Tesseractivity

I found the second of two stories I was once sure I'd posted before, but which I must have held back for some reason. I was about to post it here tonight, and in fact the text was already in place when I reconsidered. Instead, I'm about to submit the story for consideration in Tesseracts 17. 

I've only sold one work of fiction in my life, but perhaps this will be the second. The story is, at worst, free of the sort of embarrassing errors in science and logic that marred "One Second Per Second." Wish me luck!

Bad Science

Yesterday I posted "One Second Per Second," my attempt to write a short story about time travel. Shortly afterward one of my scientist friends, Michael Snyder, pointed out an embarrassing error: I'd given my main character prion-based disease, only to suggest that the solution was to send him back in time to correct a genetic disorder. Oy! Of course that's completely illogical - you get CJD and FFI from ingesting contaminated meat; it's not a hereditary disease. Oddly enough, I know this already; I can't explain how I made such an elementary mistake in science and internal story logic.

Of course there are ways to fix this, along with the other, subtler problems Michael pointed out. I'll post a more logical version of the story soon. For now, I just want to thank Dr. Snyder for his careful reading. This is why I share this stuff! Writing fiction is still new to me, and I need all the help I can get.

One Second Per Second

I found one of the stories I wrote about yesterday! I've revised it a little, cutting some bits in the introduction that didn't fit the tone of the tale.

It was my first real vacation in ten years and likely my last, so I was determined to make the most of it. I had three weeks to experience New York, no itinerary, just a nice hotel room and ample time to visit all the tourist traps. I left my laptop behind, didn't even bring a book, nor a change of clothes; I wanted nothing to weigh me down, not a single reminder of home or what awaited me there. Anything I needed, I'd buy here. 

I had one advantage over other tourists: I couldn't sleep. My approaching doom would at least give me enough time to enjoy my final trip. 

On the fifth day of sleepless frenetic sightseeing, I attended a performance of Cats. The show left me unmoved, but in the lobby I caught a young American woman staring at me. When she saw that I'd spotted her, she beckoned me over. Since I had little to lose in these final days, I approached her and introduced myself: "Adam Cranch."

"I'm April," she said. "I couldn't help but notice - you're Canadian?"

I was bemused. "What gave me away?"

"You move through a crowd very...deferentially."

I shrugged in my most charming and self-effacing manner. "I could use a coffee," I said.

That was how it began. Thanks to her local savvy we burned through my tourist itinerary at breakneck speed, one landmark after another, a blur of images from film and television finally made tangible. I enjoyed her company by day, saw her to her door and continued to explore the city by night. I explored without fear, my death sentence a perfect shield against caution. April was amazed by my stamina, and I discovered that the only fear that remained was the idea of telling her the truth.

But on the third day of our brief friendship, she insisted that we take a walk through Central Park. We stopped to feed the pigeons, snuggled together on a wooden bench.I felt a deep and sudden surge of affection for her, and I realized it was terribly cruel to hide my truth. I told her I had only days to live.

"I have a condition called Fatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI for short. Like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, it's a brain disorder involving prions, which has something to do with proteins, don't ask me what; I'm a salesman, not a doctor. The prions change shape and causes a kind of plaque to form in my thalamus, which is the part of the brain, the doctor tells me, that controls sleep patterns."

Her face was very pale, and she clutched my forearm hard. "That's why you can't sleep...but what else?"

I sighed. "Insomnia is just the first stage. Eventually I won't be able to sleep at all, then I'll develop dementia and eventually paralysis and death. At least I'll die with my eyes wide open."

The half-hearted joke fell flat.

"How long?" Her eyes were wet.

"I may not make my return flight to Toronto."

She turned away. I expected her to slap me, and I wouldn't have blamed her if she had, but instead she stood up.

"I have a friend I can talk to."

I was touched. "That's very kind, but really, I've seen the best doctors in the country already. I am going to die, and in less than a week."

"He's not that kind of friend." And then she walked away.

The next day, there was a knock at the door of my hotel room. I answered it, expecting April, but instead I saw a short, nondescript man in a black shirt and khaki shorts. He looked like a tourist.

"Can I help you?"

"Actually, April sent me to help you. I'm Edward Wynn. Will you come with me, Mr. Cranch?"

I had nothing to lose, and April obviously wanted to feel useful. I saw no reason to resist her good wishes, and so I went along with Wynn. He led me down to the parking garage, to his car, an unremarkable black Primus.

"Where are we going?" I asked, climbing into the vehicle.

"It's not far," he said.

But we drove for over ninety minutes, the buildings getting older and seedier as we travelled. Wynn turned down a narrow alley, shut off the ignition, and said, "We're here."

We left the car and Wynn led me to a pale yellow door. He pointed to the sign that adorned it: "Institute for Advanced Psychenergetic Studies." He raised an eyebrow, tapped the sign with his outstretched finger and asked, "What do you think this means?"

I thought about it. "Judging from the word 'psychenergetic,' I suppose it must have something to do with psychic energy. Moving coins around with your mind, bending spoons, that sort of thing." I suppressed my annoyance; I'd thought April had more sense than to send me to faith healers.

"Indeed. What if I told you that this is where it all began - or where it will all begin, depending on your perspective?"

"Where what began?"

He smiled in such a way that I knew he looked forward to my reaction to his next words.

"Time travel," he said.

This time, I allowed my annoyance to show. "Mister Wynn...really."

"You have plenty of reason not to believe, and I wouldn't blame you if you demanded to leave right now. But for April's sake if nothing else, will you at least listen to some friends of mine?"

I shrugged; if nothing else, I was willing to experience the new and strange in my last days. What else was the time for?

He led me through the door. I half-expected some remarkable high-tech complex, such as you might see in a film by Spielberg or Sampson, but to my eyes it looked like a simple office - perhaps a bit old-fashioned. Wynn and I walked down a half-lit corridor, turned left, then paused before another door, labelled, simply, "Operations." Wynn knocked on the door, and someone inside told us to come in.

Wynn opened the door and introduced two men: one pale, one dark, both wearing, strangely, eyeglasses. No one wore glasses anymore; they must have been eccentrics.

"Doctor Funkwright, Doctor Gurda, this is the man I told you about, Adam Cranch."

We shook hands. "Can I ask what this is all about?"

Gurda, the dark one, responded. "Edward tells us you have FFI."

"That's right."

"Your doctor must have told you that it's a hereditary disease."

I nodded.

"Edward has told you that our work involves time travel."

I smiled, making no effort to hide my disbelief. "Mmmm hmmm."

He ignored my derision. "Mister Cranch, to begin we'll need a blood sample..."

I went along with it. They drew blood, then disappeared for a while, Edward refused to answer any further questions, but brought me lunch and let me borrow his phone to call April. But she didn't pick up.

Gurda and Funkwright returned, all smiles.

"We've traced the gene that causes FFI back in time. The first carrier is a man named Marc Kastios, your great-great-great-great grandfather."

"Really," I said. I rolled my eyes.

"If you want to survive, you must travel back in time and ensure that he does not meet your great-great-great-great grandmother, one Medea Lessing. If someone else impregnates her, the gene will never appear in your DNA. You will be cured, because you will never have had the disease. You never could have had it."

I waved my hands in the air in protest. "Wait, wait wait. That's ridiculous. It's the grandfather paradox, you can't go back in time and kill an ancestor - which is what this amounts to - because then you'll never be born. It's preposterous."

Funkwright smiled, as if he'd heard this argument before. "Kastios contributed only a small fraction of the genetic material to the person that is you. Substitute another man in his place, and yes, you will be a different person - but only in the smallest respect. Perhaps you'll have green eyes instead of brown. Perhaps you'll be taller."

"And perhaps I'll wind up with a disease even worse than FFI!"

"A very small possibility, Mister Cranch."

I threw my hands up. "This is silly. It's all a mad dream anyway - you have no time machine." I moved to leave.

"But you, Mister Cranch, are the time machine."

I stopped, turned. "What are you talking about?"

"It's difficult to put in layman's terms, but while investigating the temporal lobe of the brain, my colleague and I made important discoveries about the observer effect in quantum mechanics, especially as it relates to the physiology of the brain, and more importantly, the mind. The prions will have spread to your temporal lobe by now - the very part of your brain that determines your perception of time. Only people with your condition, Mister Cranch - or similar conditions, such as CJD - may travel through time, for your brains are now fundamentally different from those of the rest of humanity."

"I've never used this word before, but I can't think of a better opportunity: balderdash."

Funkwright shrugged. "The choice is yours, of course. Will you resign yourself to a very uncomfortable death, or will you entertain a pair of eccentric cranks and a woman who cares for you very much?"

When faced with nonexistence, anyone is liable to weaken. I was out of time; my last days may as well be interesting. I nodded my assent.

Gurda clapped his hands together, smiling, and Wynn put a hand on my shoulder, nodding at me like I'd made an incredibly wise decision. I felt like a fool.

They took me to another room, a lab. It was empty but for a reclining chair, a pair of computer workstations, and a short countertop with an espresso machine. Funkwright gestured towards the chair; I took it. Then, each scientist took a position at the workstations.

"You won't feel anything. The chair will attune your brain to a different part of the space-time continuum."

Wynn opened a drawer in the counter and brought me a pair of still photos. The first was a head-and-shoulders candid shot, fantastically clear, of a dark, handsome man in what looked like early 18th century finery. "There's your man. You want to keep him from meeting this woman -" he showed me the next picture, of a startlingly beautiful, raven-haired girl, surely still a teenager - "Medea. She'll be sitting at an outdoor cafe, alone. All you have to do is keep the two of them from meeting."

"But...what about my clothes? I'll look completely out of place..."

"You'll look a little odd, but you won't be there long enough to cause too much of a stir. Besides, in this kind of situation, such distractions aren't necessarily bad."

"Ready for translocation," Gurda called out.

Wynn smiled at me reassuringly. "Don't worry. The really cool part is, you won't really be travelling anywhere at all; the rest of the universe is going to travel, relative to your position. The mountain is coming to Mohammed. Wild, huh?"

"Keen," I replied sardonically, but then I was falling, falling hard on my ass on a dusty gravel road. I picked myself up and goggled; Wynn was gone, Funkwright and Gurda were gone, the lab was gone. I was outdoors, on a plateau overlooking the sea, and there, a few meters away, was Medea, sitting as promised, alone, gazing over the water, sipping tea.

There was a shriek behind me. I jumped, spun around, and there was Kastios, face pale with terror. He must have seen me arrive! I tried to calm him, spreading my hands wide, but he broke and ran, and that was the first and only time I laid eyes on my distant relative.

My distant former relative, I thought. I took a few steps toward Medea, noting her beauty, wondering if I should try to replace Kastios as her suitor. What delicious irony if I impregnated her, becoming my own ancestor - and then passing on the FFI gene to myself!

I'm like a character in a story, I thought to myself. This is marvellous!

But then, before I could even inhale one final breath of the brisk, most air, the world spun around me again and I was back in the chair. Gurda, Wynn and Funkwright were regarding me with unreadable eyes.

"I did it!" I said, and tried to rise. But then I felt faint, and terribly weak. Something had just happened - something important. But it was fading...

***

Wynn took Cranch away, back to April. Whether she would find the new man as appealing as the old was an open question - but at least now they had the time to find out. The differences were small indeed, but the measure of a man can be had in the smallest increments - tiny alterations could make a strong man weak, could make a kind man cruel. Or they could make a good man great.

Gurda and Funkwright shut down the lab, another day's work well done.

"It's a shame the process destroys short-term memory. There have been millions of time travellers, but no one remembers," Funkwright said.

"Count your blessings," Gurda replied. "Without time travel, the death toll from CJD would be in the billions by now.

Funkwright nodded. "One of these days, someone will figure out why there are so few cases, despite the fact that nearly all beef in the industrialized world is infected. But aren't we killing the victims, in a sense? No one who makes the trip comes back as the same person, after all."

Gurda turned off the lights as they left the lab. "No one is the same person Friday that he was Thursday. Time has its way with us no matter what you or I or any of our colleagues do. We grow, we change, our old personalities die and are replaced, either in an instant, as with Cranch, or the old fashioned way, simply by moving forward through time...one second per second."

The Case of the Missing Short Stories

While reorganizing the blog yesterday, I found myself unable to locate two short stories I'm sure I posted a couple of years ago: one about a saint that wakes up from cryogenic sleep to find himself loathed by the people of the future, and another about time travel and disease. I could swear I posted both because I seem to remember Mike commenting "...and we have a title!" as he is wont to do when a story's title shows up in a story.

But neither story seems to exist anywhere in the blog archives. Did I imagine their existence, or does anyone else recall them? I haven't found the stories on my hard drives, either.

"The Case of the Missing Short Stories"
The twitching index finger of Earl J. Woods tapped nervously against his mouse's scroll wheel. It was a telescope vainly searching an empty sky, for scroll as he might there was no sign of stories he was sure he'd written and shared. Had they been so awful, he wondered, that the universe itself rebelled and erased them from memory?

"Actually, that's probably what happened," Earl thought, and pressed the bright orange "Publish" button.

Altario's Finest

The second of my articles for the Alberta Teachers' Association is available online:

Altario's Finest - Five decades of service to Alberta's students

Sheep Trading

I taunted Jeff and Susan with promises of lamb, but I was only kidding; I pulled the wool over their eyes and handed it over to Sylvia. I had to keep my negotiating skills sheep-shape!

Mowing the Lawn

There I was with green grass growing, grass that must be mowed
Time to start the weekly shearing, from the sidewalk to the road
Even though I don't care if it's brown or green
Neighbour standards won't let up so I've got to play this scene

Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn

How I hate this stupid mower, it won't even start
It's full of gas and I pushed the choke, is it missing a special part?
Pull the ripcord engine coughs, just before it rains
I'd be cozy and warm inside if only I had any brains!

Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn

Now I've shorn the grass down to nubs, it's been trimmed but good
Manicured and neatly trimmed, I did the best I could
But in just a few short days it shall grow again
Mowing the lawn is meaningless, a source of never-ending pain!

Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn
Mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn

(With apologies to Judas Priest)

The Sentimentalist Version Two

Judging by its view count, not many people read last month's short story, The Sentimentalist. Two who did read the story remarked that they liked it, but judged it unfinished. This is fair criticism, so I've attempted to flesh out the story and give it some polish with a few carefully considered alterations. The story remains essentially the same in tone and theme, but I've tried to give it a little more weight and colour. Have I succeeded? Perhaps not, but I found the exercise very valuable, so thanks to Bruce and Jeff for their comments. 

The Sentimentalist

Six hundred years after she lost her one true love, the young woman in the faded blue jeans and the tan leather jacket returned to Cherryville. She’d stopped to shed her last vengeful tears at the way station ten miles back; now, cheeks dried and eyes clear and hard, she was ready.

She rolled into town on a weathered black sociable, its left seat long ago removed and replaced by a battered old rivercane basket, currently filled with an assortment of dried fruits, nuts, jerky and a faintly glowing data tablet, resting languidly atop this humble bounty. 

Her tires kicked up dust and small stones as she braked to a halt in front of the first of three skyscrapers that loomed over Cherryville’s only street. In thirty seconds' ride she could put tiny Cherryville over the horizon behind her, but duty and destiny demanded their due.

She leaned her sociable against a hitching post and stepped onto the boardwalk, pausing a moment to stamp the dust from her black over-the-knee boots. She removed her black Stetson and with an offhand, almost lazy gesture flung it to land precariously balanced atop her sociable’s handlebars. For a moment it seemed a gust of wind would topple the battered old hat into the road, but the breeze subsided as if in deference to the visitor.

She gazed up at the towers of glass and steel before her. GENERAL STORE, pronounced the easternmost tower in bold block letters of carved and cracking obsidian. SALOON, read the middle tower in fading jade. And POST OFFICE, read the last in letters of worn marble. High above the skies began to roil, clouds of ochre and violet twisting impatiently beneath the silent glittering starscape waiting at altitudes incomprehensible, waiting on her and on Cherryville. Over the horizon other clouds rumbled their discontent, and she knew she’d allowed time to grow too short.

And yet she hesitated before the saloon doors and the murmuring voices beyond. One slightly callused but meticulously manicured hand brushed against the pistol holstered at her hip. Its deadly weight was cold comfort, leeching the heat from her body, a malevolent force pregnant with ugly potential. It had been her partner for half a century, and there was no ending their dark contract now. She took a breath and entered the saloon.

The skyscraper was mostly empty space, its one hundred fifty floors merely ringing the inner walls, ornate balconies of gilt stone open to the interior. On the ground floor hundreds of townspeople lined the bar or lounged at round oak tables as they dined, played cards, or, more commonly, ignored each other in favour of consulting their smart phones, eagerly devouring distractions that had ceased to matter centuries gone. There was no music, only the low rumble of conversation.

She stood at the saloon entrance until, one by one, all eyes were fixed upon her. At that moment she pulled her jacket open to reveal the large, polished black opal pinned to her blouse. The last echoes of conversation died away.

She spoke in the old formal tones, her voice initially cracking from long disuse.

“Hello,” she said. “At precisely noon today the extension granted you by the Confederation of the Living expires. Per the agreement, you will now surrender yourselves for conversion in an orderly fashion.”

She attempted a smile, a way to soften the blow.  

“Congratulations on your perseverance. You are among the last corporeal –”

But the crowd didn’t let her finish. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the first terrified citizen drew his primitive sidearm, his blue eyes bloodshot and bulging with panic, beads of sweat glistening on his pale skin.

He was only halfway out of his chair before the young woman and her gun were one being once more, her arm extended, eyes half-open, her expression serene but sad. The first conversion slug burped from the barrel of her pistol and sailed across the room and through the citizen’s heart, its recording devices transmitting the sounds and sights of the man’s death to the young woman’s tablet on the street outside.

She would have preferred if the first violent conversion could have persuaded the others to surrender, but this crowd was too attached to this plane. Bullets, flechettes, darts and bolts crisscrossed the room in search of her flesh. She felt something bite sharply into her left side; an instant later another missile grazed her cheekbone, leaving a shallow gash that oozed a slow trickle of blood.

It wasn’t enough to distract the partnership. Her body moved with the grace of a dancer, long dark hair whipping in an arc as she pirouetted through the saloon, conversion slugs ripping through guts and brains and faces and lungs, every atrocity duly recorded. Once or twice an especially gifted citizen nearly managed to kill her, but her reflexes and the gun’s silent psychic warnings kept her injuries to a shameful minimum.

It was over in minutes. The carpet was soaked with blood that squelched under her boots as she left the saloon.

The Cherryville postman was standing beside her sociable, holding her data tablet, eyes agog. He looked up at her as she stepped down from the boardwalk, taking the tablet back.

“Anyone else in town?” she asked, gesturing with her chin at the post office and the general store. Her eyes were wet again, her vision blurred. Tiny rivers of blood dripped down her pale cheek to her jawline.

“Just me,” he said. “Everyone else was waiting for you in there. They thought maybe they’d have a chance if everyone...well. I thought I’d go with a little dignity.”

She nodded, wearing her mask of indifference through the tears. She reached out with her left hand, the polished black surface of her pointed nails shifting and whirling to reveal vast star fields, a universe on every fingertip. But before she could touch his grizzled cheek, he raised a hand to ask a question. She waited.

“Why do you take those awful pictures?” he asked. “Surely it’s not necessary, and who’s going to watch them...you?”

Her thin lips twisted in a sad smile. Tomorrow night she would indeed watch the replays, as she had watched all the others to remind herself of what she’d stolen, what she’d given, and what she’d sacrificed. When Earth at last was empty, someone must bear the burden of remembrance.

 “I’m a sentimentalist,” she said.

The postman frowned, light years from understanding. Then starry fingertips graced his cheek and he burst into wisps of silver smoke, lost on the wind.

The Blue Jay at my Window

My home office rests mostly below ground level, with only a small window near the ceiling. I've been spending more time than usual in my office this summer, so perhaps that's why it's only this year that I've noticed a winged visitor: an attention-seeking Blue Jay.

Every two or three days since June, the bird perches on my window sill and squawks at me. The bird does so until I stand up to look at it, at which point it flies away. When I sit down to start writing again, the bird returns for more squawking.

I've tried to take a photo of my annoying visitor a few times. On these occasions, the bird allows me to finish standing, then waits sadistically until I have the camera in position with my finger on the trigger. Just as I'm about to depress the button, it flies off. I am starting to believe that the bird is playing games with me.

In lieu of a shot I'll probably never capture, here's a Blue Jay on the Etsell farm, sometime during an early 1970s winter.

Footprint River 1973

You know you're getting close to Leaf Rapids when you cross the by-no-means-famous yellow bridge over Footprint River. We moved from Thompson to Leaf Rapids in 1973, but there was no road yet; we had to fly in. Since this shot was also taken in 1973, it's possible the Footprint River bridge wasn't even constructed yet; perhaps we reached this spot by canoe.

That's Dad on the left, then me, and then Mom's parents. I was too young to remember their visits up north, but Mom tells me that they both enjoyed northern Manitoba very much. So did I!

Oddly enough I do remember Grandma's camera, which  you can see in her left hand. That particular model - I'm pretty sure it was a Kodak - used a disposable flash, which you plugged into the top of the camera. I think it was good for four flashes; you'd have to rotate the flash after each use. Photographers these days are pretty spoiled, but I wouldn't go back for anything. 

Stephen King's The Stapler

Aside from the brilliant The Cabin in the Woods and a couple of other exceptions, recent filmed horror has been long on cheap scares and gratuitous violence and short on substance and new ideas. Imagine a satirical film shot in black and white except for the blood, which would show up as a garish Technicolor red. Every act of violence would suddenly stand out in stark relief, especially if the murders were doled out with some restraint - probably a lot to ask from modern filmmakers. Aye, there's the rub: this gimmick could all too easily be used to ramp up the exploitation factor of an already blood-saturated marketplace. I can just imagine directors going hog wild, massacring scores of victims in Blood-o-Rama just for the sake of cheap new thrills. Quite a spectacle.

Naturally I'm not opposed to cheap thrills and gratuitous violence at the movies as long as there's some point to it all. Spielberg famously used a variation of this technique to powerful effect in Schindler's List, but of course his use of spot colour was tasteful and tragic rather than lurid and exploitative. I have a feeling that Blood-o-Rama, should some producer ever use it, will be used more in the vein of William Castle's favourite gimmicks, Percepto and Emergo and the like.

If I may damn my own concept with faint praise, I'd at least sooner see a film in Blood-o-Rama than I would in 3D. May that particular fad die another quick death!

Fiend Streets

In an effort to push the limits of my rudimentary graphic design skills, I sat down today to design a faux-retro poster for a fake 80s teen hoodlum drama. I shot the original black and white photos during the photography module of our grade eight industrial arts class, added film grain and tinted the colour and the rest is all in the fonts.

My goal here was to evoke the grunge of 70s exploitation films with some of the pastel-coloured glam of the 80s. Maybe I should have used baby-blue and pink tints for the photos, but red and yellow seem more lurid and violent.

A Quarter-Century Ago...

25 years ago this week, I headed off to the University of Alberta to earn my Bachelor of Arts degree. Having just loaded up Mom and Dad's car with my clothes, Atari 130XE computer and other essentials, I posed for a going-away photo in the driveway before departing for Lister Hall.

That first week at university was very strange. I was living on my own for the first time, with compete freedom to schedule when I'd eat, sleep, read, complete assignments for class and socialize. I enjoyed living with Mom and Dad, but my first year away from home started to shape who I'd become as profoundly - or perhaps more so - than any other stage of my life. I was exposed to new ideas, new kinds of people, new challenges. I was no longer one of the smartest kids in school; now I was just one of tens of thousands of young people sufficiently bright enough to make the leap to post-secondary education. It was humbling and delightful at the same time.

How different it must be to attend university now. Back then my 8-bit computer was connected only to local bulletin boards at 300 (later 1200, later still 2400) baud, text scrolling by much slower than I could read it. If I wanted to research something, I did it by traipsing across campus to one of the libraries, searching through the stacks. There was a computerized card catalogue, but it was only half-complete. There was no Google, no Yahoo, there wasn't even Mozilla or Netscape; there were no cell phones, and I listened to music on cassette tape on my Walkman. A ticket to one of the dances cost $2; tuition that first year was $800. Our meal cards were loaded up with, I believe, $700 per semester, barely enough to keep you fed at the Lister Hall cafeteria for the year if you limited yourself to about one and a half meals per day.

There was a bit of early snow that first week, and on my way to class one morning I slipped on a patch of ice just outside the entrance to the Butterdome. I flew off my feet only to land in the arms of a petite but surprisingly strong brunette.

"Thanks!" I said.

"No problem," she smirked. She introduced herself as Candy White and asked me to come see her sometime on the 11th floor - one of the all-girl floors. She was a nursing student, and while I did go up to see her the next day, I met only her very friendly parents, who assured me Candy would be sorry I missed her. I never worked up the nerve for a second visit, and whatever meet-cute romance may have blossomed was nipped in the bud by my adolescent cowardice.

Still, that first year was wonderful, and my second and third years would be even better. The fourth year, well...it was wonderful too, but...that's another story.

Out of Print, Out of Reach?

Over the years I've purchased hundreds of wonderful hard-to-find and out-of-print books from used bookstores across North America. Used bookstores introduced me to the sublime madness of 1994: The Savage Report, the adventure pastiches of Philip José Farmer, curiosities such as The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste and Cult Movies,  Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus and Pellucidar novels and countless others. It took me ten years of searching to find all three volumes of Michael P. Kube McDowell's Trigon Disunity series, but I did it, and the conclusion of that search was rewarding indeed. (It helped that the books were as entertaining and well-crafted as I'd hoped they would be.)

Though I still frequent used book stores, the Internet has fundamentally altered the search for books. These days, I visit used bookstores when I feel like browsing. When I'm searching for something in particular, I use the Internet. Since the early 2000s I've purchased dozens of books online, almost always finding exactly what I'm looking for in seconds. Even long out-of-print rarities can be had at reasonable prices...usually.

But the Internet isn't perfect, and several works still elude my grasp after years of searching. Several of the titles I desire are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive; I'll have to continue prowling used bookstores to find them.

(Surprisingly, Value Village turns out to be a decent haven for used books; I found three today, purchased for the princely sum of $2.17.)

Recently my parents visited the world's biggest used bookstore in Portland, Oregon, but even they couldn't dig up the titles on my most-wanted list. So if anyone sees the following titles in their travels, please alert me:

The Outer Limits Companion (second edition, 1999) by David J. Schow

Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
Logan's World by William F. Nolan
Logan's Search by William F. Nolan

High Crystal by Martin Caidin
Operation Nuke by Martin Caidin
Cyborg IV by Martin Caidin

By all accounts none of these are literary masterpieces (though the Schow book, I'm told, is a solid critical work), but I've been curious about them for some time. I read Logan's Run at the public library in Leaf Rapids, but I've never seen the sequels on sale; Sean lucked out and found Logan's Search a couple of years ago. The three Caidin books are the second, third and fourth novels about Steve Austin, cyborg, known on television as the Six Million Dollar Man. I own the first Cyborg novel, but the others continue to elude me.

Even if I never stumble across any of the works on this short list, the search will guide me to other, perhaps even more obscure but intriguing books. I'd certainly never have read the bizarre but somehow compelling The Second War of the Worlds if I hadn't been searching for something else entirely, and I feel all the richer for it...somehow.

The Shape of Things to Go

Back when I was studying introductory graphic design under Jeff Shyluk, he assigned me the task of using Photoshop to craft a series of simple shape. I don't recall ever handing in my assignment despite its completion, so here it is for posterity. Jeff generously refused to hold back my diploma despite my failure to deliver the completed project.

The New Wash

Last night I dreamed about what I would write on the blog today.

"Aha!" I thought in the dream. "I'll write about who would have replaced Wash as the pilot of the Serenity had the show been renewed after the movie, given Joss Whedon's habit of hiring from his favourite stable of actors and friends."

So I guess that's what I have to write about. Here's my short list:

• Charisma Carpenter as a sassy, flighty colonist escaping a low-tech frontier world in search of a better life as a pilot-for-hire. 
• Wil Wheaton as a drug-addicted madman with a price on his head (that he conveniently forgot to tell Mal about). 
• Enver Gjokaj as a professional merchant pilot who's signed on with the Serenity strictly for the money. Secretly works for a space mob. 
• Felicia Day as the perky (is she ever anything but perky?) pilot who relies on faith and superstition to do the job. Big believer in crystals and sky fairies. 
• And finally (and this was dream-Earl's idea, and probably the best one), Clark Gregg as a veteran who fought on the Alliance side of the war, providing lots of juicy friction between him and Captain Reynolds. 

Sadly Firefly is long dead, so none of these possibilities will ever come to pass. But when you keep dreaming about a show ten years after it's been cancelled, it must have had something going for it.

The Realm

In 1985, Keith Gylander, Mark Lede and I shared a communications class at Leduc Composite High. I believe it was called Communications 21a/21b, and covered film studies. One of our assignments was to write a script for a short film, but Mark, Keith and I decided to go one better and shoot our script.

Sadly, both title and film are lost to time. To my shame, I lost the only VHS copy shortly after graduating from University. It was pretty good, too - a 1984-esque tale of mental manipulation. I played the hero, a man rebelling against the system; Mark, I seem to recall, was in charge of torturing me. The film ended with me on a morgue slab, covered in a clear plastic sheet; you can see Mark and Keith posing on that set below.

Mark and Keith earned 95 percent, while I turned in a separate script that scored 98 - something about a man being led to execution. I was a little embarrassed that my unfilmed script scored higher than one that had produced an actual movie, and I don't believe I ever told Mark and Keith, or if I did it was with some degree of unworthiness.

I only remember one line, one of Mark's: "For if you give your mind to the Realm, you will be strengthened as the Realm is strengthened." If I'd kept my mind on the Realm, maybe I'd still have the tape.

Keith and Mark pose before the slab that was to hold my body.