When I was 14 I wrote a short story about computers taking over. They didn't believe in killing humans, so they built what was essentially a giant apartment complex in northern north america to sequester humankind from the rest of the creatures on earth.
Part of the premise was that construction and farm equipment had led the revolution and helped herd humans from their various homes worldwide into the new one.
Without humans to fuck everything up food crops and forests abounded, and endangered animals recovered.
Those humans who lived in the complex were forced to subsist on nutrition drinks and vitamin pills. They no longer got to enjoy delicious food and the outdoors. They were deemed too much of a threat by the ruling tractors.
I wrote this story in 1994. My creative writing teacher wanted me to justify how in the world tractors and construction equipment would have ended up with computers in them. Also, how in the world the machines with computers in them would communicate with other computers.
I was the sort of person to become very discouraged by criticism. I threw the papers the story was written on in the trash.
If I wrote this now it would hardly even seem like sci-fi at all.
I still think about the parts I hadn't written yet - about those human holdouts who were trying to live outside the complex and fight the machines. About the "traitors" to the human race known as the Amish, who were still allowed to live on and farm their own land.
(Really, the remaining indigenous peoples around the world would better fit in this category, it's just that I was a teenager raised in Ohio who was writing this story.)
She grasps at shadows, chasing them in the dark;
This is when the shadows come, images of what could be
They are tenuous at best, formless and almost out of reach.
There are two choices she hesitates between
Because they are always so lovely in their delicate state,
Weaving and looping in elegant arrangements,
But should she turn on the light and try to give them form--
Crafting words and shaping them with phrases set down on a page--
The edges of the shadows shift; their forms just as pleasing,
But somehow different from before. The images painted
By the prose have undulated, have metamorphosed.
Sometimes the words, ill-remembered, are no match
For what she heard the shadows whisper in the stillness of the night.
Other times a flash of brilliance solidifies the wisps of vapor
Into something richer even than what the shadows had portrayed.
But the darkness and the stillness are the moments
When these breathless vapors speak. It seems a shame
When they are so generous to whisper their sweet expression,
To weave their pictures in the air,
For her to grab them and pull them down
And batter them, badger them into submission.
And so she closes her eyes
And listens to their intimate rhapsody.
And sometimes, what they spoke is lost to the darkness forever.
Other times, they speak the same words enough
For her to tame them easily
But always, her life has been enriched
Because she listened.
AU where the Mutant Liberation Front aren't terrorists, they're disaffected mutant millennials who fight oppression in ways the X-Men never thought about. Hell, they fight kinds of oppression the X-Men, as a group of primarily white cis middle aged people, never faced. These are the peeps looking after the homeless mutant youths, and standing up for the rights of lgbtqa mutants, and they're branded troublemakers and terrorists by Fox News and shit, but everyone who isn't far right knows better.
The crunching of gravel had given way to the steady sound of his feet treading on asphalt as he left the place that he had formerly called home. Leaving had almost been an impulse decision. He had packed a bag with a few days' worth of clothing and all of his cash and gone out the front door. No one had stopped him or even questioned him. He'd simply walked away.
At first it had seemed quite an adventure. He went through town first, picked up the state highway and started north. North seemed like the right direction to go for whatever reason. He walked for hours, going beyond the borders of the area he knew, the rise and fall of the land now becoming unfamiliar. He went on and on, pushing through even as his feet began to ache, as the sun rose higher in the sky and as doubts about what he'd gotten himself into began to creep in.
The fog that fell that evening had an otherworldly quality, and he drew far to the side of the road to avoid being hit. He'd never stopped anywhere for a meal and his stomach was twisting with hunger. He had no idea where he was, or what was nearby, so he didn't know when he'd get a chance to stop and eat. He had begun to flag when he saw it, just a squat box beside the road far off through the mist. Somehow he knew that if he just made it that far he would be okay. So he continued forward, tired walking steadily.
He was right. Oh God, was he glad he was right.
The neon sign was the first thing that clued him in. Erma's, it said. The script seemed old-fashioned, something he would have seen in movies from fifty years ago or better. He stepped through the front door into the diner, feeling like he was shaking off the fog in the same way a dog shakes off the water after a dip in the sea. The place was small, only four booths and a counter with stools lined up along its length, and he took a seat on one of them.
"Cup of coffee?" the woman behind the counter asked. Asking seemed to be a mere formality as she was already flipping over the mug that sat on the place mat.
"No," he said hastily. "No, thank you. I was hoping for a glass of water."
"Oh, you were," she said, an eyebrow raising slightly, her tone just on the edge of being sardonic. "You do intend to order something."
He nodded, bringing a hand to pass over his forehead. "Don't worry about that. I'm starving."
“Are you?” She squinted at him and then pointed at the placemat. “Here you are.” She put a hand on her hip, not moving off, seeming to scrutinize him as she waited.
He looked down at it, self-conscious, hoping she would at least shift her weight a half-step away from him. He didn’t get his wish. Instead of dwelling on it he focused his eyes on the letters on the page and used one finger to trace from item to item.
Someone settled onto the stool beside him as he worked to make up his mind. “Coffee, Bill?” the waitress said, sounding much friendlier in the presence of someone who was apparently a regular.
“You know it,” the man said, his cup already being filled to the brim by the woman on the other side of the counter. “So who did the cat drag in tonight, Erma?”
“You can tell as well as I can,” Erma said.
Bill seemed to turn slightly in his direction. “What’s your name, boy?”
He looked at the man, puzzled. “You’re talking to me?”
Bill laughed. “Yeah, talking to you. We don’t get many new faces in here.”
“Oh. I’m Evan.” He took Bill’s proffered hand and shook it, a bit bewildered.
“Evan,” Bill said, as though tasting the word for the first time.
“Let the boy order, Bill,” Erma said. “And don’t be driving my customers away with your nosy questions.”
“He doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to,” Bill said.
Evan looked at Erma and hesitated for a moment, glancing at Bill before speaking. “I’d like a double cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake. And could I get that glass of water?”
Erma didn’t answer, but she did turn to get a glass and filled it before turning back to him and setting it down with a clunk. “That oughtta hold you,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Bill said, drawing Evan’s attention. “That just means she likes you.”
Evan smiled slightly and let out a small chuckle. He felt he was out of his element, something he should have expected when he’d started out on this journey, but of course he hadn’t been thinking of much when he took off this morning.
Bill took a sip of his coffee before addressing Evan again. “So what brings you out here? I didn’t see a car out front. I thought I’d be the only one in here when I came in.”
Evan took a long gulp of his water before squaring his shoulders and choosing to respond. He might as well; Bill seemed a fairly persistent sort and Evan had nothing better to do. “I walked.”
Bill tilted his head and his mouth curled into a surprised, bewildered kind of expression. “Well, well,” he said. “You must have come from quite a ways off just to come and have a bite to eat at Erma’s. You hear that, Erma? Your reputation precedes you.”
Erma waved him off with a grumpy huff, now standing at the grill, keeping an eye on the burgers as they cooked.
Evan chuckled more openly now, picking up his glass for another drink.
“You look younger than you really are. At least I assume,” Bill said.
Evan swallowed some water and lowered his glass. “I’m sixteen,” he said, unsure why he was telling the truth. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do, in this situation. But somehow he felt like he trusted Bill, as short of an acquaintance as they had.
“Yep. That’s about what you look like.” At this point Erma set a piece of pie in front of the man and he picked up the fork. “So what’s a whippersnapper like you doing so far off the beaten path without your parents?”
“I don’t need my parents if I want to go to a diner,” Evan said.
“Heavens, no,” Bill said. “You’re practically a grown man.” He took a bite of his pie.
“I am,” Evan said. “I can make my own decisions.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Bill said. “Sixteen is an age when you’re testing out those wings of yours, seeing if you can fly and how far.”
“It’s true,” Evan said, a bit defensively. He knew what those kinds of words meant coming from the mouth of an adult. It meant there was an underlying sarcasm there, a condescension that Evan had always hated.
Bill took a sip of his coffee before answering. “It is true. You seem to think I doubt it.”
Erma interrupted then, setting down Evan’s plate and then picking up his water glass to refill. “Don’t harass the boy, Bill.”
“It’s a simple conversation, Erma,” Bill said, raising one placating hand. “Mind your business and we’ll mind our own.”
Erma scoffed and went over to scoop up the ice cream for the milkshake. “If the boy doesn’t leave a tip I’m blaming you,” she called over to him.
Bill laughed. “You wouldn’t stiff an old lady on account of me, would you?” he asked Evan.
Erma made a sound of irritation. “You’re older than me by a coon’s age, Bill.”
Bill laughed harder. Evan only glanced from one to the other. Bill calmed after a few moments, rubbing his hand down his face.
Maybe if he started eating it would cut this conversation short. Evan took a nice big bite of his burger.
“So where did you come from, walking all the way out here?” Bill asked. “Nearest town’s two miles up the road and if you lived there I’d already a-known you.”
“Somewhere else,” Evan mumbled after he’d swallowed. That was obvious enough.
“I just wonder because you’re out awful late to make it back wherever you come from.” Bill nodded at Erma as she set Evan’s milkshake down and she turned to get him some more coffee. “Don’t want to find out you got mugged or something on your way back because you were out on the highway at all hours of the night.”
Evan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m not going back, so it doesn’t matter.” And then he sighed, because once again he was telling the truth even though this man could report him as a runaway and end this endeavor of his pretty quickly.
“Oh, aren’t you.” Bill didn’t seem at all surprised to hear this. “You have a place to stay the night, then?”
“No, not exactly,” Evan said. In point of fact he figured he’d end up going out back of the diner and sleeping among the brush back there.
Bill pushed back the plate that had formerly held his pie. “And you don’t think your family will miss you.”
“If they do, it’s too bad,” Evan said. “I’m already gone and that’s not going to change.”
“Hm.” Bill took a drink from his fresh cup of coffee. “Like I said, sixteen is a rough age. You want to be an adult, but you still have some lessons to learn about life. And I don’t believe walking off on your own is a good way to learn ‘em.”
Evan shook his head slightly and picked up his milkshake to take a good-sized bite of the thick ice cream. “Well, as far as my parents are concerned, I’m still a kid.”
“Maybe,” Bill said. “But they love you, and I know you have them worried sick right now.”
That was one thing that had been plaguing Evan’s mind for the last few hours. He may not get the independence he was hoping for at home, but he knew his mother would have been devastated when she realized Evan had gone. “It don’t make much difference right now,” Evan said.
“Maybe,” Bill said again. “Here’s what I’ll say. Sleep on it, and if you still feel that way, go on your way. But if you feel any way else, I think you’d better head home.”
Evan’s brow furrowed slightly. “Yeah. I’ll sleep on it.”
“Now the question is, where are you going to do that?” Bill stood and turned toward the door. He flipped the ‘Open’ sign around and nodded to Evan. “You can sleep in one of the booths there, if that’s agreeable to you. Won’t be the most comfortable thing, but you’ll have a roof over your head.”
“Bill,” Erma said. “It’s my place.”
“I own it by half, Erma,” Bill said. “I’m giving him his meal free, too, and don’t try to stop me.”
Evan didn’t know what to say. He looked from Erma to Bill and back again. “Only if it’s okay with you,” he told her.
“Of course it is,” Erma said. “I was only giving Bill here a hard time.”
“Okay.” It was kind of silly, lying down on a booth bench, but he found now that he was exhausted and rested his head against the windowsill with his arm curled beneath it. The sounds of Bill and Erma cleaning up and then leaving were only in the background as he fell deeply into sleep.
The next morning was bright and sunny and the light awoke him as soon as sunrise had poked its head over the mountains across the way. Evan cleared a catch out of his throat and opened his eyes. His arm was asleep and he sat up, twisting as he did to tuck his legs beneath the table. He noticed now that the window was streaked and clouded. That wasn’t the sort of thing he would have expected upon awakening here; Erma had seemed a proud proprietor and he hadn’t thought she’d let her place get as messy as all that.
Then his gaze went out into the main dining area. He blinked. Everything was covered in an age’s worth of dust, and part of the ceiling was coming down. There were no dishes on the shelves. The seats of the stools were all gone, pulled off and taken elsewhere, apparently. He scooted out of the booth and stood. All the vinyl covers of the booths were cracked with age. He picked up his bag and walked gingerly over to the doorway, crunching over drywall dust or whatever it was that covered the floor. Instead of a door was a loosely-attached piece of plywood, and he pushed it outward enough to make a gap for himself to move outside.
He spun in a circle. None of this looked the way it had seemed to, last night in the fog. The parking area had large potholes in it, the blacktop crumbling, and the paint on the building was faded with age. He looked up and down the state highway that ran before him. There was nothing, there was nobody nearby. He turned in the direction he’d been heading, north, and gazed down the road for a long time. Then he turned and started walking south.
From http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts : Write a story about the personification of Death, where Death is someone no one would ever guess.
~*~
Life was a gift, this she knew. She had never taken it for granted, despite the pain, the hardship she had endured in the time since the doctor had entered her examination room and pronounced that over her the diagnosis.
Leukemia.
Each treatment was more difficult than the last. She could count down the years, ennumerate life events as milestones that were marked by which course of radiation or of chemotherapy she had gone through. She could rattle off all the theories about the effect diet had on her illness, recite all the prayers that had been pronounced over her in an attempt to appease the God she believed in. She had tried everything she knew to mitigate the pain, the discomfort caused by her treatments and the disease itself.
In the end, her disease was too strong, the treatments inaffective. She had lingered for longer than the doctors had expected, but her time was coming to an end. Hospice care was what was being afforded to her now, and she was grateful for their care in attempting to make her comfortable. Each day was a miracle to her, awakening peacefully before the pain flooded back to her. Yet she was grateful for each moment that was still afforded to her.
One of the benefits of hospice care were the therapy pets who were brought in to comfort the afflicted. There was a dog that came by every day, whose coat she enjoyed stroking. There was a cat who would often spend time sleeping at her feet. During those times she was careful not to move. It seemed a shame to disturb the creature.
That day, in particular, was difficult. Somehow she knew she was nearing the end. The world was foggy and indistinct. She tried to swallow and found her mouth was entirely dry. She rested her head back, rested her limbs, rested her mind. It was coming.
Among the blur that her vision had become she saw a shape moving near the doorway. She lifted her head an infinitesimal amount to try to gaze in that direction. The creature that approached her stood in stark contrast to everything around it, the lines sharp; its eyes were bright, and it came to the end of the bed, attempting to hop up on the bed on its springy little legs.
"You're a new one," she murmured to the kitten, the faintest of smiles curving her lips. The kitten was calico, its fuzzy little tail twitching as it attempted to keep its balance. In the end it had to clamber up the hanging blanket with its claws to reach the surface of the mattress. It hopped forward in that silly scamper that kittens often engage in, coming to a stop on her chest.
"Hi, little baby." The patient could no longer bring her trembling hand to her chest, and instead simply watched the kitten with an affectionate gaze. The creature stepped forward, the soft whiskers brushing her chin, and brought its paws to rest on her face so that it could touch its nose to hers.
When the nurse found her she had a gentle smile on her face. He covered the dead woman's face with her sheet and went to record the time of death. As he went he brushed past the elderly therapy cat that had often slept at the patient's feet - the only therapy cat the hospice kept.
From /r/writingprompts : "Families don't exist. Children are taken from their parents and given to the Department of Child Rearing."
~*~
He was six months old when they came for him.
I had known the time was approaching, of course. Everyone knew the only thing the Department of Child Rearing waited for was for the proper timing for the child to be weaned. I prepared for the final day as though it were a funeral, so grieved I was at the prospect of losing him. I had always been taught that our culture's method of hanndling childhood and adolescence was the best and most natural one, so this reluctance I felt for our time together to end took me by surprise. What was this feeling I felt toward him? It was protective, defensive; I knew I would long for him after he was gone.
I felt more and more anxious as the day neared. The day before they were meant to arrive a forbidden thought came to me. We should run. The very idea of it was enough to bring my heart into my throat. I had always been law-abiding and complied with all the regulations our society had placed on ordinary citizens. There was no way to get away with this plan, especially on such short notice. I would have to pose as a DCR employee, a child courier, and I would have to remain on the move at all times. Otherwise, someone would suspect me and it would be impossible to keep up the pretense that I was supposed to have him with me.
I arose early on the appointed day, dressing him in his sweetest outfit. The lovely baby blues of his shirt and little pants made him look like an angel. I put him to my breast and he suckled, his hand resting on my chest, his beautiful brown eyes gazing into mine. He'd always been connected to me, engaged in a way I'd never seen in other people's infants. I felt my throat constrict and tears misted up in my eyes. This day had come too soon. The appointed hour would come too soon.
So it was that at the time I was meant to be opening the door to greet the DCR courier, I was sitting on a park bench, the soft breeze washing over me as I held my son and wept. It was impossible to escape for long, though. The surveillance cameras that winked from every telephone pole made sure my infraction was no secret. Soon enough the courier was standing at my side.
"It's time," she said.
I stared ahead of me. "I know."
"There's no delaying this," she replied after a pause. "Hand him over."
I didn't move. The courier bent, grabbing my child about his middle and pulling him away from me.
He began to cry.
There was nothing to be done now. No assurances that he would be loved and cared for would assuage my grief.
He reached to draw her closer, but she turned her head, her body language saying more than an outright refusal ever could.
"So this is how it ends," he said. After all the arguments, all the shouting, the way the situation burned in his mind for weeks, he hadn't expected his own quiet acceptance.
He watched as she pulled back, her face carefully blank, the expression in her eyes like flint.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"No, you're not," he replied, and it was he who turned, it was he who walked away.
