Blank Canvas

Photo Credit: Trina Baker (Flickr.com)

The canvas was blank.

The artist stared at his hand.

It wasn’t that he was looking for inspiration – after all, he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to paint. The problem wasn’t in the idea.

It was in finding the right place to start.

His eyes followed the lines on the inside of his palm. It was like looking at a river on a map – he could trace each line, and see it branch out into tributaries, streams and creeks. He could see the delta up near his index finger, and the stronger, deeper, more powerful line it formed. He wondered which way the water would flow on his hand – towards his thumb, or towards the outer edge of his palm.

He thought about spitting on his hand, just to see how the liquid would flow, but no—that would defeat the purpose of the exercise. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking; just staring.

He turned his vision to a small piece of calloused skin that had turned white and flaky. Underneath it, his hand was smooth, free of the wrinkles and creases he could see elsewhere. The hard skin on the top wore its ridges much more deeply than the skin around it. It was as if the top layer removed all signs of age as it came off his skin; the bottom layer was fresh and new, wrinkle-free and able to be molded into something new. He wondered if the texture of the paintbrush would start to shape it. Perhaps his hand would take on the smooth polish of the wood. Perhaps it would even start to feel smooth, like the wood, and give the brush a point on his hand on which he might lose control. That would be unfortunate. He could see himself now, painting and slipping just a bit. A slip of the brush could cost him hours of work if it was too severe.

He sighed and turned his hand over. The purpose of this exercise was to put the mind in a creative place, not to stifle his creative energy with thoughts of failure. The back of his hand – now that was an interesting place, far more worthy of creative consideration. He flexed his fingers, watching the muscles of his knuckle push up the mountainous bones that controlled his fingers, along with the skeletal structures under the skin that seemed to pop up. His gaze went deeper into the flesh, admiring the individual craters that made up the surface of the skin. Some of them had fine blond hairs sticking out, but most didn’t seem to have any hair at all. He wondered if the craters were supposed to be hair follicles, or if they were just tiny dimples in the skin.

He’d heard, once, that the reason human fingers were so dexterous was because they had tiny, eye-like sensory organs in their tips. They weren’t eyes in the conventional sense, but more like sensors that could see with a sort of blind sight – aware of things, but not conscious of them.

He stretched his fingers up under his eyes and studied them carefully. The light overhead gleamed off their tips. One would think, if there were any eyes on the fingers, you would be able to see them wincing in that light. He turned his gaze slight away from his fingers, but watched them in his peripheral vision, waiting to see if he could detect some sort of motion – some sign of eyes opening and closing. He waited, watching, and thought, for a moment, that perhaps he’d seen something. But he realized it was more likely a trick of the light, or an error of his eye.

His eye flitted to the canvas in front of him, and suddenly, he knew exactly where to begin. The entire plan seemed to appear on the canvas in front of him, almost like a paint-by numbers picture stacked upon other layers.

He picked up his brush, and he began to paint.

Wardens

Photo credit: Hellgasms! (Flickr.com)

“I don’t know what to do,” Mark confessed. “I’ve tried everything.”

Elly sat silently, the pancake makeup on her face glistening in the bright lights of the living room. Her expression was dull, probably the result of the pot she had reeked of when she’d climbed in her window. It wasn’t the first night Mark and Rhea had caught her sneaking out of her room to go out partying in parts unknown. But it was the first time they’d decided to greet her as she returned from her misadventures.

But Elly didn’t seem to care, and as she sat in her chair — the same chair Mark had built for her in his shop, with the little heart carved into the top and the pink trim he’d painted on himself — she almost seemed to be biding her time, waiting for her parents to release her so she could go to bed blissfully unrepentent.

“I have some ideas,” said Rhea. She paced around the room angrily as she ticked off her options on her fingers. “I’m calling tomorrow and getting an alarm system installed that will go off if any door or window gets opened. I’m also going to have them put cameras outside so I can see everyone who comes and goes from this house at any hour. And I’m taking a picture of that…” she spat the word, “…boy that we found in your room down last week to the school principal to find out who he is, and then, I’m going to the police to file charges.”

Elly rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

“And if you thought you were miserable before being grounded,” Rhea laughed now. “Ho, ho, missy, you’re going to love your new life, because I’m going to pick you up from school every afternoon and make you go sit down at the office with me until I’m done working. And then, you’re coming straight home, and sitting out where we can see you until we go to bed. No more shutting yourself up here in your room, no more hiding out in the car, no more trips down to the basement. When we look up, we’ll see you, and if we don’t, we’ll make sure you’re back in our sight before you can count to ten. You’ll be lucky if I let you close the door when you go to the bathroom.”

Mark listened to his wife ramble on, and sunk into the mattress on his daughter’s bed for a moment. He remembered when they’d taken her to the store and picked out this bed together, when she’d turned twelve. It had been a big deal to her, to graduate from the little twin bed she’d had since she was three years old to a double bed where she could keep all of her stuffed animals. That had just been four years ago. It was amazing to think that the little girl who had seemed so immature and innocent was now sneaking out and doing all sorts of things Mark had never dreamed she’d do.

“Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Rhea demanded. Mark sat up, and looked at his daughter.

“I’ve got Saturday detention in the morning,” Elly said. “Let me go to bed.”

Rhea turned to Mark. “She doesn’t even care!” she said. “Say something to her!” Her eyes were pleading: Tell her how dangerous the world really is, or how girls who sneak out and do drugs wind up dead, or how sex with men she barely knows can give her an STD or get her pregnant. Tell her something to make her straighten up and be our little girl again.

Mark knew that none of that would matter. And so he stood up, looked at his wife sadly, and said, in a quiet voice, “You both go to bed.” He walked over to the chair where Elly was sitting, and touched her on the shoulder. “Go clean up.”

Elly stood up. “I’ve got to go wash my face,” she said, and walked out towards the bathroom.

Rhea looked at him with wide eyes. “What was that?” she demanded. “Are you just going to give up on her?”

“No,” Mark said. He stroked the chair he’d made, his fingers running along the heart in the frame. “I’m going to sit here, and make sure that she doesn’t try to leave again. And tomorrow, we’ll get that alarm appointment scheduled. Everything you said was right.”

“But what do we do?” Rhea asked. “She can’t go on like this. She’s going to get in real trouble, Mark, and we’re not going to be able to help her.”

Mark nodded as he sat down. “I know,” he said. “But we’ve done everything we can do for her. She’s made us in to wardens. And wardens don’t scream or yell. They just make sure the sentence is served and that the prisoners don’t kill each other.”

“You make it sound like we should just let her go do whatever she wants,” Rhea said.

“No,” said Mark. “I’m just saying that the more resents us, the less effective we are. There’s got to be a better way.”

“Whatever, Mark,” Rhea said. “I’m going to bed.”

Elly eventually settled back into the room, wearing a tight t-shirt and pajama shorts with the word, “juicy” written on the back. He didn’t realize she owned those, but he’d make sure she didn’t get any more like them. She shot her father a look of contempt, settled into bed, and turned away from him as she turned out the light above her bed.

And Mark sat, and watched his daughter angrily drift off into sleep, and thought about a solution to the problem — a way for their family to be whole once more. A way that would work.

But by the time the sun rose, he still found himself without an answer.

Car Repair

Photo Credit: Aussiegall (Flickr.com)

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” confessed Chris. He pulled his head out from underneath the car’s hood. “I mean, I have some ideas, but I don’t really know enough about cars to say.”

The car had been lost power during his commute, and he’d barely gotten it home. It was a weird problem — the battery seemed to have no problems at low speeds, but completely went out during high speeds. If he was driving locally, the car was fine. If he was on the highway, the dashboard would go out, the air would turn off, and the car would have trouble accelerating.

“Well, take it to a mechanic,” said Alice.

“I can’t afford it,” said Chris. “I just had to replace my starter last month.”

“Charge it, then,” she said. “You’ve got to have a car. It’s not like you can get to work without one.”

She was right about that. But Chris was reluctant to tell her that his credit cards were already maxed, and that he was already worried he might have to declare bankruptcy if, God forbid, he lost his job. It wasn’t that Chris was bad with money, per se – it was just that he hadn’t slowed his spending down quickly enough, when he’d been cut back to a part-time position, and he hadn’t considered how quickly his credit card balances would shoot up.

So, he was in a precarious position now. He’d hoped it would be something simple that he could fix himself. But as he stared at the engine, schematics in hand, he realized that he had no idea of how to fix the blasted thing. He’d had to make a few repairs in the past, but they’d always been very minor things. This problem was far out of his realm of repair consciousness.

He cursed. “I hate feeling like this,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Alice.

“Helpless. Incompetent. Stupid,” he said. “Car repair seems like one of those basic skills everyone should have to learn. Why don’t they teach this stuff in high school?”

“They do, I think,” said Alice. “I mean, I think they did at my school, anyway.”

“Well, not at mine, and if they did, I didn’t take it,” fumed Chris. “It should have been a required class. Why don’t they make you learn stuff you actually need to know instead of stuff you don’t even care about?”

“That makes sense,” said Alice, her smile slightly wry. “Your car breaks down, and so of course it’s the educational system’s fault and not yours.”

“Don’t get all defensive,” Chris said. “Just because you’re a teacher doesn’t mean you know what’s best.”

Now Alice’s smile dropped into a dangerous frown. “I know a hell of a lot more about education than you do,” she said. “I’ve got a master’s degree. You never even finished college.”

“Right, let’s just bring that back up,” said Chris. He slammed his screwdriver down on the ground in anger. “Chris is a failure. He can’t finish anything he starts.”

“I never said that!” shouted Alice. “I never said that. All I said was that you need to finish one day.”

“Once again, because you think you know better than me!” Chris fired back. He yanked the car hood down now and stepped towards her. “If you think I’m such a failure, you fix the car!”

“Fix your own car!” Alice said. “At least I can afford to keep mine running! Maybe if you’d go get a job that didn’t require a nametag, you’d be able to keep your bills paid.”

Chris felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “That was low,” he said quietly. “You know it’s been a rough year.”

“And yet somehow, I’ve managed!” shouted Alice. “They’re cutting jobs left and right in my field, but I’ve held on!”

Chris stormed inside the house as she said it, leaving her out in the garage. She didn’t follow him in, and he assumed she’d gone home when he looked out the window a few minutes later and saw that her car was no longer there.

He felt boiled over, with no ambition to do anything but sit in front of the TV and fume. The car wasn’t getting fixed today. That much he knew. But the whole experience had been a reminder that he had plenty of other things in his life that were broken as well.

Weight Loss

Photo Credit: Mike Baird (Flickr.com)

George let out a heavy sigh as he stared as his naked body in the mirror. From the front, it looked find. But when he started to turn even slightly to the side, it became clear that his figure wasn’t as flat as he wanted to believe.

“When did this happen?” he asked his wife, Elli, who was busy showering behind him. “I was thin when we got married, wasn’t I?”

“That was ten years ago, George,” Elli said, her voice raised slightly to cut through the noise of the falling water. “You were a lot more active then.”

“I don’t think I was,” said George. “The kids and the dogs wear me out. I think I’m probably more active now than I was then.”

“Well, it’s your metabolism, then,” Elli called. “I don’t know. Maybe if you’d quit eating hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch every day, you’d be better off. Or lay off the beer when you get home.”

“I don’t know,” said George. “I’m skeptical that it has much to do with my diet.”

It took Elli a moment to respond — it sounded like she was in the midst of washing her hair – and George turned to the other side, and clutched his gut. It wasn’t huge, and it didn’t even really feel like fat. He could feel his ribcage underneath his slightly sagging breasts.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Elli said. “Either eat less or exercise more. It’s up to you.”

“I don’t know,” said George. He released his gut, and watched it jiggle. “I guess I could start eating more salad.”

“That’s probably a good start,” said his wife.

George started to dress. “It’s just… I don’t know,” he said. “You cover salad in meat and dressing and cheese, and you might as well just be eating a pizza, you know?”

“Then why don’t you use our gym membership?” Elli asked. “We’re paying for you to go, and you never use it.”

“I hate the gym,” George said. “It just doesn’t seem natural to me.”

Elli turned off the shower and pulled a towel behind the curtain. “You look fine, George,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind if you lost a little weight, but really, when you’re dressed, you look fine. Don’t be so self-conscious about it.”

George didn’t believe a word of it, of course. Elli cared. She had to. She just didn’t want to get into an argument and was trying to end the conversation. George knew full well that she’d complained about his weight to one of her friends.

“There’s got to be a better way,” he mused. “But what is it? Why is it so hard for us, with everything we can do with technology today, to lose weight?”

Elli didn’t have an answer. And George realized, as he buttoned up his shirt, that he didn’t either.

The New Game

Photo Credit: Duane Brown (Flickr.com)

“I don’t understand it at all,” said Joseph. “I’ve been developing video games for years, and this just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Well, the problem is that you see video games as being structured in a traditional way,” said Amir. “You expect to see them on a disc, or in a cartridge, packaged for sale and put on a store shelf, or available to buy online somewhere. You expect them to come with a manual, or to teach you how to play, and you expect them to have some sort of goal at the end.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sounds exactly like a video game to me,” confessed Joseph. “At least, one you plan to make money off of.”

“Well, we’ve figured out another way,” said Amir. “One that circumvents all of that. One that gets right to the heart of why people are playing.”

“Fun?” suggested Joseph.

Amir smiled in an almost patronizing fashion. Joseph had been his teacher, once. The irony of the situation was amusing. The fact that they were having lunch at an expensive bistro instead of a quick service stop, all at Amir’s expense, was a testament to the difference between the results of their two philosophies.

“Fun has nothing to do with it,” said Amir. “Video games are rarely fun for long.”

“I disagree,” said Joseph. “If a game stops being fun at some fundamental level, the player will move on to something else. You know that.”

Amir shook his head dismissively. “Fun is what gets the player in the door,” he said. “That’s all. Once the player has been engaged, once the experience has started out fun, a game becomes about work. It stops being about fun, and it becomes something far more important.”

“Achievement?” Joseph asked.

“Progression,” said Amir. “The player must move towards some objective, no matter how arbitrary or difficult it is.”

“True, but you have to reward the player, eventually,” said Joseph. “If the game’s impossible, they’ll stop playing.”

Amir smiled at this. “Really?” he asked.”Do you truly believe that?”

“I can’t not believe it,” said Joseph. “It’ s a fundamental of game design.”

“It’s a fallacy,” said Amir. “What keeps the player engaged is not whether or not the goal can be achieved, but whether or not he or she becomes frustrated in achieving it. A goal can be across an endless chasm, impossible to reach, but so long as the player believes that the chasm can be crossed, somehow, and the game leads the player to believe that wholeheartedly, he or she will search for a way.”

“So, that’s the secret to CastleTown, then?” asked Joseph. “People love it because it can’t be won?”

“Precisely,” said Amir with a smile.

Joseph shook his head. “That shouldn’t work,” he said.

“I agree, with a conventional game,” said Amir. “But CastleTown has something other games lack.”

“Oh?” said Joseph. “Enlighten me.”

“Social repercussions,” said Amir. “If you stop playing CastleTown, your peasants will leave and your castle will erode. But your friends who are playing need your Castle to exist. They can allocate a small portion of their resources to keep your Castle intact. And because you are costing them something in the game, they are likely to convince you to come back and continue playing.”

“Well, sure, but what if you just tell them, ‘no?’” Joseph asked. “They’ll quit too, eventually, right?”

Amir shook his head. “You think of the gamer as a solitary, lonely person looking out for his own interests,” he said. “That has been the paradigm of the last thirty years. But the truth is that gamers are people. They want to please other people. It is far easier for them to keep playing and to help their friends work towards that next achievement than it is to leave their friends crippled in the game world. We have data that shows that 90% of gamers will return to the game if a friend asks them to do so.”

Joseph’s eyes widened. “That’s just… sort of evil,” he said. “You’re preying upon peoples’ desire to be liked so they’ll play your game.”

Amir smiled broadly. “We give the game away for free, and we offer the players the opportunity to take shortcuts for a small fee,” he said. “We sell small items to make the gamers stand out amongst their peers, and we host contests that they can pay to enter to win special items they would not be able to earn otherwise. None of this costs us a penny, you understand — whatever we can create for the game, the players want. The quality of the game, the richness of the experience, the power of the graphics — none of those things are important to us. We developed CastleTown in a month and had over 20,000 users in a single day, each of them recruiting their friends to join.”

“And all in the pursuit of an impossible goal,” mused Joseph. “What is the goal, by the way?”

Amir leaned forward. “Whatever the player perceives it to be,” he said quietly.

Joseph felt a chill roll down his back. Amir had stumbled upon something here, something powerful and raw and important where human nature was concerned. And Joseph could not help feeling that it would one day be looked upon as the beginning of a dark era for humanity — a new manipulation, subtle and seemingly harmless, but able to direct large groups of people to give up large sums of money without ever realizing what was happening to them.

[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

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!