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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.
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: robots
Current Event: http://www.livescience.com/topics/robots/
“The Serpent In
Eden, Nebraska”
Caleb Ogallala
stared at the hole in the ground. “‘bout wide enough for me to get my arm down.
Probably to my elbow,” he said. Looking up at his sister, Isabella Pearson nee
Ogallala, he said, “You probably don’t believe I saw what I said I saw.”
Isabella – who
went by Bell at SolaRobotics in the far, frozen northland of Winnipeg – said,
“You’re my brother and I believe you saw what you thought you saw.”
“Not the same
thing. You may be all of twenty-three and all I am is seventeen, but I know what
I saw. It was a robot shaped like a snake and it dug this here hole.”
Bell winced at the
Plainsism. She’d barely managed to ditch the weird accent after she did her
undergrad work at the University of Minnesota. She’d finally got that accent
right. Now she was struggling to fit in at her newly adopted home in Canada.
She nodded, then squatted, “All right then. I apologize. You saw a robot shaped
like a snake go down this hole.” She looked up at her brother. He didn’t seem
as happy as he used to. Mom and Dad dying from MERS while she was away at
college probably hadn’t helped with the mood. Not that their family laughed
much. Salt-of-the-Earth Dad had called them...She shook off the melancholy
image and shielded her eyes with her hand as she said, “First question is: has
the county let the prairie dogs back in?”
His lips twitched
in a smile. It was the first one since he’d picked her up at the skip-port in
Ogallala, sixty klicks straight north of here. He said, “Not that I know of,
but people ‘round here, they don’t much trust nobody’s government, even when
it’s the Accordion Party.”
She stood and
straightened up, “It’s the Accord Party.”
He shrugged then
said, “It had your logo on it.”
“What?” she said,
suddenly intent.
“The second letter
of your name the round sun with black diamond eyes. It was on the snake head.”
Unexpectedly, Bell
was cold despite the heat from the late morning sun…
Names: Nebraska,
Nebraska ♀ ; Nebraska, Nebraska
♂
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