Return of the Ten-Minute Story

A propos of nothing in particular:

"Every fight is the intersection of two stories," –Narrator, The Last Round

* * * * * *

Again, this is more like a half-hour story. The tone has been inflected by my consuming large quantities of IF*, which I am able to download to my palm pilot. So if the story seems to consist of a long string of descriptions of locations, objects, and oddly static people, that is a combination of my natural writing tendency and my current adventureading material.

I think it also has a certain Vintage flavour – not the excellent publishing house, but the heigh-ho arm-punching style of early-to-mid-era speculative fiction. Which is not my Usual Thing at all.

Are other writers this malleable when it comes to what they read? I feel like the text inhabits me, like I incarnate it while I'm reading it and for a few hours (or days) afterwards. The voice enters my voice -- it doesn't take over, but it definitely changes it. Sometimes I feed good writing into my brain, like putting --

My Dog, does anyone remember the Bugs Bunny storybook where he tries to get the machine to make him a carrot? By feeding it all kinds of objects with the right characteristics -- right shape, right color, and so on?

Like that.

-rf

*IF = Interactive Fiction. See Previous Entries

(*Note - this will be a fragment until I get the rest of it up, later tonight or tomorrow.)

Dr. Enderby’s School of Thought

(informally: "Poo School")

Shit can tell you a lot about the past, but I never thought of using it to predict the future until I went to Dr. Enderby’s school.

It’s too bad he founded the school in 1968. It was, still is, a series of overlapping stucco boxes with tiny, oddly-placed windows, narrow corridors, and depressing dark brick in every classroom. Studying there was like attending classes in a vacated sewer. Or maybe that’s the shit talking. A hundred years earlier or later and someone’s idea of functionality might have included comfort, pleasure, or the actual purpose of the rooms.

The teachers also seemed to have been built in the same era and never updated. Mr. Anders had shaggy collar-length hair, a moustache shaped like a furry brown staple, and tinted glasses. His assistant Norman looked ordinary enough, except that he always wore a tweed jacket. This suited him, but made him seem anachronistic, a space-traveller using old broadcasts who hasn’t yet discovered his error. When he stood next to Dr. Anders, he seemed like a cutting from the larger plant.