Post by Cy Skywalker on Feb 26, 2007 8:35:55 GMT -5
AP prompt #2. This was written from a prompt which bade me explain why a turtle had the numerals 1 8 7 4 written on its shell. Please critique harshly.
1 % 7 4
“One Thousand Directions
Streaming away in the wilderness
Valleys between mountains.”
Allison said, “It has the wrong amount of syllables.”
Mayer stared from his boulder perch to the tree-carpeted mountain across the steep valley.“I don’t care.
“Life doesn’t have enough time to worry about syllables.”
Allison picked up the red backpack from the grassy ground and parted the analog-cloth.
“Don’t take anything out yet.”
She looked up at him and thought that he looked like a guru, a brown man seated on a boulder. A cold breeze between the mountains blew through her senses. “Why not?”
“Come here. Look at this.”
Allison resealed the pack by pressing her fingertips against the separated edges and moved to beside the boulder. He extended one hand to her without turning his face or stare. She clambered up, and crouched behind him while the Earth sussurated around and above them through the trees.
He must have sensed her nervousness and said “Remember--” as she said “What?” “What?” was drowned out like static by a trumpet.
“Remember this. Free water, trees, free air.” He lifted the same hand she had clasped and pushed at and waved through the open space in front of the boulder where the mountain overlook fell away. “No screen. No toll.”
The breath caught in Allison’s throat for a second. “This is...free? We aren’t trespassing or... hunted?”
Silence for a second. The wind ruffled Mayer’s black hair, which was cut just short enough to be neat and fuzzy. “Does that disappoint you?”
She did not want to risk disappointing him by saying yes.
***
The picket signs lay underfoot and under dust. Mayer leaned around a white buttress and scanned the street. He could read some of the signs under the grime.
‘Our property is ours!’
‘Impeach McCail-Time!’
and the brand name of the moment, ‘CorpCaptain’.
Mayer leaned back and pushed himself against the lukewarm wall. A blue light with a tail of thick air swooshed by perpendicular to him. Mayer leaned out with palm extended –left hand, braced with the metal straps like spider’s legs between his dark fingers–and shot a heatblast in the direction of the initiating one. He caught the slight recoil in the set of his feet and in the thick muscle of his arms. He was twenty-eight years old and three hundred years in his past, helping to kill the remaining Democratic first-worlders.
Two things had/would come from this event; the legalization of time travel within and only within the Continuity Bureau, and the sea beginning to rise. The current commander, Ashleigh-Time, had seen a Line where the prevention of the riot, which an average person would profess would prevent the degradation of society which came after it, actually had none of the recovery the main Line had managed 300 years of turmoil and reorganization later.
Seven agents had been sent back; four adults and three apprentices with the augmentation-helmets still cradling their faces. Two of the adults, as far as Mayer could guess from their chopped-off signals, had been trampled when the crowd rioted.
A barrage of heatblasts ate away the white wall next to Mayer’s face. He waited, inching back, then turned and entered a metal door in the same wall. It let him into the gutted building, with its girders and piles of rubble. He jumped over and around them and quickly let himself out an identical door in the streetward wall. He raised his hand and sighted on the gunman, who now had his business suit-clad back facing Mayer and was creeping, or at least walking with a stoop, toward the ruined corner.
Someone jumped in front of the businessman, down off of the white building. It was AJ–Meyer had a quick look at his red hair and golden helmet before he blasted the businessman.
Mayer stepped over the detritus to stand before AJ with a disapproving look. “You are not so fast yet.”
“I am too. You see that? Swoop!–like Superman.”
“You know how invincible you are, “ growled Mayer. “Go track the signals from your friends. I’ll bet they’re dead.”
AJ blanched, and Mayer almost felt sorry for him. As the apprentice ran off, Mayer picked his own cautious way through the streets to see if any more people were alive. Time Agents had not been sent–were never sent–to kill. But they had myriad ways to let people get killed by their own decisions. All Time was/is, sometimes, was/is decisions.
Mayer, though, let his thoughts fall into other grooves and critiqued AJ’s rash behavior. So many times he had seen apprentices act quick and invincible, like cartoon characters beneath anvils, in their maturing ages. Some became wiser. Some died. Some made it to the highest echelons of power and lived perfectly content lives, never knowing how foolish they were. Such injustice rankled Mayer and he was glad to see that it still was a small flame beneath the fiery emotion that existed in him when he critiqued his own callousness.
I sound far too old and eccentric myself.
Funny how the human mind still managed things like that, when he walked on the ground of three hundred years before his birth.
***
When their car arrived, five time-travelers got in. The two adults’ demises churned up a wave of mourning that Mayer knew would tsunami over his emotions once he was safely home.
AJ and the others lounged back in their seats as the chevrons aligned. Said one, in the manner of lesser men’s rumors about whom dating whom; “So what if, you went forward in time to a point before your own death. Then you went back and lived a normal life, right up to that point. When you got there, It’d be your future and your past.”
“Oooh, Ahh–“ The appreciation of the paradox warmed the agent’s voices.
Mayer wondered about it. That was a different one than the usual, which involved twins and black holes or grandmothers and suicides.
He liked the sense of infinity it gave. Like looking down into a mirror lain below the base of a ladder.
***
He tried it in a moment of singular free time and singular annoyance, when Ashleigh-Time had been bringing in publicity for the agency. Unfortunately, the Earth was back to life enough that meant things like jingles, full theme-songs, pop connections, mysterious electronic melodies playing to recruit young people. Mayer was only in his thirties by his home Time-count, but he felt gray. He had seen many die, and more make mistakes that needed to be gone back to again and again, changing little things. Time is/was a puzzle, and humans had the edge-pieces only.
It was forbidden, but Mayer felt no thrill when he traveled to the Future. He stepped out of the car into breathable, green-scented air.
He smiled. Indeed he resisted shouting for joy, that the recreation had gone so well that he could stand here now and see purple-misted mountains in the distance. A deer high-stepped away from the car in the clearing on its thin legs.
It was not hard to find an animal which would suffice; one which lived long, on sustainable plant matter, and would not be noticed. He made the turtle an enclosure with living trees and grasses growing in it and with its edge lapped by a lake too shallow here to harbor snakes, but with the mesh to let in small fish. He put a plastic crate which would not degrade that it could shelter under. He thought for a time of what message, if any, to leave. Should it be a complex one? How much would men of this era understand If peace and paradise had finally come and the Agency was not longer needed? Should it be one explaining his reasoning and his tiredness, or one of more universal value?
Finally he settled on something which surprised him and wrote it on the turtle in a space-quality marker from the leadership’s office. He looked at his watch and memorized the digits.
***
He retired from the Continuity Bureau upon his return, before they could investigate. He spent the rest of his days in the countryside of France, which became steadily less overshadowed by smog as life and government went on. His favorite pastime was writing haikus and showing them to people who would tell him that they had an incorrect number of syllables. Each time he had a different answer as to why such an act represented life. He grew old, watching government stabilize and the Agency quiet. He grew to be seventy-four. He never once forgot the test.
At seventy-four he thought he had lived enough. Indeed he had thought this before then, but had remembered the test.
He walked through the streets and watched the happy human children play and was glad, in the intellectual part of him which wanted his species to survive.
He walked out into the country and through a new forest.
He watched himself build the cage for the turtle and write the message on its shell. As his past self walked away, Mayer came forward, stooped and unlocked the door for the turtle, and jogged to catch up to his younger-looking self. He stepped one step in its shadow and felt a lurch as the paradox took him.
Einstein had insisted that no man could be in two places at once. Could one man be twice in one place?
It snapped together the walls of Mayer’s existence. He died there, never knowing what changes had occurred, never caring though not out of lack of conscience, never remembering some of the things he had forgotten, in his long retirement, about how Time travels.
The turtle carried the truth and the second side of the coin out to civilization.
On its shell was written the extremes of Mayer’s age– one and seventy two–and, between them, the symbol for infinity. Such had been his true lifespan. Such would be his true life.
1 % 7 4
“One Thousand Directions
Streaming away in the wilderness
Valleys between mountains.”
Allison said, “It has the wrong amount of syllables.”
Mayer stared from his boulder perch to the tree-carpeted mountain across the steep valley.“I don’t care.
“Life doesn’t have enough time to worry about syllables.”
Allison picked up the red backpack from the grassy ground and parted the analog-cloth.
“Don’t take anything out yet.”
She looked up at him and thought that he looked like a guru, a brown man seated on a boulder. A cold breeze between the mountains blew through her senses. “Why not?”
“Come here. Look at this.”
Allison resealed the pack by pressing her fingertips against the separated edges and moved to beside the boulder. He extended one hand to her without turning his face or stare. She clambered up, and crouched behind him while the Earth sussurated around and above them through the trees.
He must have sensed her nervousness and said “Remember--” as she said “What?” “What?” was drowned out like static by a trumpet.
“Remember this. Free water, trees, free air.” He lifted the same hand she had clasped and pushed at and waved through the open space in front of the boulder where the mountain overlook fell away. “No screen. No toll.”
The breath caught in Allison’s throat for a second. “This is...free? We aren’t trespassing or... hunted?”
Silence for a second. The wind ruffled Mayer’s black hair, which was cut just short enough to be neat and fuzzy. “Does that disappoint you?”
She did not want to risk disappointing him by saying yes.
***
The picket signs lay underfoot and under dust. Mayer leaned around a white buttress and scanned the street. He could read some of the signs under the grime.
‘Our property is ours!’
‘Impeach McCail-Time!’
and the brand name of the moment, ‘CorpCaptain’.
Mayer leaned back and pushed himself against the lukewarm wall. A blue light with a tail of thick air swooshed by perpendicular to him. Mayer leaned out with palm extended –left hand, braced with the metal straps like spider’s legs between his dark fingers–and shot a heatblast in the direction of the initiating one. He caught the slight recoil in the set of his feet and in the thick muscle of his arms. He was twenty-eight years old and three hundred years in his past, helping to kill the remaining Democratic first-worlders.
Two things had/would come from this event; the legalization of time travel within and only within the Continuity Bureau, and the sea beginning to rise. The current commander, Ashleigh-Time, had seen a Line where the prevention of the riot, which an average person would profess would prevent the degradation of society which came after it, actually had none of the recovery the main Line had managed 300 years of turmoil and reorganization later.
Seven agents had been sent back; four adults and three apprentices with the augmentation-helmets still cradling their faces. Two of the adults, as far as Mayer could guess from their chopped-off signals, had been trampled when the crowd rioted.
A barrage of heatblasts ate away the white wall next to Mayer’s face. He waited, inching back, then turned and entered a metal door in the same wall. It let him into the gutted building, with its girders and piles of rubble. He jumped over and around them and quickly let himself out an identical door in the streetward wall. He raised his hand and sighted on the gunman, who now had his business suit-clad back facing Mayer and was creeping, or at least walking with a stoop, toward the ruined corner.
Someone jumped in front of the businessman, down off of the white building. It was AJ–Meyer had a quick look at his red hair and golden helmet before he blasted the businessman.
Mayer stepped over the detritus to stand before AJ with a disapproving look. “You are not so fast yet.”
“I am too. You see that? Swoop!–like Superman.”
“You know how invincible you are, “ growled Mayer. “Go track the signals from your friends. I’ll bet they’re dead.”
AJ blanched, and Mayer almost felt sorry for him. As the apprentice ran off, Mayer picked his own cautious way through the streets to see if any more people were alive. Time Agents had not been sent–were never sent–to kill. But they had myriad ways to let people get killed by their own decisions. All Time was/is, sometimes, was/is decisions.
Mayer, though, let his thoughts fall into other grooves and critiqued AJ’s rash behavior. So many times he had seen apprentices act quick and invincible, like cartoon characters beneath anvils, in their maturing ages. Some became wiser. Some died. Some made it to the highest echelons of power and lived perfectly content lives, never knowing how foolish they were. Such injustice rankled Mayer and he was glad to see that it still was a small flame beneath the fiery emotion that existed in him when he critiqued his own callousness.
I sound far too old and eccentric myself.
Funny how the human mind still managed things like that, when he walked on the ground of three hundred years before his birth.
***
When their car arrived, five time-travelers got in. The two adults’ demises churned up a wave of mourning that Mayer knew would tsunami over his emotions once he was safely home.
AJ and the others lounged back in their seats as the chevrons aligned. Said one, in the manner of lesser men’s rumors about whom dating whom; “So what if, you went forward in time to a point before your own death. Then you went back and lived a normal life, right up to that point. When you got there, It’d be your future and your past.”
“Oooh, Ahh–“ The appreciation of the paradox warmed the agent’s voices.
Mayer wondered about it. That was a different one than the usual, which involved twins and black holes or grandmothers and suicides.
He liked the sense of infinity it gave. Like looking down into a mirror lain below the base of a ladder.
***
He tried it in a moment of singular free time and singular annoyance, when Ashleigh-Time had been bringing in publicity for the agency. Unfortunately, the Earth was back to life enough that meant things like jingles, full theme-songs, pop connections, mysterious electronic melodies playing to recruit young people. Mayer was only in his thirties by his home Time-count, but he felt gray. He had seen many die, and more make mistakes that needed to be gone back to again and again, changing little things. Time is/was a puzzle, and humans had the edge-pieces only.
It was forbidden, but Mayer felt no thrill when he traveled to the Future. He stepped out of the car into breathable, green-scented air.
He smiled. Indeed he resisted shouting for joy, that the recreation had gone so well that he could stand here now and see purple-misted mountains in the distance. A deer high-stepped away from the car in the clearing on its thin legs.
It was not hard to find an animal which would suffice; one which lived long, on sustainable plant matter, and would not be noticed. He made the turtle an enclosure with living trees and grasses growing in it and with its edge lapped by a lake too shallow here to harbor snakes, but with the mesh to let in small fish. He put a plastic crate which would not degrade that it could shelter under. He thought for a time of what message, if any, to leave. Should it be a complex one? How much would men of this era understand If peace and paradise had finally come and the Agency was not longer needed? Should it be one explaining his reasoning and his tiredness, or one of more universal value?
Finally he settled on something which surprised him and wrote it on the turtle in a space-quality marker from the leadership’s office. He looked at his watch and memorized the digits.
***
He retired from the Continuity Bureau upon his return, before they could investigate. He spent the rest of his days in the countryside of France, which became steadily less overshadowed by smog as life and government went on. His favorite pastime was writing haikus and showing them to people who would tell him that they had an incorrect number of syllables. Each time he had a different answer as to why such an act represented life. He grew old, watching government stabilize and the Agency quiet. He grew to be seventy-four. He never once forgot the test.
At seventy-four he thought he had lived enough. Indeed he had thought this before then, but had remembered the test.
He walked through the streets and watched the happy human children play and was glad, in the intellectual part of him which wanted his species to survive.
He walked out into the country and through a new forest.
He watched himself build the cage for the turtle and write the message on its shell. As his past self walked away, Mayer came forward, stooped and unlocked the door for the turtle, and jogged to catch up to his younger-looking self. He stepped one step in its shadow and felt a lurch as the paradox took him.
Einstein had insisted that no man could be in two places at once. Could one man be twice in one place?
It snapped together the walls of Mayer’s existence. He died there, never knowing what changes had occurred, never caring though not out of lack of conscience, never remembering some of the things he had forgotten, in his long retirement, about how Time travels.
The turtle carried the truth and the second side of the coin out to civilization.
On its shell was written the extremes of Mayer’s age– one and seventy two–and, between them, the symbol for infinity. Such had been his true lifespan. Such would be his true life.
