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. Regarding
Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an
ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows
the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity.
Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of
ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa
McPhail.
Ngendo Bonhoeffer
said, “The First Timeline energy is building. It’s going to wash over all the
others and pull them all back together. The experiment gave God the answer El
was looking for.”
Varma Avelsson
shook his head, “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said in Spandaringlish.
“Anywhere from
now,” Ngendo snapped her fingers, pausing. She snapped her fingers again,
looking up into the sky.
“Oh, stop it
already! I get it!” Sighing, he sat down on the metal box. They were in the
middle of one of the deserts of Earth. “For an agent of God, you’re awfully
sarcastic.”
She snorted, an
unladylike sound even for an agent, then said, “For an agent of God, you’re
awfully secular.”
Varma coughed into
his hand and said, “‘A gentleman knows God believes in him, it is his duty to
return the compliment.’”
“God doesn’t care
if you believe in El, Mr. V. El cares that you do what El sent you here to do.”
“I am!”
“Not that I’ve
been able to detect. I’ve watched you for the past seventy-eight of this world’s
stellar revolutions and all I’ve ever seen you accomplish is a small trophy
following a football game in which you accidentally scored a point for your own
side, counteracting the point you’d ALSO accidentally scored for the other
team.”
“That’s not fair!
I’d only been here for eight years! And we were playing by American rules. I
got confused!”
“So you say.”
Ngendo laughed and stood up from her own crate. “We have to get moving. Plans
are afoot.”
“You and your plans,”
said Varma. “When have your plans ever gotten us…” She cut him off by walking
away, up the side of a sand dune. “Get back here and finish this conversation!
You’re going to get burnt to a crisp!” As there were no standard Humans nearby,
her head was suddenly covered with a pale hijab. Her shoulders wore a light wrap
with a long white dress. She kept walking. He created a pith helmet for himself
and a khaki shorts and shirt of a British soldier in mid-20th Century
desert dress.
Once he’d caught
up, she said, “You look like you’re an extra from an historical movie – about badly
dressed actors in historical movies.”
“This is
authentic!”
“Authentic
Hollywood.” She kept walking. He followed in silence and when she looked back,
he was dressed in a pale tan Nehru shirt and a matching round cap and plants. He
could have stepped out of a skyscraper in Abu Dhabi and taken a drive into the
desert. “Better.”
“What do you know
about fashion?” he groused.
“Obviously more
than you.” She stopped. “There’s our assignment.”
Varma squinted
into the blinding sunlight, reflecting from the sea of sand. “What’s that
supposed to be?”
“A new thing. It’s
the first real colony in Sahara in three thousand years.” He looked at her. “It’s
going to be at the very center of the end of the Multiverse.”
“This is the
Energy Project?”
“Exactly, and from
what I’ve been able to find out, the Humans here are protecting this place with
weapons strong enough to take even us out.”
He snorted, “Out
of how many timelines? I’ll just slide over from one sixty-eight dimensions
over…”
“Sorry, Varma.” She
turned to face him, “If things go badly here, we will cease to exist anywhere
in Time.” She paused. “Including on the First Timeline.”
Names: ♀
Kenya, German ; ♂ Liberia, Sweden
Image: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg
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