"Perchance"

PERCHANCE
By Curtis C. Chen

Edwin had never dreamed until his wife died. The night after Angie's funeral, he fell asleep, still dressed in his dark suit and necktie, and imagined that he was floating in an indoor pool.

The smell of chlorine wrinkled his nose. A vast rush of noise swirled around him--shouting, whistles, echoes. He was up to his neck in lukewarm water, and his feet couldn't touch the bottom. He'd never been any good at swimming. He started panicking and splashing. Nobody seemed to notice.

He woke up before he drowned. The last thing he remembered seeing while he sank was a lone infant, who seemed too young to be swimming unsupervised in a public pool, floating just below the surface of the water.

One week later, Edwin was back at the clinic.

"All the eggs are still viable," Doctor Plume said, adjusting his eyeglasses. "Now, your--situation has changed, but there's no reason we can't continue with the fertilization procedure."

Edwin nodded.

"Since your wife has--passed on, we will need to find a surrogate. I know this is awkward, but have you talked to your family about this? Your siblings, or maybe your in-laws?"

"I'll do it," Edwin said. "I'll carry the fetus."

"What?"

"I researched male pregnancy. They've done it successfully in Singapore. Implant the embryo in my abdominal cavity, then give me the right hormones--"

Plume held up a hand. "Okay, Ed, stop. Yes, it's possible, but it's incredibly dangerous. Even with healthy women, ectopic pregnancies tend to kill the mother. And you don't have a birth canal--we'd have to do surgery to get the baby out. You'd never survive in your condition, and the baby's chances wouldn't be good, either."

"I've been dreaming," Edwin said, and described his dream. He'd been having the same one every night, about the baby in the swimming pool. Sometimes he could almost touch the baby. Sometimes the baby swam away. It always had Angie's eyes, and it never blinked.

"Look," Plume said, "we're both scientists. You know this is just your subconscious going on a joyride. It's not a message from beyond or some kind of holy vision. You're still very fragile, emotionally, and you need time to consider a decision like this."

Edwin nodded. "How much time do I have? Eighteen months? I can die from my next relapse, or I can die giving birth to my child, aren't those my choices? Weren't those Angie's choices?"

"You wouldn't be able to continue the gene therapy," Plume said. "There's no guarantee you'd survive a whole nine months with the disease and with, frankly, a parasite growing inside you. It'll probably kill both of you."

"There's a chance it might not."

"As your doctor, I can't even think about recommending it."

"Fine," Edwin said. "But will you help me? As my friend?"

Plume stared at Edwin, then removed his glasses and sighed. "This is going to be the most convoluted euthanasia I've ever performed."

Edwin smiled. He would look forward to dreaming for the rest of his life.

Audio: "Perchance"

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Music: "dreamer..." by cdk, licensed under Creative Commons from ccMixter.

Not much to say about this one. I probably should have picked a different name for the doctor, since I popped a couple of his P's pretty hard. And I didn't really mean for Edwin to sound like Hugo the Abominable Snowman. Sometimes these things just happen, y'know?

ObDreamSequence

Yes, the dream sequence which feels totally out of place and does nothing to advance the plot is the hallmark of amateur and amateurish writers everywhere. But combine said dream sequence with an oblique Shakespeare reference and add a sprinkle of medical jargon, and (as the band kids say) voila!

Well, actually, it's still not very good, but at least it's finished.

In high school, I read a short story by Robert Bloch (I think) that totally freaked me out. It was written in the first person by a witch who cursed a man by putting a baby inside him. The implication was not that it would kill him, but that he would suffer horribly because his body was not designed to support the growing fetus or, eventually, give birth to it. Eww.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the 1994 movie Junior, arguably notable only for the fact that it stars both The Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elinor Dashwood Emma Thompson.

"Antique"

ANTIQUE
By Curtis C. Chen

I brushed away more leaves. There was a hard surface beneath. Ceramic armor. I ran my hand along it until I found the edge, then pointed my flashlight. I stared into a dark mass of machinery--joints, gears, struts, wires. There was a serial number engraved on the interior surface of the casing.

"I don't believe it," I muttered.

"What the hell is it?" Embeck called from below. He had insisted on staying at ground level, scanning the landscape, his finger on the trigger of our only blaster.

"It's a mech," I called back.

"A what?"

I rolled my eyes. "A giant robot."

"You're kidding."

I lifted one leg and kicked the hidden mass beside me. My boot clanged against the armor, and leaves fell like rain. I pulled away the remaining vines so my co-pilot could see the huge metal arm.

"I don't believe it," he said.

"Get up here and help me clear this stuff away."

"What if we're attacked?"

"Then you'll have the high ground. Hurry up."

He secured the blaster in his hip holster and climbed slowly. Very slowly. He was the cautious one now. Funny.

I was sitting on the mech's shoulder by the time he got halfway up the torso. The main antenna array had been crushed a long time ago. Rust, bird droppings, and other stains streaked down to the middle of the mech's back.

"I don't suppose you've ever driven one of these things," I said.

Embeck shook his head. "Never even seen one in person. When were these last used in combat? Fifty, sixty years ago?"

I grimaced. "Christ, Embeck, I'm not that old."

"You were a mech driver?"

"I got the training. I was a Starbird candidate, you know."

He smirked. "How the mighty have fallen."

I saved my breath. "Let's get this canopy open. Maybe we won't have to walk back to the crash site after all."

We found the emergency release latches around the opaqued chest cavity of the mech, following the seam just above the window slit. I remembered being sealed into one of these things, being overwhelmed by a dizzying array of displays, nearly losing my lunch as the mech lurched around the training field. The narrow band of sunlight coming in through that window was the only thing that had helped steady me.

When we opened the seal, a cloud of dust puffed away from the mech, with a sound like a sigh. Mech cabins are airtight, to protect the driver from biochemical attack. It smelled stale. We lifted the creaking canopy and locked it into place, then leaned over and looked inside the cabin.

This mech's driver was still strapped into his seat. Something must have made it through the ventilation filters. He just had time to park the mech in this grove to hide it from the enemy. His desiccated fingers were still touching the throttle.

Embeck vomited into the cabin.

"You're cleaning that up," I said.

Audio: "Antique"

Music: "This Isn't My Day" by Evrim Sen, licensed under Creative Commons from ccMixter.

http://512words.blogspot.com

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Mechy McMecherson

"Antique" was the first story of mine featured on 365tomorrows. I haven't changed anything except for adding one adjective. (Hint: the word has a double-C in it.) It is the last reprint you'll see here at 512 Words or Fewer.

Who doesn't love giant robots? Well, except me while watching the Michael Bay bastardization version of Transformers.

<RANT>

I have many problems with that movie, but chief among them is something I've said about much better shows: it is insufficiently rigorous. I remember reading a Wired article about the visual effects, in which the filmmakers go on and on about how they wanted their robots to be more "transform in a believable way," and to that end required the art designers to use actual car parts in the humanoid forms and change Optimus Prime's distinctive shape. I still prefer the old-school anime robot designs, with blocky limbs and smooth edges, but at the time, I was willing to give them the benefit of a doubt.

And then I actually saw the movie, in which (SPOILER ALERT) not only does Bumblebee transmute his physical structure from a 1976 Camaro to the 2009 model, but the magical Allspark gives life to inanimate technological objects--which, by the way, also allows them to sprout guns and rockets whose manufacture would require materials not present in the original object, such as chemical propellants and explosives.

Now, I suppose you could argue that transforming from car to robot is a merely mechanical action, while the aforementioned subatomic transmutation of fucking matter requires more energy (or Energon, as the case may be) and happens only rarely. But in that case, why wouldn't the folks who captured Megatron and the Borg Allspark cube be working like crazy to figure out how to turn lead to gold, instead of just reverse-engineering cell phones with bad reception?

Let's not even talk about John Turturro getting peed on. Just... no.

I mean, if you want to see unapologetic giant robot phallic imagery, go rent Robot Jox. I'm not going to say it's a good movie, but it was co-written by actual science fiction writer Joe Haldeman and correctly depicted the silent vacuum of space (as did 2001: A Space Odyssey and Firefly).

</RANT>

Temporal Mechanics

As you may have noticed, I schedule each week's trifecta of 512 Words posts (story, podcast, and notes) to publish right after midnight. It just occurred to me that, since posts appear on the home page (and many RSS feed aggregators) in reverse chronological order, the notes will show up at the top of the page for most readers.

So, in the interest of not burying the lead, I'm going to reverse the order of the posts every Friday, starting tomorrow. Which means that the notes will actually get published first, chronologically; but when you read this blog, they'll show up under the actual story on the home page, and the story will get top billing. I'm hoping this will be an improvement. Let me know if you disagree.

Thanksgiving

It seemed appropriate to write a story about food this week. Hope you had a nice meal yesterday!

The original germ for this week's 512 Words didn't make it into the final piece, but I'm including that text here to give insight into my process:

Nobody calls him by his name. It just feels wrong, you know? He's too important to have such a dumb-ass name.

Some people call him The Clown. But that feels disrespectful, too. And you don't want to disrespect him. For a while, a few called him The Redhead. But then that girl showed up, and things got confusing. When most men say "redhead," they're talking about a woman--usually someone they'd like to screw. And he is as far from sex as anything can get.

Most people these days call him Shoes. It used to be Big Shoes, because that's what you were probably staring at when you were in his presence, if you were lucky enough to be granted an audience. You don't look at his face. And you really don't look into his eyes. It's not that he cares. But there's something there, something in his soul, it's overpowering. Some are said to have gone mad from a mere glance.

Anyway, Shoes. That's what people say when they talk about him. You heard about Shoes' new dollar menu? Hey, want to grab a Shoes milkshake?

Never call him by name. The name is dangerous.

And here is the video that inspired the final draft:



When I was in high school, my friend Gavin and I rented and watched Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I promise you, we were not under the influence of any controlled substances at the time, but we found the line "They're dead. Everybody's dead" hilarious in late-night context.

That's not really relevant, except to point out that sometimes things seem funny that really aren't. Like clowns. And nobody knows why.