Flip Rate: A Beginning

This one is in reaction to another dream. it's based on a series of books I enjoyed up to the point represented by the dream, and found problematic thereafter. The remarkable thing about that is, as far as I know, those books don't exist, but are the product of some previous dream.

This is a fragment, of course, but I hope I can make it coherent enough to stand as a short story, or possibly the beginning of yet another serial.

Berelandra
Fragments from a Possible Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2009 by KFB

Chapter One: Flip Rate

Part One

There was nothing strange about the girl. That much was certain. She was a perfectly ordinary human being, young and healthy.

I should know. I examined her, and I'm a doctor. Or was.

Oh, her circumstances were odd, no question about that. She was an orphan, apparently about twelve years old, living alone in a small, abandoned hotel along the Bering Strait. There had been an older brother, apparently, but Cinda was annoyingly vague about where he had gone or what had happened to him. "I didn't follow him. I was afraid," was all she would say at first.

And the hotel itself didn't make much sense. Who would want to vacation up here, far from the cities and amenities, along a stretch of sea the cruise lines could not enter without going aground? There wasn't even that much wildlife here, just a handful of auks and puffins, and the occasional polar bear lazing around on still-firm ice. Their habitat troubles were a hundred miles further south, and the survivors of global warming had not yet reached this godforsaken place. So there was no reason for a hotel to exist up here, run by an English girl almost certainly unknown by the State of Alaska's child welfare people. There was no village or town for fifty miles in any direction, no road to anywhere, no possible clientele except a small party of scientists studying the geological, archeological, ecological and meteorological evidence for the one time existence of a land bridge here. Which of course was what we were.

Six days of helicopter surveys with infrared cameras, landing on a likely spot and chipping away at samples of permafrost had let us to this luxury log cabin, the sort of thing Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed. Its graciously open interior spaces made clever use of glass and wooden curtains to bring in the heat and keep out the cold in a way I didn't quite understand. But I liked it.

The kitchen wasn't as rustic as it looked, and it seemed well stocked. Cinda was at the stove, flipping pancakes for us. Her flip rate was remarkable. Each pancake was perfectly cooked through in just about a minute.

I was rather pleased with myself for thinking up the term "flip rate," as if it mattered how quickly one could change pancakes from pools of batter into nicely browned discs. Funny, that.

When our expedition leader, Eric, asked where the food came from, Cinda said, "Oh, Jerry drops it off, once a week."

Jerry was the helicopter pilot who had brought us here. He was supposed to return on Friday. This was Tuesday.

"How do you pay for the food?" Eric persisted.

"Oh, with these." Cinda wiped her hands off on a towel and walked to a locked safe next to a glass-covered cupboard. After a few rapid twists of the dial she reached in and pulled out several shiny lumps of yellow rock.

"But this is gold," Vince, our geologist, exclaimed. "Unprocessed gold, like what came out of the Yukon Gold Rush over a century ago. What is it doing here?"

"Oh, it's been here a long time, my whole life," Cinda said. Everything she said seemed to start with "Oh," as if every thought our questions precipitated was entirely new to her.

"How much of it is there," Eric asked. "If you've been spending it on food and supplies...."

"Oh, I don't think I should tell you how much," she said, "but enough to last a while longer. Years, maybe. It's worth it to be able to stay here." She put the gold away, carefully spinning the lock afterward.

"Why do you want to stay?" Vince asked.

"In case Jack returns," she said. This was clearly not a new thought for her. Jack was her brother. We had determined that much.

After breakfast, Cinda showed us a framed photo of her family. It was black and white, and looked like something out of the 1950s or earlier. Everyone wore fur, in the style of a previous generation, and grinned at the camera as if in acknowledgment of a game of dress-up.

"This is my mom, Beryl," Cinda said, "and here's my dad, Erasmus. That's Jack, and this is me."

"What happened to your parents?" asked Lucy, the team's cartographer.

"They went out on the ice, a long time ago," Cinda said. "They never came back. Later Jack went looking for them. He never came back either, but I've seen him. Several times. He wants me to go out there with him, but I won't do it."

At this point I suspected that Cinda was somewhat delusional, but she was so matter of fact about everything that I wasn't certain.

"Why did your family come here in the first place?" I asked.

"Oh, they were looking for a place to have the baby. Me, I mean. I guess the sled dogs were lost or something. Then they found this hotel, and the sign, and figured this was the place to stop."

"The sign? What sign?" The only sign we had seen was the hotel name, World's End. Weird, maybe, but hardly an omen.

"Oh, do you want to see it?"

She led us outside, to a bed of ice immediately behind the hotel. The summer sun made it almost blinding, except for deep blue shadows, well beneath the surface. The numbers and letters they formed were so precise they could have been etched by lasers: "1929 BERE 2009."

"You see it?" she asked.

"We see it, but we don't understand," Eric said. "Why would that influence your parents to settle here?"

"Well, it's my family's initials," she explained.

"No it isn't," Vince said. "That would be B E J C."

"Oh, well, that's because of the nicknames. Jack is really Richard, but he didn't like that name, and Call of the Wild was his favorite book. So he's Jack. And my real name is Ella. Get it? Cinda Ella?"

I suppressed the groan that escaped the lips of several of my colleagues.

"What do the numbers mean?" I asked.

"Oh, they're years. The year my family first got here, and this year. The year I leave, maybe."

"You think we won't let you stay?" Eric asked.

Something in the sky changed. Blue became another color, gold maybe, like Cinda's nuggets. Something flashed in her eyes, and she shook her head. "I don't think it matters. The sky has changed, and I don't have to wait here any more. I think we're all leaving now. You're the people I need to help me."

"Help you do what?" Lucy asked.

"Go help Jack," she said.

That's when the flipping began.

To be continued. Maybe.

Nightmare University

A dream, half-remembered. I hoped to build something more of this than I managed to retain, but ah, well. At least it sets a mood.


Nightmare University

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2008

An alien who wanted to go Christmas shopping found himself trapped in a complex of academic buildings after dark, looking for a way out onto Route 39.

He walked down gloomy, formerly white corridors where students passed by, discussing coffee and homework. Muffled music came from behind a locked metal door painted orange, but when he opened it he found it was just the soundtrack to King of Hearts, flickering in an almost empty room.

He walked through the athletic apartment, where students in yellow T-shirts spoke enthusiastically about their several undefined sports. One female student said something rather interesting, and was answered with something rather profound. In the next room, two other students said exactly the same things. In the room after that, the alien could not remember what either couple had said.

He walked on into the law department, where he found a statue of an eagle, labeled American Plausibilitism. "Ah, that explains everything," he said. And woke up.

A slightly more coherent version, starring the Doctor and turned into a comic strip slide show, can be found on my LiveJournal.

Karen

Former Ficlets: An Archive

Like pretty much every other bit of user-generated content AOL ever hosted, Ficlets will be gone by year's end. This was a site devoted to ridiculously short fiction, limited not by word count but by character count. Stories could then be given a more normal length by writing a series of prequels and sequels - and Ficlets writers were encouraged to do this to each other's stories. To be honest, I really didn't like that part, because other writers took my characters in the "wrong" directions in their sequels.

Despite the fact that a glitch prevented me from logging on with the OpenID I used for my Ficlets, I was able to find them eventually and store them to Word. Here are three of the five pices I wrote for that site. The other two I will post later, fleshing them out into a proper story. New fiction on this site at last - what a concept!


Do You Want to Meet a Pirate?
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on March 23, 2007.

“Tell me a story,” the little girl demanded.

“What kind of story?”

“About pirates.”

“Do you like pirates?”

“Yup. Only I don’t know any.”

“Would you like to meet a pirate? Or would you rather just hear a story about one?”

“There aren’t any more pirates.”

“Yes there are. I know some pirates. One in particular.”

“A real pirate? With a ship and everything? Or do you mean the boring kind, that just copies video and sells it?”

“The kind with a ship and everything.”

“I don’t believe you. What’s the name of the ship?”

“Bad Wolf.”

“That’s a funny name for a ship. There aren’t any wolves in the ocean.”

“You’ve never heard of the Sea Wolf?”

“No. Can I meet him?”

“Her. That depends. Are you brave enough?”

“Yeah. Why? What will she do to me?”

“She might shanghai you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Make you part of her crew.”

“That would be cool.”

“You couldn’t go home for a long time. No mommy or daddy.”

“That’s okay.”

“No tv. No iPod, phone or video game.”

“Well….”

“No computer.”

“I’ll think about it.”


The Secret Freeway
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on March 26, 2007.

(This one is based on a concept I've been playing with for decades - and I still don't know what to do with it.)

I first discovered the secret freeway in 1986, the same year I learned that the back doors of every Yellow Roof restaurant lead into the same parking lot.

This is how it started.

It was a little over 4 AM when I pulled into the “Yeller’s” at El Cajon, California. It had been our traditional stop, the place to get breakfast en route from the Cleveland National Forest rest area to Disneyland. But everything was different this time. Jill wasn’t with me, and never would be again. I wasn’t headed for Disneyland, and it wasn’t time for breakfast.

I needed coffee, so I stopped anyway. It didn’t help much. I hit I-8 again eastbound, thinking that if I could just make it to the Cleveland rest area, I could sleep there. It was pretty much all I thought about.

An hour later, I pulled off. It wasn’t until I’d parked that I noticed the snow, neatly plowed but starting to drift in the biting wind.

And the Ohio plates on most of the cars. And the I-90 sign.

I was ten miles from Cleveland, OH, via the secret freeway.


What It's All About
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on June 04, 2007.

“What is it about?”

“It’s about how we change in response to outside pressures.”

“Boring. What is it about?”

“It’s about three teenagers trying to stay alive.”

“Better.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“Let me see the manuscript.”

The next day: “It wasn’t about that at all.”

“What?”

“It’s not about people changing, or trying to stay alive. That’s incidental. It’s about alienation, Fox News, and the corruption of the Bush White House. Allegorically, of course.”

“No, it isn’t. Okay, the one character is alienated, but that’s about it.”

“Wrong. His friends are alienated, too, from their family and friends and a corrupt government. The government lies to the people, aided by the mass media.”

“There are no mass media in the story. It’s a fantasy world.”

“Your storyteller characters are the media. They are complicit in the government’s lies.”

“But I wrote that part before Bush took office.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s all right there in the story.” He looked at me kindly.

“Writers never know what the story is about.”

Beneath the Orange Sky

I'll get back to the other stuff eventually, but meanwhile here's a special treat, cross-posted from the Outpost. With closure, even!

Into the Land of Shadows

Vicki of the blog "Maraca" is responsible for this week's Round Robin topic, "Shadowland." This is going to be my most ambitious RR entry to date, not so much photographically as, well, you'll see.

Beneath the Orange Sky
by Karen Funk Blocher

They rode toward the mountain side by side, Rona Sable on her horse, Apple, her grandfather Seth on Chub as usual. The oncoming sunset did not pause in its approach, unlike several of the cars that passed them, heading toward the city as the two horses left it behind. While they were still on the long, flat highway, Seth played his favorite game with Rona, asking her questions about stars and planets, brains and botany. Rona answered dutifully, but she was not in the mood for it. Her whole body throbbed with tension, not just from the long ride, but with anticipation. She looked no more than seven years old, but today was her thirteenth birthday. Tonight after sunset, her impossibly youthful grandfather would finally tell Rona the secrets that had been withheld from her, all her life up to now.


Once they reached the base of the mountain, Seth lapsed into silence. They directed the horses carefully along the narrow shoulder, lest they miss their footing in the gloom. Ten feet to the right, the drop was at least a hundred feet, and increasing with every step.


"How far are we going?" Rona asked after a while. "This is getting dangerous."

Her grandfather did not answer immediately. Then he said, "Yes, it is. But for now we're riding only as far as the first vista point, another three miles or so."


Sunset was starting to fade as they turned right onto the looping drive of the Frog Mountain vista. A couple sat on the wall between the paved parking and the drop toward the valley below. Rona knew her grandfather would not want to tell her anything interesting with strangers around, so she wandered along the stone wall, taking pictures with her new camera.

"Point the lens this way," Seth said in her ear.


Rona aimed her camera in the direction her grandfather had indicated, over the wall onto a path that went past of couple of mature saguaros. Beyond the cactus, and over the foothills themselves, the LCD viewfinder revealed a light in the sky, arcing over the blue, like a cloud but not a cloud. Rona glanced away from the camera, but her naked eye revealed nothing.


When she turned back, the couple were getting in their car. "Finally," her grandfather said. "Now, look that way. See the mountain over there, where there's still an orange glow? That is where we are going."

The more Rona looked, the less sense Seth's statement made to her. "From here? Tonight?"

"Yes, from here. Look, that's the way down, over by the two saguaros. Take Apple's bridle and follow me."

Rona protested even as she obeyed. "But why from here? That mountain is down beyond the airport. Half the city is between us and it. And it's getting dark."

"It won't get dark. Not quite. And now that we've passed the boundary, we're not where you think we are. There is no city, until we reach that mountain."

"But--"

"Wait and see," her grandfather said.


Five minutes later, the switchback they were following turned suddenly onto a disused section of road, where no road ought to be. Below was a flare of light, but it was not a set of headlights. The sky ahead of them was more orange than before, and the ghost of a full moon was in the sky, although Rona knew it should only be a half moon. By its light and the distant orange glow, she found she could see every pebble, every bramble. The horses plodded along the dark pavement.

"Welcome to the Shadow Kingdom," her grandfather said. "While we're here it will never be daylight, but it never quite gets dark, either. "Look behind you."

Rona looked. Behind her should have been the looming mountain, but instead she saw a valley and the twinkling of lights. A yellow glow fringed the horizon, and a much brighter glow above that seemed to hold back the night. "What's that? It almost looks like, I don't know, a bomb or something."

Seth shook his head. In this strange light he looked slightly older than usual, perhaps a year older than his students at PCC. "It's the interface between the world you knew and the one we just crossed into. It's not visible from the other side, except sometimes through a camera lens, when the two worlds come together at dusk. But on this side it's the primary light source. You won't see the sun again while we're here."

"How long will that be?"

"Until you come of age."

"What does that mean? Until I'm eighteen, or twenty-one? Or worse yet, until I look twenty-one? That could take decades."

Seth smiled at her. "It won't be like that. It's the sunlight that slows down our aging in the other world. Here you will finally start to age normally. And no, we're not waiting for you to reach some arbitrary age or stature."

"What then? Am I supposed to go and prove myself in some way, so I can be admitted to some strange tribe? Or engage in ritual dreaming? Or kill a deer with a stone knife? Does this world even have any deer?"

"Mutter's Grey deer. And no, you don't have to hunt them, although some do. You're here to complete your education."

"I can't do that at home?"

"Haven't you guessed? This is your home, the land of your birth and birthright. The things you need to learn, you can only learn here. Your mother will teach you."

Rona stopped dead. "My mother?"

Seth smiled at her. "Of course."

"But isn't she dead?"

"Did anyone ever tell you that she was?"

"No, but I kind of assumed...."

"You know better than to assume things. Observe, hypothesize, and test. But in this case you don't need to. I had a message from Mana, just last week. She's looking forward to seeing you again."

"Truly?"

"Truly," Seth assured her. "Now come on. It's time we were riding again. The horses see this road as well as you can, and we've a long way to go."

Full of wonder, Rona climbed into the saddle, and rode on into the endless orange twilight.


Fin.

The Children in the Shoebox: an Experiment

While we're waiting for the collaboration on "Later This Somewhere" to take off, here's something I'm writing off the top of my head, under the influence of E Nesbit and Miss Mullock.

The Children in the Shoebox
An Experimental Faerie Tale

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Part One
Once upon a time there were three children who lived in a shoebox in the cupboard. Their names were Mattie, Maggie, and Maddie. I expect you think a shoebox is a very odd place for three children to live, but it was their home, and they were used to it.

The shoebox was in a cupboard, as I have said; and the cupboard was in a pantry, and the pantry was in a little stone house in a grassy clearing in the Deep Woods. The house belonged to a witch, and the Deep Woods belonged to the King, but he wasn't around much, just once a year to smile and wave and hunt the same magic deer who never let him come close to catching her. She was really a princess in disguise, and the King knew it, so he wasn't as ruthless in trying to trap her as he might otherwise have been. He kept hoping that one year the princess would get tired of being a magic deer, and let him take her home at last.

Meanwhile the King let the witch live in the woods to look after the deer and the children, who were his cousins once removed on his mother's side. They were part Faerie, enchanted to remain in the miniature form the Good Folk sometimes preferred. In this size they fit in the shoebox quite well, with three tiny beds lined with the down of baby robins, for indeed their beds had started out as a large bird's nest. The witch, who was a decent sort, really, had cleaned up the nest so that it was quite habitable and pleasant, and not at all smelly.

Every morning the faerie children would fly out of the cupboard, whose door the witch thoughtfully kept open except at night, for protection, and outside into the meadow for bath and breakfast. The little stream that ran through the clearing was shallow and only a little dangerous, as long as they stayed in the inch-deep water at the very edge. Breakfast was nectar from flowers and tiny millet-cakes the witch left out for them. They didn't actually see the witch, for she was invisible; but they usually remembered to sing out a "thank you!" to her, especially when she came up with something extra special to eat, like honey-buns or a tiny omelet.

Afternoons, the faerie children might go racing with butterflies, or make forts out of sweet grass, or visit with their friend, Princess Doris, the deer. Doris was secretly in love with an enchanted skunk who lived in the hollow of a nearby oak tree. Years before he had behaved very badly toward the witch's sister, which is a very foolish thing to do. He was sorry about it, but not quite sorry enough yet, in the witch's estimation. So the deer waited for Prince Roger - the skunk's real name - to be sorry enough for the witch or her sister to let him go. Another year, Doris thought, or two, and he would probably be quite reformed enough for them, and for Doris as well. She probably couldn't live happily ever after with a fellow who still went around insulting witches and princesses and thought it an all right thing to do. But the children thought Roger was quite fun to be with, and usually pretended that his smell didn't bother them at all.

The one thing that bothered the children about this life was that it got to be rather dull and lonely after a while. Doris and Roger were very nearly adults, and sometimes acted more like animals than people. The witch was invisible, so if she was even around they usually didn't know it. And the King, jolly as he was, seemed a little awkward around them when he came through every spring. "It's the politics," Mattie explained one year, and Maggie nodded wisely. Maddie didn't really understand this explanation, and wasn't quite sure the other two did, either. But she didn't say so.

The fact remained, however, that the three faerie children suffered, just a little, for lack or a mother or father or playmates aside from each other. Then one day, everything changed.

Well, really, only one thing changed, but it was a very important change. Someone new came into the Deep Woods.

Maddie saw the girl first, in the second clearing over from the stone cottage, on the left. She was sitting on a rock, dressed in a frock the exact color of buttercups. She was reading a large, thin book with a paper cover and colorful pictures on every page. Maddie, who knew her alphabet and more besides, flew close enough to read the words on the cover. "The Amazing Spider-Man," it said.

Careful not to be seen, yet, she flew off to find her brother and sister.