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:
transmutation (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmutation)
“Transmutation circle, a circle used to perform alchemy” I think I’m going to mine THIS idea in
various ways for a while!
Current Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZjp32EiTzM
Alchemy is thought
to have been the deepest roots of the science
we know as chemistry. As such, it had its origins in many, many cultures – from
Pharaonic and Hellenic Egypt, Eighth Century Arabia (the name “chemistry” comes
from an Arabic word, al-kimia),
Medieval and Renaissance Europe, India, and China – then matured into the
science.
Ishaq ibn Musa and Meitreyi Nur Jehan are
friends at Obama Middle School. Ishaq – who tries really hard to go by the
nickname, IM – was skimming TreeFlicks (3D online streaming videos) when he
downloaded a flik of a person drawing a transmutation circle.
He got the
measurements and veeked – visually communicated – with Meity J and told him to
meet him at a nearby playground after school...
Meity waited for
Immy with her arms folded over his chest. It was cold today, even though it was
late August. “So much for Anthropogenic Global Cooling,” he muttered. He veeked
him again, but he wasn’t answering.
Suddenly someone
behind him shouted, “Boo!”
Meity J turned
around and said, “It’s not even close to Halloween yet Immy.”
He grunted and
said, “Who spat in your bean curd?”
“No one! It’s just
that I have a hundred things to do before school starts next Tuesday!”
“Like what? We’re
just starting a new school. Nothing’s going to be different...”
“Except in high
school, we might actually get to see a physical teacher!”
He grunted and put
down a small plastic bucket. His jacket bulged in odd directions, as if he were
carrying packages underneath. “That has about as much of a chance happening as
me turning you into an oriole.”
“Orioles are
extinct,” he said, irritated that he chose NOW to pick on her favorite extinct
animal. “That was really mean of you.”
“What,” he said,
straightening up, “If I told you I could turn a pigeon into an oriole?”
“I’d say, ‘fat lot
of good that will do the species!’ You can’t repopulate a species with one
bird, stupid!”
With a flourish,
he reached under his jacket and pulled out a plastic box. Inside, something
brilliantly orange and black squirmed. He said, “What if you had one male and
one female?”
He popped the top off and an oriole – the first one Meity J had seen
since he was a kindergartner and his director had used query markers on
colorful birds to lead the class to a discussion about ‘extinction’ – flew out.
He removed another box. This one had a pigeon in it.
“What are you
going to do with that thing?”
He grinned, set
the box down and started clearing a circle on the concrete game square. “We’re
going to make a transmutation square and start making orioles out of pigeons!”
Meity J scowled
for a bit, then said…
Names: ♂♂
-- Yemen, Pakistan
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