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In Which I Make No Real Progress

I promised to come up with other ways Terminus might end up existing as I’ve seen it painted in the pictures which inspired it.

Part of the original restriction was that I felt I needed to make this a post-something Earth world. The pictures reminded me or picked over airplane graveyards. Newer painting’s no longer do that with as much strength. I never did like my contrived Large Hadron Collider/Spell Gone Awry thing as much as I wanted to like it.

However, I do like the idea of these folks being interlopers in the land of others. I like the conflict and the out of placeness feeling that gives me. I’ll try to stick with that for at least a couple scenario changes.

I suppose one thing that might keep nearly everything intact that I’ve supposed so far would be if these natives were attempting to summon metal because their world was lacking in that resource. When they connected with Earth they were able to collect anything metallic which wasn’t grounded, so planes and helicopters are good candidates. I’m not sure I’m employing the proper meaning of grounded there, but I’ll check that later. They could have picked up Partly because she was falling and had money in her pocket or something less totally lame.

I’d need to come up with a reason they’d think that a summoning spell was the best way to obtain metal and how they were so successful in retrieving hundreds of thousands of tons of it. That’s a tough magnitude to get to accidentally.

We could go with the common post-apocalyptic Earth. Initially that feels like a cheat, but I also feel I’m working pretty hard to explain something like this in the first place. It would be nice to circumvent some of the work.

Maybe I’m thinking this the wrong way. Maybe I’m going the long way around to explain a light switch.

Hundreds of ships in the air need to have a reason to be there. A substantial military needs to have a reason to have become so large.

xxx words on day 767

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Comped Chinese Food

A coyote balks at the march between forest and field. Her dance with the grassy fringe fraught with advances and retreats. Eventually she skirts the openness hoping to find a slimmer gap between cover. The longer route feels safer than a bold one.

Someone, a person new to the English language, once noted the word ‘patriotic’ had so many variations in English it didn’t share in his native language. I wished I’d committed more of that conversation to memory, for he spoke on it as if the discussion came from a class or lesson he’d taken to speak my language. All that really remains with me is this notion that ‘patriotic’ is somehow blessed with more variations than new comers might expect. Patriotic, patriot, patriotism, patriotically. Those are the four variations I can think of; four doesn’t seem to push any limits of my thinking.

Anyhow, it dawned on me just now that the word ‘poetic’ can do the same thing…I think…poetic, poet, poetical, poetry. Though it feels like I may be making up ‘poetical’, Merriam-Webster claims it is real. Surely ‘politic’ does the same thing: politics, politician, political, policy?

Shrug.

I really do wish I could recall this guy’s point. Of course now I’m straining my memory to remember where I met this person and could have this kind of conversation. It must have been in my days as a waiter. I probably had this conversation with a Hungarian while rolling aluminum silverware into a napkin or over a plate of comped Chinese food.

253 words on day 765

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No Name Yet and Still Homophobic

Jack smoked a cigarette on the front porch. A red beer sweat Oklahoma’s June humidity into a ring on the concrete step next to him. He watched two boys walking up the drive from 33. One wore boots and a straw hat; the other a Cowboys’ ball cap and sandals. Sandals carried a guitar case. They were lost or in some car trouble he supposed, but Jack didn’t feel like getting out from under the shade and shortening the distance just now. They’d get here soon enough on their own.

The one in boots placed his hand on the gate latch and stopped. He looked Jack in the eye as a request to enter the yard. Jack bucked his head in assent. Then he began to wonder if he should take a sip or a drag before the conversation started. He stood and did both. When that was over he ended up holding the beer and the cigarette in his right hand when the one with the hat put out his and introduced himself.

“I’m [no name yet]. This is Mark Olsen,” [no name yet] said. He kept his hand out as Jack swapped his beer and dashed the cigarette to the corner of his mouth.

“Jack.” They shook hands. Jack took another long drag on the cigarette and pitched it to the ground since it was near enough smoked out. He noticed Sandals—Mark—watch him crush it with his boot like maybe he’d have smoked it a bit longer. He spoke to [no name yet]. “Ya ain’t lost I don’t think. Truck break down?”

“Pothole took out a tire. I’ve got a spare but no jack,” [no name yet] said.

“Ha!” Jack just looked at him.

“I know. Never needed one till today. So…”

“Roof don’t leak when it ain’t raining,” Jack said.

“No, Sir. It don’t.”

“That a guitar?”

Mark lifted the case in front of him a little. “Yeah.”

“You play?”

“Yeah.”

“Going to Stillwater then?”

“Got a gig at George’s Stables.” Mark looked at his watch. Then added, “Across from Joe’s”

“I know where the Stables are.”

Mark shrugged and Jack took it as an apology.

“Well. Old Jack’s gotta jack.” He looked at his beer then sighed and pitched the bottom half into the grass. He left the boys standing in the yard while he went in to get his keys and hat.

396 words on day 764