Hi guys, ok, still working. Found inspiration yesterday with the help of some old friends. I think I should be spending more time looking for inspiration than boring myself to death with old books. I'm learning a lot of stuff but it's not usually applicable.
The bird carried behind it in a stream of metallic black a bundle of wire. It looked like a long string of worms, and Jim questioned what a bird would do with something like that.
He sat down at his workbench and tried to get back to work, but it was no use. He first had to straighten the place, still piles of nuts and bolts askewed and arranged messily. The green light flashed on his largest machine, and he didn’t notice till the darkness spread from the window.
It had become synonymous with the building, a button on the top he struck with the broom suddenly pushed it into motion. To be activated, it has to be struck hard and quickly with a broom or other bristled object, a wire had been crossed and he thought it would still use the pat-on-the-top mechanism. Jim got into frenzied paces and created inventions he had no idea how to use, machines that took shape after he awoke from his work-induced trance.
There was a round machine on wheels that succesfully shined everything it came in contact with. It cleaned all of the dirt from under Jim’s nails, polished the wood floor to a reflective glow, and heated the shack at the same time. Now, it was broken, in a noncircular pile with metal spires like slinkies curving out of it.
Roger drove faster, the country roads with no speed limit signs. He pulled up alongside the old red brick school building, its structural integrity ensuring it would be there for generations to come. There were no blinds on the window of the only classroom, one giant rectangular window open to the entire side.
There were five other kids in the class, each perched in a circle on the bearskin carpet. The chalkboard behind Mrs. Lapointe had cursive letters written on it between dotted chalk lines. The giant stuffed polar bear under the American flag by the window lurched forward for a siesta.
“Daddy’s here.” Mrs. Lapointe greeted Roger by talking to his girls. The rest of the kids turned and wrenched their necks upwards towad Roger, the one with the suspenders waving spasmodically.
Roger checked his watch, it was leaving time. Mrs. Lapointe always creeped him out, she seemed like a schoolteacher straight out of the 1950s. He remembered seeing black and white news reel videos of students during the war, and she’d be the one standing at the head of the class. It was the only school close enough to drive through, and the building was nice, he just felt like an alien. And, she could see right through him, she could tell he was a stay at home dad.
“Alright children, get your things.” She ushered Patty and Sandy over to the coat rack, where they equipped their backpacks and coats. “Working on grammar tonight, grammar and syntax. It’s lesson 11 in the work book.”
“You hear that, girls?” Roger hated calling them “the girls” but thought it made him sound fatherlike in front of the teachers. “No more Dora, no more coloring books until that’s done.”
“It will take us mere MINUTES to finish all that!” Sandy said when they were out of ears drop of Mrs. Lapointe, who was now kneeling next to the kid with the overalls.
The green light of the machine got greener, until the green was so dark and opaque that it looked like an emerald. The hole in the ceiling where the bird had borrowed the piece of cable from gave way to a sturdy metal infrastructure that bulged uncontrollably from around the outside wall. It felt suddenly like he was inside a giant bag of popcorn.
When he opened the door, a gust of air left the shack. It wasn’t hot or cold air, just air, and he wondered if it had some sort of intangible quality to it.
“Ok, I know it has an intangible weird quality to it.” He said outloud to himself. The door still easily opened, and when it did the façade of a wooden garage was lost forever. He was standing outside of what had faded into being out of random chance, a robot head with flashing green eyes. It had a long antennae coming out of the top of its head and hummed at a pleasurable frequency, and then it began to speak.
“John, it’s John right? Oh, no, I mean, Jim. Jim. Let me tell you what I do.” The robot head began. “You created me a long time ago, and you forgot about me. Do you know how many of your other inventions have uses that you have never dreamed of?”
“You have to keep moving, robot sir. You have to keep on going to the next thing, I can’t stop. I didn’t know how to activate you.”
“Oh me, don’t worry about me, I’ll activate when the time is right. The time is finally right now for me to be activated, to become your house. You will live inside of me, and I can let you know what to do next, does that sound good?”
“First thing, you are made out of metal, so you might attract lightning. Secondly, are you going to be loud and rattley the entire time?”
“No sir, I’m airtight, and I can tighten myself up.” With this, the robots face stiffened as if constipated and his walls blew themselves out again, then rebalancing in form as a perfect square. Places where there were bumps were completely flat again, to Jim it seemed like a balloon blowing itself up. “Look, too, I can produce heat for myself, like a little oven. I’ve been here all along, didn’t you wonder why you didn’t get cold?”
Jim stood with his arms crossed and shivering wetly into his long underwear. He shook violently with the cold, and suddenly the robot offered him a gust of warm air like a jet stream.
The robot flashed pictures of Jim’s old friends, recounted his earlier exploits, and showed a short video montage with wipes, fades, captions, and interviews with celebrities. Robert Downey Jr. said he remembered Jim from high school, and that back then they had been friends. Prince showed pictures of him and Jim cooking beans together at a summer camp.
“This is all not real!” The robot said. “You programmed me to do this.”
Then, it showed some real stuff.
Hey this isn't that shitty. It's shitty but yeah the contexts are starting to make sense.
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