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.
F Trope:
xenofiction (point of view of an animal)
Mia had one
mission in life.
She was a IED-expert.
When she was called up and shipped to Afghanistan, it was the single most
exciting moment in her short life. She was certain she’d been made for it.
Certain that no one else could do it as well as she could. She knew beyond a
shadow of a doubt that her mission was to save lives by getting rid of IEDs
that littered this sad country after its abortive war. She was set to do
whatever was necessary – almost.
When she found
IEDs, she refused to touch them and certainly refused to disarm them no matter
how simple the device was. In fact, she couldn’t disarm an IED even if her
partner’s life depended on it. She couldn’t handle them – because she didn’t
have hands.
But smelling an
IED was an entirely different story. She could tell the exact makeup of the IED
from thirty meters away.
It had taken her
a lot of time to train her partner to be as good as she was. The language
barrier itself was nearly impossible to overcome. Ethan Pai-Teles was virtually
deaf, couldn’t tell the difference between a rubber band bomb and a
mercury-tilt switch bomb. Mia could smell mercury from a long way away – the
sharp, poisonous tang would keep her away even when Ethan tried to bribe her
with treats.
She’d usually answer
him, “Totally unsafe, Ethan! Totally unsafe!”
He rarely
understood her. At least now he slowed down some. When they first started
working together, he’d tried to get her to understand English. She got that –
some of the first words she’d understood were “toy” and “walk”. But the
language was so limited. Ninety percent of the scent keys aligned with real
language were missing in English. It was nearly impossible for Ethan to hear
anything but the most rudimentary phrases in the Bark Tongue.
Yun, a Chinese Shih
Tzu soldier Mia had met at the Summer Olympics had it easier. Her partner at
least understood the importance of pitch in real speech. Ethan – she loved him,
but MAN! – was practically tone deaf, even as far as Humans were concerned.
She had to rely
on body language, just as he’d devised a series of hand signals that allowed
them to work together as their sight at close range was very nearly the same.
They were
patrolling a stretch of road they hadn’t been in a bit. They’d been working
together – she knew it was many, many sunrises past the last sandstorm, Ethan
said “Two years, six months, five days, thirteen hours and,” he’d glance at his
arm, “fourteen minutes” – and she caught the whiff of an IED.
She growled. It
smelled strange. Very strange. There was the sharp, Human smell of plastic
explosive but it was overlain with something different. She’d never caught the
scent of anything like it…except maybe when they’d trained together when she
was a pup. It had been in a very dry place, a long way away from her favorite
water and the fabulous birds Ethan killed for her but didn’t allow her to eat.
This place had a
two white marks laid on the floor of one of the buildings. Ethan had made a
violent sound and exclaimed something softly and low so she could actually hear
it, “Area Fifty-One?”
This smell was
the same as that...
Names: ♀
UK-Scotland ; ♂ UK, Portuguese
Image: http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/bomb-sniffing-dog-given-highest-honor-in-britain-web__oPt.jpg
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