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.
SF Trope: alien
parasites take over humans
Current Event: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/07/have-earths-pandemics-originated-in-outer-space.html
Choden Wangyal is
the first generation of Tibetans to be born in the US. Her parents rarely come
out in public and as an only child (not from lack of trying, her mother
regularly assures her), she is their connection with the wider – and wilder –
culture in which they live.
Choden was reading
when she was 2 and has taken the most advanced classes her school offers. A 10th
grader now, she applied for and was allowed to begin college at the University
of Minnesota through a program called Post-Secondary Education Opportunities
(PSEO) and has been there for four months now.
With her college
experience and her interaction with other American students, Choden realizes
that she HAS to escape her family – soon!
One night, she
chooses to stay late with a post-graduate student whom she KNOWS is flirting
with her. They go to the Gartner Labs building where he has a night key. She never
“actually told him” that she was fifteen, so when he makes amorous advances
that terrify her, she cries out that she’s only fifteen.
Angry, he leaves
her alone in the Labs, not realizing that his key card lanyard broke. Choden
finds it and explores the labs alone. She stumbles in into the Virology Lab and
without quite knowing what she’s doing, enters a restricted area that the boy,
apparently, has access to. There she studies various experiments and when she
picks up a shell vial culture to look at it, the plastic dissolves in her hand,
the culture medium oozing over her fingers – and suddenly disappearing. She
stares at her hand, suddenly doubting anything was there are all.
Choden hurries out
of the Lab and to her aunt’s cousin’s sister’s dorm room where she spends the
night. When she wakes up in the morning, she suddenly feels like she’s outside
of herself. When she opens her eyes, she can see herself; wildly distorted. A
moment later, one of her eyes pulls back into her head from the long stalk it
was on and she can clearly see the other eye at the tip of a long, pale optic
nerve sheathed in what appears to be chitin. That’s when she realizes that some
sort of hideous, Kafkaesque metamorphosis has taken place. Or has it?
That’s almost
acceptable until she begins to hear a voice speaking in her head. She can’t
understand words, but the attitude is recognizable…
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