[Journal] Dog Fostering

Hunter at the pound.

On Friday, my wife and I became foster parents.

For a dog.

The story’s a sad one. Hunter is a 3 year old beagle who was dropped off at a Missouri animal shelter because the family was moving and couldn’t keep him. He’s housebroken and seems to be trained to respond to some commands, and the family claimed his shots were up to date. But for whatever reason, they decided to drop him off at an animal control facility the way one would drop off a bag of old clothes at Goodwill. The poor dog, who is sweet and friendly and adorable, was slated to be put down if he couldn’t be adopted out within a few days.

I found out about the dog through St. Louis Pet Rescue and, braving snow and ice on a Friday afternoon, drove out to the shelter to pick him up myself.

I’m so aggravated that this even needed to happen, because it says something about how people in our society treat their pets. I love my pets, and I probably spoil them a little, but I try to make them happy because they make me happy. I can’t imagine life without them, and I tear up at the thought of Ramses or Oscar passing away. So, for someone to be so cold and callous about their pet is alien to me. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have at least found him a home, or contacted a rescue organization. He’s a purebred beagle, for crying out loud. People pay hundreds of dollars for them at the pet store. (The sale of dogs at the pet store is another gripe, but we’ll save that for another time.) Instead, they simply said, “we can’t handle this dog any more, so we’ll turn him over to the authorities.” That’s just loathsome. They took a creature that loved them deeply and they discarded him because it was too much trouble to make sure he was properly taken care of.

The Animal Control facility people are frank: they destroy dogs after a few days. They have to. They don’t have the space or the funding or the ability to keep these dogs, and they are reliant on rescue organizations to come in and bring the dogs off death row. It’s an ugly situation. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that every year, 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are brought to shelters, and of those, around 4 million are put down. Think about that for a moment. 4 million. Where I live, in St. Louis, there aren’t even 4 million people in the area. 4 million is a number that should boggle the mind. 4 million would be genocide if it involved people instead of pets.

People often ask me why I get so upset about animals when I should be caring about people who have problems. My answer is that the way we treat animals reveals much about who we are and what we stand for. If we are kind to animals and have compassion for them, we are typically kind to people as well. If we are cruel to animals or callous to their needs, we are typically selfish when it comes to assisting others. I think this proverb sums it up best:

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10, NIV Bible)

Proverbs are meant to be chewed on and digested. What this one says is that when a person is good, he or she cares for the needs of an animal because that is what good people do. But when a person is wicked (or, by extension, selfish), no matter how much he or she tries to be kind, the action is cruel because the person is acting out of ill-intent and self-preservation. A good person bears good fruit; a bad person is poisonous.

Hunter is so much happier now that he's in foster care!

I don’t know if the people who abandoned Hunter are bad people. But I will say that they are ignorant and short-sighted at best and very likely callous and selfish. They don’t deserve a dog like him. All he tried to do was love them. But they couldn’t plan their future with him in mind.

Fortunately, he is fine now, and sleeping behind me in his crate. He’s a little upset that he can’t be around me all the time, or that he has to compete with my dogs for dominance. But he’s alive, he’s enjoying life, and he’s going to find his way to a family that will love him. I think it’s a big deal, because all of the humans involved in this story are going to learn so much more about compassion than they would have otherwise. And so many more will hear Hunter’s story (or the story of other foster dogs after him) and perhaps consider fostering some pups of their own.

As a final note, I was searching for Hunter’s new profile on Petfinder and came across another beagle named Hunter who was adopted out of the Madison County Humane Society only to be brought back a few months later because he kept getting out of his new owner’s fence. This Hunter was an 8-month-0ld puppy when he was adopted out, and full of energy. Perhaps the owner should have tried walking him more often instead of relying on a fence, or putting in one of the many fencing options that are designed with dogs in mind. Instead, the owner dumped him off at the Humane Society like a piece of returned merchandise. What a tragic world we live in, when the life of a loving canine companion can be tossed aside so callously for want of a better fence.

[Journal] The Sort of Story I Want To Tell

I’ve been reflecting, following the Lost premiere last night, about why some stories are so captivating while others are so forgettable. Lost is just one of a series of stories that have managed to build up an impressive following despite being complex and different. In the 1990s, The X-Files experienced a similar phenomenon. I’ve also realized that the Harry Potter books, the first Matrix film, the first season of Twin Peaks and even the original Star Wars trilogy have managed to achieve similar success.

But what is it about these stories that has made them so popular? It boils down to the following common elements:

1) The presence of an overpowering element. In Lost, it’s the frustration of trying to get off an island populated by seemingly evil forces. In Star Wars, it’s the evil galactic empire and the dark side of the Force. In The Matrix, it’s the presence of the enslaving machines. In The X-Files, it’s the government. In Harry Potter, it’s Voldemort. All of these stories have not just a great villain, but a real sense that this villain (or evil power) cannot be defeated without great perseverance.

2) Everyman heroes. In each of these stories, the heroes are just normal people who are trying to stand up against a great force. By persevering, these heroes can achieve some sort of power (or knowledge), but they are never strong enough, on their own, to defeat the evil power entirely. These heroes also tend to be morally good, though that is not necessarily a requirement.

3) A secret world. Even in a fantasy world (such as the fantasy galaxy of Star Wars), some secret sub-world must exist. In Lost, the secret world revolves around the cult of the Island. In Star Wars, it revolves around the Jedi and Sith. In The X-Files, it revolves around those who have some knowledge of “truth”. In The Matrix, it revolves around hackers who are jacked out of the central network. The sub-world is what the story is able to use to not only reveal key elements of the story, but also what the story uses to elevate the heroes above their everyman status.

4) Unknown story elements that result in mystery. These might be secrets that are being intentionally kept from the characters, or they might be knowledge of the villain’s motivation, the nature of the evil force, or the true power of the secret world. Revealing these secrets must be done in a careful, metered way, though the longer the mystery exists, the more effective it will be at keeping the reader hooked.

5) Plot twists that change the audience’s perception of the story. Plot twists, when employed correctly, can give a story new life. Lost has been notable in that it has introduced plot twists in every season that have changed the very nature of the show. The original Star Wars trilogy offered one major plot twist per episode that changed the face of how the characters would react: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, the revelation that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and the revelation that Luke was fighting not just for his noble cause, but also to protect his secret sister. The X-Files had plot twists that would confirm Mulder and Scully’s quest, only to frustrate them even more when the evidence vanished. The audience was left with a deeper understanding of the story while the characters were bolstered in their attempts to uncover the truth.

6) A very deliberate structure that never allows the heroes to triumph until the very end. This is, perhaps, the most important aspect of telling this sort of story, and it’s actually the reason why the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the two Matrix sequels and the second season of Twin Peaks and the resulting movie weren’t able to achieve the same sort of success as their predecessors.

The structure is very similar to what you see in the original Star Wars trilogy, and it can be remembered by considering the titles of the film. The first film, Star Wars: A New Hope introduces the element of conflict with some glimmer of optimism. The second film, The Empire Strikes Back, results in the overpowering force defeating the heroes and preventing them from prevailing. The final film, The Return of the Jedi, puts the heroes in a last-ditch effort to overcome incredible odds so that they can finally defeat the villain and the evil power behind him.

Now, look at the prequel trilogy and you can see how this structure was employed incorrectly. The first film was titled The Phantom Menace, indicating that the evil power had yet to become overpowering or dangerous. The second film was titled Attack of the Clones, but the third was titled Revenge of the Sith. The conflict of these two films should have been reversed. George Lucas would have been much better off to ditch the first film, begin the new series in the midst of the Clone Wars, have the Sith return and overpower the Republic in the second episode, and then be defeated by the tragic figure of the ends-justify-the-means Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader in the process of putting the evil Palpatine (himself a Sith) in greater power.

The Matrix told its story incorrectly as well. The correct structure would have been to kill Neo at the end of the second film and then have him return in the third with a greater knowledge of who he was, allowing the humans and machines to fight the greater menace of Agent Smith. Instead, the second Matrix film decided to info-dump the audience and remove the magic of the story with a bewildering scene that gave answers no one was ready to hear.

Even Lost, which has managed to string its story along so well, has struggled with story arcs that waste characters and provide unneeded information. Charlie, a fan favorite, is probably one of the most wasted characters in the series. He was made into a pseudo-villain during the second season, and then killed off in a meaningless sacrifice in the third. Other characters, such as Sayid, were changed later in the series in the name of plot twists, but these twists were neither necessary nor appealing to most viewers.

Anyhow, the story with the elements above — that is the sort of story I want to write. Three times, to be precise — on three different projects I’ve been working on. Now that I’ve been able to identify these elements, I think I’m in much better shape to incorporate them. The next step is to work on my revisions.

The Dark Ages

Photo Credit: Paul Goyette (Flickr.cm)

“But why would they do that?” Clern asked his tutor in shock.

“Because they were living in the dark ages of humanity,” said Mane. “Some of the people were scientific and embraced reason, but most were simply content to live out their biological urges.”

Clern looked down at his pet dog, Yoseh, and gave him a pat on the head. This ancient history stuff was troubling. To think that humans could have lived that way… it was horrifying!

“What you have to understand, my boy, is that human beings couldn’t even treat each other as equals,” Mane continued. “There was this practice during the time that they called abortion. When a woman would become pregnant with a fetus, she would sometimes carry it for a month or two without realizing it and then go and have a doctor rip it out of her or kill it with chemicals if she decided she didn’t want it any longer. It was a barbaric practice, and the sad thing is that the entire issue divided humanity along a very bewildering line — they would argue whether the fetus was alive or dead. Can you imagine?”

“They… didn’t know?” Clern asked.

“They didn’t think,” said Mane. “Even then, they had the technology to resolve the issue. Abortion as a practice could have ended entirely had they instituted a breeding program that would have allowed those who wanted to be life-bearers to do so and those who did not to indulge in their carnal pleasures with no repercussions. But they were so distracted by the debate of what life truly was that they could not see the practical solution. Nor could they let go of their age-old attitudes towards sexual behavior.”

“Abortion is just one of the heinous things they did to each other, of course,” Mane continued. “During the height of the dark ages, technology was driven by instruments of death designed to kill other humans. Did you know, my boy, that the exoskeletons we use today to build great things and the robots we use to assist us with our daily needs were first developed as weapons to be used in wars? Wars resulted in death and suffering unlike anything you could ever fathom. All for pointless squabbles about power and resources.”

Clern shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How could humans possibly behave this way?”

“That’s why we call it the dark ages,” Mane continued. “Humans would kill each other over the color of another person’s skin, or another person’s ancestors, or another person’s nationality. Even worse, some nations would live in extreme wealth, while allowing others elsewhere in the world to starve. It was all needless and cruel.”

“Is that why they slaughtered the animals, too?” asked Clern. “Because they were cruel?”

“They slaughtered the animals for food, my boy,” said Mane. Clern tensed up and put his hand on Yoseh, who also looked up in alarm as he sensed Clern’s discomfort. “Familiar animals, such as cows and chickens and sheep and fish. But even unfamiliar animals that no longer exist, like sharks and ostriches and elk.”

“And dogs?” Clern asked.

“Of course,” Mane nodded. “They would eat any meat they could get their hands on. And what they couldn’t eat, they would often waste, erecting huge mounds of trash outside their cities. You’ve learned about those, have you not?”

Clern nodded. “But why?” he asked.

“Because they believed that the animals were inferior to them,” Mane said. “Many humans at the time believed that they had been created by a god to rule the world over the animals. When scientific knowledge began to flourish and revealed the truth about human origins, many humans refused to believe it. Others argued that since the law of nature was survival of the fittest, that humans should be able to eat any animal they could catch and kill.”

“But… that’s twisted!” Clern cried.

“That may be,” said Mane. “To some degree, you have to excuse them, because they were correct in that humans evolved larger brains because they were capable of eating meat. Proteins are important for human survival, and the humans did not yet possess the technology for growing meat without taking the life of a thinking creature. But whereas early humans understood that nature was not a hierarchy as much as it was an ecosystem, dark age humans responded in arrogance, taking control of nature and shaping it to their desires. They destroyed a number of species before they truly realized what they were doing, but by then, it was too late.”

Clern put his head down on his desk. “I don’t want to learn any more about the dark ages,” he sighed. “It’s too much.”

Mane sighed. “Sadly, my boy, you must,” he said. “It is the history of our people, and we must understand it so that we do not live in fear or ignorance of where we have come from.”

“But,” Mane added, “that’s enough for today, I think.”

He rose, and looked out the window. “Our world is so bright, so gleaming, so peaceful…” he said. “It’s hard to imagine that this place had once been a city where humans had fought against each other because of two old religions.”

“What did they call this place?” Clern asked.

“Israel,” Mane said, and sighed. “And the story of what happened to the people who lived here will be our topic tomorrow.”

With that, Mane gave the boy a tired smile, a simple bow, and said, “you are dismissed.”

[Slept Through Thursday] Part 4

Photo Credit: TeeMack Photography

Slept Through Thursday is a serial story. To start with the first chapter, please click here. Click here for more chapters!

“How far is it?” I asked, panting for breath as we stopped.

“Another mile,” said Molly. “Geez, you’re really out of shape.” Herman nodded in agreement. It was humiliating to be judged by a pig.

“My major is computer science,” I said, and took in another deep gulp of air. “I don’t get out much.”

“Should we just take a car?” Molly asked. “I’ve always wanted to drive one.”

“Whatever,” I said. And then the insanity of what she was suggesting started to sink in as she picked up a big rock and headed for a parked car on the side of the street. “Wait!” I called, and chased after her. “What are you doing?”

She peered in the window of a Honda Civic parked on the street, holding up the rock as if she were ready to smash the window and break in. “No keys,” she said. “Do you know how to hotwire it?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “That’s something people do in the movies, not real life.”

“Oh,” she said. And then she turned and pointed at another car. “How about that one?”

The car she was pointing to was crashed into the window of a coffee shop — a big yellow Dodge Charger that looked like something out of a 1970s movie. I walked over towards it, with Molly and Herman behind me, and scoped out the area. There was glass everywhere, but the car didn’t seem to have too much damage. The passenger’s side door was open, and there were clawmarks and bloodspots all over the seat. But the keys were still hanging in the ignition.

“It’ll do,” I said, and then looked over at all of the pastries in the display case that were sure to go to waste. “You start it up while I get some breakfast.”

I spent a few minutes wandering around the back counter, stuffing my face and getting out some bags and loading them up with as many pastries and bagels as I could. I was worried about anything out in plain view having glass in it, but the display case items seemed to be unharmed. My stomach must have overridden my brain for a moment, because it didn’t occur to me that Molly might have no idea what she was doing. That became apparent when she turned on the car, started squealing the tires and then lurched forward with the horn blaring. I jumped out of the way as she crashed into the display case. She turned off the car and jumped out.

“Sorry!” she called. “Maybe I should let Herman drive!”

I got up out of the rubble, brushed myself off, and picked up the one bag of food I’d been able to salvage thus far. “I guess I don’t get any coffee,” I said, looking over at the broken espresso maker.

“Sorry, sorry,” Molly said. She walked over towards a cooler full of soft drinks. “Coke OK?” she asked.

“It’ll have to be,” I said. “Grab a bunch and come on.”

I had to move Herman out of the driver’s seat, and he was quite indignant about being put in the back until I threw a piece of coffee cake back there. He sniffed it and nudged it with his snout for a minute before gobbling it up. Molly plopped down beside me after a moment with an armload of sodas. I grabbed one before she dropped them on the floor. As I cracked mine open and took a sip, I noticed her reaching down for a bottle of Dr Pepper.

“Don’t open tha…” I started to say, and braced myself for what was about to come. But it never did; I looked over at Molly and noticed  she was looking back at me like I was an idiot.

There was an awkward, silent pause between us. Finally, I turned on the car, adjusted the mirrors, and slowly backed out of the carnage of the coffee shop.

Once I was on the road, I turned to her and asked, “So, where are we going?”

“The edge of town,” she said.

“Which edge?” I asked.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said.

“And why wouldn’t it matter?” I probed.

“You’ll see when we get there,” she said. And then she slowly cracked open her bottle, let some of the gas hiss out, and then finished opening it so she could take a sip.

To be continued! Click here for more chapters!

Slept Through Thursday (Part 3)

Photo Credit: n*o*o*r (Flickr.com)

Slept Through Thursday is a serial story. To start with the first chapter, please click here. Click here for more chapters!

Before I realized what was happening, the pig broke free and ran towards me. I tried to turn around and run, but tripped over the bench behind me. The pain of the trip, along with the weight of the pig, knocked me to the ground.

“I think he likes you” the woman said, and then gave an inappropriate giggle. Her pig was grunting in my face as he sniffed at me.

“Get him off me,” I groaned. The pig was heavy.

“Herman, come on,” she said. “Let him up.”

The pig looked back at her, and then at me. He snorted in my face and then backed off a bit. I sat up and stared at the woman, who was doubled back in laughter. “It’s you!” she shouted. “Oh, I’m glad it’s you.”

I stared at her for a minute, trying to figure out why she looked so familiar to me. She was in her early 20s, with stringy brown hair filled with what looked like pieces of aluminum foil and red-lensed plastic sunglasses that seemed to have loose pieces of wire hanging off them. She was skinny, but not in an incredibly attractive way; she was lean and gangly, with very little curve to her body. Plus, she was wearing overalls and a plaid flannel shirt. It might have been cute if it hadn’t been so sad. Well, that, and the fact that she was walking around with a pig that was as big as a large dog. That was just plain weird.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she said. She stuck out her hand, as if she wanted to shake, even though she was standing about eight feet away. “I’m Molly,” she said, and laughed again. It was such an awful sound that I wanted to tear my own eardrums out.

The name and that horrible laugh reminded me why she looked familiar. Mad Molly was one of the local townies who was well-known for her antics out on the quad. We had our fair share of crazy quad preachers coming out to tell us about how Jesus hated anyone who wasn’t straight, white and sober, but Molly had a different message. She believed that religion was just a conspiracy created by an ancient race of space aliens to keep mankind from destroying itself, and that the whole reason the Bible existed was because its words were written in a pattern that wired human brains to be more receptive to the truths the aliens had taught. Or something like that. Molly had often gotten wound up when she’d give her strange sermons, and they didn’t always have a lot of internal consistency.

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?” I demanded as I stood up.

She looked down at the pig. “It’s him, right?” she asked. The pig stared at me, but seemed to be nodding.

“Are you asking the pig if he recognizes me?” I asked.

“Yep,” Molly said.

“But… ” I held out my hand and pointed at him, as if to protest, “he’s just a pig!”

Herman looked offended, and gave a disgusted snort. Molly shrugged – at me, I realized, not at him. “Pigs are one of the smartest animals on the planet,” she said. “Granted, some of them are pretty dumb. But you really shouldn’t make assumptions about people until you meet them.”

“People?” I said. “Pigs aren’t people! They’re…” I didn’t know what else to say here, so I shouted, “Pigs!”

Molly shook her head and looked down at Herman. He made eye contact with her. “Are you sure it’s him?” she asked. “He was a lot nicer last time.”

“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “I thought you said we’d never met?”

“I said we hadn’t met yet,” she said. “But we have met, now, and we will meet again. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

I started to explain exactly what was wrong with that, but then I realized that I was arguing with Mad Molly and a pig. And somehow, I seemed to be losing. I took a deep breath and tried to regain my composure.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Probably at the south farm,” Molly said. “That was where the animals seemed to be taking them.”

“OK, wait, hold on,” I said. “The animals were taking them there?”

“Yep,” she said. “That’s what I said.”

“Why were the animals doing that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Molly said. “You’d have to ask them.”

I pointed to Herman again. “What about him? He’s an animal. Was he involved in this?”

Herman looked up at me as if he were wounded. Molly gave him a pat on the head.

“Herman loves humans,” she said. “He’d never do anything to hurt them.”

“So these animals … not Herman, but the others,” I said, nodding at the pig, to his seeming approval, “just rounded everyone up, just like that? Why would they do that?”

“Like I said, I don’t know. But I do have a theory,” Molly said. “Have you ever read the book Animal Farm?”

“A long time ago,” I said. I didn’t like where this was going.

“Well, maybe this is like that,” Molly said. “Except this time, instead of running the humans off, the animals are going to farm the humans for a little while. You know, to get their revenge.”

“You talk about these animals like they’re…” I sighed. “Like they’re smart enough to do something like this.”

Molly shook her head. “Well, ordinarily, they’re not,” she said. “I mean, people don’t give animals enough credit, that’s for sure. But most animals aren’t very good at coordinating things outside their own species.”

“And what about Herman here?” I asked sarcastically. “Could he coordinate an attack?”

“Oh, not at all!” Molly said with a surprised look. “Herman’s a very peaceful pig.” The pig nodded.

“Does that pig really understand what we’re saying?” I asked.

“Most likely,” said Molly. “I mean, he seems to, doesn’t he?”

“How is that even possible?”

Molly pointed to his ear. There was a small, red clip on it. “Probably because he’s a lab pig,” she said. “He’s had a lot more advantage than most animals get. Do you think humans would be smart if they didn’t have other humans to teach them?”

She had me there. “So… is there anyone left besides the two of us?” I asked.

“You’re the first person I’ve seen today,” Molly said.

“And is there any reason why the authorities haven’t descended on us yet and set everyone free?” I asked. “Because I’m going to bet that the animals haven’t built a military effective enough to stand down the Army just yet.”

“That is actually a very interesting question,” Molly said. “Do you mind taking a walk?”

“I’d rather get some breakfast first,” I said. “Why?”

“Because there’s something you need to see,” she said. “And it will explain a lot more of what you want to know.”

To be continued! Click here for more chapters!

Slept Through Thursday (Part 2)

Photo Credit: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) (Flickr.com)

Slept Through Thursday is a serial story. To start with the first chapter, please click here. Click here for more chapters!

“Well,” I said, staring at the computer screen, and quite sarcastically, “that explains a lot.”

It wasn’t the information on the computer screen that was helpful. It was the lack of information. The entire campus appeared to be off the Internet. But the campus Intranet was working, and that was where some of the really bizarre stuff could be found, like pictures of gangs of cows running around the streets looking menacing, or message board posts from students talking about hiding from a tiger, or a shaky video someone shot of a herd of cats and dogs working together to yank a janitor down from a tree. I didn’t know what to make of any of this, particularly since the messages all seemed to stop around 3:30 AM. It was as if everyone quietly vanished around that time.

I had to sit and think about all of this for a moment. It occurred to me that our campus had a veterinary facility on it, and it had always been rumored that there was an entire menagerie of exotic animals in the basement. So maybe, somehow, a tiger got loose from there, and some cows followed in his wake. That seemed unlikely, but plausible. But it still left me with that haunting video of the dogs and cats, working together. Maybe the janitor had been really mean to them, but it seemed unlikely that they would rise up together against him. None of this made any sort of sense.

Finally, I found a message board thread titled, “What we know.” Someone named George Lewis had been keeping it updated throughout the day, with its last message dated at 3:17 AM. I studied these postings for a few minutes, trying to make sense of his rambling writing style so I could understand exactly what was going on. Unfortunately, George was a really bad writer who seemed to be oblivious to capital letters and punctuation. Every post was one giant paragraph with no coherent structure. I sighed. Apparently, going to an easy-to-get-into school like Midwestern U meant you didn’t have to be proficient at written communication.

What I could discern was this: at some point on Thursday morning, the entire campus had been shaken by an extremely loud sound. People rushed out of the building and saw this giant, sphere-shaped thing hanging above the campus about a mile up in the sky. There was a tremendous earthquake, and a lot of people ran into buildings and hid. The earthquake lasted for about an hour, tapering off around 11:30 AM. Everything was calm and quiet for about two hours until the animals started pouring out on the streets, acting strangely and chasing people down. The weirdest thing of all was that they didn’t seem interested in killing or mauling the people they caught; they would just herd them off or carry them off towards someplace out near the south farms. No one really knew what was going on there.

And that was it. A bizarre, implausible story that sounded like something out of a fanfic sequel for Animal Farm where the animals extract their revenge on the humans. I didn’t know what to make of it. I also couldn’t fathom how I could have slept through all of this if there were earthquakes and loud noises going on. Living in the dorms had taught me to be a heavy sleeper, but this seemed to be a little too much for even me.

After some reflection, I realized it was almost 6AM, and the cafeteria at the dorm down the street, the one with the awesome omelet bar and freshly-baked pastries, was about to open. I decided I’d think better on a full stomach, and left my dorm, hoping that maybe I could find someone along the way. I kept my eyes open for roving gangs of animals, of course, but I didn’t see any at all on my way, aside from a few birds — not even a squirrel.

The door to the cafeteria at the other dorm was still locked when I arrived. I glanced down at the analog hands on my watch and saw that it was 6:05 AM. “Maybe they’re getting a late start today,” I mused, and sat down on the stone bench outside and waited. There was nothing to do, and I realized it was times like this that I really wished I’d taken up smoking, as my friend had suggested, so I’d at least have a cigarette and a lighter to play with while I waited. After a few minutes, I pulled out my phone and started trying to play around with the Internet, but I didn’t seem to be getting a signal. That was hardly a cause for surprise; my phone network’s coverage was terrible in this area, and I’d been thinking about switching to a different carrier all semester. I’d just never gotten around to it.

Finally, around 6:25, I started pounding on the door. There was no answer. That was weird. It occurred to me that during this entire time, I had not seen anyone, which was also weird. I was starting to wonder if those kids from Campus Crusade for Christ had been right when they’d been trying to tell me about their rapture, or whatever it was called, where all the true believers were supposed to disappear and leave all the sinners behind. Apparently, there’d be a lot more Christians on this campus than I’d realized. That, or the devil had decided to rapture away all the sinners as well. But that didn’t make any sense, because I hadn’t been raptured by anyone. Unless… “Maybe I’m the Antichrist,” I said out loud, and laughed. No, there had to be something more to it than that.

“Hello?” I heard a female voice call, accompanied by some loud grunting. That was odd. I turned and looked over my shoulder and saw a girl walking towards me, holding a leash in her hand.

And connected to that leash was a very large pig.

To be continued! Click here for more chapters!

Slept Through Thursday (Part 1)

Photo Credit: Sarko (Flickr.com)

Slept Through Thursday is a serial novel. Click here for more chapters!

I woke up around 4 AM. This really bothered me, because I’d crawled into bed around 2:30 AM. But I felt well-rested. I wondered if that time I’d spent napping at work had translated into some sort of sleep efficiency. “It must have,” I said to myself as I got out of bed and climbed down the ladder leading up to my bunk. Honestly, I felt like I’d been sleeping for hours.

My roommate was gone. That didn’t surprise me. His classes were all on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so his weekend began on Wednesday night. He’d been gone when I went to bed, too. I never knew where he went on the weekends, and I wasn’t about to jinx his frequent absences by asking too many questions. I just assumed he went camping. That was good enough for me; I enjoyed having a part-time roommate.

The dorm hallway was pretty quiet, but then, this was the one time of day in which it usually was. The bars closed at 1 AM, and most of the guys got back around 2:30. We had a few who would pull all-nighters in the lounge or who would stay up playing video games, and then a few more who liked to get up at 6AM and head down to the cafeteria the moment it opened.

I only knew this because I was one of the guys who tended to be up during odd hours of the night. Earlier in the year, I’d developed a 11-day week for myself that shortened my days to around 15 hours each and which left me with three extra hours on day 11 to do whatever I wanted to do with myself. That day started at  5:43 on Thursday morning. My three extra hours came between 9:00 PM and midnight. But now, since I was up at 4:00 AM with nothing to do, it was like I’d added a couple of  extra hours to my free time.

As I stopped in the bathroom and emptied my bladder, I reflected on how lucky I really was. Most of the people I knew were slaves to the 24-hour day. When I tried to explain my 15.72 hour-day to them, most got annoyed and said that it was too much math. I’d show them the watch I’d built to help me keep track of which day it was in conventional time (using the analog hands) and Chance-time (using my digital readout). “Stop being an idiot, Chance,” they’d tell me. And often, I’d get a lecture about how when I got out of college, I’d have to live on a 24-hour day just like everyone else.

I passed by the sinks on my way back to my room and took a look at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands and face. My face actually had what I’d often heard described as a 5 o’clock shadow on it. I grinned at the irony of this — 5 AM was coming up, after all — but I was also troubled by it. I’d never had to shave more than once every week, and I’d just shaved on Day 2 — sometime on Friday night on the conventional calendar. I should have had a couple of days in Chance-time left. Was my body starting to age rapidly now that I was 21 years old?

“That’s what you get for being an Underdweller,” I grumbled. Underdweller — the name we’d proudly inherited for living in the dorm basement. It was all guys. The floors above us were all co-ed, but the girls didn’t want to live in the basement, even if we had the best access to the laundry rooms and the cafeteria, and even if we could escape out our windows if someone was waiting for us outside the door. It seemed like an ideal situation to me.

Still grumbling, I skulked out of the bathroom and back into my dorm room, where I grabbed a soda out of my mini-fridge and plopped down at my computer to check up on the world online. For whatever reason the, Internet was down. I grumbled again. It’d been out a few times over the last month, mainly due to one of the guys who used to live on the floor flooding the traffic with his botnet as a prank to another guy who still lived here. It meant they’d shut the whole floor down until the botnet attack was over. It’d been funny the first couple of times, and it could potentially be funny again once it’d happened too often. But right now, it was firmly in the realm of annoying.

I thought about playing some video games, or maybe (I grinned at the thought) studying, but I decided instead to wander upstairs to the courtyard to see if I could bum a smoke off someone. I’d never actually smoked before; it was on my bucket list of things to try. A friend of mine who did smoke had told me how he’d started just to be social, and how he never paid for cigarettes now. He’d just find some lonely-looking smoker, bum a smoke and then keep them company while they got their fix. “The secret to smoking is not to do it too often,” he said. “That way, you don’t get very addicted, and it’s a lot easier for you to quit when you want to.”

It sounded like sage advice to me. And besides, this particular friend had used smoking to develop an entire network of smoking buddies on campus — male and female. He’d even hooked up with a few of the girls. It was amazing how you could get people to trust you and like you just because you both shared a common vice.

Unfortunately, there was no one in the courtyard, nor did there seem to be anyone anywhere upstairs. That was sort of strange. Normally, there was at least one person walking around doing something, even if it was just something dull like visiting the poor sap who had to sit at the front desk or watching the foreign news on the giant TV in the lounge. The place seemed completely deserted.

The free campus paper was already out on the rack, so I checked to make sure it was Thursday’s and picked up a copy. It seemed like there were a lot fewer papers on the rack then normal, but it occurred to me that maybe they were just trying to cut costs. The paper had been getting thin lately and – bastion of journalism that it already was – the stories had been getting increasingly more sensational and crazy. It was like watching an old uncle actually go crazy during an attempt to pretend he was crazy just so he could get some more meds. I never missed an issue, especially now that the Student Senate had appointed a Student Dictator who had used his power and popular support to shut down the Student Government and assume its powers. You really couldn’t make up stories like those.

I sat down in one of the plush chairs in the lounge and read for a few minutes. But I found myself increasingly getting anxious at how peaceful and quiet everything was around me. I’d never known my dorm to be so tranquil; generally, there was at least something going on. I decided to stop in the computer lab to see if they had their Internet up, and saw something I’d never witnessed before.

The place was entirely empty.

Quickly, I ran over to a computer, logged in, and checked the online news. And in doing so, I quickly discovered two things that put my entire experience into context.

First of all, it was Friday, not Thursday. I’d slept through an entire 24-hour day without even realizing it.

Second, while I’d been sleeping, something very, very bad had happened to the world around me.

On to Chapter 2!

Vegetarian

Photo Credit: Lost Tulsa (Flickr.com)

“Come on, Betty,” said Roger. “Try some.”

He held up a fork with a piece of his steak on it, red and dripping with bloody juices. Betty moved her garden salad out of the way and gave him a sharp look.

“I know what steak tastes like,” she hissed. “Don’t shove it in my face.”

Roger shrugged and popped the fork in his mouth. He gave a contented sigh, smiled and sunk into his seat  a bit. “So good,” he moaned, and then picked up his knife, plunged his fork into the steak and eagerly began cutting another bite.

“I should have never let you talk me into eating here,” Betty said.

“Well, it’s your own fault you don’t eat meat,” Roger replied. “The rest of us don’t have to suffer.”

“You say it like I have a disease or something,” Betty said.

“It seems pretty sick to me, yeah,” he said, and then popped another piece into his mouth and began to chew. “Nature designed us to eat meat. What’s the big deal?”

Betty frowned. “I didn’t realize it was your turn to be the meat evangelist,” she said. “Was that the whole point in bringing me here? To throw all this in my face?”

Roger shook his head as he cut another piece. “Nope,” he said. “We came here because they serve a great steak, and steak was what I was craving. Simple as that.”

Betty decided to begin eating her salad, and the conversation lulled for a moment. Finally, she said, “I don’t think you realize what a temptation this is for me.”

“Oh?” Roger said. “You can have a bite. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No, it’s just that…” she sighed. “I used to love meat. If you’d have told me that I would become a vegetarian a couple of years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy. But the more I looked into it, the more I learned about what they do to those poor animals, the more I realized that I couldn’t keep eating meat unless I was willing to kill it myself. And you know, I wasn’t. So what other choice did I have?”

“Well, Jesus ate meat, so I think it’s OK,” said Roger. “Animals don’t have feelings like we do, you know.”

Betty sighed. “You say that, but I don’t think it’s true,” she said. “My cats definitely have feelings. So does your dog.”

“Well, kind of,” Roger said. “But that’s not really the same as, you know, cows and pigs and chickens. They’re not too bright.”

“Chickens aren’t,” said Betty. “Cows are pretty much all about eating. But pigs are smart. They’re one of the smartest types of animals there are.”

“Pigs? Really?” asked Roger. “Well, too bad. I’m not giving up bacon.”

“Not that it should matter how smart they are anyway,” said Betty. “We don’t eat animals because they’re smart. We eat them because we can grow them up to get really fat and then produce a bunch of unhealthy meat.  And then, we have so much meat that we wind up throwing a lot of it away, or using the by-products for all sorts of terrible things. It’s a horrible thing to do. We don’t show any respect to the animals, we torture them and butcher them, and then we package their pieces up so they don’t even look like animal parts anymore.”

Roger shrugged. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t even be around if we weren’t eating them,” he said. “We give them life so they can be food. The ecosystem can’t sustain them unless we’re out there feeding them and taking care of them.”

“Well, and that’s another problem,” Betty said. “Cattle farming is really bad for the environment. It puts a lot of methane gas into the air, it creates bad ecosystems where bacteria and viruses thrive, which means it can spread disease.”

Roger polished off his steak. “Yeah, well,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not giving up meat.”

“I know,” Betty said. And she went back to her salad.

Discrimination

Photo Credit: Litmuse (Flickr.com)

“Hey fatty, hit the gym!” someone shouted at me as a car blasted by.

I rolled my eyes. Stupid frat boys. They were just dumb enough, and just drunk enough, to find something like that funny.

I’ve always been fat. Not overweight, but fat. Really fat. Like Garfield in his first year fat. And no matter what I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to be anything but fat.

Honestly, it’s never really bothered me, and it wasn’t about to start bothering me then. Every now and then, I’ve found myself feeling a little insecure, sure. It’s hard to live in a world that obsesses over freakish women and feel like a normal person when you’re on the opposite end of the distribution.

I continued walking down the street, undaunted. It was a hot day, and I wished I could be wearing shorts. Unfortunately, I’ve got to wear two layers when I go out on walks — the world’s biggest pair of spandex shorts and a part of jeans to cover them. Ironically, the spandex shorts don’t do much to slim me down, but they do help keep my thighs from brushing together and getting rubbed raw by my jeans. It’s a real problem when you’re fat, though I’ve often wondered if skinny people suffer from it too. I could wear loose-fitting shorts, but then people see the horrible bulges hanging off my legs and tend to stare at them. I’m not self-conscious, but I’m smart enough to know that the more I cover up, the less I look like a spectacle.

I’m actually quite fashionable for a fat person. It used to be difficult to find clothes, but lately, with Americans getting fatter, there are more plus-size stores selling more stylish things. On that particular day, I was wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and a loose black shawl made of thin fabric that was draped over my shoulders. They say you should wear vertical stripes to cut down on your horizontal curves, but I don’t like looking like a watermelon. I stick to solid colors, and wear clothes that fit well and that drape over my roundest parts. I also make sure to get my hair done regularly and wear plenty of makeup and jewelry. All of these things help detract from my shape. Just because you’re fat doesn’t mean you can’t embrace it.

I continued down the street, stopping at the building where my interview was going to be held. The potential job was at an office tucked inside an old shopping center, but I noticed that there were three places to eat within 100 feet of the store. That made me sigh a bit in frustration. I knew it was self-conscious to think along these lines, but I hoped it wouldn’t come up in the interview.

I went inside, introduced myself to the receptionist (who must have been a temp or about to quit, because that was the job I was applying for) and sat down next to a girl who looked like what I can only describe as a Barbie doll. She was blond, and thin, and pretty, with perfect teeth and a large bust.

“I’m Amy,” I said. “Are you here to interview too?”

“Yeah,” she said distantly, as if she wasn’t paying that close of attention to me. She didn’t provide any further discussion, such as her name or any pleasantries or anything of the sort. Pretty people tend to do that to fat people. It’s almost like an unconscious reaction, like they know they don’t need to try around us.

“Um…” I said. “So, are you from around here?”

“Yeah,” she said again, and looked down at her cell phone. She started fiddling with it, clearly set on ignoring me. I decided to abandon any attempt at communication with her and flipped through a magazine instead — not People or Us, which were both in the lobby, but the copy of National Geographic I’d brought with me.

Finally, the receptionist looked up. “Amy?” she asked, looking at the pretty girl. I stood up. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were Agatha.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Because I don’t look like an Amy.”

The receptionist smiled. “Exactly,” she said. “Come on, I’ll take you back.”

I was escorted to a small conference room, where two men in suits were sitting. The receptionist introduced me to them — Alan was the older of the two, sporting a ridiculous gray mustache and a plump belly tucked beneath his ugly red tie and worn gray suit. Joseph was the younger man, and he was quite striking in his red turban and navy blue suit. I assumed he was a Sikh, which was not so unusual for a college town.

I sat down, put on my best personality, and answered all of their questions. I knew that I had to make a good impression before they saw the Barbie doll sitting in the lobby, and I felt like I was doing so. As I stood up to leave, they seemed pretty happy with me overall. “We’ll be in touch,” Alan said, and Joseph nodded as he said it.

I didn’t expect to hear back from the firm right away, and it’s a good thing, because it was nearly a week before I got a call from the receptionist. Not the woman who had been there the day I’d interviewed, of course, but a bored, disinterested voice that seemed to be reading as she said, “Alan asked me to thank you for him and to let you know that while he enjoyed meeting you, we had another applicant who was more qualified.”

I sighed. It can be hard to be fat. It’s the one type of discrimination that’s still legal.

Virtually Better

Photo Credit: Shapeshift (Flickr.com)

My phone keeps ringing. Whoever is calling it must really want to get through; they’ve ignored the instructions on my voicemail several times.

“Hi, you’ve reached Jerry,” it says. “I don’t check my voicemail, so don’t leave a message. Send me a text, shoot me an e-mail, or leave a comment on my blog, and I’ll get back to you.”

Simple instructions, right? But whoever this idiot is can’t follow them. So, with a deep sigh to remind myself how exasperated I am by the whole thing, I pause my game and take the call.

“Talk to me!” I say in the most obnoxious, game-show-host-er-iffic voice possible. “You’re on with Jerry! Make it snappy!’

“Uh, hi, Jerry,” a female voice says at the other end. “This is, uh, Trudy, from, you know, work…”

On a scale of 1 to 10, Trudy’s maybe a 6, and her shyness makes her more like a 3. But she’s getting divorced, she’s got no kids, and she’s lonely; that’s got to count for something. I guess I can make a little time for her. “Yeah, hey,” I say. “I don’t usually answer my phone because it’s just telemarketers. What’s up?”

“I, uh…” she says, and just leaves some dead air between us. I plug in my headset and resume my game while I wait for her to spit it out. “Uh, what are you doing?” she finally asks.

“Playing a game,” I said. “Halls of the Mountain King. Ever heard of it?”

“No,” she said. “Like, a board game?”

I sigh. “No, Trudy, it’s a computer game,” I say. “Probably the best game there is right now.”

“Oh,” she says. “I don’t really play a lot of video games. Just, you know, the sports one, and that Guitar Band Hero thing.”

“Well, I do play a lot of games,” I say. “Pretty much every moment I get, in fact.”‘

“Oh,” she says. “Well, um, I was wondering if maybe tomorrow you might want to go see a movie or something.”

I roll my eyes. “And pay, what, $10 a person plus another $15 for sodas and popcorn?” I say. “No thanks. I’ve got a sweet setup here, and I can get any movie I want to see off the ‘net. Plus, I don’t really watch movies that much anyway. I’d rather be playing games.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, if money’s a problem, I don’t mind paying. I…” she pauses. I once again decide to let her spit out her thought as I continue playing my game. “…I guess I just need to get out of the house.”

“It’s not just the money commitment,” I say. “It’s the time. Two hours on a movie I probably don’t want to see. Another hour getting back and forth, and then, you know, all that sitting and waiting for the movie to start. No thanks. Not worth it.”

She sort of laughed and sighed in a really nervous way. “You, um, understand that I’m trying to ask you out for a date here, right?” she says.

I hadn’t realized that, but it sort of makes sense. Still, I’m not really interested in a movie. “Well, tomorrow’s not that great,” I say. “I play this other game, Mists of Moria, and my guild’s got a raid scheduled. So I really probably shouldn’t bail on them at the last minute, you know?”

“Is that really all you do?” she asks. “Play computer games all night and all weekend?”

“Pretty much,” I say.

She pauses. “I guess… I don’t really know a lot about them, but that just seems sad,” she says. “Don’t you ever want to get out and, you know, spend time with real people?”

Suddenly, Trudy is reminding me a lot of my mom. “You know, I’m not persuaded that it’s any better to be around real people,” I say. “These games are great. You can do lots of things in games you can’t do in real life, you know? And you never get bored. I mean, you out to see the one I’m playing now. It’s this huge, vast, fantasy world where you can pretty much do anything you want. To me, that’s a lot more fun than having to go stand in line behind a bunch of morons at the movie theater who’re just there to see things go boom. In my games, if things go boom, it’s because I made them do it.”

“So is that all you’re willing to do?” she asks. “I mean, I guess I could come over and you could teach me how to play. Do I need to bring my laptop?”

“Only if you’ve got a computer with a good enough graphics card to play it,” I say. “And if it’s a laptop, probably not.”

“Maybe we could take turns?” she asks.

“You’d have no idea how to play.” I say. “I guess you could watch me play, if you really want to.”

She sighs deeply. “You know… no, I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to, Jerry,” she says. “I was hoping we could go out, but you know, you’ve got to meet me halfway or this is never going to work.”

I wait to see if she’s got anything else to say. It sort of sounds like she’s crying on the other end. Women.

“All right, well,” I finally say. “I guess if you want to come over tomorrow, that’s cool, and if not, that’s cool too. I’ll be here either way.”

I hear her choking back a sob. “Go to hell, Jerry,” she says, and hangs up angrily.

I shrug to myself as I yank the headset out of my ear. “Her loss,” I say, and get back to my game.