IDEA ON TUESDAY 714

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Ghost stories…

David stepped into the house long-abandoned by his great-grandparents.

Still standing after the most recent clashes between Israel, Palestine, and what his great-grandmother and her parents called, “The Annihilator of the Jews”, former UN President Alija Suleiman Muhammad Umar, now King of the Restored Umayyad Caliphate, which controlled the majority of oil left on Earth. As a Canadian citizen, he was entirely welcome in the Caliphate. As the American citizen he ACTUALLY was, he’d have been forbidden to set foot in the Middle East.

He sighed. There wasn’t really much left of their home – though he recognized a few things. The dining table that could easily seat sixteen adults. High overhead, the shelf that had held family heirlooms away from questing child hands. He smiled. When he became a man at thirteen, he’d been allowed to climb the long ladder and, taking each relic and climbing cautiously back down, he’d listened as whatever adult was nearby, give a concise (great-grandfather was NOT so concise, though his stories were full of wonder!) tale of where the object began and how it came into their hands.)

Eventually, they’d end up in the Hall of Paintings – and more recently, Holograms; and after a gift from his researcher uncle, the holograms were animated and semi-sentient. Those were his favorites.

After the Second Lightning War, funded by a conglomeration of backers who believed that the Jews had discovered and then appropriated the technology that allowed the manipulation of gravity, most of Jerusalem had fallen into ruin and continued to decay. He sighed and reached out to take hold of a rung of the ladder. Only seven steps remained, but he held them gingerly as if they would break away if he sneezed on them.

At that idea, he sneezed.

“Bless you,” said a voice. It wasn’t a Human voice – he was considered the most skilled Speech/Voice Recognition Technologist in the Solar Commonwealth – besides, it had spoken in Old Hebrew.

David said, “Who is that?” The voice echoed back in Old Hebrew. David spoke again in American English.

The voice said, “Who would you say that I am?”

David made a face, the said, “Very funny. You’re obviously some sort of joker…”

“I am not,” the voice said in Old Hebrew.

David scowled. Shaking his head, he replied in the same language, “First guess is that you’re the ghost of Christmas Past.”

The voice hummed, then replied in 20th Century English instead, “Remarkably close. I am the voice of an AI who has come to visit disaster on a world that mocks and assumes it’s better than any society that has evolved on Earth – and any society that will ever arise on this planet. I am the Ruach of Vengeance…”

Event: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/ghosts-of-a-holy-war-the-1929-massacre-in-palestine-that-ignited-the-arab-israeli-conflict
Names: ; ♂ David Shain­berg ♀ Ruach ("spirit" or "wind", usually, “ghost”), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 712

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Benevolent Alien Invasion (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BenevolentAlienInvasion)
Current Event: http://fortune.com/2016/06/01/poverty-simulation-camps/

Landon Smith shaded his eyes as he looked up into the crystal clear Nebraska sky. September was an odd time for an Alien invasion. “What do you suppose this group wants to see?” he asked the girl next to him as he pulled off his cowboy hat and wiped at the band of sweat. Even though school had already started, it was still a scorcher. Clarkson in Omaha had drawn him from his hometown with the brass ring of the first full-scale Theoretical Alien Psychology and Philosophy PhD in the country.

Olivia Williams had come for the same reason, though she hated the fact that she’d also promised to the college place-kicker on the football team. She sighed. She STILL wished people wanted her for mind more than her extra-point record. She said, “The same as all of them – poverty-stricken Earth People.”

“Yeah, but…” he began.

“Why come here and not Harlem or…”

“Addis Ababa or Dakar…”

“Or any of a hundred other places?”

“Why here?” they said together.

“It’s not like they talk to anyone – or even pay us any attention. We could be stray cats as far as they’re concerned.”

“Have you ever watched one of their ‘poverty retreats’?” Landon said as they first pallet jack rolled past with a platform of weird aliens. He knew he wasn’t supposed to feel that way, but they were all but incomprehensible to him – or any other Human for that matter. Not one single alien conformed to a body layout that even remotely resembled something on Earth. The “parallel evolutionists” were rethinking their theories at an alarming rate. The Laws of Evolution were being seriously considered as totally outmoded and insufficient to explain, well…anything living. One of the reasons he’d decided to major in TAPP.

“They’re so weird, they aren’t even creepy. Even in my worst nightmare I wouldn’t have been able to imagine these intelligences.”

“That’s why they aren’t particularly scary.” Landon said, “They don’t remind us of ourselves in any way, so they CAN’T be frightening. They’re…alien.”

They said the last word together again. She shrugged, “Well, I for one am looking for some way of breaking through their indifference.”

“You don’t hold with Feng Youlan’s theory that they simply cannot see us – that we’re so far outside of their realm of experience that their brains can’t interpret us at all?”

She laughed and they walked away, arm in arm. Behind them, one of the aliens twitched something that might have been an eye and might have blinked in what could be thought of as interest.

Names: ♀ common Arkansas names, ; ♂ common Idaho names
Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C2nVRtyWKDsGheTkefwup8-970-80.jpg.webp

IDEA ON TUESDAY 711

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: apocalyptic diary/journal/log
Event: http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/lost-continent-discovered-beneath-indian-ocean-130225.htm

Andrianampoinimerinatompokoindrindra Zehrezgi – who preferred to go by Andri Zee – tried to keep his last meal down as the boat rocked beneath his feet.

“Isn’t this exhilarating?” exclaimed Shamma Maslah.

“When do you think the hurricane is going to stop?” he asked.

Shamma burst out laughing. “There’s no hurricane! In fact this is the calmest day I’ve seen since we were out here.” She glanced at him and went to the railing and said, “If you don’t like the ocean, why’d you come out here?”

“This site is within the waters of my country.”

She made a face, saying, “I didn’t know you had a country. Not how you talk about it anyway.”

“Madagascar is my homeland!” She grunted and leaned over the rail, looking deeply into the water. “Watch out!” he cried, stepping forward, arm outstretched.

She looked at him and laughed, “What? It scares you when I lean out this far?” she said, leaning back over the railing. Suddenly the water below her grew dark and began to bubble, gently at first, then wildly. Water geysered into the air. She screamed and staggered backward, into Andri Zee’s arms and they watched in horror as...

A fluorescent orange conning tower surged out of the water, sluicing aside until the hatch on top opened up and a young lady waved at them.

Shamma shouted, “Laura! What’s going on?”

Laura shouted back, “You won’t believe what we discovered! Not only is Mauritia a sunken island – there was some sort of sealed chamber there!”

“What?” Andri exclaimed. Majoring in archaeology, THIS is what he’d come for! “Where is it?”

“They had to send down the big sub and they’re bringing up the entire chamber right now.”

Shamma looked at Andri then Liz, bobbing in the conning tower of the sub and shouted, “The time is all wrong! Mauritia sank when the dinosaurs died. There shouldn’t be anything there.”

Liz shrugged, “I don’t know about when it sank or what should and shouldn’t be there, but there’s something big and it looks like it was sealed. See you in a bit!”

*

They rendezvoused at the small sub dock. The massive winch from the ship platform had lifted a barnacled encrusted, roughly cubic case into the air and was swinging it over the helipad, where it lowered the box down.

The metal groaned as the cables above relaxed. Andri said, “It’s heavier than it looks.”

“Way heavier,” said Liz.

Shamma frowned. There was something about it. Something strange. Despite the noise around her, she could hear…not exactly hear…sense? Feel? She wasn’t sure. Something. The hot sun of the Indian Ocean beat down on the head of the crew. Men and women in trunks and halters scampered around the deck, disconnecting chains, cables, hosing down the object. SCUBA divers were lifting up from the waterline; heavy metal music abruptly blared from the deck speakers and the recovery work began in a part atmosphere.

Shamma found a spot, out of the way. Her work on the project was cataloging and identifying life forms; part of a survey team that had set out to begin to quantify the anecdotal evidence that the oceans were beginning to recover now that the world population had precipitously fallen during the H7N9 Pandemic of 2038-2042. With over two billion people dead, the Earth seemed empty now. It scared her sometimes. Abruptly, a migraine assaulted her. It had been years since she had one.

That was when heard a voice, speaking in Olde English. She only caught the first few words, vaguely familiar, but somehow wrong as well, “In the beginning, I created this earth to inhabit heaven...” The migraine became blinding and with a squeak, she passed out.

Names: ♀ UAE, Somolian; ♂ Madagascar, Ethiopian; ♀ Hebrew (diminutive of “Elizabeth”)
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 710

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.

F Trope: Conjuring…
Event: http://www.spellsofmagic.com/spells/spiritual_spells/conjuring_spells/390/page.html

Jacob Adams scowled, shivering in the cold. He wore black jeans and boots, but all he wore on top was a baseball cap turned backwards and an A-shirt. “All I want is a fire to keep warm! I said the spell, how come it’s not working?” His breath puffed out a white cloud with every word.

Ada Contepomi stood with her fists balled on her hips. She was wearing her light blue parka, mittens and knee-high Mukluks. She said, “What exactly did you expect?”

“Fire! The website said that all I needed to do was, like, imagine the fire then speak the words and I’d have it.”

“So if ‘conjuring fire’ was so easy, don’t you think that everybody and their mother would be doing it right now?” She sniffed. “You should try and find a spell for something useful – like conjuring a tank of gas or a Big Mac with fries and a large, hot peppermint mocha!”

There was a sharp snap that had nothing to do with icicles falling from the roof of Jacob’s house and a ball of fire suddenly flared up, hovering over the snow in the driveway. “Oh, my gosh!” Jacob said, dropping to his chest on the frozen driveway, staring at the flickering ball of flame. He held out his hand then looked up at Ada, “Hey! It’s not hot or anything. It’s no warmer than the air!”

Ada looked disgusted and said, “So even though your magic spell worked – it didn’t make what you wanted it to make?” Shaking her head, she said, “When you’re ready to give up this crazy stunt, come in and we’ll watch Wheel Of Fortune.” She turned and stalked away.

Jacob lay in the driveway, staring at the whirling flame ball. Holding his palm to the flame, he moved his hand slowly closer until he was almost touching it. “Maybe it’s only hot on the surface or something.” He uncurled a finger and reached slowly toward it, ready to jerk it back in case the little flame ball was actually hot.

He didn’t realize what was happening until he noticed that his finger had disappeared up to the knuckle…

Names: ♂ USA ; ♂ Argentina

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 709

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: sanitation in the future is non-existent in cities…
Current Event: http://www.smh.com.au/world/mexico-city-fails-to-solve-its-garbage-crisis-20120127-1qlr2.html, http://fryingpannews.org/2012/02/09/big-step-taken-to-resolve-las-trash-crisis/

Trey Jackson and his family live in rural Nebraska – but the city of Omaha is a big part of their lives.

Especially the smell.

The city has been nearly buried under its own waste since, in 2029, the state legislature banned Omaha from dumping outside of a 20 mile radius. While few people in the CITY agreed to the law, legislators from outside the urban areas voted them down.

In 2041, Omaha has been walled in and in order to deal with the trash situation, they have moved their garbage to the edge of the city and hire companies to come in and search through the trash to find reusable, recyclable and useful things. Because the US economy slid into The Really Great Depression after an unprecedented eight Democratic Party dominated legislatures from 2008 through 2040, few people work – but everyone continues to produce garbage.

Trey and his family are part of a garbage caravan heading into Omaha to collect and distribute the trash West. When they arrive, they make camp in their covered wagons in Collector’s City and file for a permit to dig through the trash of a particular dump Trey’s dad and mom have researched. His twelve little brothers and sisters wait for their permit to clear.

In the meantime, Trey’s parents allow him to take the older of the siblings to the Collector’s Carnival. There he meets the amazing Francine La Flesche, descendant of the Indigenous people for whom the city is named. She’s not supposed to be there, though.

In fact, she’s missing from her parent’s home – and they are powerful lawyers deep in the center of Omaha, living among the city’s wealthy elite. On the Ferris wheel ride, as it stops so that they are at the top and can see the Core City, she tells him she’s run away to see the world and was wondering if she can go with his family…

(I can imagine the name of the story would be "Raccoons"...or something...)

Names: ♀ France ; ♂ Latin (=3)

Image: https://i0.wp.com/dumpsterrentalreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Nevada-Landfills.png?w=748&ssl=1

IDEA ON TUESDAY 708

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: “Grave Clouds for the variant where the weather is simply miserable at graveyards and other creepy areas, and which is possibly a sister trope to this. See also Evil Is Not Well Lit…”
Current Event: http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/scary-graveyard1.htm

Niaria Xiong-Walker squinted, trying to see through the gathering mist that apparently hung over the cemetery every night. She said, “How can mist hang over this place EVERY night? Fog’s a function of temperature, humidity, and dew point.”

Seth Bakhsh stood near an obelisk, pitted from ages of lower-than-water pH acid rain that drizzled from the Rochester, NY sky on a regular basis, giving it the dubious distinction of the being the American city with the most rainy days and its unofficial slogan, “If it rains, it’s Rochester”. He said, “It’s the oldest municipal graveyard in the US and has 400,000 dead people in it. Don’t you think that all those ghosts might have an effect on the weather?”

Niaria snorted and said, “They don’t even act as creeped out as you are doing in my parents old village in Nigeria! You’re a wimp, Seth!”

He snorted just as loudly, “I prefer to think that I’m prepared for all eventualities – even ephemeral ones.”

Shaking her head, she tapped her tablet computer and plugged in a cord. “I’m going to see if there’s any truth to the old wives tale that cemeteries are always foggy and creepy at night.”

“How many have you tested?” he asked. He usually ignored her scientific researches in favor of tapping her fascination in anime movies by presenting her with the latest rerun of her favorite Miyazaki film.

“Sixteen,” she replied.

“What?” he stepped from the obelisk, saying, “This isn’t the first time you’ve done this?”

“Duh,” she grabbed the tip of the cord and pulled, a long sensor extended, glowing blue.

“What’s that?”

“A data staff. It collects information and feeds it into a program I wrote.”

“So you can detect monsters?”

“Nothing so solid. Ephemerals. Like you said.”

“Ghosts?” he breathed the word – and his breath fogged in front of his face. “How come it’s so cold here?”

She shook her head, “Because the temperature’s low, dummy.”

“No – I mean it wasn’t cold a second ago and now I can see my breath.”

She looked at her tablet then back up at Seth, “The data confirm your sensations.”

“Duh.”

She looked around, scowling. “But there isn’t any reason…” As she said the words, something congealed out of the fog. It wasn’t humaniform, more like a lizard-like; possibly saurian, large as the obelisk.

Seth said, “It’s coming out of that gravestone...”

“It’s a monument…”

“Whatever it is, I think it has big claws.”

Names: ♀ India, Hmong, English-Scottish; ♂ Hebrew, Pakistan
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 707

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.

F Trope: White magic
Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD1SLcyMZRE

Mahamat Abeche and Liha Beledweyne looked at each other across the table in the Gersthofen Commons of Göggingen College.

“The thing about Americans?” Liha said. She watched a gaggle of students mutter on by.

“Which thing about Americans?” asked Mahamat. Liha looked at him in disgust. For having so many bad things to say about the US, he certainly had no qualms about the food. He was stuffing a sheaf of “French” fries into his mouth then washing it down with a Coke.

“The thing about Americans is that they’re so…materialistic. They think that what they see is what they get.” He rolled her eyes and shook her head. Even she picked up Americanisms without even realizing it. Her father had warned her that America would badly muffle her perception of the spirit world. She’d figured she could handle it. She now figured that it was a good thing that the college was so close to a Somolian neighborhood – while her spiritual sense was nowhere near as sharp as it had been at home, at least she still had one.

Mahamat looked up at her over his plate of fried. Once he’d chewed and swallowed, she said, “You East Africans are so proud of your supposed closeness with the spirit world. What about us? Chad grew from a population emigrated there in the seventh millennium B.C.!”

She snorted. “We were there from the ninth millennium B.C. onward. We were practically there are the dawn of Human civilization.”

“So you supposedly know all about everything spiritual because your forebears were around a couple thousand years before mine were?”

“No, I’m more spiritual because I’m more spiritual. You’re a brainless blob with so little spiritual sense that I’ve been dead trees with more spiritual energy than you have.”

“Hey!” Mahamat exclaimed. The tip of a fry fell from his mouth.

“So, if you’re more spiritual than a log, you’re gonna have to prove it.”

He grunted then said, “I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns, but now you’ve impugned my masculinity. I have to...”

“Do you even know what the word means?”

“What? ‘impugn’ means ‘honesty of (a statement or motive); challenge; call into question.’ See?” He smirked.

“That’s not the word I meant.”

Scowling, he said, “I know white magic and I can prove it.”

“What?”

Mahamat lifted his chin. “In white magic – as it was passed on to me by my mother – we follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention. But I know a spell to protect an item.” He leaned over and grabbed his backpack, opened it and pulled his laptop out, opened it and powered it up. Sitting back in his chair, he muttered then looked up at her. “I’ve protected my laptop with a spell.” He stood up. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said loudly and walked away.

Liha said, “What are you doing? If you leave your...” He flipped her off and kept going.

She stared after him incredulously, flipped him back, spun around and walked away. She walked past the Göggingen Gallery then came back around, unobtrusively watching the open laptop. It sat just fine for several moments. Four people walked past going in different directions, but no one made a move for the computer.

Then a peculiarly shabby male student, long hair obscuring his face, his sweatshirt slightly rattier than usual walked toward the table. He reached for the laptop…

Names: ♀ Somalia; ♂ Tchad
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 706

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Isaac Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.”
Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131210071936.htm

Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little more than a hovering plate.

“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a geologist...”

“You mean a Eurologist?”

“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”

“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a ‘geologist’.”

“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”

Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.

Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”

“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet, Khun.”

He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”

“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice, water, uranium?”

“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”

“Technically, I can’t hear anything. The vibrations from the ice are…”

“Literalist,” Khünbish said.

“I thought you Mongolians were literalists, but here I find you’re a pure romantic,” Yelizavta poked back. She sighed as the ice under her feet shook again.

Her partner froze in place and whispered, “I think I hear something…”

Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C2nVRtyWKDsGheTkefwup8-970-80.jpg.webp

IDEA ON TUESDAY 705

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Attack of the Killer Whatever

Current Event: “In various Stephen King short stories, he has had people attacked by novelty chattering teeth, paintings, a toy monkey, evil toads... If it can be seen as even vaguely creepy by anybody in the Western world, chances are it's killed somebody in a Stephen King story.”

Liam Johnson held his Kindle, staring down at it.

Sophia Smith, sitting next to him, said, “What are you waiting for?”

The roar of voices in the lunch room was almost deafening. He didn’t hear her – or didn’t respond – until she nudged him.

When he looked over at her, there wasn’t any color in even HIS usually pasty face. His freckles, even now that he was fifteen, still stood out on his face like spaghetti sauce blotches. At least he’d got his hair cut super short over winter break, Sophia thought with approval. The red stuff at shoulder length had been almost too much to stand! He said, “The last time I read a new Stephen King book, I almost died.”

Sophia shook her head and took a bite of her taco salad then made a face. “The food didn’t get any better over break, I’ll tell you that much. Why can’t they just order out from Taco Bell?”

“You’re not listening to me!” Liam said.

“Sure I am – the last time you read this guy’s book, you almost pissed yourself.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I almost DIED.”

Shaking her head, she toasted him with another forkful of salad and said, “Whatever.”

He stood up abruptly, looking down at her with the strangest look then said, “I gotta go.”

“Go where? It’s the first day of a new semester. You don’t have any homework.” She sighed, he could be almost as dramatic as her friends. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down on his chair again. “OK – let’s start at the beginning.”

The cafeteria was jammed and someone had been moving in on Liam’s seat when she pulled him back. If it had been another freshman, she wouldn’t have bothered, but the look the guy was shooting at her was deadly. She grabbed her lunch tray without letting go of Liam and said, “This was making me sick, anyway.” She tossed it into the nearby garbage can and towing him after her, made her way to the stairwell.

The supervisor knew them both and waved them through. When the door shut behind them, muted to a dull roar, she said, “The last story this guy wrote almost killed you…” she paused.

He wouldn’t meet her eye, looking down at his ereader. Finally he lifted his chin and said, “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but his stories...they’re somehow linked to me.”

“You mean like ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ linked to you?”

He make as if he were thinking, then shook his head, “Not that closely linked.” He pursed his lips, sucked the top one between his teeth then said, “I love reading…”

“Duh!” she said, slugging him softly on the shoulder. “I do, too.”

“Nah, you like your Ebony and Essence,” he held up one hand defensively, “Not that that’s bad! You’re like my only friend that reads as much as me, but,” he looked down again, “When I read a Stephen King book or story, I get sucked into it. I can’t explain it, exactly. It’s like the book is about me, but not about me. That’s why I don’t dare read his newest one...which I got for Christmas...which I can’t NOT read...which, if I do is gonna kill me. Like, for real...”

She grabbed his Kindle, cussing, and thumbed it on. The cover of the book showed a guy who looked like he was delivering mail in a tornado. In bold, red letters across the bottom – smaller than Stephen King’s name in bolder, redder letters across the top, was the word, MAIL…”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Most common US names 2014
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 704

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.

Fantasy Trope: Witchcraft For World Peace!!!
Current Event:
http://wildhunt.org/2016/02/call-for-global-witchcraft-community-to-unite-against-terrorism.html

Saga Pai-Teles shook her head then said, “How much do you really expect us to accomplish?”

Djamel Vlach sighed, “I’m sure nothing, but what else can we do that might even conceivably make a difference? I’m not a soldier, and unless you enlisted in the Royal Marines or fought a stint with the Aegis Mercenaries in the past few months, I’m pretty sure you don’t have much experience with fighting, either.”

“But we’re not ‘fighting’ – not like that anyway. Our powers are of Earth, wind, ice, fire, and water.”

“Sounds like the name of an American band from the nineteen seventies.” She frowned at him and made a faint movement with her fingers. He laughed, “You think charms and wardings are going to be able to stave off the black market weaponry of Daesh, or Boko Haram, or the Taliban?”

“Shows how much YOU know! We’re not here to fight anger with anger. We’re here to fight anger with the power of nature and of the true spirit of Humanity. There are way more...”

Djamel wasn’t listening to her. His eyes had grown wide. “OK! Now you’re talking! Taking out Daesh with a hurricane or an earthquake or even a flood is totally cool! I could get into that and I even have a couple of spells that enhance water movement!”

“That’s not what I was talking about,” she stopped talking abruptly. “Then again, I have a couple of other spells that help anyone who’s got a gift for dowsing.”

“What’s that?”

She looked at him steadily and when she had his complete attention, she said, “Dowsing is all about FINDING water, Djamel. If I could find the water…”

“I could direct it.” Djamel scowled again. “My powers aren’t that…um…powerful.”

“Mine, neither. What we need is someone who can magnify or enhance our simple powers,” Saga said.

“I don’t have simple powers! They’re plenty strong enough!”

“That’s not what I meant! In order to deal world peace and muffle terrorism in our time, we have to overcome terror with peace. But it can’t be done if we’re weak.”

“We need, like, a talisman.”

“A crystal, or a…” Sag was saying.

Djamel cut her off, “The Vial of Trench!”

“What’s that?”

“A Vial of water collected from the bottom of the Marianas Trench.” He looked down at her, “Can you think of a more powerful talisman to increase our mission to bring peace on Earth than focusing our meager powers through a vial of water from the bottom of the Earth’s sea?”

“I can’t…”

“We’ll do it and it’ll start now?”

Names: ♀ Finland, Portugal; ♂ Algeria, Hungary

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 703

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

Suggested Title: Them, Robots
The fact is that robots are everywhere! From cleaning the bottom of the school swimming pool, to building the car you drive, robots are so much a part of our lives we couldn’t even LIVE without them…unless you could stand alongside a hospital bed and pump a respirator for a patient in a coma.

Event: The Arizona wildfire is likely going to go down in history as the Third Largest in that state. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43290922/ns/weather/ If it continues much longer, it may well go down as the second largest – maybe even the biggest one ever. They’ll bring in everything to stop it. Eventually, there will be robots – not humanoid ones like in I, Robot, but more like water, fire and chemical squirting tanks. Or possibly like the robots above. Of course, they’ll have to have a certain amount of autonomy. So what happens to them after the fire?

Santiago and Elijah are hiking in the mountains three half a century after after one of Arizona’s historic wildfires. They met the first day of their class on Introduction to Mobile AI Engineering. Way off the usual trails, they’re happily nattering back and forth and looking forward to lunch – Santiago’s dad packed a surprise, and Elijah’s older sister packed a different surprise. They’re going to swap meals and then serious critique them. After a while, they stumble onto a town that looks as if it had been burned mostly to the ground and entirely abandoned for the past fifty years, and they find some strange leavings. After poking around, they’re stunned to discover a nest of semi-intelligent robots who not only survived the fire, they’ve established a colony and they are making new copies of themselves. Surprising enough, but out of the basement of one of the ruined homes – and Arizonans don’t often have basements! – a humaniform robot steps up the stairs, looks at them and says in clear, Western-accented English…

Names: 2♂ Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese; Israel/Hebrew
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Valkyrie-robot-3.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 702

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Haunted Castle/Mansion
Inspiring Event: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31105/cold-spots-glensheen-mansion

“No! Really! I saw the ghost!” said Enzo Solem. His wild hand waving came more from the passion of his French forebears than the stolid formality of his Norwegian. First generation from both sides, he’d been born and raised just north of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

He also had a wild passion for the paranormal.

Weayaya Aguirre sighed. Enzo was her best friend but sometimes he bugged the living daylights out of her. Shaking her head, she said, “Why can’t you just accept that the world is the world and that’s all there is?”

He stared at her incredulously and exclaimed, “You work here, too! How can you say that? You’ve seen the apparitions just like I have!”

Shaking her head, Weayaya – Wee-ah to the rest of the staff at the Glensheen Mansion – said, “I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t know what you saw that night. I saw some kind of heat shimmer from the furnace.”

“And I’ve told you two dozen times that I talked with Elizabeth Congdon!”

“A woman who’s been dead for half a century?”

“She’s not dead...” he scowled. “Exactly. Her spirit is trapped here because her son suffocated her under a pillow and then banged the night nurse over the head with a candlestick.” Wee-Ah sucked in her lower lip and bit it gently to keep from responding how she wanted to respond. He added, “All I’m asking is that you come with me tonight. It’s the night of June 26...”

“You want to see her ghost, right?”

“Nope.”

Wee-Ah frowned and looked at him. This was not the answer she’d expected. “What?”

“I want to see the ghost of her son. He confessed to her murder and was sent to jail, getting out five years later. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Congdon’s sociopathic adopted daughter never gave him any of the money she inherited from her mother’s murder. He killed himself five years after his release from prison – though I’ve heard people whispering that Congdon’s daughter did him in.”

“So you want to see if the ghost of one of Congdon’s ex-son-in-laws comes back here?”

“Yep. Marjorie died in prison in 2022, five years before the fiftieth anniversary of her adoptive mother’s murder.”

“And you think that that is significant...how?”

“It’s obvious! Marjorie-originally-Congdon is buried in the family mausoleum.” Wee-Ah nodded. That much was true. “It’s now half a century after her mother’s murder by her second ex-husband Roger Caldwell.” Wee-Ah nodded, not even realizing she was encouraging him. He went on excitedly, “So I figure the psychic energy will be so powerful that not only will Roger’s ghost appear, so will Velma’s; her third husband Wally was murdered as well as his ex-wife; plus some old guy she defrauded of all his money in a nursing home in Arizona. His same was also Roger, though his last name was Sammis. Her first husband – with whom she’d had seven children – was Dick LeRoy and he died the same year she did – 2022. So it’s 2027, fifty years after someone murdered Elizabeth Congdon. I would say that Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen has some serious psychic reckoning coming.”

Wee-Ah found herself nodding in agreement before she could think things through. That was how she found herself kneeling in the bushes near the Congdon family stone marker in the Forest Hill Cemetery on this dark and stormy night, cold summer rain dribbling down the back of her hastily donned poncho.

Enzo leaned over to her and whispered, “It’s five minutes to midnight…”

Names: ♀ Sioux, Spanish; ♂ French, Norwegian
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 701

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: “Alien Life”
Current Event: https://news.arizona.edu/employee-news/new-conversation-extraterrestrial-life-may-look-nothing-life-earth-so-astrobiologists

Caw-clak-clak looked around, noted the Human children playing in the back yard of a nearby home.

In fact, it was the home a much larger Human who had been sitting in his back yard for several months now, attempting to communicate with various members of the flock. While most of the Edinburgh Clan thought he was ridiculous and a waste of time – and must be a mentally damaged Human because he kept trying to communicate with them by dancing around and flapping his arms. Caw-clak-clak thought he might be just sadly mistaken, or worse, misled by members of his own species.

Caw, for short, had spent months preparing for his experiment. He’d spent at least two nests of his progeny preparing them for his attempt to communicate with the Human, whose name apparently, was I Am Guy. Odd name, and though it didn’t sound like any of the other names the Edinburgh Clan had learned over the past eighty years, who was he to judge Human naming. I Am Guy was clearly intelligent and was making an attempt at communicating with them.

While Caw was the last living member of the group assigned to the project, he was nearly certain all of their work would pay off. He fluttered to a thick branch of one of the pines in I Am Guy’s territory and perched. The Human wasn’t around at the moment, but he’d made a habit of coming out to his communication station when the sun was two wings above the horizon for some weeks now.

Others had analyzed the sounds he’d made and through rigorous repetition of them, and an Edinburgh Clan member even breaking into a library one night and activating one of the electrical information devices, they had managed to build the largest vocabulary list ever assembled.

Of course, it had taken the sacrifice of thousands of newborn chicks to find the ones most adept at learning and mimicking the sounds Humans used to communicate – though Ravens had learned to do it several hundred years earlier – the fact that Humans needed sounds stung together in very specific orders to make sense of what Ravens had been trying to say to them. I Am Guy seemed to catch on faster than any other.

He also had a connection to the Ravens in the Far To The North And Grimly Certain Of Their Unchallenged Wisdom Humanland. Both the ones near Edinburgh Clan and Baikanour Clan had discovered that there was finally a way Ravens could escape the coming Human Apocalypse…

Names: ♀ Ravenoid
Foundation for story: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+smart+arre+birds%3F&sca_esv=016f34706b28a015&sxsrf=ANbL-n6dzJRKeIEcUJ6BoaPkhbhG9jH8hw%3A1771963848346&source=hp&ei=yAWeafHgEoStp84PitCR4QM&iflsig=AFdpzrgAAAAAaZ4T2I5fx2PKT1FJy_7llqcuNpuMneCE&ved=0ahUKEwjx5O7d9_KSAxWE1skDHQpoJDwQ4dUDCCE&uact=5&oq=how+smart+arre+birds%3F&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IhVob3cgc21hcnQgYXJyZSBiaXJkcz8yBxAAGIAEGA0yBxAAGIAEGA0yBxAAGIAEGA0yBxAAGIAEGA0yBxAAGIAEGA0yCBAAGAoYDRgeMgYQABgNGB4yBhAAGBYYHjIGEAAYFhgeMgYQABgWGB5IikFQ-gZYgzxwAngAkAEBmAHQAaAB1BGqAQcxMS4xMC4xuAEDyAEA-AEBmAIWoALLEagCAMICDhAuGIAEGLEDGNEDGMcBwgILEC4YgAQY0QMYxwHCAggQLhiABBixA8ICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgIREC4YgAQYsQMY0QMYgwEYxwHCAgUQLhiABMICBRAAGIAEwgIIEAAYgAQYsQPCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICDhAuGIAEGLEDGIMBGIoFwgIOEC4YgAQYxwEYjgUYrwGYAwHxBaauf5aFU9EHkgcGMTIuOS4xoAfqwwGyBwYxMS45LjG4B8cRwgcGMC4xNC44yAc9gAgA&sclient=gws-wiz&safe=active&ssui=on#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f5f6f3d6,vid:7aWL2iEb6y4,st:288; MORE food for thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 700

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.

Fantasy Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/index_report.php
Current Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army

I know this is just a wiki, but this idea was inspired by a former student of mine who became a physics teacher and is currently teaching in China. He visited this site several weeks ago and has posted pictures on Facebook. His pictures of this army came up recently and though I couldn’t link directly to his Facebook, I linked here:

It got me thinking – if there are some 8000 pieces (and about as many are still buried)…what if the mother of a teenager was working as part of an international team and uncovered something unusual (not that a standing army of 16,000 horses, soldiers, acrobats and various and sundry other “people” isn’t unusual enough!) What if an archaeologist intern, Wu unearths a unique figure, say a woman, knocked down, crying out in terror, with her arm upraised as a man draws back a spear and is obviously about to run her through…

Is there a curse on this piece that comes to haunt the head archaeologist’s teen boy, Shun when he sees it and is strangely attracted to it?

Or is it case for a forensic anthropologist (or would it be, more appropriately a forensic terracottaist) and was a MURDER involved which someone commemorated? Who did the commemorating, who was the perpetrator – and what if it had a connection to the present?)...

Caihong stared down at the face of the terracotta daughter, the sole female discovered some distance from the terracotta army. A soldier with a raised sword held over his head – except his was missing the arm…and the sword…threatened her. “He’s going to kill her!” she said. “It’s obvious. Besides, he’s armored and she’s just wearing a sack.”

Dong, who hated his name and went by Chuck in school back in Minneapolis, shook his head. “How do you know she was afraid? You can barely tell what her face looked like.” He glanced as his sister, “Though she sort of looks like you.”

She cut his snicker off. “Shut up, Tiny-Dong. She’s terrified.”

Glaring, he said, “What do you know? Mom’s the expert on this creepy terracotta army.”

A young man looked down at them from above. He said in British-accented English. “She’s one of the only Americans to study the Army.” The way he said it made it sound…capitalized. He sat down at on the lip of the short trench. It was separated from the main army by a kilometer. “I think her history is interesting, but not complete.”

Caihong sniffed. “You can’t be any older than Ding-Dong here.”

“My name is Gang, I’ve…studied the terracotta acrobats.”

Chuck frowned then said, “You look like one of them.”

“You’re familiar with the statues?” said Gang.

Caihong cut in, “He likes anyone that looks like him – skinny and wimpy…”

Names: ♀;♂China
Links: https://pushingtime.com/terracotta-daughters/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Acrobats Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 699

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”
SF Trope: Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) – "Stories centered on climate collapse, resource wars, adaptation to extreme environments, and societal breakdown due to environmental disaster.” PLUS Reality Blurring – “Deep dives into advanced VR, simulation theory, and the philosophical questions of what's real versus simulated (e.g., The Matrix but with more nuance).”
Current Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload_(TV_series)

Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, shivering.

For several moments, all he could do was blink, unable to move his arms or legs. He tried, but he couldn’t even move a finger. Abruptly, he felt extremely tired. He tried to stay awake, but even though he felt more than one of his fingers move, he fell asleep.


Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, sweating. It pooled in his navel. It dripped maddeningly down his sides. The droplets slid into his eyes, and even though he blinked repeatedly, some of the stinging sweat stung enough for him to squinch his eyes tightly. He tried to talk, but all he managed was a wheezing rasp. He fell asleep again.


Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, breathing slowly, calmly, and no longer naked. He didn’t remember noticing that his first two times waking up. He moved his hands. The fingers worked fine. He curled his toes and found they also worked just fine.

Then he tried to sit up and found he was strapped firmly to a table – a surgery table, he was fairly certain, based on the straps around his wrists, across his chest, at his waist, and thighs. He was also naked. He didn’t remember being naked before, though he was fairly certain he’d been dressed in something before.

A face suddenly appeared above him and said something in English. He knew he didn’t know much English, though he’d worked somewhere in the Solar System where he’d spoken English as a matter of convenience. He tried to respond, but the hand of the body attached to the face smiled while placing the hand gently over his mouth. They spoke, the voice oddly asexual, “Don’t move. You’ve been in suspended animate for the past few months. Don’t try and talk either, give your vocal chords a chance to warm up. You could damage them if you tried to use your voice like to talk…or scream. Look up then down to tell me you agree, Zhi Zonghan Li.”

He wanted to tell the face that they could call him Zhi. All of the English-speakers he’d worked with used the abrupt truncation of his name as a matter of convenience. He went along with it because they usually mushed his name-sounds into a Western rush to speak. The face said, “You’ve been sleeping for several months. You were put under because your skills in climate designing were deemed too important to allow them to die with your body.” He must have widened his eyes because the voice said, “Don’t worry. The climate disaster was averted while you and most of the rest of the wealthy world slept.” The face – he realized what he’d recognized as a female face – was actually that of a very young man.

Zhi Zonghan Li found his voice, albeit a bare whisper, “Solved it?”

The face grimaced, looked around then leaned closer and whispered, “Not exactly…”

Name: ♂ China
Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C2nVRtyWKDsGheTkefwup8-970-80.jpg.webp

IDEA ON TUESDAY 698

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

Old Horror Story/Series “for kids”: Goosebumps Books 
H Trope: Abusive Parents (with a touch of SF)
Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2536926/Sharon-Glass-trial-Boy-12-testifies-starved-locked-closet-fathers-girlfriend.html (Rewatched an old, old movie a few nights ago with this precise theme: “Forrest Gump”...Tropes don’t grow old.)

Austin Ventura stood in his room. What should he do? What could he do? Carlos Rodriguez Cruz – his best friend since kindergarten – had run off somewhere. Worse yet, he’d been gone for anywhere from a few minutes to four hours. Austin texted Carlos’ sister, Paulina, “You still there?”

“Not going anywhere. Really.”

“Can I come over?”

“Here?”

“Where?”

“Meet me at the school.”

“I can get there in ten.”

“No car. Give me an hour.”

“Why?”

“Walk.”

“I can come and get you,” Austin clicked. He waited. His screen dimmed to dark. She wasn’t going to answer. Shaking his head, he left the house, walking out the

front door. Mom and Dad had long ago given up trying to keep him in the place – he’d “escaped” so many times…and they’d had to pick him up from the police station for curfew violations so many times, that they’d finally said if he was going to go out whenever he felt like it, he could pick himself up.

They refused. He tested their resolve exactly once. That was the night he had to walk home from down town Minneapolis. His parents insisted the cops turn him out. The also lied about how far away they lived – they said they were staying in a nearby hotel. It had been just before Christmas. Austin was twelve.

When a cop car stopped to nab him, it turned out it was the same one who’d grabbed him the first time. The lady had said, “Your parents made you walk home?”

Miserable – even in his fancy Columbia ReflectiveHeat Brand – in just his jacket and Converses, the cop relented and gave him a ride home. When he dropped Austin off in front of the mansion, he’d leaned forward, looked at the entryway and said softly, “I can file for child abuse if you want...”

“No!” Austin had exclaimed. The publicity would ruin Dad. Mom would never speak to him again. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

The cop had made a face, shrugged and said, “Suit yourself, kid. But if you ever change your mind,” he’d squirted a contact email to Austin’s cellphone then went on his way.

Austin-in-the-present shook his head and sighed, the only lesson he’d learned that night was that he had to be a helluva lot sneakier from then on. And he’d learned exactly how mad Dad could get. He set off to meet Paulina.

Names: ♂ Mexico, Mexico; ♂ Minnesota, Italy (= “baby in the woods”, “foundling”); ♀ Spanish form of French name
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 697

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.

Fantasy Trope: The Quest
Event: http://contemplativequest.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland

Světlana Angelika pursed her lips, looking out over the hectares of forest. In the MSP Vertical Village, it was mostly deciduous trees – oak, maple, patches of white-barked birch, poplar – with a sprinkling of pine trees. The concourse she and Uthman Aali were on was packed with people. Not a hundred thousand, for sure, but too many to think. “We need to go somewhere,” she said abruptly, speaking in the too loud manner of all the inhabitants of Vertical Villages everywhere.

Uthman gave her a look that said, “You’re crazy.”

She slugged him in the shoulder. It was a little kid move – but then, they’d been friends since they were three years old. “No, I’m serious. We need to go somewhere real.”

Without changing his stare, Uthman said, “We can go up to the six hundredth floor...”

“No! I don’t mean here. This is all so...boring. We need to go,” she pause, “through a looking glass.”

“A what?”

“A looking glass! Haven’t you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I might have seen a threevee of it once. Wasn’t it a cartoon?”

“Yes – and no, you haven’t seen this. Lewis Carroll wrote a novel, it’s true. But he was a mathematician. His logic is all over the book. Math. Everything.”

Uthman snorted, “It sounds like science fiction.”

“It’s fantasy – she steps through a mirror.”

“If it’s math and logic, it’s science fiction.”

“There are talking rabbits,” said Světlana. “And a talking, disappearing cat. As well as a talking, smoking caterpillar, talking mice, and soldiers made of playing cards.”

“OK. You win. It’s a fantasy. But what does it have to do with us? What kind of mirror can we jump through? I’m sure there are some here – but...”

“The windows. We can jump through one of those.”

“A window?”

“Come on, let’s go to the outer walls. We’ll leap through one of those!” She turned and ran, Uthman running after her.

Names: ♀ Czech, Roman; ♂ Arabic, Hindu 

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 696

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: sanitation in the future is non-existent in cities…
Event: http://www.smh.com.au/world/mexico-city-fails-to-solve-its-garbage-crisis-20120127-1qlr2.html, http://fryingpannews.org/2012/02/09/big-step-taken-to-resolve-las-trash-crisis/

Trey Jackson and his family live in rural Nebraska – but the city of Omaha is a big part of their lives.

Especially the smell.

The city has been nearly buried under its own waste since, in 2029, the state legislature banned Omaha from dumping outside of a 20 mile radius. While few people in the CITY agreed to the law, legislators from outside the urban areas voted them down.

In 2041, Omaha has been walled in and in order to deal with the trash situation, they have moved their garbage to the edge of the city and hire companies to come in and search through the trash to find reusable, recyclable and useful things. Because the US economy slid into The Really Great Depression after an unprecedented eight Democratic Party dominated legislatures from 2008 through 2040, few people work – but everyone continues to produce garbage.

Trey and his family are part of a garbage caravan heading into Omaha to collect and distribute the trash West. When they arrive, they make camp in their covered wagons in Collector’s City and file for a permit to dig through the trash of a particular dump Trey’s dad and mom have researched. His twelve little brothers and sisters wait for their permit to clear.

In the meantime, Trey’s parents allow him to take the older of the siblings to the Collector’s Carnival. There he meets the amazing Francine La Flesche, descendant of the Indigenous people for who the city is named. She’s not supposed to be there, though.

In fact, she’s missing from her parent’s home – and they are powerful lawyers deep in the center of Omaha, living among the city’s wealthy elite. On the Ferris wheel ride, as it stops so that they are at the top and can see the Core City, she tells him she’s run away to see the world and was wondering if she can go with his family…

Names: ♀ France ; ♂ Latin (=3)
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

IDEA ON TUESDAY 695

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a total stranger and never lets them go.
Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html

They’d been locked in the basement for longer than either of them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that the boarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were once windows – were impossible to open.

The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by a heavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked at getting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry them from the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten a shock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but very painful.

Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic. They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in the ceiling whenever they were both asleep.

They were trapped.

In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake, Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying. Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they were being watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on the same pile of blankets as far from the bathroom hole as they could get, Rudyard had gotten very excited. Natasha was willing. Snakes had suddenly dropped down from the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.

They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole. They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them had been bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another corner after stomping it to death.

This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immense red door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. At first he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What are they gonna throw at us next?”

Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”

He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finally rested against her.

As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.

It thudded to the floor.

A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…

Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, Mexico
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 694

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.

Fantasy Trope: AI taking over everything!
Current Event: “Nonsense paper written by iOS autocomplete accepted for conference”
Fascinating Quote: “The atoms of a better universe will have the right for the same as you…”

“In possibly the best story ever, Christoph Bartneck, associate professor at University of Canterbury and ultimate troll submitted a paper to an international physics conference written by the iOS autocomplete function…He submitted it under a fake identity aware that none of it made sense. Didn’t matter though – still got accepted.”
Some Quotes?

“Nuclear weapons will not have to come out the same day after a long time of the year…”
“The atoms of a better universe will have the right for the same as you are the way we shall have to be a great place for a great time to enjoy the day you are a wonderful person…”
“Physics are great but the way it does it makes you want a good book..”
“Power is not a great place for a good time.”

Standing in the back yard, Kumar Manish said, “Physics is just a 21st Century way to explain magic.”

Durga Jyoti shook her head, “Backwards, numbskull!” She smiled as she used her favorite extinct Americanism. “It’s from some old scifi author* who wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“Same thing,” he said, brushing away her comment. “One of the greatest physicists of the 21st Century started out with a ridiculous statement thinking he was getting away with tricking a bunch of creaky old physicists by playing on his gravity. When he got up to read his paper…” The look on his face abruptly froze.

Durga frowned then said, “What are you doing?” Kumar didn’t budge. After a moment, she realized he wasn’t even breathing, yet he still stood in front of her, mouth open, eyes unblinking. “Kumar?” She waved her hand in front of his face. He still didn’t blink. A moment later, the air around him began to sparkle an the faint sound of high-pitched laughter swelled around. Even as she watched, Kumar was surrounded by dancing lights that, when she squinted, looked weirdly like villa…fairies…

Names: ♀Bosnian ; ♂ Nepali * Arthur C. Clarke: 1962 “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible.”

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg