Micro story 3: An untitled book

The two children spent many hours that year, amusing themselves by listening to the stories they recorded in their book.  Until, as you might expect, they outgrew the need to hear them.

They kept the book though.

The terrier and his faithful companion returned to their home world by another way, and were never again seen by the children.  Before they left, they recorded their own story in the book, though the children were unaware of this at the time.  Their account of the incident with the chickens is unique, to say the least.

Micro story # 2 - Involvement

“Tom, I was already practicing on one of the big machines next door when they moved me, and I was starting to make progress.  Can you get me moved back over there, or can you get me an interface for over here?”

“I’ll have to check, Bob.  I’ll see what I can do.”

I knew Tom was good to his word, but it might take several minutes.  I don’t like to just sit and do nothing, not when I’m here being paid to work.  I can daydream at home.

Right in front of me on my desk was, of all things, an electric typewriter.  I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’ve gotten more practical use out of my typing class than all the other high school classes.  The only sheet of paper I saw in the whole room was the one in my typewriter.  The room itself, though older and obviously smaller than the room next door, was kept in good repair.  It looked to have been cleaned within an inch of its life; if there was any more paper here, it was well hidden.

So I typed some practice lines.  None of this silly “quick brown foxes come to the aid of their country” practice stuff would do.  I thought, how about a fake weekly report?

 

Mon.:  1000 units shipped (16 returned)
Tue.:    812 units (Eric’s last day; party ensued) 
Wed.:  1204 units (made up for Tuesday)

That’s as far as I got.

Right then, a young woman (who looked like she could have been my daughter’s twin), walked into the room and stood at my left.  “Tom said to give you this, and you’ll need to work from here for now.”

The interface was a combination face mask and goggles, with what looked like a chin guard.  So I put it on, and was surprised to see a power on light and the outline of a keyboard appear a few feet in front of me.  Surprised and relieved.  I was concerned that the image might appear right on the goggles, far too short a distance for me to focus.

“Okay Bob, first look towards the blank wall straight ahead, it’s less distracting.  Next, what you’re going to want to do is reach your fingers to the chin piece.  Watch the keys in the image in front of you, and touch your fingers to the home row keys, just like back in typing class.”

When I touched the chin piece, I saw an image of my fingers.  When I was positioned on the home row, red dots of light appeared on my “fingernails”.

“Hold that steady until it registers.”

The red dots disappeared.

“Now, set your password.  The first letter is your initial.  The next bit you choose, five or six characters, something you can remember.  Then the numbers…18614 for today.  That will change fairly often, and we’ll tell you.  And that’s it.  I see you’ve been practicing.  Cute.”

She flicked the top left corner of my typewritten page with her finger (snap!) and my fake report text went away somehow.  She pushed the typewriter towards the back of my desk.  “Use the space in front here.”

“So I don’t have to tap the chin piece now?”

“No, just at the first of the shift to register.  Touch the top of the desk.  The interface assumes left pinkie = a, left ring finger = s, left middle finger = d, and so on.  Touch typing, right?  Stretch your fingers out to reach the other letters, numbers, symbols and like that.  All you need is a light touch.  In fact, if you watch the experienced people, they’re pretty much motionless.  They stretch their fingers to reach the letters and numbers, but they hardly move their hands at all.  You’ll pick up on it fast.”

She added, “Not everything you key in will make sense, not consciously.  Don’t worry about that, it will be all right anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you might type, ‘It will be orange except when it’s level’.  That’s one I did yesterday.  And there will be small stray groups of letters and numbers.  It might actually be ‘except L5X when it’s NY30*T level’.  Don’t do any editing, leave all that it; it’ll be used.  Remember, you now have access to a slightly different part of your mind.  Things you don’t realize.”

I recalled their motto, “Not knowing, you know”.  And I wondered how it was that I had this “slightly different mind access” here; maybe they put something in the water.  Or in the vending machines.  Probably both.

“Computers don’t have minds like that, so we people have to be involved.  Just go flat out as fast as you can.  Have no doubts.”

“Oh, one more thing.  Sometimes you’ll see an image in front of you, like an aerial photo in 3D.  Let the lights appear where they need to be.  You’ll find your fingers are typing five digit numbers.  Don’t fight it and don’t stop, that’s good raw data the computer needs.”

“So, you okay to start?”

“I’m good.”

It took me a while to get up to speed.  The first line was gibberish.

Eiouy ert6pip wopo  ty7upwen  i0p-sjhe0 uit6pj  tpy  euiop; t ws0elmj t08ul;j0w tgujppw 8-

The second line, more gibberish.  At least, mostly.

9078 John we’re up w0[j0] top without mph pjs-e7u parent day.  Bjhpdf took down pi’;’ west pocket u

Then something interesting.

“Your Calcium number will not double.”

The Evening Rambler for the last day of November 2013

I'm making this up as I go along, so I don't know what direction it will take.  Welcome to live blogging!

We had a good Thanksgiving, my family went to my mother-in-law's and we had a good visit.  Traditional food was the order of the day, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cole slaw, rolls, cranberry sauce, celery stuffed with creamed cheese, and of course pies.  Two choices this year, pumpkin and chocolate.  As I do every year, I asked for a small slice of both since I couldn't decide.  And that's not a lie, I didn't want to pass one of them up.  One of these years I might just choose one, and everyone will look at me funny and ask if I feel all right.

There's an old saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too".  No cake though, as I mentioned Thanksgiving was a day for pie.  The early results are in, and it seems like the old saying applies to pie as well.

So I've been trying to come up with more stories.  A few days ago, I thought of a dialogue that could happen between just some average guy, and an alien.  It went on for a while, and I thought it was pretty clever.  At the last, the alien starts to walk off (presumably to his spaceship), and said, "You won't see me again".

It had possibilities, and now I sure wish I could recall their conversation.  I have got to start carrying a notepad at all times and write this stuff down while it's fresh.

It was a nice fall day today.  The fall season ran kind of late here, but by now all the colors are over and most of the leaves are down.  Except for the big pin oak tree in my front yard.  It will release leaves a few batches at a time, and it's liable to still have some old leaves to drop through the winter and maybe as late as the first of spring.  It does that most every year.  What are you gonna do?

Tomorrow December begins, and it seems like a clean break between Thanksgiving and the Advent / Christmas season this year.  For me, anyway.  I know shopping and running around will happen, but I'm not in a panic about that.  We have our tree up and the lights put on; the boxes of ornaments have been brought up from the archives.  We're poised to begin.

A micro story

All the big fans were accounted for, he had put the last one in the shed and taken a quick inventory before he walked out and locked the door.  He dreaded to think of the electric bill, but there was no help for it.  This had to be done.

It was a nice sunny afternoon; the last of the seasonal rains were well past.  He walked back and looked over the site, the pond was as dry as he could expect.  He opened the door to the truck.  “That’s the last one”, he said.  “It’s time to go now”.

One Saint Patrick's Day

Last year for St. Patrick’s, my wife, my son, my youngest daughter and I went to a place in Shawnee Kansas called Waxy O’Shea’s, for lunch and to listen to some great Irish music. Our son is home from Missouri State, so we decided since we each enjoyed the outing so much last year, we’d do that again. My wife couldn’t find a calendar on their website, so we weren’t sure what music, if any, would be there. We decided we’d drive over and check it out anyway. If there wasn’t live music, or if the lines were too long, we’d make the decision – stay and wait our turn for supper, or go elsewhere. At the last minute before we left home, my wife found an Applebee’s gift card and put it in her purse, just in case.

That turned out to be a good idea.

We drove into the parking lot and immediately saw the sign on the building:

SPACE AVAILABLE.

Now if I understand those letters right, in that order, it means, “Nobody Home, We’re Closed Now”. Our other clue was all the plywood on the windows…The Shawnee location of Waxy O’Shea’s was no more.

My wife had noticed an Applebee’s when we passed it earlier, so we went there and were well treated. No Irish music, though.

On our way back to Missouri, I’d listen from time to time to the conversation between my wife and daughter in the back seat. I don’t always quite hear what’s being said and I’m not sure what it was about, but one thing I heard sounded like “butterbean”.

Hmmm…that could be a fun name for a story character.

“Dear, you had a call while you were out, a Mister Butterbean.”

“Was it Charles Butterbean?”

“No…that doesn’t sound right.”

“Was it George, then?”

“Yes, that’s it, George Butterbean. He said you’d know what it was about.”

“Okay, I’ll call him back.”

George Butterbean is the founder of Butterbean and Associates, importers of all kinds of hard to find items of value. I could say many of the items were impossible to find, but I’d have to leave it at that. It would be wise if I said no more.

George had recently turned over the daily operation of the business to his son Charles. One thing I learned early was to never, and I mean never, call him Charlie. He really hates that, so it’s Charles or C. W.

I had a pretty good idea of what the call was about, and I had been expecting and dreading it. I couldn’t ignore the call (business is business, after all), and while I was glad it was George rather than Charles who called, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to become involved.

Call it a premonition, if you must. I’ve really got to start paying attention to those…

Never forget The Porch!

That month of February just seemed to flee; don't know what it was so afraid of, but if you look quickly you can see it vanishing in the distance.

Just about gone, and there's not a thing to be done about it. But everyone's tired of hearing about how fast time flies when you get older, we never seemed to notice that when we were young, blah, blah, blah.

So, what have I been doing instead of posting here more often? Home repairs? Not exactly. But we did have to call the overhead door guy three Sundays ago. The garage door opened, my wife backed the car out, then I pushed the button to bring the door back down. Instead, it failed in the open position, and it didn't take long to figure out we weren't going to get it to close. Since we couldn't secure the house, we skipped church, much to my annoyance. Within a couple of hours the repairman came out, and he made a good repair...the door runs more smoothly than before.

That, and our dryer failed on us. The appliance repairman gave us a choice, he could put in a new motor. But that would have been more than half the cost of a new dryer, and there were no guarantees how long we'd have until something else failed on the old machine, the heating element, perhaps. Sears happened to be running a special - free delivery - so we now have a new dryer. Much better than what we were using. But, it's been a bit costly this month.

What I'm more excited about though, is I've been taking a continuing education class online, on writing for internet markets. I'm most of the way through the course, and I'm very encouraged. I had no idea how many different options their are for writing and having content published online...this course has been worth every penny.

One thing I will probably do is start a new blog, and monetize it. This will be a more focused effort, as soon as I decide what I want to write about.

But never fear, Poppy's Front Porch isn't going anywhere, I'm just expanding my opportunities to write. I will post more than the once a month rate so far this year, but it may only be just two to four times per month, at least for a while. It's possible I might move some subject matter over to the new blog, but right now I think the family stories, photographs, and much of the silliness will remain right here.