Seven stones…a short time travel story.

“How was it?”

“A lot of pony tails, poodle skirts and saddle shoes,” said Amy.  “There was ANOTHER glitch, STELLA.  I was supposed to go to Paris in 1934, remember?”

“I’m working on it,” said Stella, looking at her computer.

“I don’t want to get STUCK anywhere.”

“I KNOW that.”

“What if I had to wear a poodle skirt!” groaned Amy, pacing back and forth.  “What if I end up like Tony Smart and I’m lost forever, somewhere in time?”

“I SAID, I’m working on it.”

“If you’re going to lose me, lose me where somewhere nice.”

“Did you find anything?  Maybe you should talk about THAT, instead of whining.”

“WHINING?” shouted Amy.  “You should try traveling through time.  Perhaps you’d be more understanding if you were the one hurled through space. More understanding if you were the one who landed on a camel.”

“You only landed on a camel once, and I said I was sorry.  You told me the camel was more surprised than you were.”

“It’s not about camel.  I was in the DESERT, when I was supposed to be in…”

“London.  Yes, I know.”

“The guy with the camel almost fainted,” she snickered.

“Did you find a stone?” asked Stella, typing as fast as she could.

“No.  But I know where to find one,” she said, grinning.

“Really?” squeaked Stella.  “We’ll have three out of seven if you find it.”

“I know,” said Amy, frowning.

“Who’s guarding it?”

“A wizard using black magic and a monster or two. ”

“Are you going to need the dragons?”

“More than likely, but I’d like to try and get it by myself, before I call them.”

“Where is it?” asked Stella.

“O’hare airport, under one of the runways.”

“THE O’hare?  The airport in Chicago?”

“Is there another one?

Stella paled.  “You’re gonna need the dragons,” she said.

“Not if you can get me to the airport when they are ready to bury the stone.”

“That’s pretty exacting.”

“You need to get me there when the Wiz is ready to put the stone into the ground.  The airport opened in 1955 for commercial use.  We have to find out when the Wiz was there, hiding the stone.  It had to be just before the runways were poured.”

“I’ll find out, but you better take care of that arm, you’re dripping blood all over the floor.”

“Oh, sure, don’t ask me what BIT me, worry about the floor.”

“Looks like a canine bite, fangs of some kind, but not from a vamp, so I’m guessing a were, or alien thing, floating around in the ether. ”

“Your concern is touching.”

“I told you to look after it.  Go to the clinic and let them look at it.”

“They might want to quarantine me.”

“I doubt it,” said Stella, still not looking away from her computer screen.  “Did you sleep with the camel guy?”

“Is that ALL you ever think about?”

“No,” said Stella, calmly.  “Sometimes I think about pizza and french fries.”

“I think I hate you,” said Amy, looking at her arm.  “These puncture wounds are deep.”

Stella got up and looked at Amy’s bloody arm.  “Uh…”

“Ya think?” asked Amy.

“Could be,” said Stella.

“Whoever bit me was spelled and I’ve been poisoned?”

“Looks that way,” said Stella, pushing the emergency button.

“I hate when this happens,” sighed Amy, crashing to the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so…

I think this picture is sweet.  A little robot and his robot dog.  See, even when we imagine things to come, or things on a different planet/world, we can’t get away from who we are.  We put a dog in the picture because we love dogs.  Many sci-fi films, books, etc, include “pets,” or companion animals.  The people in those worlds aren’t that different from us because we can’t think past who we are.  There’s no place for our minds to go.

I could draw a string and write about it being a living entity but it would eventually end up thinking like a human, at least a little.  We ARE this thing called human and we can’t escape.  Even the things we “make up” are still who we are.  The above picture is cute because it’s a little boy and his dog in a strange world.  We don’t care about the world, or even the fact that the boy and dog are robots, we just love them anyway.  We think they are just like us.  We imagine that they have our feelings and thoughts.  That the little robot runs and his dog runs with him.  The dog is looking at him, just the way our dogs look at us.  We can’t help it.  We don’t even think about the boy being the dog’s pet.  Not really.  But that’s more than possible on a different world.   Even the slender aerial on his head reminds us of his hair being out of place.  It makes us think, awwww.  His eyes are perfectly spaced, to draw us in.  Everything about him makes him seem real and one of us, even though we can plainly see that both robots are not human.

That’s how much we are locked in to being who we are.  We can’t imagine things past a certain point.  No matter how far out, we give whatever it is, a sense of humanity.  It’s all we know.  In stories trees can sing and shelter beings, they can even walk.  Mountains can speak and they sometimes have eyes.  We are literally prisoners, locked into a body and mind that can only go so far and do certain things.  We can learn.  We can do a lot of things, within our limits, but things have to make sense to our brains.  We can’t even imagine big numbers, or how truly far away some of the things we see in telescopes are.  That’s the thing, we too often refuse to acknowledge the fact that we have limits.

We are easily manipulated by what we see.  If the robots in the picture were ugly or threatening,we wouldn’t think they were cute we would want to disassemble them.  But the boy and his dog speak to a part of our brain that wants to care for and protect them.  It’s not a conscious thing.  We are wired to act that way.  If either of them were damaged, we would want to fix/help them.

They’ve done studies on faces.  Marilyn Monroe’s features were such (they measured) that they made people see her as a child, a baby, the distance between her eyes, etc.,triggered a certain response in those who saw her.  Basically, we’re just riding around in these bodies, doing as we’re told, seeing what our brains tell us is there, and how we should feel about all of that.

The robot is adorable and so is the dog. People would buy tiny images of both and put them on a shelf…I have robots on my shelf.  If we didn’t know what a boy or a dog was, however, I wonder what we would think about the picture?

 

 

Heroes…

I think we need new heroes.  For anyone who reads Urban Fantasy, I’m voting for Harry Dresden, Sandman Slim, Suzie Shooter, John Taylor, Razor Eddie and Dead Boy.  Eddie Drood would work and so would The Wild Witch and her sister.  There are others, of course, but these are some of my favorites.  We need someone who doesn’t recognize the law but always does what’s right for everyone else.  Okay,  maybe not always but most of the time.  People willing to stick their necks out for the good of all, kind of thing.  People who can take a hit, smile and stand on the side of freedom and right.  Those who do what has to be done in order to make sure that people are free and safe from the ugly people in charge.  I love these characters and think a few of them sprinkled throughout the white house and elsewhere would be a good thing…they can’t always be bought and they can’t be controlled by the bad guys.

Sure, you may be thinking…wow, those characters would be out of control, but no, not really.  The government and people in charge right now are out of control.  The people I’ve mentioned would make sure that didn’t happen and none of them seek power of their own, they just want to keep the game fair.    🙂  These are my heroes.  I’ve gone to Fictional Characters because politically speaking, no living person is worth the title and the puppet masters need Sandman Slim to pay them a visit, he could bring Suzie along, just for fun.

Books:

The Dresden Files  by Jim Butcher
Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey
The Nightside books  by Simon Green
The Drood series by Simon Green

Science Fiction and the pas/present/future…

Science Fiction is used to prepare society for what’s coming next.  Whether it’s babies grown in petri dishes, which was shocking and unheard of before they got us used to it in Sci-Fi and then told us they already did it,  or loss of freedom or AI…it’s always the forerunner of the future. If you look at the Sci-fi of the past you will see the present.   Even our computer age was alive and well in Science Fiction before anyone knew what a computer was.  It’s been said that the People in Charge, the ones behind the curtain, want to cull the herd (we are the herd, FYI).  So, has anyone else noticed all the new programs about viruses and mass death?   Hey, I’m just sayin’.