Prompt 4: Week of 12 December 2010

"Submit any number of related data tables, charts, or graphs."

Submissions are due 20 December at 12:00 AM.

Another Tie For Round 3

Round 3 ends in a tie between Gabriel Reynolds and Gregory M. 

3. Gregory M.

Their immaculately furnished flat welcomed him as he made his way across it. He stopped at his wine rack and selected a Swiss Pinot noir. He carried the bottle to the far end of the flat and stood at the floor-to-ceiling window looking out upon the city. Would they have predicted the Pinot noir? Are they yet prescient? He wondered to himself. He turned his attention to the impressive irony: the reason he was able to provide so well for his wife would be precisely what stopped him from providing for her. His wife stood in the doorway to the master suite, overcome with anxiety. Keeping his eyes focused beyond the window, Mr. Ray began to let spill what must be spilt.

“I was an inside man. A researcher. A staff-scientist, an experimenter, experimentee, subject, subjector. I was a trial, one of the first, not the last. I don’t work for CarbonTronics Consolidated, dearest, though I wish I were so innocent.”

She tilted her head slightly, wondering.

“This isn’t the CIA or the FBI or the Mafia, honey. Those guys let you go. All you have to do is best a few hitmen and it’s gone from your past. Then you move on. Not so with my… organization,” he continued.
            He turned to her, really observing her. He had taken her for granted for so long. He noticed her lower jaw slacking just slightly.

“I don’t understand, honey, what makes you say all this?”

“Dearest, have you ever taken an aptitude test?” He was insulting her. He knew her vast education preceded her.

“Why, of course. Not since finishing at the University, though. I’m confused, dear.”

“My… organization uses a type of aptitude test to select its workers, subjects, employees, experiments. But it’s strictly that: an aptitude test. They don’t care about your past. They care about how you will respond to what they do to you. They enhance you. They change you. They want to make sure you can handle it well.” Were the details important? Yes. She would herself die of anxiety if he remained a mystery any longer.

“And you passed the test?”
            “Yes, dearest Bretta, I passed the test.”

“Did they… enhance you?”

“Yes, Bretta. My nervous system. It’s how they change you. They help your brain communicate. All electrical signals are subject to some sort of resistance. Your brain communicates with itself and with your inferior nervous systems with electrical signals.” Again he was insulting her, a prominent medical professional.

“So Bretta, what if you could get rid of some of the resistance felt by those signals? That was these people’s grand question. They answered it—using injection. The active agent binds to nervous components. Spinal column, dendrites, individual neurons, everything. It’s a coating; think of it like an organic superconductor. Brain signals suddenly have no difficulty traveling. More signals per second, more information per second. Faster processing. They dealt with subjects’ overheating with the second prototype serum.”

“Dear, please stop. You’re such an engineer; I don’t want details. Tell me why you’re telling me all this. Other than to be honest with your wife.” Mrs. Bretta Ray grew stern on the surface, but she was really growing dangerously anxious. Was her husband a damn lunatic?

“They did it to me. I was one of the first. It’s not so bad; just helps you think. It really helps you think. Makes you a valuable asset to whomsoever you want to be an asset for. They sent me on an assignment, dear. Reconnaissance in Eastern Asia, and I gained some—err, valuable—information. That information is why I’m abandoning this nameless, faceless, Godless, monstrous organization that thought it could use its damn serum to help me help it. But it’s not so easy, honey. They know that I know how they work, how they use their precocious army of agents to get around all worldly obstacles. They’ll deduce pretty quickly (oh, quickly!) that I’m abandoning them, and they won’t have it. They will come to drain me, honey. Drain my mind. Not my thoughts, or memories, but drain it physically—I’ll have a useless husk of a mind.”

She burst into tears. Which would be worse? That her husband is so hopelessly insane or that it’s true?

He placed the wine bottle on the carpet, where it promptly spilled, and he approached his wife. He kissed her knowing that he may not do so ever again. She let him leave the flat without protest, but she collapsed and sobbed after he was gone.

Mr. Ray had a crude plan. He would find a hotel. They would trace him there, doubtless. They were probably already waiting in the random hotel he would choose. If he could kill them, he would. He double-checked for the weight of his primary and secondary firearms: they were there. Otherwise, he’d make them damn sure that his invaluable knowledge wasn’t to be had.

He had been sitting on the single bed for less than twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door of room 414.

“Mr. Ray, we need to speak about your assignment. It’s pressing, and you can help us.”

Don’t they know I’m one of them—anything but a fool?

The door opened. Mr. Ray saw one of them stowing a lock-picking mechanism. No doubt he had designed it himself, perhaps earlier that day.

Four agents. It was useless. Drawing a weapon—even on himself—would mean instant capture. They’d see it coming.

But there’s an outcome they couldn’t have predicted. Computed. I have no choice, they’ve worked out every alternative to their advantage. I can be sure of that. They wouldn’t come here without deductive certainty of success. But they neglect the irrational. What I know does not belong to them. I’ll keep it that way if I die to do so.

Mr. Ray slowly stood and turned away from the door. The agents calmly approached from behind. There were certain surprises the agents expected; they embodied the ability to expect the unexpected. The surprise of Mr. Ray bolting towards the hotel’s bay window, hurling himself through it, and falling to his death was not a rationally foreseeable outcome. The agents stood dumbfounded for the first time since their injections.

EPILOGUE

Mr. Ray’s body was collected by his former employer within minutes. It was in excellent condition. His brain was scanned, and impressions left therein by the neurological signals of his final thoughts were reconstructed into a comprehensive record of his latest assignment.

3. Gabriel Reynolds

This room needs a breeze.

I need a release.

I need to get the most out of this situation. I have some potential kinetic energy up on the fourteenth floor here. Or – shit, science is silly. Potential gravitational? Which was it? Too stuffy in here to think. This room needs a breeze. I can make the most of that potential here on the fourteenth floor. Not much else potential left. It all went somewhere, somehow. I know the energy just kind of transferred, I know that much about science – never goes away, just gets put somewhere else. Maybe somebody else got that kinetic energy, that happiness for moving forward that got burnt out of me. Is that – no, no, stupid, that’s not how karma works; you don’t swap karma credit with other people while you’re still alive. What I know about karma is that it involves death, and redemption. I can make the most of that potential here on the fourteenth floor.

But… I guess kinetic – gravitational – dammit, whichever, whatever, I just know it involves two places, not one. You make that swift, decisive movement from one place to another – two places, not one. Who’d want something so boring as a one-scene story? Not much else potential, having just one place to go. Cuz you’re already there. Big places to go, all of them nowhere. Big people to see, all of them me. Shit, who am I kidding, some big person I am. Some big place I’ve been living in! Big enough to feel far away, no matter where you go. Big enough to be there no matter what you do.

Hey, that gravity though. There’s potential there. I’ve got so much potential up here. And it’s down there too? Shit, the perfect pair of places for this two-scene tragedy. All that potential. Who knew. But hey, it’s funny though, cuz without that whole second scene, there wouldn’t be this potential in the first one to begin with. That’s funny; I mean I guess that’s how potential energy works? The first part takes its meaning from the second cuz that’s why there can be movement in the first place?

It is stuffy as SHIT in here. This room needs a breeze. Somebody’s gotta open a window, kill two birds with one stone. Or I guess – ha, the bird’ll take care of it himself. Only one bird anyway, sticks and stones and shit all redundant.

Fresh air. Oh my god. That smells impossibly delicious. This is what freedom smells like. This is what potential smells like. I have to… I have to be there. Two birds with one stone, I guess. Or… right, one bird. No stones. No sticks. Dumb bird that never flew before. Never knew how. Well, I don’t care this time. Breeze or no breeze, this bird’s gonna fly.

Easy.

I hope they never close

that window again.

Oughta smell the

potential once

and a while.

Whoops,

this

is

my

stop

3. Nixon Ball

Forgive the length, due to time constraints I didn't do much planning and just started writing, only stopping when I felt done. I then did my best to eliminate waste, while still making haste.

Margaret was a girl unlike many others. Her long blonde silken hair was revered by the land's many adoring men, and reviled by it's many envious women. Her figure and countenance were of such beauty that they could only be compared properly to that of Aphrodite. Of course, Margaret's unsurpassed beauty was not the only which set her apart from other girls. As if God had decided when creating her that this particular girl was not yet fortunate enough, Margaret was the daughter of the King of all the land. The land was prosperous, its fields yielded crops with astonishing efficiency and its mountains were practically teeming with gold. Sadly, in this land and in all the lands surrounding it, the concept known to reader as art had not yet been discovered. So the castle had no ornamentation, homes had no décor, cathedrals had no stained glass. All "design" choices were made by engineers in the most practical way possible. No one had ever thought to alter how some looked, so it would be more pleasing. It goes without saying that no one had ever though to make pleasing sounds or even a realistic sculpture.

On her 18th birthday, after a party so spectacular that the reader can't possibly conceive of it (this is inherently true, because no one wealthy enough to comprehend the extravagance of the party would be bothered to read) she had a vision as she slept. In her mind's eye she saw a beautifully cut block of marble. When Margaret awoke the next day she told her parents what had happened in her mind while she slept. Not wanting even their daughter's subconscious to want for anything, the King and Queen ordered a large block of marble exactly as Margaret had described it. Slightly frustrated with her parents overzealous efforts to please, she had the servants move the half ton block to the top room of the highest tower.

The next night Margaret saw a chisel and hammer. Following her usual pattern she told her parents about the strange vision, and before long there were several hammer/chisel combinations laying beside the marble in the top room of the tallest tower. Then the sleeping started to get quite strange for Margaret. She would see herself being celebrated through out the land. She was riding in a parade around the Castle being thrown in her honor. She could sense that everything seemed much more beautiful. There were things she could see which made happy, and sounds that pleased her greatly. Then she would force her way through the crowd to her beckoning parents. All along her way people thanked her for bringing them "art". Then as the confused princess reached her parents, her mother would weep, point to a beautiful marble sculpture and proclaim that it was the best invention in the history of the land. After having felt the grandness of her life in this dream world Margaret could not bear to live her real life. So she set out to make the vision come true. She worked day and night on what she imagined would be the first of many projects. She became very attached to the physical product and the ideas it represented, and she began to refer to the whole thing as her "dream".

Margaret put all of her best effort into the dream, and after two years she was finished. Sadly, on the day she completed the project, the King was informed by a page that his wife had been having a torrid, love affair with one of the royal knights. The king had been a very forgiving and docile man his entire life, but his love for his wife was such that this news sent him into a catastrophic rage. He ran frantically through the castle throwing everything about. The anger fueled a desire for destruction which seemed to be insatiable. After he finished destroying the first 3/4ths of the castle, he furiously began searching for things to destroy in Margret's quadrant. Margaret quickly ran out of her study to see what was the matter. Her servants informed her of what had passed and led her to the King. Margaret pleaded, weeping with her royal father to calm down, but the man was too consumed by rage to even hear his daughter. He tore through every room until finally he reached the top room of tallest tower where Margaret's dream was waiting, under a cloth, to be revealed.

Showing incredible strength, the King lifted her dream off the ground and dragged it to the window. Margaret screamed and cried for him to please put it back. She tried to explain that it was her "dream" and she had just gotten it right. But the old man had lost all sense of reality and with a great heave he defenestrated Margaret's sculpture. It left the window and immediately started descending to the ground. Margaret sprinted to the window, instinctively but futilely attempting to prevent the now inevitable demise of the first piece of art in all the land. Margaret put her head in her hands, she felt as if all the life, happiness, and purpose had gone from her. Her sadness was such that she could not even cry, she could not even move, she could not even think.

She lived out the rest of her days in miserable, depressed, stupor while her father was institutionalized and her mother ran away to another land with young knightly lover. The kingdom fell into ruin as its leaders were either incapacitated or had ceased to care, and all because Margaret's dream was destroyed that day.

And this boys and girls, is the story of how Margaret's dream, went out the window.