Day 82: Stephen King Occasionally Has Awful Dialogue

            Some of Stephen King's dialogue is the worst.  I don't want to take any out of context because that's what morons do.  But some of it's bad.

            My favorite adjective is "shitty".  It's a great descriptor.  Dialogue is definitely my weakest point, so I should talk.  Sorry, Stephen.

            Most often a "leap of faith" is more a "leap of rationality".  The conclusions to some arguments don't make any sense.  I'm mainly talking about politics.  I don't really want to get into it though, having too good of a day so far.

            All I needed was "more culture" all along!  I was crazy for not knowing that.  Nothing more affirming as some culture.  Reading this website, www.thoughtcatalog.com has been a good experience.

            The way Otto stomped around gave the shack an impermanent feeling.  He was like a bull in a china shop in his own house.  The amount of shit on the walls that should have fallen down by this point was perplexing, and the amount of value Otto put on his work was outrageously low.

            Roger picked up a framed five by five picture from the chunk-of-wood table with the mounted buck on it.  It showed Otto shirtless with a night and day farmers tan with his arm around a woman wearing a powder blue sundress, her face and head concealed completely by a straw hat and roundframed sunglasses.  Jim snatched it from his hand and set it back down on the wooden slab.

            “That’s Otto’s wife, we don’t want to remind him of her.  Things didn’t end well.”

            “Is she… dead?”  Roger asked.

            “No, she just left him.  Old Otto has a volatile temper, as you’d imagine.”

            (She’s going to be with Mr. Grey later on, that’s how it’ll turn out.  Writing this so I see it in the proofreading)

            “What are we doing here, then?  How is he going to help us, did you even tell him we were coming?”

            “That isn’t how Otto works.”  Jim laughed at the idea like it was absurd; a compliment to Roger’s sense of humor.  “You don’t call Otto, Otto doesn’t do you favors.  You get him riled up enough about something and he’ll help you like it’s his idea.  It’s called a “Long Con”, although I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

            A policecar flew past on the interstate, the gush of wind surrounding it sounding like a mist spraying over the side of the shack.  A meadowlark sung as sweetly as the wind through the trees.  Somewhere the robots gears grinded through the streets.

            Otto was presumably preoccupied with something he was finding for Jim.  He dug intensively dug through the box in his room like a kid digging through a toy chest.  Glancing down when he heard rustling, it appeared something in his living room was important to him. 

            The dead buck head was pointed in Roger’s directions.  The eyes couldn’t have been real deer eyes anymore, they were wide and bright white with dilated pupils.  They looked like cubed sour milk.  It peered pleadingly at Roger, either asking for help or attempting to convey a warning.

            Jim rose and went to use Otto’s bathroom, the outhouse.  Those cappucinos.  He exited through the front door quckly, in spite of Roger’s tacit protests.  Roger sat with his hands in his lap, back straight and feet firmly on the ground.  He could hear his own heartbeat, it felt like he was in a doctors office waiting for test results.  He wished Otto had a pet that he could play with, then immediately retracted this wish when he thought about what Otto’s pet would be.  The deer continued glaring.

            “So you said Mr. Grey kidnapped your girls, is that what happened?”  Otto called from upstairs, breaking the silence with a pickaxe.  The old house noises of boards shifting and groaning under his weight combined with the crickets for ambience.  “That son of a bitch.”  Next, he made a series of unintelligable growls.

            “He did.  Jim was living out in my garage and he created some crazy robot head.  The robot head let all hell loose, and they swept in and took them away.”  Roger said, feeling like Josef K in The Trial.  It was one of those tired facts that was brought up again and again, like he had been a previous lottery winner or a childstar.  Otto continued to dig, it was about five minutes later.  “You’re the guy has people over and just digs through a box upstairs?  You know how to find this Mr. Grey, can we get on with it already?”

            Otto chortled and gave up his search for a second.  “Someone with daughters should have a little more patience than that.  You’re just going to have to wait I’ll be back down in just a minute.  In the meantime, you can go help yourself in the fridge if it will put you at ease.”

            Roger shivered at the prospect.  He sat still for a minute, ignoring the offer, but his stomach started to quake.  At high stress times, his appetite was at his worst.  Everyone has a different nervous tic, some people clean, some people do laundry, others cry in the fetal position, he was an eater.  Before Sandy was born, he hadn’t slept more than four hours a night for the whole gestation period.  This is when he had given up all of his hobbies, his bad habits, cleansed himself of interesting quarks much in the same way his wife had changed her appetite.  He was ready to spring outside at a moments notice, bring the car around to the front of the house and book it for the hospital. Miranda’s disposition had remained cool all along, she became calm and tranquil like a dying person who accepted the pangs of mortality.  Instead, those drives often ended up being to fast food restaurants, or missions to fill the pantry with frozen foods and junk food.

            He pulled the refridgerator open with a sticky peeling noise.  Piles of meat sat on plates, with varieties of barbeque sauces filling the doors on each side.  It looked like a primordial proving ground, like these animals had been reduced completely to their delicious carcasses.  He didn’t trust the plates sitting out in the open the way the way they were, without the applicatioon of seran wrap, but still a particular plate of ribs caught his eye.  A microwave would have made things a lot easier.  As it was, he prepared a burner on the gas stove.

            Jim exited the dank outhouse and shook with a flaccid autonomy over his own body.  His skin had become pale and he perpetually felt like he had woken up from a cold sweat.  He stared at the shack; it was windowless from the back side.  He looked over at the smaller chained up shack, it was in a blind spot.  A baby chick walked lackadaisically out from the four by foured doors, stretching its tiny toes out as it walked.

            One of the more interesting things about doing this blog is I've been able to objectively identify what works better for me and what doesn't.  Like most people, I'm a lot more effective when I have a deadline.  I get a lot more done on days that I have to go to work.

Day 81: Driving round town with the girl I love

            Ok things are going alright!  Getting up and motivated quicker, that's called discipline.  Haven't hit that dreaded "writers block" yet, although I'm also not creating the levity I'm looking for quite.  It's an ongoing process that subconscious is a snake to be charmed.  I think I need to be more practical, and from a practical standpoint I should be writing more than I'm reading.  So let's supercharge this thing and write thousands of words a day, guys.  It's more important than anything else.  "The Magnificent Obsession" plus other stuff like that.

           Otto’s front gate swung open slowly with a humming sound when he saw the car approaching.  The sun scudded behind the mountains, brown light covering the desert in a thin strip.  There was plenty of vegetation but no cactuses, a foreign species of moss covering the road.  Dark crevasses shined in the sand like shiny armpits.

            Roger shut off the ignition and leaned his head forward on the dashboard, stretching his arms out beside it and twisting his neck from side to side.  Jim was spry, his mind shooting off synapses like christmas tree lights.  He pulled his arms inside of his parka and hopped out of the car peered out at the familiar gate with anticipation, like a meerkat out of the grass.

            “Who the hell is there?”  Otto called, shooting a warning shot from a hunting rifle up in the air.  “Whoever you are, I don’t’ want any visitors.  Shoulda seen the sign.”

            Otto was a heavyset bear of a man.  He looked more like a wild animal as he gestured animatedly at a generic “no trespassing” sign framed and mounted on a foot tall pike facing the house.  His stature was reminscent of Foghorn Leghorn, his top half looked like a bowling pin which was absorbed by the mound of jello which was his lower torso.  His head wobbled involuntarily as he approached, but his gun hand stayed steady.  The muscles in his arms bulged involuntarily, like they were a volcano that might explode at any moment.

            Jim ducked and covered his head, inching forward as quickly as he could while doing so.  He knew Otto was liable to start firing at any trespassers.  Roger panicked as he tried to get the key back in the ignition, scratching the wheel up around the entry point.  When he finally got it in, it was too late, he was already staring from a distance down the barrel of a compensatory rifle.

            “Ya’r better off getting out of the car, lemme have a look at ya.”  Otto said, a hint of sadistic joviality in his voice.

            “Of course this is one of your friends, of course it is.”  Roger said to himself, ducking his head into his lap.  He peeked up and watched through the windshield as Otto took a temporary break from harassing him to  ascend upon Jim. 

“The second we get by another phone I’m calling the looney bin and we’re going to have you penned up for good.”  Roger threatened wistfully to himself, accidentally prying a little black metal piece off of the dash.

            Otto stood over Jim, placing a forklift of a hand on his back.  He lifted him up, and recognizing it was Jim patted the dirt off of his front side.

            “Excuse me, Mr. Jim.  You can’t be too careful these days.” 

            Jim laughed and put an arm around Otto, his giant gristly beard scratching against Jim’s neck.  Jim’s arm felt like a toothpick, like Otto could snap it off at any moment, and he towered above him with rambunxtious energy.

            “Bout time you got out from there.”  Otto stared at Roger through the windshield.  “You should turn off those headlights, I can’t see your pretty little face.”

            Roger begrudgingly exited the cabin, like a kid being sent to the principles office for something he hadn’t been responsible for.  He pleaded to Otto with open arms.  “All I know is there’s some guy named Mr. Grey and he kidnapped my girls.”  He paused between sobs.  “Jim let a killer robot loose.”

            “Ain’t nothing as shameful as seeing a grown man cry, clean yourself up,”  Otto said, removing a disgusting handkerfchief from his sweatstained front denim pocket.  Roger accepted it with reckless abandon, wiping sweat and tears from his glassy darkened eyes.

            “There’s the lieu,”  Otto said, pointing at one of two other monuments that dotted the property.  “Here’s my house.  That over there is the shack.  Don’t go in the shack, it’s all chained off for a reason.”

            Roger squinted and stared towards it, with Otto’s foreboding gaze fixing on him.  The shack was tightly wrapped with chains, looking like a sports injury wrapped to make the joint completely immobile.  A giant masterlock was wrapped like a bow through the chains; it seemed like a place that was dying to be broken into.

            “Come on in,”  Otto called as he walked back into his garage of a house.  He slapped Roger with two fingers on the back of the neck when he lingered staring at the shack, the sun now almost disappearing completely. 

            The place stunk of rotten cheese and formaldehyde.  A ten point buck head sat mounted behind a circular wooden table, leather couches flanking it on either side.  Unprimed wooden stairs without a railing led up to a single bedroom with no door separating it from the main room, the ceiling much higher than anticipated from the outside.  A small kitchen, more appropriately referred to as a nook, consisted of a rusted gas oven, a utility sink that jutted out of the wall covered in dirt and grime.  A layer of white sealant covered the layer between the wood and the insulation.

            They sat down after Otto gave the grand tour, which consisted mostly of a raised hand and a few garbled exclamations.

            “Hup.”  He pointed at the head of the buck, ostentatious as a man of his stature could be.  He insisted the guys sit on the couch when he went to tay care of something and then disappeared upstairs, although not really disappearing because he was still entirely visible.

            “He’s the only man Mr. Grey is scared of.”  Jim said behind a raised hand.

            “I heard that.”  Otto yelled down the stairs, lifting his shitty boxspring mattress with one hand and pulling a wooden box on wheels out from underneath it with the other.  “That grey faced drone might scare the ordinary man, but not me.  I practiced ripping tin cans to pieces with my bare fingers, I’ll tear that guys face off.”

            At this revelation, Jim noticed in horror that the garbage can sitting next to the couch was full of bloody tin can lids. 

            “He’s a nut, yeah, ok, he’s a little nutty.”  Jim conceded. 

            The revelation of a new, less quirky and more scary world dawned on Roger, and he suddenly thought about what Jim had said again.  The further away they went, the weirder the world got.  He wouldn’t admit Jim was right outloud, of course, but it suddenly made more sense.

            Jim admired the mounted creatures dangling precariously from the rafters.  The moose head above him looked like it might fall at any moment, he could have sworn he saw it twisting on its screws. 

 
            Man do I get lazy some days.

Day 80: Electric

            Positivity flowing!  Typing this while shaving with electric razor.  Electric razors give you perfect pitch, try singing while using one some time.
            Trying to get this done earlier and earlier.  It's down to a system.  We finish about 1,000 words and then proofread brings that number up to 1600-1700.  One of these days I really need to proofread that national novel writing month novel that I did.  You remember that one, loyal reader.  It's ironic because by saying loyal reader I'm talking to myself in the future, when me in the future is talking to me in the past.

          Letter from me in the future:

          Keep going you're only on Day 80.  You're gonna get good at this stuff and knock it out of the park before breakfast.  Also, I know it sounds counterproductive, but watch more movies.  It will give you a better idea how different variables and themes are introduced.  Always be studying!

          From the yacht,

          Future me with thousands of dollars

            I changed the font for effect.  

            He swung out a hand and hit the off switch before its rockets could fire off.  Even when it relaxed and fell back into a neutral position it still looked threatening, and Dream Roger worked with difficulty to turn it around in the opposite direction.

            In the meantime, Jim had accumulated quite a crowd with his anecdotes.  The surrounding booths had no choice but to listen to his stories, some people laughing and guffawing from across the way.

            “So he thought by putting a hydrogen charged particle in the electron based carbonite…”  Jim made something up.  These people were eating it up, he thought of himself as a maestro in front of an audience.  Or, better yet, a conductor in front of an orchestra.

            The cappuccinos went straight to his heart, he could feel a warm sensation inside that was pleasant even though it might have been a heart attack.  His eyes ached, his arms trembled, but his resolve went unshaken. 

            “Roger, you’ve been out for a couple of hours,”  Jim playfully jabbed at Roger, smiling up at the crowd.  A few of the fan boys friends had joined him.

            “Is it true what they say?”  One of them asked.  He was wearing a backward baseball cap and a NASA T-shirt.  Thousand years in space.  Whatever that means.  “You could build a contraption out of anything in front of you, any time?”

            Jim eyeballed the table.  Napkin dispenser, forks and knives, overhead sound system, juke box.  “I could instill life on that napkin dispenser, yes I could.”

            Roger woke up violently with a placemat stuck to his head and gasped for air.  “We have to go.” 

            “You guys are a regular comedy duo!”  An oblivious old man laughed.

            Jim left a handful of wadded disgusting bills on the table, and they squeezed past the patrons.  Jim elicited cheers, and he held his hand up in the air in a Black Power fist. 

            “What in the world is wrong with you?”  Roger whispered in a stern bass, pushing Jim faster toward the door.  Jim tried to turn around and do a Nixon “I’m not guilty” pose, but Roger pushed harder and they were out the front door.

            Down the flat interstate that seemed to curve on as far as the naked eye could perceive, a grey dot came into view again.  It was traveling a lot faster than before, and Jim stared at it, transfixed.  He gripped the bike rack and let out a short loud whistle, Roger tugging at him to get to the car.

            “Check that out!”  Jim pointed, Roger turning his face slowly with horror.

            The Bully Bot had added a mobile apparatus underneath itself, its body resting on top of it like a Greek god being fed grapes.  The blue chrome apparatus had treads on the bottom, resembling a long glider of sorts..  The crowd gaped at the windows, all eyes on the road.

            Roger made a dash for the car, prodding Jim one last time before taking off in a bolt.  Jim stayed perched on the bike rack, nodding and evaluating his creation from afar.  It was suddenly larger, more adult; it had grown up.  “That’s something you don’t see every day.”  He whistled to himself and pushed off of the bike ramp with newfound vigor, the Subaru flying past him.

            The sun hazed over on the orange horizon like butter on a pancake.  The telephone lines stretched parallel to the road, crows resting furtively on top of the wires.

            The Bully Car Bot flew closer, tossing gravel and dirt underneath it.  It practically looked like Aladdin on a carpet.  As it approached, it slowed to a steadier pace, and looked at Jim, its face vacant behind retractable sunglasses.

            “Jim what the hell are you doing?”  Roger called out of the window of the Subaru, the car idling on the edge of the parking lot.  “I will leave without you.”

            It was only about one hundred yards away, Jim awestruck like it was a famous rockstar coming to see him.  The nerds came out of the restaurant when it was close enough to see the bot, the one with the backward cap turning it around to use it for its functional purpose.  The other two shielded their eyes, the mexican one’s giant eyebrows looking like an extension of his sideways karatechop.

            The tread collapsed underneath it as they pulled up, and BB jumped off of it like a skateboard.  It folded up into the shape of a blue robotic humanoid, not unlike a three dimensional bathroom sign.  The blue was vivid, like dark mountain glaciers, and it reflected into Jim’s eyes like it had been made to do so. 

            Roger scooted across the bucket seats with difficulty, his lower body remaining in the drivers side, and pushed the door open.  The door struck Jim in the lower back, which was great because it showed him where the car was.  He realized as he sat down in the car that he was nearly blind.

            He tried to attach the seatbelt right away with Roger’s urges, he ruminated aggressively as he pulled himself back up to seated position.  The blue robot was gone when he looked back, the Bully Bot strutting with casual urgency.  The original fan ran up to it, touching it and admiring it with a wide smile.

            “Stay away from it!”  Jim called, with no success.  Roger swung the car with a sharp right and continued down the road in the opposite direction, the fat fans scream coming from a distance.  Red sprayed up into the air like a fountain, and appeared to disappear as mist in the mirror.

            “It’s funny,”  Jim started, looking over at Roger who had a very grave look on his face.  “I don’t mean actually funny, ok, let me start over.  The further out we get into the real world, the more real things get, did you notice that?” 

            A police car came flying by in the opposite direction, sirens blaring and blue and red lights flashing.

            “That’s bullshit, Jim, and you know it.  This is the one most surreal event that has happened to me in my life.  Do you have family, Jim?  You don’t know how this is at all.  You feel like this is real because you are disconnected.  I was content with my boring life, I know this is hard to believe.”

            They drove on in silence, passing vast plateaus of nothingness on either side.  Occasionally a street sign would assure them the area they were in was civilized.

            “There!”  Jim called abruptly, gesturing at a shack off the road surrounded by tires and wire fences.  “That’s Otto’s place.”

            One of those days where, yeah the story isn't great, but I feel like this stuff is getting easier.  I'll get there just stick it out with me ladies and gentlemen.  The trick is to not go back to school.

Day 79: Reflection

              So now that I'm openly posting about this thing I think it's about time for some cool hard reflection! 
              Skipped the job fair again this morning, but there's really no point to that anyway.  I don't want to sell myself to some random hacks, it'd feel like army recruitment.  But really, I overslept and that was the whole deal.  So, oops.
              Muppet movie last night was awesome except for underusing Jack Black.  Also, fact that Selena Gomez was in it at all sucks, even though she was awful and I think that was the point.  I should watch it again for some positivity today.  Going into the home stretch on this one!  Bout to get a story rolling.
              Muppets taught me a couple of things about character that I should have realized a long time ago, yesterday.  First of all, Fozzy working with the knock off imposter band in Reno, that tells you everything about character.  A celebrity who isn't with the original group and does some stage show for ends meat (ends meat is a thing you can get), screaming Ringo Starr.  I don't know how much it will help me with my own writing but it's good as far as character goes to notice instances like that, I'd think.
             Problems with my writing!  Introducing characters that have a strong sense of purpose will be difficult until I have a strong sense of purpose that doesn't involve writing every day.  This is still a little bit of a goof-off thing, although I do feel more confident in it since I started effing proofreading every day.  Proofreading bolsters the wordcount and makes everything more readable at the same time, so that's good.  I remember seeing a snippet from Christopher Paolini (shitty author, I know), where he said there's no way to learn more about your writing than to read your own.  Alright, I get it Mr. Eragon.  Something tells me I never should have graduated college without proofreading, but that's tantamount to my "natural talent", or else the laziness of college professors and everyone's fear of conflict.  I'm a fearsome guy, that's what it really is.
             Oh!  Other great inspiration from the movie was when Kermit tries to call Jimmy Carter, the what-if scenario that plays out there.  First, what would happen if Kermit called the whitehouse?  Well, obviously, he'd get through right away and be directed to a secretary or something.  Then, that secretary tells him Mr. Carter has changed residences, not very surprised someone is calling for him.  That's just a joke being a joke, and being subtle and all that hooey. 
              Writing has become easier since I started thinking of people as random animals that inhabit certain places.  See, I could never explain that where it'd make any sense.  Youtube clips.

             Life's a happy song

            “Some of the problems with fatherhood are that there’s no allomothering involved.”  Jim said without flinching.  Roger wasn’t a fearsome dude, even when his paternal instincts were kicking in.  He stared across the table like an angry rottweiler.  "Where the hell's your wife, anyway?"

            A man wearing a bib spoonfed an angry baby in a highchair in the nonsmoking section. The baby casted formula bottles, sticky dinosaur toys and sippy cups on the floor,  the dad fighting through the projectiles like a snow storm.  He squeezed the bottle of baby food tight in his hand but was unable to break it.

            Roger couldn’t open his mouth without Jim saying something stupid.  Jim waved the waitress down for his fifth cappucino, taking full advantage of the free refill policy.  The Christopher Cross title track from the movie Arthur, “Arthur’s Theme (The Best You Can Do)”, chortled sweetly over the sound system.  Roger stared down at the cross around his neck; he and Miranda had seen that movie together in theaters.

           A business meeting adjourned and men with suits exited into the parking lot.  A robust circle of a man led the pack, using the cliched business phrase “In the interim” twice as he smiled lecherously at the waitstaff. Roger’s lowered eyes following them through the glass windows.  They piled into a black sedan, their meeting continuing on wheels.

            “Hey, you’re the guy who built those robots!”  A man with a braided beard called from the bar.  He was sitting by a glass case full of pies that were spinning on their own axises, a dull yellow light illuminating the counter space around him.  He set down his tabloid and got up to pester Jim. 

            Jim hid sheepishly behind a menu, although he knew he shouldn’t bother hiding.  He’d been spotted, he was going to have to face the music. 

            “It’s you, I know it’s you!”  He sprang up from his seat, his T-shirt barely covering his fat belly.  “I can tell it’s you because of your pony tail, man.”

            He offered a flabby paw to be shaken.  “You’re not looking so good, man.  I hope you haven’t quit.  Some of your bots were genius.”

            “My apathy toward my appearance reflects my dedication to my work.”  Jim said, proud the words came out in a straight line.  “Yeah, I’ve built a few robots in my day, what of it?”  Jim blushed.

            “Some of those ideas were brilliant man, they really were.”  He showed Jim his T-shirt, which was from a robotics convention in the summer of ’98.  “Years really fly, Jimbo, years really fly.”

            Roger was asleep on the table, or sobbing silently into it.  The old people stared over like they knew Jim was famous.  They talked amongst themselves; Jim assumed it was about him.

            “Pardon me, young sir, what have you invented?  You’re an inventor, he says?”

            The fan sat down in the booth next to Jim, forcibly moving him toward the window.  Jim scooted, without much of a choice.  He felt like a artist who was still working diligently on creating new songs, but still all anyone wanted to do was talk about the old ones.

            “I’m a scientist, not a celebrity.”  He assured them, sipping his cappucino.

            “I remember…”  The fan started.  “Back in 75 when you had that Alan Moore hair and beard.  You had an air about you man, a real je ne sais quoi.  On that panel, you were like a man amongst boys, man.  Charlie Hytzer, Paul Vinderbiln, those guys looked at you with disgust, a real renegade, yeah.”

            “Those guys are still working for Mr. Grey,”  Jim nudged Roger, who raised his head off the table for a second and then pried himself upright with his palms, like he was pulling himself off of fly paper.  His eyes were red and he rubbed them with the napkin on the table. 

            Roger recommitted himself to the table, falling into an instant sleep.  He dreamed of Jim’s creations locking him in a small room with a dangling light and a brassy mildew stink, and interrogating him with robot voices.

            “You should never have moved here.”  One that looked like an ostrich with reversable joint legs said.  A robot wearing a Zoro mask repeatedly thrashed him with a coat hanger, and down the hall he could hear the heavy crackling of a fireplace.  The door opened a crack and a robotic version of Jim squeezed through, putting a spiked choke collar around Roger’s neck.  Roger shook like a wet dog, and Jimbot slapped him across the face and tugged at the metal chain connected to the collar.

            “Friend of yours?”  The fan asked Jim as Roger lay there asleep.

            “He’s… uh… renting my house.  His wife is the one with the dough.”

            Robot Jim walked fast, and Roger slipped his hands in between the collar and his neck to keep from being choked.  He stumbled onto the cobwebby dungeon floor and scampered on his hands, passing cages of colorful birds with skull masks and shrunken headed fellows with taxidermied bodies.  An assembly line carried them along faster finally, and he relaxed, laying on his back with the leash taught.  Robot Jim pulled him back up to his feet, waving a pneumatic finger wildly in the air.

            “That time you created that water out of thin air, how’d you do that again?”  Asked the fan.  Their cute blonde waitress came over, chewing gum and eavesdropping from the comfortable distance of the next booth.  “Naw, you don’t have to tell me, magician can’t give up his secrets.  Hey, I’ll be right back.”

            “Pretty big deal, huh?”  The waitress asked, inching in.  Jim couldn’t tell if she just wanted a bigger tip.  He had no idea what to say around women, his experience was that he’d start talking about tinkering and they’d find out he had no free time or independence. 

            Out in the parking lot, the fan dug through a shitty Red Volkswagon Beetle filled with fastfood wrappers, used-up air fresheners and multidinous cupholders.  He came running back in with a tightly wound piece of parchments, unrolling it in front of Jim to reveal a large treaded robot with arms that were cannons in an action shot on an aircraft carrier deck.  There were lightning bolts and flame decals bordering the centered picture, with the caption written in rock n roll typefont:  “The birth of AI.”

            “First succesful artificial intelligence, in a robot that shoots fireworks out of its hands!”  The nerd said, pointing at the poster and turning toward the audience, a group of apathetic diner patrons.  When he took his hand off the poster to point at it, it rolled up on one side.  “You gotta feel a little guilty about the deaths, though.”  He whispered behind his hand to Jim.

            “I swear the arms were callibrated correctly, that’s the problem with artificial intelligence.  Wasn’t my fault it just started shooting bottle rockets at anything within a half a mile.”

            The robot was conjured into Roger’s dream through inception.  He actively tried to make himself wakeup, the thing turning its evil hands toward him as he shoveled coal into a furnace with his bonded hands.

               

Day 78: Pandora plays a commercial every other song

              Noticed I write a lot better in the morning!  At night there's too much stuff on my mind.  A  whole day of negativity has kicked my ass by then.  I'm trying though, guys!
             Ok, it turned out a lot better than it started.  Nothing funny to relate today, just another day at the office, sirs.

 

“Your brain is programmed to have dejavus to keep you on the right track.  When you have these ephemeral flashbacks, its like a clue, consider it breadcrumbs.”  Jim spattered off details on their trek up to the car.  Roger walked ahead, speeding up his pace each time Jim would catch up beside him.  He looked back at him as he yammered on, Jim debating with himself as much as he was talking to Roger anyway.

            The robot followed slowly on the trail, in full on strut mode.  It had battle scars, and didn’t bother removing the glass lodged in between its joints.

 “Don’t worry that’s as fast as he’s programmed to walk.  Running isn’t cool, and he’s programmed to be cool.  Completely unlike me.”

            It ran into two trees that were standing close together and ripped one of them down and in half with a loud tear.

            “How did you plan on standing up to that thing, anyway?”  Roger asked as they reached his Subaru.  He got into the drivers side and opened up the passenger side for Jim.  He had urgency in his eyes, but still moved smoothly and slyly.

            “Well, I was going to punch it in the nose, if you hit it hard enough in the nose it’ll back off.”  It kept coming toward them, making up a dangerous amount of space.  With a quick lunge, Roger was positive they’d be goners.

“…But, metal is pretty hard, and it doesn’t want you to hit it in the nose.  Therein lies the problem.”  The robot was distracted with pretending to be too cool to approach more quickly.

  “Seems like there’s been a few mutations, it might be just a little more unpredictable than planned.”

            Roger stared in the rearview mirror, it was coming up the walkway.  He took the car key out and twisted it, revving the engine in reverse. 

            “You could just hit it with the car, theoretically that should put it out of work.”  Jim said, fiddling with something in his pocket.  He put on a pair of sunglasses, and reconfigured the passenger side chair, rolling it back to the seat behind him.  Roger pulled the car up the path with Emerson Lake and Palmer still blasting from the deck.  He reached and turned it down.

            “First thing we need to do is figure out where we’re going,”  Roger said.  “Where am I going?”

            “We might want to go visit Otto first.”

            “Otto?  I don’t like the sounds of that”

            “He’s an old pal.  He didn’t quite get out as cleanly as I did, though.  He had to listen to that wailing going on all night, every night.  It makes me shiver to think about.”

            The robot disappeared completely from view in the rearview mirror until it was a tiny grey speck behind them.  It was an unapologetically handsome day outside, allergy causing green shrouding everything.  The windshield wipers were covered in leaves, and Roger flicked them on to get rid of them.  A lot stuck, intertwined around the swishing blades like tendrils on a hungry tree holding down a crocodile.

            They stopped to get gas, Jim insisting on paying with cash, removing a sweaty smelly bundle of bills from the inside of his dirt black socks.  He bought a Red Bull on the inside, and joked around by calling it “motor oil.” Jim insisted he could drive if Roger got tired of it, but Roger didn’t respond, merely looking over with a furrowed brow and a grave look on his face.  They drove two hours back to the city, not saying a word to eachother.

 The shrubbery and foliage outside lessened progressively as they departed the woods, past the old water tower and city graveyard full of homemade wooden graves. 

“I want to be buried there.”  Jim said, unaware of the crypticness of this comment.  “I just think the stones are cool, looks like people really cared about their loved ones.”

“You know, you don’t sound like much of a scientist,”  Roger said.  “If your science hadn’t got us here, I’d think you were more of the antisocial hermit type.”

“I’m an intellectual, I keep on going because I have to.”  Jim assured him.  He had little sense of humor when it came to things that dealt with his personal nature, even though the world was one big joke.

Roger switched off from checking the clock on the dashboard, the mirror, and the road.  His eyes glazed over from time to time, and to a bystandard it appeared he might fall to sleep at any second.

            A tiny black shadow ran in front of the car, and Roger unwillingly crunched over it.  It made a loud popping noise, like a balloon right in someones ear, and Roger pumped the brakes as the tires left a long black smear on the road behind them.  The car finally righted itself as they came to almost a complete stop.  A mouth wateringly bad smell took over the car, and Roger knew he had hit a skunk.

Everything started to get uncomfortable in the car after that smell.  Roger cracked the windows and turned the air up, but this seemed to amplify the smell.  Jim complained about the tightness of his seatbelt and removed it as he continued emptying his pockets and reorganizing them.  He found a little red rectangle that looked like a block of wrapped cheese, which he sounded particularly excited about.

“Roger, this is exactly what we needed,”  He said, pressing the button in the center of it and releasing a gas into the car.  “Omega oils in gas form.  Smells like fish sticks.”

Roger hated this smell more than the skunk one, and they melded together to become almost intolerable.  He saw a sign for a diner flashing, a plate with a fork and a knife on each side in bright neon, and pulled in.

“You’re right, Roger, we had better eat and think this thing over.”  Jim said, putting his useless inventions in the door pocket.  He checked his hair in the mirror, assessing for damages, and they stepped out together.

“I should try calling the police again.”  Roger said.  “They should know what happened to their policeman.”

“Well I wouldn’t dream of having you do that on an empty stomach.”  Jim said, an air of nonchalance in his voice.

They sat down and Jim ordered Salisbury Steak.  Roger got the Family Chicken Combo.  The young blonde waitress looked like she had no business working at a Denny’s-lite type of place.  When she left to get their coffee, Jim had a few comments to make.

“I need to know why she’s here.  Why would someone like that be here?  She looks like a real woman.”

“What do you know about real women, Jim?  And while we’re at it, what do you know that I don’t know?”  He leaned across the table, and the waitress placed their lunches in front of them.

“Roger, I know you’re upset because your girls are gone, but yelling at me won’t help you about it.”

They ate in silence, the TV showing a turtle escaping from activity.  A table next to theirs consisted of three older man concerning themselves with lifes bigger probems, mainly lottery tickets.  The car in the parking lot practically had stink lines coming from it.

“I do know one thing you don’t know.”  Jim said.  “They aren’t going to hurt your girls.”

Roger sighed audibly.  “How do you know this?”

“He kept a stable of younger girls, he treated them all like princesses.  He pampers them, gives them a taste of the good life.  It’s going to be like those girls were at the spa.”

“But they need to be raised by their parents!”  Roger slammed a fist down near his mashed potatos.  Some of his water splashed on the table.  The old men facing away rearranged themselves, the svelt leather booths crinkling underneath them.

Jim leaned in so their heads were almost touching eachother and said.  “This is the first and only time I’m telling you this.  I don’t want to be traveling with you any more than you want to be traveling with me.  You seem like an alright guy, you have it together, you’re serious, you are a creature of habit.  They want me to come back, they don’t want you.  They think it’s my daughters, he doesn’t even know who you are.”

“You’re the creep living in a shack.  What happened anyway, where’d all of your money go?  Why did you have to insist on staying near the house, if you knew you were endangering my family?”

Day 77: Lucky 77!

I'll put all my money on black today.  And I'll spin that wheel until I lose it all.

Good indie rock band name:  Jimbo's Belt.  In case anyone was wondering, it's an extension cord.

            “Where we’re going,”  Jim said, wrapping an american flag bandana across his head and now really looking like Willie Nelson ready to go out on stage.  “There’s going to be a lot of violence, a lot of unpredictability.  The impropability variant is going to be high, we don’t know what we’re going to see.  You should probably just keep your eyes on what’s straight ahead of you.

            “But we do know where we’re going, then?”  Roger sounded relieved.  He fingered his earlobe with a grimace.

            “Yes, it’s where I was working before I came here.  My old employer.  He had a freak accident and it landed him in that metal facade.  Let’s just say I jumped the coop.”

            Jim explained how the particle stabilizer had misfired, and the room’s door was closed, with him inside it.  Mr. Grey, who at that point was just a confident if not arrogant young scientist only had his goggles and led vest on, when the rooms sirens started to blare and the red light began to flash, lighting up the granite bomb shelter walls.  Jim sat outside with a few other scientists, an inexperienced young bunch that were collectively dreading the ramifications of this experiment.  He remembered saying, “If he doesn’t end up killing himself, he’s going to get cancer.”

            “It was supposed to speed up time,”  Jim said, shaking his head.  “Instead, it created more time, it revolutionized time in that one spot.  The quarks ate Mr. Grey’s skin and instantly recreated what was there.  He was… no longer… human.  But the bright side is, I’m pretty good with machines!”

            Jim pulled out a fancy phone, fiddling with the touch screen for a minute.  He clicked and dragged, clicked and dragged, clicked and dragged.  The screen produced a picture of an outdoor facility, it looked like there was a front desk and the offices were carved into the trees somewhere, but the virtual tour didn’t have clearance to get through it.  They both stared on at the tiny screen, Roger looking perplexed and confused.

            Jim looked at the lapel he handed to Roger, who twisted it in between his fingers and placed it in his pocket.  He smelled the air, no traces of the metallic residue that the robots left on their path.  He recognized that smell so clearly when he held the pin for the split second, they might now recognize Roger as one of them, and see Jim as the only intruder.  That was, once they reached the outdoor bunker.  It seemed like a far off dream, so the anxiety wasn’t creeping in yet.

            The front door opened itself before Jim could walk through it and the Bully Bot stood there, his foot stuck out in a tripping position.  Jim recognized it immediately and knew it would try to trip him, since that was what he had programmed it to do, and slammed the door quickly.

            “Going somewhere?”  The robot said in a perfunctory monotone.  “You will stay in the house until you meet your maker.  Me.”

            Jim moved a coffeetable sideways into the door, ripping a long hole in Roger’s nice blue carpet in the process.  He apologized with his shoulders.  The robot clawed at the other side of the wooden door like a cat, a sudden red dot appearing that seemed to soak through from the other side.  A hand poked through the hole, rotating around and making it wider, and long snakelike fingers stretched out for the doorknob.

            “I didn’t teach it to do that, or say that.”  Jim said, panicking.  He hunted through his toolbox, turning it over on its side on accident.  He reached down with one hand to grab the lid and lift it back up, the the lid popped off and he fell onto his back.  Screws, washers and nails rolled out like doors to a clown car had just opened, and they rolled freely across the alcove. 

Roger ran to the sink and turned the knob to full blast, fumbling around in the compartment underneath it for a bucket.  He filled it and the hot water sloshed freely, soaking his T-shirt as he scrambled over to the door.  He threw the bucket in an overhand heave at the robot, sliding forward on the floor.

Jim gave off an agitated yelp, as the robot grew faster and shined a metallic red.  The robots function on heat, he would later explain.

“Come on!”  Jim called, already out of the back door, the swinging gate creaking in the wind.  The robot barged through and stepped directly through the glass coffee table, wearing it over its body like a person who had a painting smashed over his head.  Roger threw the knock-off Van Gogh at it from off of the wall, it smashing ineffectually against the robots body.

“Nice shot, Tex.”  It said, whistling between its teeth.  It shook its entire body with a violent vibration and turned its lower half into a round spiked ball, shooting glass around the living room like a chandelier falling on concrete.  Roger caught some shrapnel to his sweatpantsed ankles, gimping his way up the stairs to Jim who was waving enthusiastically like a runway guide.

Jim pulled a shiny metal discuss out of his sweatshirt pocket and hurled it down the stairs at the robot, and the metal disc gave off a blue light.  It pulsated once, distorting the air around it, and the robot was temporarily phased, holding its head like it was drunk and walking around woozily.

They scurried out onto the overlooking porch, Jim looking around decisively and grabbing a hold of a branch.  The robot hulked its way up the stairs, losing some of its humanlike enamel as it continued.  Roger was standing by the foot of the bed, looking forlorn.  He spotted a picture of his daughters with the Easter Bunny on the dresser and pocketed it, throwing a cross necklace of his wife’s around his neck as well.  Jim waved and they jumped off the porch together, landing softly in the bushes.

Jim looked at the necklace and then up at Roger.  “There’s no God where we’re going.  There’s nothing at all there.”

Day 76: I didn't forget about you, writing blog

OK I'm going to get more into this thing "in earnest."  I know I've been doing it every day for SEVENTY SIX DAYS, and that in itself is a commitment, but I'm going to marry it now.  Also, want to read a book about making successful blogs.  I think that might make me more blog-savvy.



            The face saw Jim and panicked.  It cradled its black leather fingers in front of its face, steepling them under its jaw.  A smile rose over its nonexistent lips, hinted at by its eyebrows which lurched downward.   The frenzied neighing of a stallion in the background caused temporary feedback, the screen fuzzing blue black.  The man looked like he could see into the other side of the camera, and the screen turned apprehensively in each direction as he tried to figure out what was going on behind Jim and the policeman.

            “That sure is a lot of scrap metal around.”  The metallic voice said.  “You… must,  have had some problems.”

            The policeman looked around unscrupulously, the wheels turning slowly inside his head.  He took the hand off the holster and walked over to the pile of rubble, kicking a metal corner with his steel toed boots.  The pile collapsed in on itself and the cop turned slowly, staring blankly over at Jim.  He rolled up his sleeves for no apparent reason, falling to one knee with his elbow perched on the other looking at the pile.

            Roger slouched and rubbed his forehead with an open palm, the vein under his eye throbbing with red intensity.  The bags under his eyes grew with each second, crows feet popping up by the twenties like his face was building a fence to protect the nose from the eyes.

            “When can I see my girls, are they fine?  They have to be fine.  Where did you take them?”  Roger said, his voice wavering.

            The robotic eyes twitched and focused on Jim, ignoring Roger’s question completely.  An aperture adjustment scrolled like a hand on a mouse button, the screen zooming forward about a quarter of an inch.

            “Jim, how are you? It’s been so long, hasn’t it?!”  The voice moved up to a high register and stayed there,  the robot voices enthusiasm sounding entirely genuine. 

            “Yeah, I suppose it has.”  The cloudy veil behind Jim’s eyes lifted and he was lucid again.  His voice took the shape of a Batman behind the mask.  “Glad I got here in time for the screening.” 

            It’s voice grew shriller.  “Making dumb jokes at a time like this!  Jim, you really are a piece of work!  You think you can escape from here without doing the work we scheduled for you?  Do you think that, Jim?”

            A bouncing autonomous sound shook the camera, the screen displaying it rising up and facing out into a vast desert.  Roger watched with anticipation for a glimpse of one of his daughters but the bright midday sun gave him an eyeful of blurs instead. 

            “It’s not my fault you guys can’t invent yourself a design out of a cardboard box.”  Jim said, digging through his pockets for something.  He retrieved a piece of gun and popped it into his mouth, smoothing his wild long hair back into a pony tail again after popping it into his mouth. 

            “I’ll give you one chance,”  The robot voice said after a long pause.  The cop pressed a button on his neck, and the man on the screen froze.  A bright purple laser shot in a concentrated line at the cop, leaving a skeleton laying in a pile of charred ash.  Roger recoiled,  gulping back copious bodily fluids rising through his throat. 

Jim looked at him, he was close to tears, and what he really wanted to do was walk over and give him a hug.  Instead, he ducked around the house, out of view of the screen, and returned seconds later with a triangular shaped rock.  He held a “shh” finger in front of his face, Roger looking at him with woeful acceptance.

Roger was too afraid to talk to the screen, although now they were left alone.  He smiled at it sheepishly.

“Where did Jim go?”  The screen asked, perplexed.  Jim jumped out at it like a wild tiger, struck it in the side with the rock, and the picture fizzled into white noise momentarily.  Roger languidly walked toward Jim who was frantically gesturing, the screen trying to turn to face them, drubbing its sides against the wooden scaffolding of the building. 

“I will be here, waiting, when you get back, and you want to see me.”  It assumed they were going somewhere.

            Jim ran through the house organizing all of his warring equipment.  He got his metal boots, bulletproof vest, rickshaw cutoff shotgun.  Roger grabbed the shotgun out of his hand and looked at him with disdain.  He fumbled it, unprepared for the heaviness of it, and screamed weakly as it hit the front walkway and didn’t go off.

            “Who is that guy?  What kind of people are you involved with?”  Roger shouted as Jim dug through cabinets, pulled drawers open, stomping more loudly than might have been necessary.  Chunks of dirt from his clothes left a trail on the kitchen floor.  “You know, this isn’t your house anymore!”  Roger said rhetorically

            Jim speedwalked down the hall and hit an invisible button underneath the stairs and a hidden armory opened, from which he removed a helmet and special gloves.

            “What do you know about this guy?” Roger pestered in a feeble voice.

            Jim didn’t answer, he raced upstairs into the master bedroom, slipping at first on the bottom of the stairwell and having to hold himself up with the banister to the top.

            “There’s nothing in our bedroom!  What are you doing in our bedroom.”  He rolled his eyes and followed upstairs, repeating in a quiet staccato.

            Jim was on his knees digging through Roger’s wifes underwear drawer, with a focused look in his eyes.

            “What the hell are you doing?”  Roger blustered out in his most authoritative tone.  He stood over Jim with his hands on his hips and fingers facing outwards, and started gnawing at his lower lip.

            Jim removed a pin from the drawer minutes later, a tiny lappel with a swordfish insignia.  He handed it to Roger, giving him a stern “you know what to do with it” face.  Then he raced back outside, dragging his armament along with him.

          Ok, not quite a thousand words, and not a particularly good one.  It ebbs and flows.  But, it's not always easy, so it feels like work.  And so the point is definitely to improve as time goes on, eh?  We'll see tomorrow.