Share your work and share your edits

[anthonypero]

Change made, thanks... I also have a bunch of inconsistencies to work out with the spelling of my technology. I bounce around a bunch. haven't really settled on a form yet. Your edits improved your story greatly.

Quick link back to my story for anyone interested in reading it: http://forum.tor.com/threads/751-Sha...=3470#post3470

[SkylarkThibedeau]

OK An Earlier somewhat Dated Short Story


Rumpelstilskin 2.0
By Skylark Thibedeau


A dwarf showed up at my door one night last week. He wasn’t a “little person” in the politically correct sense nor was he like one of the oompaloompas or a Khâzad from a story by Dahl or Tolkien. He was your regular fairy tale dwarf with pointy ears, about three feet tall, long scraggly beard and so forth save he was dressed in an impeccable Armani suit sized to fit him perfectly and instead of seven league boots he was wearing some very nice black patent leather Italian shoes.

“Can I help you?” I asked bending down to his eye level as I kept the door cracked and the chain in place in case he pulled a battleaxe out of the briefcase at his side.

“Ms. Miller?” he asked looking up from his Blackberry that in his small hairy and crooked hands looked like a small PC.

“Yes?” I said inquisitively through the crack in the door. “What can I do for you?”

He placed the blackberry in the inside pocket of his jacket and began to dance a jig around his briefcase singing a catchy little ditty that I’d thought I’d heard before.

'Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Type away, Type away,
Web into gold!'

He did this for a few moments and ended by jumping on top of his briefcase with a loud “ta da”. I was very confused and had a sudden urge to clap which I suppressed as I had a very uneasy feeling about the little fellow.

He hopped off the briefcase and came back to the door. A terrifying grimace appeared on his face and I was sorely tempted to slam the door in his face.

“I have come for my payment Ms. Miller!” he snarled. “I have come for the child”

I stood there perplexed as he stood in the foyer angrily tapping his foot on the bright green carpet. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t recall buying anything from you. Was it something I purchased on EBAY or HSN? Did the purchase not clear my VISA account? And what do you mean you have come for my child? Timmy is asleep and can’t play.”

He stomped over to the briefcase and pulled it open. His long bony fingers reached in and he pulled out what appeared to be a legal form of some kind or another. He slipped the paper through the door.

“Do you not recall agreeing to the specified payment when you downloaded our software?”

I looked at the contract and it appeared to be a standard End User Licensing Agreement.
RCB&B Corporation Software License Terms
RCB&B Corporation Web into Gold ’97 Software
For all Operating Systems
This licensing agreement is between RCB&B Corporation or one of its affiliates as the case may be and You. Please read them as they apply to the software named above which includes the media upon which you received it if any.
By using this software you accept its terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software.

“Web Into Gold ’97?” I asked looking up from the contract. “That software was free! I used it to develop a Y2K compliant Marketing website for Mr. King. It was a great tool. That website really took off during the dot com boom and established me as the Queen of Webpage Design.”

The dwarf sneered and a large grin appeared on his face that revealed some very pointy and sharp looking teeth that glinted slightly in the poorly lighted hallway. “Ah, please check page 17 paragraph 4 and you will notice that the required payment for use of the software is clearly stated. If you did not want to meet the terms of the required payment, you should have not accepted the end user agreement.”

I quickly turned to the referenced page and place and saw in bold letters:
Upon acceptance of End User License Agreement the User (You) agrees to pay the aforementioned RCB&B Corporation the first child that may be born to them after such license is accepted within 1 month of such birth being recorded by State, Province, or national government.

I looked up at the wicked little manikin in astonishment. “I never agreed to any of this you have to be mistaken?”

He smiled an evil smile that dripped with darkness. “If you look at the documentation at the end of the EULA you will see that we have recorded your IP address and your employee ID in addition to the TIN number of King Enterprises. It’s all there perfectly legal and since your child Timothy Miller has received his Social Security card in the mail this week, I have come for my payment.”

I was frantic. That was so long ago. I was just out of college and didn’t have a job and my dad bragged to his Boss Mr. King that I was a great web designer though I barely knew HTML code.

Mr. King hired me but after several weeks I hadn’t produced anything and he was growing impatient. He threatened to displace me if I didn’t produce something the next day.

I searched the web for web design tool and had found Web to Gold ’97. I remember loading it and using it to create the remarkable web pages that had made my reputation and all that stock equity for King Enterprises in the late 90’s. I know remember that every time I opened the software it played that same little ditty the dwarf had sung out in the hall.

He laughed. “I see that you remember using our product. It did turn the web into gold for you? I see you cashed in your stock options right before the dotcom crash.”

Then he began to dance and sing.

“Round about Round about
I turned a web into gold
Time for my payment
Do as your told
Bring forth your firstborn
To me was he sold”

[SkylarkThibedeau]

Rumpelstilskin 2.0 S.A. Thibedeau 2 of 2

“No. No!” I gasped and began to cry “This contract can’t be right! You can’t have little Timmy! He’s just a baby!”

The dwarf shut the briefcase and smiled slyly as he shook his head. “You shouldn’t sign anything without reading the fine print. “ He picked up the briefcase. “I tell you what. I’m a reasonable creature. I’ll give you three days to say goodbye to your child. Go ahead and have a lawyer look at the contract. I assure you its valid and binding. I’ll be back for the child at this time on Friday.”

He began to leave. I fumbled with the chain and threw open the door. I threw myself on the floor crying on his teeny tiny but well shined shoes. “Take my Stock options! Take my Porsche! Take my condo! Please don’t take my baby!”

He took out a handkerchief that in his small gnarly hands looked like a towel and wiped off his shoes. “I love a little fun.” He said. “I will nullify our present contract if by the time I return on Friday you are able to guess my name. Guess my name and the contract will be void!”

He opened the briefcase and made a few notations on a PDA and a teeny tiny contract printed out which he signed and gave to me to sign. I read it very carefully this time before affixing my signature to it.

He seemed very pleased and began walking out of the building. I followed reciting every name I could think of.

“Frodo?”

“No and not Bilbo neither”

“Ishmael?”

“No. Don’t call me Ishmael nor Moby, Ahab, or Starbuck neither!”

“Wendell, Tupac, Jose, Wang Fu?”

“Nope none of those!”

We came out into the parking lot and he climbed into a cherry red Mini Cooper with a License plate that read “WEB4GOLD” and a bumper sticker that said “I brake for Wood Nymphs”.

He began to pull away and as he did he rolled down the window and said “See you Friday!!! Have little Tim packed!” The car rolled out onto the highway and I could hear his laughter echo into the night.

I returned to my condo and went into little Tim’s room. I sat in my chair and snuggled him close as I gave him a bottle. My husband, Prince got home from the office about that time and I told him everything. He was very perturbed at me to say the least. He faxed the contract to his Attorney and we were dismayed to discover that the contract was indeed valid.

We spent hours going thru the phone book and online directories trying to find some word or name that might describe the evil little imp but none sufficed.

“Do you still have that software loaded somewhere?” he asked.

“I think I have a copy on my laptop” I replied.

Prince opened up the laptop and searched the c drive. “Let’s reinstall this Web for Gold 97 and take a look at that Eula again.” He said.

The program began to reload and the EULA reappeared. “What do you know about this software company RCB&B?” he asked. “Did you every visit their website or anything?”

I admitted that I had not. Prince was unable to find a URL in the software so we brought up a search engine online and immediately got a hit.

We went to the homepage of RCB&B Corporation and were shocked to discover that it was not a software company, it was a restaurant! RCB&B stood for the Rumpelstilskin Child Bakery and Brewery. There were several recipes for such things as Kiddy Pot Pie and Gingerbread House stuffed with Roast Baby.

We clicked on the Contact Us link and found a list of the corporate officers, an eclectic group of Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves, and Pixies. At the very top of the page was a picture of the president and I recognized him as the dwarf who had come to the door. We clicked on the link and a media file began to play and the troll began to dance and sing around the screen menacingly.

"Merrily the feast I'll make.
For you I'll brew, For you I’ll bake;
Merrily we’ll dance and sing,
For next day will another child bring.
Like Grendel’s Mom we cook the same
As Rumpelstilskin is my name!"

So Friday came and we sat in the living room with our lawyer and some friends. A nurse held Tiny Tim and we waited for the evil Imp to arrive. Shortly Prince saw a Red Mini Cooper pull up in the lot and presently there was a knock at the door.

Prince let the debonair dwarf into the living room. He noticed all of the people there but was nonplussed. “I hope we aren’t going to have any difficulties this evening.” he said. “I assure you that the contract is in order and that I have a very good attorney.” And he began to chuckle at the thought of taking the child back to the Restaurant. I though I saw his mouth watering a bit.

“No. no.” I assured him. “We have had the best lawyers in the city go over the contract with a fine tooth comb and it is as binding as you say. Please give me the opportunity to guess your name as that contract is as binding as well and will nullify our original agreement.”

He lustfully rubbed his hands together glancing over at the hapless babe in the arms of the nurse. “But I don’t have all night. I have a very special occasion I must prepare for this evening! I will give you three guesses”
I pretended to be crushed and fell back in my chair moaning. Prince came over and began to comfort me.

The little man stomped an Armani clad foot on the floor. “Stop that sniveling!” he demanded. “Guess my Name!”

“Gilgamesh?” I cried.

“Wrong!” he cried as his eyes seemed to turn red like fire.

“Nebuchadnezzar!” I gasped.

“No!” he shouted and he moved towards the nurse, bony claws extended toward the baby. A trickle of saliva seemed to be escaping from the side of his mouth.

“Rumpelstilskin!” I wailed at the top of my voice!

He stopped in his tracks. He turned from the baby back towards me. He wiped the saliva off of his chin. “What did you say?” he meekly asked.

I jumped from the chair and began to dance jig and sing a song of my own.

'Upon your homepage there was a link
that showed your face for all to see
it said there just as plain as day
That Rumpelstilskin is who you be!'

“No!” he screamed and stomped his feet into the floor so hard that we still have the imprint of Italian shoes on the carpet. “No, no, no, no, No! I told the witch not to publish our personal information online! No! No! No!”

With that he stormed out of our condo with our laughter trailing behind him. We watched as he got into his little car and drove away moaning “Intranet only I said. INTRANET!!!!”

[shalter]

Skylarkthibedeau:That was a fun riff on Rumpelstilskin.

After the singing troll says the name, it seemed a bit off that she had a hard time naming the dwarf. The direct reveal seemed a bit soon. Maybe having the troll sing about the Miller's daughter for camouflage or else have them be toying with the dwarf instead of worried.

[SkylarkThibedeau]

In honor of National Poetry Month:

The Theory of Relativity Blues

The endless Years just seem to be but Days
To one Traveling at the Speed of Light,
Upon the Endless Seas of Endless Night,
I think of her in many Special Ways.
Sometimes when the Loneliness gets to me,
I'll take her Picture down from off the Wall,
And let it float around in the freefall
For it is all I have for company
I know that I am doomed to wander space
For the rest of my long and lonely life
I'll never really ever see her face
And I know that she'll not become my wife
Our Love is Lost across Ten Thousand Years
And I think I have Shed as many Tears.

[samuel RCS]

This is my first short story I'm sharing and a process I'm extremely new at. This is a journal entry from a major character in the story I'm working on. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Samuel RCS. Burning Ashes. Short Story, Entry 1


September 27, 1943
European Theater, Italy

I have seen many things in my life but today I was reminded of the incompetence of this world. Sometimes I could not fathom as to why men could be as wasteful and foolish as they were. In my mind sacrifice is suppose to have meaning, duty is suppose to be fulfilling and hollow hearts should be filled with courage. Perhaps the greatest irony right now in my mind is that looking back at this morning I came to realize that despite my bold words I still felt nothing from their meaningless deaths then and now. It seemed like a philosophical question a professor would ask his students not the reality that 18 men died in the space of 25 seconds. Incompetence from a single man can cause so much damage.

"Why?" I would ask myself that question as I had asked myself for the last two thousand years. I killed 25 Germans today by sniper fire and they never saw it coming. Perhaps it was not fair that I could kill men as easy as I breathed the air every morning, as easy as I drank tea by the fire. I no longer thought of the lives I destroyed, the families I broke apart...it was just a number. A number I added to an ever growing list of people I killed over the years. Should I feel like a monster? I sit in silence thinking about this when after a few minutes I write an answer.

"No"

I laugh bitterly for a few minutes before my thoughts return to the battle of this morning. The lieutenant who was second in command almost came into blows with the captain before he ordered an artillery strike on the fortification. Even now I cannot understand what drove that man to order a head on charge against a heavily fortified position. Many things kill men but it seems that foolishness never ends. It was thanks to the artillery strike that the company got the edge they needed to take the hill and the fortifications. The battle comes to an end with a heavy cost and I been lauded as a hero for what I done. I'am laughing now thinking back on it. Hero? No, I'am not a hero.

"A tyrant?" I asked myself but shook my head.

"A survivor?" after a few moments of silence I smiled slightly. Beneath it I wrote the names of every soldier who died this morning to remind myself of the cost. I still cared nothing that they died but I reminded myself that I was getting closer. At the end of the day these wars continue to mean nothing because humanity is just another pawn. Nonetheless just as this war will end others will come and just as they come I will be there. For one day everybody will have to answer for what they have done and the Scales of Justice will bleed as the avenging sword descends upon life. Like burning ashes let all who can burn for as long as possible. Do not be forgotten by history, do not go quietly into the night. I write these words for myself only but I hope that many come to understand before it is too late.

I laugh a little more as I close this for the day. Honor, courage and justice. Everything has a price, everything has a purpose and one day all shall answer for them. Justice will not be denied.

[Ian P. Johnson]

So, the forums are back up.

Last night, I finished a story called "Cassandra". It's a little longer than 5,000 words. Okay, it's almost novella length. But I thought that it would be good to get critiques from you guys.

Ian P. Johnson: "Cassandra". First Draft, part 1 of 17.

I’m not sure where I should begin with this. Beginnings are strange, fiddly places. Endings are solid and firm. They bring meaning to what comes before. When you’ve got an ending, you’re on solid ground. Whereas beginnings are like trying to run on quicksand. It’s messy and dirty, and it’s never going to end well.

But this story doesn’t have an ending. At least, if it has an ending, then it’s not one that I know. The ending’s a long way off, and I’m so tired.

Let’s see… where should I begin?

It starts about six weeks from now. April 6, 2037. The date’s been etched into my mind. The date when everything ends. Or begins. It depends on your point of view.

On that date, I was a developer for Omicron Studios, one of the premier game developers in the world. I wasn’t one of the creative leads, the people who create new virtual realms out of pure thought. No, I was just a code monkey. I was a low-level programmer, overworked and underpaid, with dreams of doing something more but still thankful that I have work.

That morning, I was the maglev from my apartment in Sunnyvale to San Francisco, where Omicron’s headquarters is located. I’m wearing typical work clothes (at least, for me): a Steel Empire t-shirt and cargo pants. As the maglev runs down the Peninsula on a bright and beautiful California day, I was reading the news on my tablet.

Typical grim stuff, as you can imagine. The oil shortage, effected by the Second Egypt-Saudi Arabia War, was causing gas prices to go up to $35 a gallon. Inflation continued unabated, with the US Dollar, the Chinese yuan, and the euro reaching record highs. In the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the True America Liberation Front was continuing their fight against the combined National Guards of twelve states– and by all accounts, they were winning. And the drought had continued into its twenty-fifth month. Many of the cities of the Central Valley and Southern California were planning mass evacuations of its citizens, and the people of the Bay Area and the rest of Northern California knew exactly where the rush of fifty million people was going to head: straight north.

It was (or will be– I’m really not sure what tense to use here) a time of dark, grim news. But then again, what time isn’t?

My mind was busy, of course. Omicron’s QA department had just posted a new bug report on our new game, Steel Empire (think sandbox first-person shooter set in a massive dystopian steampunk city). Apparently when you had a certain kind of gun equipped and landed a headshot to a certain enemy, it would cause all NPCs to become instantly hostile to you, for your Wanted Level to go to maximum, and for all your inventory down to your sepia-toned waistcoat to be permanently deleted. The QA department sent the bug off to the project lead, but he’d passed the buck further down the line, until it finished with me. I was left to untangle the massive Gordian knot that was this game-breaking bug, and believe me, it was a huge headache.

I got off of the maglev at Golden Gate Station, tucking my tablet into my satchel. I bought a blueberry pastry and Mexican Coke at the snack station, then stepped out into a brilliantly-bright sunny day.

Now, here’s the thing about me: I love to look at the sky. Always have, always will. I watch airplanes, satellites, the circling dance of the stars and planets (although I don’t often see them, what with living in the light-polluted Bay Area and all). So when I heard a deep, throaty rumbling in the sky, I turned to look up, thinking that it was a jet.

Then I realized that I couldn’t recognize what the engines sounded like. There was a sort of whispery roar that was indicative of a jet engine, but there was also a deep guttural whub-whub-whub noise that sounded a bit like a helicopter. But not exactly like a helicopter. It was a bit more like a subwoofer. Like the kind of dance music that was popular when I was younger.

I was the only one looking up at the sky, so I remember seeing it: a massive disk, made of some shining white material that looked like a Mac laptop from about thirty years ago. Only this wasn’t plastic: this was metal. I could tell because it shone in the mid-morning sun, as bright as a mirror. I didn’t know how high up the disk was. It could have been a hundred meters up. It could have been a thousand.

Then it descended, and I realized that my estimate was completely wrong. It was high up, and huge: easily twenty kilometers wide. It came down lower and lower, until it completely blocked out the sun. A sharp-edged shadow came down over San Francisco, and soon the city was in darkness. It was like a total eclipse had taken place, and we were all in darkness. The shadow covered all of San Francisco.

Everywhere I looked, people had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, gaping up at the disk. Some people were crying. Some were on their knees, praying. Some even stood with their arms outstretched, tears of rapture streaming down their faces. It seemed that everyone who looked at the disk had been confronted with their own personal gods. I, a wicked old atheist, had no one to run to. I simply stared wide eyed at the sky, not knowing what to believe, as everything I knew was shattered.

And everywhere, echoing from buildings and sidewalks and cars and streets, was the subwoofer sound, a huge, roaring whub-whub-whub-whub-whub that caused everything to vibrate: everything from the shop windows to the street signs to the fillings of my teeth.

[Ian P. Johnson]

Ian P. Johnson: "Cassandra". First Draft, part 2 of 17.


Then a screen opened on the base of the disk, and it said:

“PEOPLE OF SAN FRANCISCO: YOUR PLANET HAS BEEN DEEMED SUITABLE BY THE KORI PEOPLE FOR TERRAFORMATION AND COLONIZATION. UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR NATIVE POPULATION IS TOO NUMEROUS AND DANGEROUS TO BE PERMITTED TO LIVE. PLEASE STAND BY FOR EXTERMINATION.”

I’d like to say that we ran, that we screamed, that we had time to make phone calls to our loved ones, to hug and kiss and comfort total strangers, spending our species’ last moments on Earth in a desperate attempt to go through the last moments of our existence together. To not be alone. To go together into the void.

Unfortunately, there was no time to say anything. The moment the speakers on the spaceships turned off with an audible click, there was a sudden, blinding white light that felt like staring straight into the eyes of God.

There was a sound like screaming metal, and a moment of pain so agonizing it can’t be described…

…and then nothing.

I’d expected to be dead by now. I’d expected the darkness to close over me, to pass into nothingness. Like I said, I was an atheist. I didn’t believe in an afterlife. I just believed in eternal darkness.

But I was still thinking. Why was I still thinking?

I felt a tug deep within me, just below my navel– at the place where my womb would be, if I had a womb. It was like a fishing hook had been caught in my abdomen, and now I was being reeled in. But there was no pain. I was simply being pulled… somewhere… by an invisible force in my belly.

I didn’t fight it. I just let myself be carried back.

Soon, the blinding white light that greeted the end of the world receded, and became soft and golden, like summer sunlight. I blinked, and realized that my vision was fuzzy and blurred. I blinked, and then– surprised that I still had eyelids– blinked again.

I lifted my hands and rubbed my eyes. Then I looked up.

I was in a bedroom. A child’s bedroom, with Buzz Lightyear sheets on the bed and a cluttered bookshelf filled with books with titles like 245 Super-Gross Things You Can Do Right At Home!! The light was streaming in from a window in the far wall, and through it, I could see the leafy green branches of a maple tree, and beyond it, the shining blue sky.

A woman peeked her head around the doorway and snapped, “Darren! Get out of bed! Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean that you can sleep in until noon every day!”

I recognized that voice. My mom’s voice.

My mom, who died of a brain aneurysm in 2031.

“I don’t understand,” I called back. “Am I dead?” My voice sounded strange to me, like I had inhaled a lungful of helium.

“You will be if you don’t get your butt downstairs in five minutes, mister!”

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m your mother,” she said, concern suddenly coloring her voice. “You’re at home.”

“What city? Where do we live?”

Suddenly I recognized my voice. My voice box hadn’t descended yet. I still had the piping tones of a pre-pubescent child.

I felt my face. Before, I’d had a scraggly beard. Now my skin was as smooth as soft cream.

I was so preoccupied with stroking my now-smooth chin that I barely noticed my mother speaking.

“Hmm? Can you repeat that?” I asked.

“Lodi,” my mom said. “Lodi, California.”

I inhaled deeply. The air was thick and dry– typical Central Valley summer air.

“Darren? What’s wrong?” my mom asked.

“What’s the date?” I asked. My voice still sounded strange, like I was Donald Duck.

“June 28.”

“The year,” I said. “I need to know what year it is.”

“2001. Why? Dar-bear, are you sick?”

2001. June 28, 2001.

I was nine years old. A child again.

* *

I’d like to say that my parents coped with having a child who had seemingly aged thirty-six years in one night– but stayed in the same body, as the same nine-year-old boy that they’d always known.

But they didn’t.

My mom knew well enough to leave me alone. I sat in my room, looking over books that I hadn’t read in thirty or more years. I looked through The Kids’ Space Almanac again and again, looking at blurry Voyager 2 pictures of the outer planets. I flipped through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which had always been my favorite of the series. I looked through the bookshelves, gingerly handling every book, as if they were archaeological artifacts. In a way they were: artifacts of my lost childhood.

A lost childhood that had been found again.

When I got tired of flipping through the shelves, I turned on my Nintendo 64, which was hooked up to an old TV set that my parents had said I could have in my room. The 64-bit graphics looked primitive and blocky to me, especially after working for months on Steel Empire, which had the capability to individually render flies buzzing over a pile of garbage. But even so, it was a comfort. Games have always been a refuge for me, a place where I go to when the world has melted into chaos and my mind is filled with anger and confusion. And I was confused: I’d become a child again, retaining all my memories of my adulthood. Of the holocaust to come, which would wipe out a city in an instant.

I played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and Mario Party 3, and round after round of the original Super Smash Brothers. I even put in Ocarina of Time at one point, but didn’t see the appeal anymore: in the thirties, when game designers could create whole continents down to the last leaf on the last tree, the formerly wide-open land of Hyrule just seemed compressed and constrained.

As I played, I wondered: what had happened? Why had I gone back thirty-six years? How did I remember? Did I dream the following three-and-a-half decades?

The sky darkened, and eventually my father came home.

[Ian P. Johnson]

Ian P. Johnson: "Cassandra". First Draft, part 3 of 17.


He stepped into my room, and I looked up to see him: a giant bear of a man, with hands like New York steaks and a vague smell of tobacco and about him: a comforting smell. He would die in the late teens, his lungs riddled with holes from lung cancer.

“Dar-bear?” he asked. “What’s up? Your mom says you haven’t been out of your room all day. Is there something wrong?”

“Don’t call me Dar-bear,” I snapped. “I’m forty-six years old, and I didn’t even like it when I was nine.”

My dad smiled slightly, as if I was telling a joke. But then, faced with the completely serious expression on my face, he glanced down at his hands, studying the hair on the backs of his palms, his broad flat nails, the sterling silver wedding ring on his left hand.

“You’re forty-six, huh?” he said. I could tell from the way he said it that he had no idea how to deal with this situation.

“Yeah. Forty-six years old.”

“But– Darren, you’re nine.”

“I know. And I’m also forty-six.”

He grinned at me: a grin meant to be friendly and comforting, but obviously with no idea about what to do. At that moment I realized that he had no idea what he was doing as a parent– something I hadn’t understood until I had kids of my own.

“You can’t be forty-six and nine at the same time,” he said, but there was a tone in his voice that seemed a bit unsure.

“I went to high school in Willamette, Oregon. Willamette High School. Graduated Class of 2009. I was accepted to Washington State University, went there, graduated 2013 with a degree in Computer Science.” My father just stared blankly at my rapid-fire listing of my curriculum vitae. “I worked as a developer for 343 Studios near Seattle for six years. Met a Yakima girl named Sarah North online. Married her in 2016. Had twin girls in 2019. Their names were Danni and Fiona.”

My father’s eyebrows had been steadily rising throughout this statement. Now they’d reached their apex.

“When Microsoft collapsed in the recession of 2021, 343 went with it,” I said. “I got a job developing a new first-person graphics engine for EA. I moved to Redwood City in the spring of 2022. Worked for EA for three years. In 2023, I had a third child: a son, named Jamie. He was diagnosed with high-functioning autism in 2026. In 2027, I changed jobs from EA to Omicron, a second-party developer for the Apple iPlay, based in San Francisco. In 2030, I got divorced. My wife took the kids and moved back to Yakima. I stayed in the Bay Area.”

Still no response or interruption from my father.

“In 2034, my ex-wife and daughter Fiona died in a car accident, while she still had her learners’ permit. Danni and Jamie went to live with their grandparents. A year after Fiona died, Danni killed herself. Threw herself off a bridge. I went to my daughters’ funerals, Dad. I saw the coffins lowered into the ground. I may never recover from that.”

To my surprise, I was saying none of this with grief or anger. In fact, my voice was calm, dispassionate. I was simply reciting a series of events, events that now might never happen, now that I was back in 2001.

“In 2037…”

I stopped. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t want to talk about what happened April 6, 2037. I wasn’t exactly clear on what had happened on that date myself.

My dad blinked. “If you’re from the future,” he said, “tell me something that happens. Something that happens to me.”

I thought of seeing my dad’s MRIs, the images of his lungs as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

I thought of the smell of tobacco that even now hung around my father.

“No,” I said.

“Well, then, tell me something,” my dad said.

I sighed. “Fine. But if I violate the laws of causality somehow, it’s your own damn fault.”

My dad looked puzzled again. I sighed. “It’s a sci-fi thing. Never mind.”

And then, I launched into a description of the century-defining event that was just three months away…

“On September 11, this year, terrorists will hijack four planes. Two of them will crash into the World Trade Center. One of them will crash into the Pentagon. A final one will land in a field in Pennsylvania. Because of this event, the United States will enter a series of unpopular and costly wars in the Middle East. First Afghanistan, then Iraq. At home, new security measures will be put in place to keep a terrorist attack like that from happening again. In order to keep the country safe, a new arm of the Executive Branch called the Department of Homeland Security will not allow Americans to carry more than three ounces of liquid onto planes. The NSA will wiretap ordinary citizens’ phone calls. Guantanamo Bay will be converted into a prison for suspected terrorists, many of whom will be kidnapped from their home countries and imprisoned without trial. People will live in fear. People will lose hope. And it’s coming– in just three months.”

My dad stared at me for ten whole seconds. Then he burst out laughing.

I glared at him. “This isn’t funny, Dad,” I snapped. My hands curled up into tiny fists. “Thousands of people will die.”

“Oh, Dar-bear,” he said, and I felt a sudden spasm of rage. “Do you know how crazy that sounds? It’s just…” and he gestured vaguely in the air, “…silly. Nothing like that would ever happen. I don’t know what you’ve been reading or watching that scared you like this, but all that… it’s just impossible.”

“It will happen,” I snapped. “Wait and see.”

[Ian P. Johnson]

Ian P. Johnson: "Cassandra". First Draft, part 4 of 17.


My father smiled tolerantly, and kissed me on the head. “We have airport security for a reason, Darren. You’ll see.” And he hugged me close, and said, “Come downstairs and have some dinner. Mom’s made mac and cheese. Your favorite.”

I hadn’t had anything to eat since the blueberry pastry that morning– or thirty-six years in the future.

I was ravenous.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“All right,” he said, smiling. “You just hang out here. I know that it’s scary sometimes, but don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. And remember– tomorrow we’re going to Lake Beryessa.”

I’d forgotten all about the Lake Beryessa trip. That was where I broke my radius falling off my BMX bike– my first broken bone.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

I listened to my father’s footsteps passing down the hallway, and I took a deep breath.

Everything wouldn’t be fine.

* *

The summer of 2001 passed relatively uneventfully. It was the summer between my fourth and fifth grade years, and I was surprised at how different everything was.

For one thing, I found I wasn’t sexually attracted to women. I don’t mean that I was gay, or that I was attracted to the various neighborhood girls: I mean that I didn’t see the appeal of adult women. Try as I might, I stared at lean, fit early-twenties girls in tank tops and cut-offs, hoping to feel any fleeting bit of arousal. Nothing. They might as well have been wallpaper for all that I cared. I couldn’t imagine wanting to have sex with any of them, even though I’d had repeated fantasies about girls who looked just like them when I was an adult. In fact, the idea was vaguely repulsive to me, like drinking from the toilet.

There were other changes as well. Adults seemed like clumsy, bumbling giants to me now. They were huge, looming beasts with heads that seemed in the clouds, and their movements were so uncoordinated.

As for me, the square-cube law worked in my favor. I found that I could do pull-ups without much effort, whereas when I was an adult I couldn’t even hold my weight while hanging. Since it seemed as if I was being awarded a do-over to fix the mistakes of my past, I resolved to take advantage of my low weight to actually do exercise and avoid turning into a pear-shaped slob, like I was when I was an adult.

There were times that I forgot the fact that I was a child again. Like the time that I borrowed the keys to my mom’s minivan and drove down to the liquor store to get a six-pack of Anchor Steam. When I reached the liquor store, I realized that I didn’t have any ID. And then I remembered: I was ten. I wasn’t even allowed to be in a liquor store.

So I simply drove the minivan back home, hoping that my mom hadn’t seen the car gone.

When I got home, my mom was sitting on the couch, crying. I asked her, “Mom? What’s wrong?”

She looked up, leapt from the couch, and gathered me into her arms, “Darren, don’t ever do that again,” she snapped. “I was so worried. You could have killed yourself. Thank God you weren’t hurt.”

I patted the back of my mother’s head in a comforting way. “Trust me, Mom. I know what I’m doing.”

My mom slapped me full across the face. “If you ever do a stunt like that again, young man…” And she buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed. I could feel her warm, wet tears soaking through the fabric of my Mervyn’s t-shirt.

Then there was the time that I went to the bookstore with my dad and picked up Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which had just come out in paperback.

“That book looks a little advanced for you, Dar-bear,” my dad said nervously.

I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything else to do that summer, so I finished the book in two weeks.

My parents were so proud of me finishing a thousand-page novel in such a short time that they took me and my little sister Tanya to Applebee’s for a celebratory dinner, where they bought me a massive fudge brownie cake for dessert. My father told me he was so proud of the huge leap ahead that I’d taken in my reading level. I spent most of the evening staring at the waitress’s breasts, trying and failing to be attracted to her.

Summer slowly passed into its final days, and I went back to school, enrolled in Ms. Fischer’s fifth grade class at Heritage Primary Elementary School. After a week, Ms. Fischer called in my parents and recommended moving me up a grade. (After taking differential calculus courses in college, the harrowing peaks and valleys of long division didn’t seem so frightening to me.) I was surreptitiously moved up a grade, into Mr. Zampano’s sixth grade class.

On a Tuesday morning in my third week of class, I came downstairs to find my parents and little sister sitting on the couch, watching the news. My parents were holding hands. My mother had her arm around Tanya’s shoulders. Both my mother and father were crying. Tanya, who was in second grade, was too confused to understand what was going on.

On the TV screen, there was nothing but repeated images of two towers, going up in flames…

“See?” I said. “I told you I wasn’t lying.”

It should have come as no surprise to me that they sent me away.

* *