Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls
its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write
down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote,
website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will
simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test
or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes
of them.
H Trope: Ghost
Towns
Current Event: http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/mn/taconiteharbor.html
Mary Croft may
have been the only certified dredge operator on the North Shore of Lake
Superior – but she hadn’t expected to be the ONLY operator in the abandoned
town of Taconite Harbor.
The dredge she
captained was mostly operated by an “artificial intelligence idiot”, which was
why she was required by Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company to actually direct
the floating suction dredge boat. The harbor was a small one, the taconite
loads mostly taken out by rail, and the robots inside did most of the work in
the town.
Her job would take
a week and the company wanted her to work as much time as possible, so they’d
given her one of the floating suction dredgers with an actual bed, galley and
deck. “Henry?” she said.
“Please call me
Hal,” said the idiot.
She shook her
head. “I’d rather not. I have an original DVD of the old movie 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY.”
“You can’t,” said
Henry.
“I can’t what?”
“Have an original
DVD. The movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was filmed in 1967 and premiered in 1968.
The first true DVD was not manufactured for movies until 1995.”
“You know what I
mean.”
“I do not.”
She sighed and
shook her head. “Let’s call it a day and shut down operations,” she said,
tapping the shutdown key on the flat screen.
“Very good, ma’am.”
Mary rolled her
eyes toward the ceiling and stepped out on the deck. Henry would take it from
here until the actual docking procedure which she would do in the gloaming. She
loved that word, she thought, unfolding and dropping into the lawn chair she kept
carefully stored until the end of the day. No one would have said anything if
she’d lounged about all day, issuing orders to Henry via her cellphone, but
that had never worked for her. When she did a job, she wanted to actually DO
something. For the time being, however, Henry was working hard pulling in and
storing the collapsible pipe they used to siphon sediment from the floor of the
harbor. It was pumped to a barge where it was dried and shipped down to Duluth
for further processing or shipment to central North American markets.
The sun had fallen
behind the steep shoreline to her left. It was a calm evening, a choice night
on the cool waters of Superior. Such a night was rare enough to make her sigh.
Farther out across
the water, to her right on the lake, waves rippled like a thin band of diamonds
reflecting sunset light.
What was left of
the town was now invisible as was the power plant. It had once operated on coal
and had had a solar conversion during the third term of America’s first black
president. There was no one left living there.
When the three
remaining streetlights farther up the shore, intermittently lining the stretch
of road that had once been the main street of the long-abandoned town, abruptly
lit, she frowned.
When lights on either
side of the abandoned basketball court at the near end of the street, close to
Taconite Harbor itself, suddenly lit, the hairs on the back of her neck stood
up. She went into the boathouse and grabbed a pair of digital binoculars, took
them out and scanned the shoreline.
The lights were
gone.
Frowning, she
lowered the binoculars and rubbed her
eyes. When she looked again, the lights were on and in the distance was
the slow, faint thup-thup-thup of a basketball bouncing...
Names: ♀ Hebrew, English; ♂ ,
No comments:
Post a Comment