same logo that was on everything he’d seen since waking up. To John, if he squinted, it looked like a set of stylized arched gates.

“Over a century before the Two Eight Two a multinational, nongovernment, nondenominational group of scientists and thinkers realized the possibility of something like the Two Eight Two, and that it would be a catastrophic blow to humanity.”

Murmurs rolled through the crowd. The Two Eight Two had caught everyone flat-footed and no response would be strong enough or fast enough to save humanity. At least that’s what everyone had been told in the last days. The idea that someone knew the Two Eight Two was coming and did nothing was not going to be a popular one.

“This group knew that something had to be done to preserve humanity in all its richness and so The Committee was formed and the Ark Project was conceived.”

An old photo of a few dozen men went up on the screen.

“The first ideas were primitive. A few hundred people on ice. But with each new generation of technological advance the scope of the Ark Project grew. The plan became one to preserve as many people as possible who could be the start of a new humanity. At the end, The Committee managed 50,000 individuals plus another 400,000 fertilized human embryos. And before anyone starts thinking of eugenics please look around. Their goal was not just to save people, but to preserve as much solid genetic diversity as possible.”

Everyone, including John, looked around. He was surrounded by every possible shade of skin, facial shape, and body type. He took some comfort in the idea that he hadn’t been kidnapped by Nazis. He also started to wonder what the hell he was doing as part of the lucky 50,000. His family line started with plague-ridden pig farmers and went downhill from there.

“So how long were we out?” someone called from the crowd followed by a collection of other voices wanting the same answer.

Jacob looked uncomfortable. “You are all part of the fifth wave of awakening. The first wave was scouts, followed by engineers, farmers, doctors, individuals who could build general infrastructure. As the fifth wave, you, are our academics. You are our scientists and thinkers. You can build and staff our new schools, and libraries. You can assemble the T-Rex skeleton we’ve got in a crate next to the Mona Lisa as soon as the first museum is built. And the schools do need to be built. The next wave is young adults and families with children.”

Now John knew there had been a mix up. He was no scientist. He’d nearly failed high school and dropped out of university, twice. “That doesn’t answer the other guy’s question,” he called out.

“As I said you are the fifth wave. The first wave was woken automatically when sensors determined Earth was once again fit for human habitation.”

“How long!” came yet another shout.

Jacob cleared his throat. “Twenty thousand and nineteen years.”

There was silence as the number slowly sank in. Once it had sunk the shouting started. John didn’t bother. He was still contemplating the number. Twenty thousand years. He was twenty thousand years removed from his joke of a life. From his bills, double alimony, and triple mortgaged house. Millennia way from grand expectations he could never rise to. He was free from it all. He waited for the lightening of his soul or something like that but all he felt was tired and numb. As for the rest, for a group of people who could still barely walk, they were doing their best to form an unruly mob. Jacob waited until people were out of breath and collapsing back into their chairs.

“Everyone got that out of your systems?”

There were some cranky grumbles. The woman sitting next to John was sobbing into her hands.

“Good, because we have a lot more to cover. It won’t all be fun and games. There are expectations. You will be given jobs and expected to undertake certain duties. I know most of you were taken against your will and everyone left people behind, but we could not risk the Ark Project becoming public knowledge. There would have been riots. Well, more riots. But The Committee chose all of you to receive this gift of life because they believed there is something each of you can provide to help advance humanity while keeping us from repeating the mistakes of our past.”

Now John knew there had been a clerical error. He was a mistake of the past. He had no business being part of a second humanity, except perhaps to be held up as a horrible warning. He’d already decided the woman in blue must have drugged him, or at least scraped him up when he blacked out, but she must have grabbed the wrong person.

He pushed himself to his feet. “Excuse me, what if we think we know someone who might be on ice around here?”

“There is a citizen directory you may access.”

“What if we don’t know their name?”

There was the creak of chairs as every person turned to look at him. “Do you know anything about them?”

“She was in a blue dress?”

Jacob blinked at him for a couple of second then turned back to the crowd flipping to a new slide which showed a group of people with smiling, sympathetic faces. “There will be counselors available to help you adjust to this new life. And it will be an adjustment. But try to remember, at the end of the day, this is better than the Two Eight Two.”

^^^^^

The afternoon sun through the leaves of a spreading oak and a light breeze were lending themselves to create a green dappled light that danced across John’s face. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He’d been awake almost four months before he was declared fit enough to be freed from one of the arks. He’d been told that Earth now had more oxygen and his body would need a bit of time to adjust. It did feel nice, breathing air that didn’t taste of the residue of humanity. He leaned against the huge oak that sat in the courtyard of the library.

Birds fluttered in the branches above him. He recognized the one on the branch nearest to him from its twisted foot. It looked a little like a large sparrow but with a tail that fanned out and dark purple feathers. He’d named it Frank. John knew it was things like Frank that had the scientist all excited. Some things were exactly the same. An oak tree was still an oak tree but there were birds, bugs, and weird little rodent creatures that hadn’t existed when the Two Eight Two hit.

John hated the weird little rodent creatures. They scurried around trees and sat on their back legs and had fluffy fur like squirrels, but also had thin bald tails like rats. He was a New York boy. Both squirrels and rats disturbed him more than a bit and the combination of the two had pulled a yelp from his lungs the first time he saw one.

He heard the library door open and knew break time was almost up. When he’d been assigned to the library he thought he’d be shelving books, and he was. He just wasn’t expecting to be shelving a half million of them. The great unknown Committee had ordered the looting of major libraries, museums, and research centers. It was rumored there was an ark that held the Library of Congress, British Library, National Library of India, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It was going to take a couple of generations to sort it all out, but the start was John, a half dozen other guys, and his half million books.

Toby, one of John’s fellow book shelvers, leaned against the oak and tipped his fair freckled face towards the sun. He twisted a small stick in his fingers that would have been a cigarette twenty thousand years earlier. “You know John, I used to love books. Devoted my life to the things. Protecting them, preserving them, worshiping at the altar of them.”

“And now you’d kill for a little crappy TV?”

“Oh God, yes! At this point I’d actually watch Strictly Come Dancing. I can’t wait for them to start unpacking the movie reels. I don’t care if they brought some of the worst films ever made. I just need a break from books.”

John stretched his back. Only a step away, some little green and white parrot-ish birds pecked at the grass like they were pigeons. Nothing on Earth feared humans anymore. “I hear next year they are going to thaw out some real librarians, other than you.”

“They’re also thawing out the children,” Toby grumbled.

“Don’t like kids?”

“I had nine brothers and sisters that turned into twenty seven nieces and nephews.” John gave a small whistle. “I could have happily gone for a very long time without dealing with children.”

“You already went 20,000 years. I don’t think you can get away with it much longer.”

^^^^^

The small stadium was packed, but John methodically scanned across every row, trying to take in every face. It had become a habit, or maybe a compulsion, every time he was in a crowd. Unlike most, he’d left none behind that he missed. But always in the back of his mind there was still the woman in blue from the bar. He knew she had to be part of it all, she had said as much, but he’d downed that drink before even getting her name.

He knew she could still be on ice, or at one of the outlying colonies, or maybe she didn’t even make the trip, but he knew he needed to find her. He wasn’t yet sure what he’d say, but that had never stopped him from opening his mouth in the past, and he’d always had a gift for words.

The crowd cheered and clapped as a red ball flew into the air. Toby elbowed him and John clapped as well. He couldn’t pretend to understand short-form cricket, or any cricket, but entertainment was entertainment and it was going to be another three months before intramural baseball started.

^^^^^

The warbling calls of the purple sparrow-things surrounded John and a dozen other men and women who had gathered in a corner of a park. It was an unofficial gathering. It could have been official. The Committee was willing to give space for any group to form. But in a brave new world where people were chosen for good genetics and an ability to contribute, people were a little leery of admitting to any fault.

John stood and wiped the grass from his hands. “Hi, my name’s John, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for 20,019 years, 3 months, and 4 days.”

A chuckle went around the group.

“Truth is the last thing I did before all this was to take a drink. I’d been sober for two years, eight months, and two days, and I figured if there was any day to take a drink that was it.”

There were some nods of understanding.

“And when I say it was the last thing I did, I mean it was the last thing I did. There was some woman next to me at the bar, she was in blue and telling me there was a way to survive, and I guess she worked for the great Committee or something, but I tipped back that drink and next thing I know I’m waking up in a giant Pringles can with a tube down my throat. Now I’ve woken up in some strange places before but…” John shook his head and got another chuckle. He took a deep breath of clean air and looked up into the perfectly blue sky. A purple sparrow-thing flew overhead.

“The thing is, I don’t know why I’m here. And I don’t mean here at this meeting. I know that. God I know that. And I don’t mean in some metaphysical of philosophical sense. I mean here in general. I was part of the wave of scientists and thinkers but I am neither and as for good genetics… I’m an alcoholic, my mother was a drunk, my father was a pill popping closet case, my uncle Rob was part of the foil hat brigade. I lived my life as a sad caricature of my chosen profession. And now… now I shelve books and try to retroactively earn this little trip, but dear sweet god do I want a drink.”

^^^^^

Claustrophobia was starting to weigh down on John’s chest as he pushed through the tight group of people milling around the foyer of his library. After months of work by John, Toby, and their little team, shelving books day and night, the library was formally open. They didn’t have even a quarter of the books up, and there was an entire wing that was still being constructed, but it was decided that there were enough to start letting the public in.

Someone on the City Council had decided to make an Event of it. John found Toby lurking by the food table giving general dirty looks to the crowd.

“Who the bloody hell are all these bloody people eyeing up our books?”

John randomly grab an hors d’oeuvres from the table. “I was just thinking the same thing. I saw some of them actually touching the books.”

Toby snorted at him but John understood. He’d been granted one of the most wonderfully antisocial jobs in the colony and now there were strangers in his space touching the books he had so carefully examined, repaired, and arranged.

“It’s the bloody Council wanting to make a bloody Event out of every little thing,” Toby ranted. “All the politicians died 20,000 years ago! Why the hell do we have to revive the whole mess?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.” John was about to take a bite of something that looked like fish on bread when he saw a flash of blue fabric and dark hair in the crowd. He dropped the bread and pushed into the mingling horde, ignoring Toby’s complaints about crumbs on the clean floor.

He elbowed his way past the Council Head then saw her face. Twenty thousand years may have passed but he recognized the sweet smile and soft brown eyes and she was just turning to step out the door.

He didn’t bother to see who he knocked over as he sprinted after her. Outside the summer sun was blinding. He shaded his eyes and looked up and down the street desperate to see a swirl of blue, but everyone in sight was dressed in the light browns and greens favored by most of the colony. He took a gamble and started racing towards the center of town looking down every side street until his lungs burned.

He stopped and gasped for breath before kicking the trunk of a nearby tree. But at least he now knew two things, the woman in the blue dress was alive and she was here.

^^^^^

There was a banging on his door that woke John from a dead sleep. The clock by his bed said midnight. He threw back his light blankets and stumbled the few feet from his bed to the door. As a bachelor, he had been assigned what was basically a studio apartment. He opened the door to Toby, looking wide eyed and terrified.

“Do you have anything to drink? I need a drink.” Toby pushed his way in.

“It’s midnight, and I’m an alcoholic, so no.” Toby started pacing, nearly bouncing off the bamboo walls. “What the hell is going on?”

“It came,” he hissed. “My list.”

John rubbed at his face trying to wake up a little more. He hadn’t been sleeping well since the library opening and this was the first night he’d made it to sleep before one in the morning. “What list?”

An official issue tablet was thrust into John’s hands. “My. List.”

On the tablet was a list of names next to pictures of pretty faces. “Oh, your list.” Everyone of breeding age was supposed to get a list sooner or later. Some great Committee computer was set up to play match maker, working not just through personality but apparently genetics as well. It had been over a year since he and Toby were defrosted, so it was about time. “You have told them you’re gay, right?”

“Many times. They say they’re fine with that. They say they wanted to preserve all possible human diversity. But apparently they still want me to breed.”

John scrolled down the list. “There are some really nice looking women here. Smart by the looks of things too.”

“Everyone here is smart if you haven’t noticed and if you think they’re nice looking then you can choose one for me because I haven’t the slightest idea.” Toby was rummaging through John’s cupboards. “For fuck sake, if you don’t have alcohol do you at least have tea in this place?”

John grabbed the back of Toby shirt and shoved him down into a chair. “I have what they claim is coffee, and why don’t you tell them that you want to be in some sort of relationship before having kids?”

“They already thought of that. Go to the next page.”

John swiped over a page. There was a list of smiling, reasonably attractive men. “Ah. The Committee does think of everything, doesn’t it?” Toby snorted and crossed his arms building himself up to have a full blown sulk. “Okay, I don’t know about you but I haven’t gotten laid in 20 millennia. Why don’t you go on a couple of dates? Even if none of them work out long term, you still might get lucky.”

Toby shifted around in his chair. “Hadn’t really thought about that. Just saw the list and panicked.”

“And think of it this way, all of these women could take one look at your face and decide they’d rather take a roll on some sperm on ice then have anything to do with you.”

Toby smiled. “Hadn’t thought of that either, and I will gladly take that blow to the ego if it will save me from having children.”

^^^^^

John squeezed his hands tight around his tablet in an attempt to keep them from shaking. He stared at his List. It had been waiting for him after he’d thrown out Toby too close to dawn. He had been starting to believe he’d never get one; that The Committee had realized its mistake and was just quietly trying to write him out of the new gene pool.

There were half a dozen women on the list, all intelligent, and pleasant looking, but it was the one at the top he couldn’t take his eyes from. Her name was Anju and she was the woman in blue. He’d caught a glimpse of her a few times over the previous year but always in crowds or vanishing around corners. For a while he was sure he was losing his mind; that she was some sort of trauma induced hallucination.

He had been sitting under the oak in the courtyard for most of the morning while the purple sparrows went about their business. He was meant to be shelving the crate of biology books that had come in. He heard steps across the courtyard and looked up, expecting Toby. Instead, it was Anju walking towards him in a gauzy summer dress of blue that formed to her curves and cascaded over the soft swells of her hips.

She sat down in front of him, tucking her legs neatly beneath her. John struggled to find something to say. After a year of thinking about her, of composing epic poems in his head and never writing them down, of planning exactly what to say, his mind went completely blank. She smiled that same knowing smile she’d had in the bar.

“I told you I knew a way to survive.”

“Yes.” John was very proud his voice didn’t squeak. “Yes, you did.” he held out his hand. It trembled ever so slightly. “John.” He forgot his own last name. “Quinn. John Quinn.”

“Yes, I know. Anju Das.” Her hand was fine but not fragile as it slipped into his. “It’s nice to meet you again.”

“So…” John looked down at his tablet. “I take it I’m on your list?”

Anju grinned. “Right at the top.”

“We’re that good a match?”

She grinned at him. “Not in the slightest, but my brother is part of the computer team that sends out the lists. Things can be… shifted around a little if you know how.”

John was once again lost for words. His ex-wives and a stack of ex-girlfriends had made it quite clear that he was a drunken loser, and even sober he wasn’t much of a man. Even his own mother had said as much after a couple of drinks of her own.

“You wanted me on your list?”

Anju hadn’t stopped smiling. “I have a gift for you. Think of it as a courting present.” She reached into the cloth carry bag she had slung over one shoulder and pulled out a slim, worn, paperback book. She handed it to John.

The Scream of the City by John Quinn.

His hands began to violently tremble and he fought not to accidently crush the cheap paper. “I didn’t think this survived.”

“A couple of copies made it. That one is mine.”

He brushed his fingers over the title. The New York Review of Books had called him an urban Walt Whitman and hailed him as the next step in American poetry. The New York Times called it so much adolescent tripe. Either way it launched his career. “I wrote this when I was nineteen.”

“And I read it when I was ten.”

The answers to so many questions started to click into place. “You. You got me on whatever list. You got me here. You saved me?”

“You were already on the list of possible candidates. I just made sure you floated a little higher up it. I couldn’t see your talent die with the rest.”

A flash of anger stilled his hands. He hadn’t come twenty thousand years to have his career mocked. “What fucking talent? I’ve been a hack and a joke for decades and everyone knows it. Did you even read the reviews of my last three books?”

“Did you? The reviews of Holy Rain were glowing, every one of them.”

John had been proud of Holy Rain. It was the first thing he’d written sober for a while, but he hadn’t looked at a single review. After the thrashing his previous two books had gotten he was sure another hit would just send him back to drinking. He tried to keep up the anger but it was fading quickly under Anju’s serene smile. “That still doesn’t explain what the hell I’m doing here shelving books.”

A flash of confusion and a little sadness crossed Anju’s face. “Has no one told you?”

“No one has told me shit since I woke up.”

Her hand covered his just as it had that night at the bar. “The book shelving is temporary.” She leaned in close, her lips to his ear. He breathed in her scent, still oranges and green grass. “You are the poet laureate of Eden.” John’s heart stopped. “You are charged with the responsibility of telling us where we came from, and where we are going. You get to scream about our past and muse on our present. You get to be the namer of things we’ve never seen.”

He looked down at her hand, so soft and warm, so very alive. He wanted to somehow shrink himself down and curl up in that hand. “I haven’t written a thing in a year.”

“I thought you might say that.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a pad of yellow legal paper and a number 2 pencil. The same objects he was crouched over in the photo at the back of all his books; his writing instruments of choice, originally stolen from his mother’s divorce lawyer. “I squirreled a few pads away. Not enough to last forever but enough to get you started again.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. He picked up the pencil and rolled it in his fingers. A sense of peace slid into his bones at the familiar hexagonal shape and the slight smell of yellow paint, wood, and graphite. He ran the edge of his thumb across the cheap, once mass produced paper with more care than he had ever touched any woman.

He looked up into Anju’s face, finally giving it proper study. He took note of the tiny scar on her chin, and the first few lines at the corner of her eyes. He knew the questions he wanted to ask: why did she save him, him of all the poets in the world? What was he to her and who was she, beneath that smile and brown eyes?

“So… how’d you get this ride? I mean aside from being obviously intelligent and very beautiful.”

Anju blushed a little and John fell just a bit in love. It had been a long time since he’d known any women capable of that. “I have double doctorates in biotechnology and environmental engineering.”

“So you’re a completely pathological overachiever.”

“No, just the daughter of completely pathological overachievers. I wasn’t given much of a choice.” She ran her fingers across The Scream of the City. “The arts were not encouraged in our home, but still I read you under the covers at night. You, Ginsberg, Kerouac. You were my rebellion.”

“Those are some big names. I’m touched.”

She smirked. “Not yet.”

John laughed, sounding strange to his own ears. The purple sparrows were startled up to higher branches. “By any chance do you know what those purple birds are called?”

“Rhipidura Passer Motitensis Purpureum. ”

“Wow. Do they have a name that doesn’t require advanced Latin classes?”

“Most of the new birds don’t have common names yet.”

John watched as little Frank with his twisted foot hopped back down to a lower branch and flashed his tail feathers. He’d been watching the Rhipidura Passer Motitensis Purpureum for a year now and knew the male mating dances. “You said I get to name things?”

“I did.”

John raised his hand to poor desperate Frank. “I hereby dub you… a grapekoolaid.”

Anju’s bark of laughter sent the grapekoolaids fluttering from their perches towards the library. “A grapekoolaid?” she sputtered through giggles.

“Who outside our generation is ever going to know what the hell Grape Kool-Aid is?”

“Okay.” She was still giggling. “Are you going to name all our birds after beverages?”

“Well, I have been calling those green and white parrot pigeon-things mojitos.”

“Mojitos and grapecoolaids. I’ll be sure to pass that along.” Before John could make any other declarations Anju leaned in a put a peck on his cheek. He felt them burn in a way they hadn’t since he was a child. “I need to get going. Society fell and was rebuilt and still we have meetings.”

“Humans are humans. Cave men probably had meetings to discuss mammoth population management or something.”

“I’m sure they did.”

They fell into a silence that John didn’t want to break. He was still half afraid she was a dream. “Um… So… Do you want to get coffee or tea or something, considering…?” John waved to the pad with his list.

“I’d like that a lot.” She stood then leaned in close. “You’ve got my number now,” she whispered before heading back across the courtyard. John watched her go, nearly hypnotized by the soft swing of her blue dress.

He placed his list aside and took a deep breath of the clean air, trying to catch a lingering hint of Anju scent. He listened to the song of the grapecoolaid seeking a mate. He looked down at the yellow pad of paper and rolled the pencil between his fingers. He placed the tip on the first line and wrote… Song of a Blue Dress. He paused and moved his pencil to the next line. In Two Hundred and Eighty Two Words.

#END#

Crockpot Writing or Why I Failed NaNoWriMo 2014 Miserably and Why That’s a Good Thing

(This is an expansion of something I posted on Google+ back in early December)

Why I failed miserable at NaNoWriMo 2014. Two reasons.

Reason One: I was sick. Everyone in the house was sick. Not joking here, at least one person in the house was sick every day of November. I spent one morning in the ER after spending a night puking my own bile. One member of the household is a toddler who was sent home from daycare after a few too many runny diapers in a row. There were viruses, colds, and just when I was feeling better I rolled my ankle the day before Thanksgiving. So yeah, messy, nasty, sickness really messed with my writing time and energy.

Reason Two: I should not have started to beginning with. At least not with the story I did. I have a process but until this I didn’t realize just how much of a process I have or how important it was that I stick to it. My process is what I now call crockpot writing. I have to slow cook the ideas in my head for a long time, possibly years, before I feel comfortable enough to start it. I figure I need at least at 75% written in my head before I sit down and put fingers to keyboard, and it can’t just be the first 75%. I have a whole file of half-finished wrecks that make it very clear that I need at least a general idea of a beginning, middle, and end before I start typing.

I also need to know a lot about the characters before I can start writing them. I don’t know if it was years of method acting training (which I was bad at), or years of writing fanfic, but I can’t seem to get more than two good words out of a character unless I know a lot about who they were and what they did before the story even starts. That’s not to say I don’t discover or change things about the character once I start writing but I need a strong foundation before I do.

I had none of this with my NaNo project.

I pushed myself into the idea of writing a young adult novel which I have never done before. It’s currently lucrative and my publisher, Dreamspinner Press, has just started a YA imprint, Harmony Ink. And in the famous last words of so many I thought to myself ‘how hard can it be?’ I scraped up a vague idea for a story in mid-October and told myself that I could work it out as I went. Very Bad Idea. I should have known myself better.

I never studied prose but I did study screenwriting as part of my Master’s Degree program. My professor was very big on three act structure and outlining and it does show in how I write my prose. I get twitchy if a book I’m working on can’t be broken down into a solid act structure with identifiable highs, lows, and turning points. She also ground into her students the importance of a solid step outline, and that all actions must inform and be motivated by character.

I had done none of this before starting NaNo. None of it. I had a couple of ideas for scenes I wanted, maybe about 20 lines of dialog, and a vague idea of what I wanted the story to be about. No outline, no idea how things were going to get from A to B to C. I also knew nothing about any of the characters. My old Russian method acting teacher would have been so disappointed in me.

“How can you act when you do not know who you are?!”

How can I write when I don’t know who I’m writing? The answer is I can’t.



One of the most important relationships was supposed to be between the main character and her step mother. On November 1 the step mother didn’t even have a name. She had no job, no past, nothing. She was just The Step Mother. I can’t write emotional connection or conflict with a character who is just The Step Mother. Maybe a better writer than I can but my attempts were a disaster.

Another important character was the Ex-Girlfriend. Again, November 1 she didn’t have a name, I didn’t know why the breakup had happened, or why they had been together in the first place. The main character was supposed to be cold and closed off, instead 4,000 words in she’s pouring her heart out to a group of complete strangers. And I have no idea if that was a legitimate character choice or just my virus addled brain doing an exposition dump.

I have better hope for my next two novels. I’m not really sure which one I’m going to tackle next but they’ve been sitting in my head for a while. One is a sequel to my western novella Eden Springs. That should have probably been a novel to begin with but it was the first thing I put out there was insecure about it. It has been slow cooking since the moment I hit send on that first submission in 2012 (fuck I haven’t published in a long time). The characters are already set, their backgrounds are in my head, and a lot of it is already on the page.

The other story about ready to come out of the crockpot and onto the plate is a (very) slow build romance about a couple of government agents. That one has been cooking away since mid-2011 when I woke up one morning with a freeze frame image in my head of a man in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling and another man in a suit sitting on the edge of the bed looking away. I’ve spent the last four years teasing out that image, working out who those men are, how they got there, and where they are going. I have a lot of hope for that one.

As for my NaNo project I still think I have the seed of a good story and at least two characters that might prove interesting, and I have 13k written. But I broke my own process and that (along with several viruses) broke me. So I’ll stick the story in the back of my head and put it on low. Maybe by next November it’ll be ready for another go, maybe the November after that. Maybe it’ll fall into the same file as the poly romance I started at nineteen and still can’t work out a third act for.

But now that I have fully accepted, acknowledged, and resigned myself to the fact that I have a process it might mean fewer half finished .doc files and more fully complete novels for people to enjoy. Here’s hoping.