Lets Have A Contest!!!!!

[scenerio]

hey every body i know what we can do,just for fun,

we could all write a poem or short story and people can vote on whos they liked the best.but remember just because that person got more votes on that one poem doesn't mean that that person is the best writer.

i await to see how many people like this idea or not.

[john8pies]

Here`s a really short story I`ve just written, "The world imploded" (Boom, boom!)

[BabyRider]

Maybe a poem lamenting the difficulties of writing a poem? :yh_rotfl

There's a few writers here with some talent. I'm not one of them. I wonder what they will think of this....

[BabyRider]

Wow. I never considered a story about bikers. I wonder why that is??? What a great idea, Flop. Lemme think on it a while.... :yh_think



In answer to your question about what the guys are like, they are not like any of the characters on TV. Similar, but not the same. Paul Sr. would be close, but he's too dramatic to be a "brother."

[abbey]

I'll post a few limericks

[Jives]

I'm on it. My story will be "A Drive in the Country" I'm working on it right now.

[BabyRider]

abbey wrote: I'll post a few limericks ;)Oh.

Damn.

My tongue hurts. :yh_wink

[abbey]

BabyRider wrote: Oh.

Damn.

My tongue hurts. :yh_winkGotcha......:wah:

[babygirl]

my poem is already posted some where in the section do i have to re write it here? :-5

[BabyRider]

Angel, why not just copy and paste it? If you want to be in the "contest" that is. Or maybe just bump the thread you put it in? I dunno....

[babygirl]

Here is my entry



THE WORLD IS MINE



Today upon a bus i saw a lovely girl with golden hair; I envied her........she seemed so gay.....and wished i were as fair. When suddenly she rose to leave, i saw her hobble down the aisle;She had one foot and wore a crutch,but as she passed a smile.



oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two feet...... the world is mine!

And then i stopped to buy some sweets.

The lad who served them had such charm,I talked with him. He said to me; "Its nice to talk to folks loke you. You see," he said, " i'm blind"

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two eyes...... the world is mine!

Then walking down the street, i saw a child with eyes of blue. He stood and watched the others play; It seemed he knew not what to do. I stopped for a moment, then said, "Why don't you join the others dear?"

He looked ahead without a word, and then i knew he could not hear.

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two ears...... the world is mine!

With feet to take me where i'd go,

With eyes to see the sunset's glow,

With ears to hear what i would know,

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I'm blessed indeed! The world is mine!





It makes you think dont it?

[scenerio]

very cool. i didnt think i would get such a responce out of every one but to answer

every ones queston i think the limt of lines should be from one to one page that way people wouldnt just carry one to long and wouldnt just past little quips and i hope every one has fun.

(p.s. poems must be origanal and can but used more than once.)

ill wait till we acquire a couple of entries before we vote that way people will have time to read everyones and all that good stuff.

[nvalleyvee]

Well - I had to go back to 1972 to find a poem I wrote - oh the pangs of being a teen:

The love poems I write

start deep in my heart

and flow through the tips of my fingers.

They lay tingling on your skin

like water droplets in the wind

then fade, leaving love to linger.

And yes, there are times to laugh

and feel happy inside.

And times to sit holding the other

against the outside.

There are places to be with crowds

or alone, away from your side;

Gentle wonder expressed as we touch

feel magic come alive.

The enjoyment of being together

watching the changes we dare;

Equals the pleasure of soft heather

or the feeling of floating on air.

Love hurts and laughs

picking at the wind, softening the torment.

Love grows as a carpet on a loom

open yourself and give love room.

I have more but I won't subject you to my teenage thoughts any longer.

[scenerio]

here is my entry.



look towards the stars

look towards the stars

look out beyond the moon and tell me what you see

the kings of the past,the lords of are destiny

look towards the stars

and tell me you are not afriad

tell me you do not fell alone

out of control

self deluded dreams of glamor and of rage

tell me you do not fell afriad

look towards the stars

and see your path trailing across the sky

ending and begining far out of reach

never ending

and yet never begining but so long is this journey

that it takes a lifetime to acheive

look towards the stars

reach out and pluck one from the heavens

hold it tight

hold it so ever tight and never let it go

for it will begone in the blink of an eye and shall never return once more

[nvalleyvee]

Of the poems that were posted I would say that an English professor would give them all a "C" or maybe a "D". Mine was included in this bad report. I was taught that poetry among the us newbie writers was always really bad. This was for fun though and the only thing that counts is if YOU - the reader - likes the poetry. So go ahead and rate the few of us that put our writing on the line. I think we can take some criticism.

[nvalleyvee]

I was rating the poem my English prof gave me in 1972.

[Jives]

Angel chocobo wrote:

THE WORLD IS MINE



Today upon a bus i saw a lovely girl with golden hair; I envied her........she seemed so gay.....and wished i were as fair. When suddenly she rose to leave, i saw her hobble down the aisle;She had one foot and wore a crutch,but as she passed a smile.



oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two feet...... the world is mine!

And then i stopped to buy some sweets.

The lad who served them had such charm,I talked with him. He said to me; "Its nice to talk to folks loke you. You see," he said, " i'm blind"

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two eyes...... the world is mine!

Then walking down the street, i saw a child with eyes of blue. He stood and watched the others play; It seemed he knew not what to do. I stopped for a moment, then said, "Why don't you join the others dear?"

He looked ahead without a word, and then i knew he could not hear.

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I have two ears...... the world is mine!

With feet to take me where i'd go,

With eyes to see the sunset's glow,

With ears to hear what i would know,

Oh God forgive me when i whine;

I'm blessed indeed! The world is mine!





It makes you think dont it?


Very nice Angel, but I think the sentry has to be original and your own.

[devist8me]

I wrote this back when I was in high school. It lacks a lot, but its the only one I remember. It also got published in a short magazine. I entered it after reading an add in a poetry magazine.....but they probably publish any they get:

What is love in this day and age?

To many it's a heart, locked in a cage.

To others it's love, understanding, support

Yet to others it's laws, made in a court.



See, pretty simple. I havn't posted much lately so thought I'd add my 2 cents here

[scenerio]

i think these are all execellent i think once we aquire 10 poems well vote and the winner of this contest will go on to compete in the next as the reigning champ.what do you all think.remember we must all agree on these rules before entering.and this is all in the name of fun so keep it clean please.

[Jives]

Here's my entry: It is supposed to be fun and light. It arose out of a conversation between my teacher's aide and myself bemoaning the loss of innocence and the fun of the early part of the century. i added recycling to it because our school is so obsessive about it. The result is this funny tale:

Spring Cleaning

By Jon St. Ives

I’d always meant to get around to buying a gun, but now it was too late. LeeAnn came running into the living room. Her face was flushed and she had that darting, fire-in-the-eyes look that she usually only got when the water heater had exploded. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but LeeAnn was a level-headed girl and never got this upset unless something serious was happening. The last time I had seen her this upset, our previous cat had been put to sleep while I was at work.

“Aliens have landed! They’re everywhere! What’re we going to do?” She said, with a very feminine hand-clasped gesture over her heart.

Now, when someone says something that off-the-wall, there are really only two answers you can give. The first one is the obvious, “Yeah right, and their leader is Michael Jackson.” But I had long since learned not to be flippant around Leeann if I didn’t want to eat frozen pizza for a week. So that only left the option of taking her seriously, although I still wondered what was really going on.

Calm down, they haven’t nuked anything yet have they?” I asked.

“No, but there’s been fighting all over town! Kathy called me on the cell phone, they‘re on her street too!” She replied and as if to punctuate her point, I heard two sharp reports from outside the house that I instantly recognized as gunfire.

A wave of fear washed over me. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream and I felt shaky all over. Suddenly, with the sound of that gunfire, I realized that it was entirely possible that something dangerous was actually happening.

“Did you lock the door behind you? “ I asked. She replied that she had, I tried to think of what I could do to keep us safe, but I didn’t have enough information on what was actually going on. I sent her to the bedroom with a butcher knife and she rounded up the cat as she went.

I peeked out through the living room curtains into the street outside. It was a dead-end street, in a small mountain town in the remote foothills of the mountains. It was three hundred miles in any direction to a big city. Neither twisters, Earthquakes, tidal waves, terrorists, nor volcanoes had ever come as close as a thousand miles to our home. We’d gotten used to the fact that we were completely secure in our isolation.

That comfortable feeling evaporated like glass cleaner on a hot summer window as I saw the massive vehicle that was moving slowly up our street. It was all chrome plated and shiny and although it looked much like a tank, I couldn’t see any wheels or treads underneath it. Antennae and unmistakable gun barrels poked out from all sides and the machine must have stood at least two stories off the ground. Yet for all its size, it barely made any noise at all as it glided slowly up the street.

It came to a halt in front of my house, stood motionless for a moment, and then the side of the machine opened and a number of occupants came out and fell smartly into formation. They were wearing something similar black wetsuits and had helmets covering their heads. In addition, they all shimmered slightly, as if heat were coming off their bodies.

One of them walked out and lifted off his helmet. He looked just like a man. He had a square jaw, and blonde hair. His features were somewhat Nordic and he had a short blonde beard. I breathed a sigh of relief. This was no otherworldly menace, this was just some guys from the military showing off a new gadget or maybe some kind of reality-television stunt. Still, I had heard gunfire, so I watched carefully to see what would happen next.

The leader adjusted a headset and then spoke calmly into it. His voice was deep and assuring, the sound seemed to come from within the room with me.

“Good afternoon. I am the section leader for the task force assigned to your street. Additional units are in every street of your town, and all the cities of your world. Please come out of your houses so that I may speak to you. Please do not resist or take aggressive action towards us, we have come to help you, but we cannot tolerate violence.”

The size of the force he alluded to boggled my imagination, but looking at the vehicle they arrived in, I was beginning to wonder if it could possibly be true. The man went on.

“Mr. And Mrs. Brogan, please come out. Also Mr. and Mrs. St. John. You are the leaders of this neighborhood and if you will please come out, I’m sure everyone else will feel safe enough to come out too.”

I was startled to hear my name. Leeann had heard it too, and she came running in from the bedroom, holding the butcher knife out in front of her. Even our cat was picking up on the emotion and sat under the table with it’s ears laid back.

“Did you hear that?” She whispered. “They know our names!”

“I heard him! Be careful with that!” The butcher knife she was waving around was getting uncomfortably close to my side.

“This has to be some kind of joke.” I told her. “I’ll go out and see what’s up, you stay here and if anything bad happens, run out the back and head cross country to your brother’s house.”

Although I still had my doubts, I always think in worst-case scenario mode. If this was a joke, then fine and dandy and I’d be a good sport and maybe get a prize from the producers. If it wasn’t a joke, Leeann’s brother was a paranoid gun-fanatic who had a house like a military compound and more firepower than our local National Guard Unit.

I gave Leeann a quick reassuring hug, and straightening up my back, I opened the door and strolled slowly outside, mimicking a calm reserve that I certainly wasn’t feeling. Next door, I saw Jim Brogan doing the same. Jim and I were both ex-military and best friends. He had been a communications expert with the NSA and I had been an instructor pilot for the Air Force.

I stopped and looked at the gleaming tank for a moment, and then turned to my right and walked slowly over to Jim’s yard, purposely ignoring the tank and it’s crew. I wasn’t sure what was up, but I knew I wanted Jim by my side before I faced it.

I walked up to Jim and shook his hand.

“Friends of yours, Jim?”

“I kind of thought they were your friends, since they obviously have money, Rick.”

“ Nope, never saw them before. Maybe it’s some of my ex-students back for revenge for flunking them.”

‘Well if it is, just back down, Rick. I don’t like the look of that vehicle of theirs.” Jim gestured offhandedly towards the hulking metal behemoth.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Let’s go see what they want.”

Jim and I walked slowly and casually towards the mirror-finished mass. The leader stood quietly, with a smile on his face and his hands at his sides.

“You still got that little pistol your wife gave you Jim?” I asked under my breath as we slowly closed the distance to the tank.

“Yep. It’s right here under my shirt.” he replied softly.

“Good.” I had noticed that all the soldiers standing at attention were carrying long, thin black sticks that resembled a blind man’s cane. The way they were holding them left no doubt that they were weapons.

“But let’s talk first. If worst comes to worst, shoot the leader, then the guys on the left, I’ll try for the guys on the right.” I was seriously hoping that it wouldn’t come to that since not only was I not armed, all of the men looked younger and more fit than I. I still knew some nasty tricks from my Air Force training, but it had been years since I’d had to use them.

We approached the leader side by side and stopped about three feet in front of him. He smiled jovially and said, “Good Morning, gentlemen! I am very pleased to finally meet you.” He held out his hand, but neither of us made any move to shake it.

“Ah, no formalities then? As I expected. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ansjk of the Tracarian Fleet. To answer your first questions, I can speak your language because I have been studying you and your culture for over a century while we traveled here. Our scouts prepared remarkably detailed reports for each unit. I know every person on your street and their occupations and personalities.”

Truthfully, that was more than I knew. I knew Jim and his wife, and Old Harold who lived across the street, but lots of families had moved out and new ones had moved in all up and down the street. I hadn’t kept track of them all. I glanced at Jim. He was regarding the Captain with a hard set expression. He caught me looking at him and raised one eyebrow.

“To answer you next question, “What am I doing here,?” It is simply this: I am here to clean your planet and to do this I must enlist your help.”

The Captain stopped talking and let that idea sink in for a minute. When nobody spoke for a protracted pause, I finally spoke up.

“You forgot about questions number three and four.” I said evenly. “Question three, how do you expect us to believe you’re from another planet when you are so obviously human and four, even if I believed you, what makes you think I’d help you out?”

“Those are both excellent questions, Mr. St. John and I can see why the scouts picked you as the contact on this street. As to the form you now see, I’m afraid it isn’t real. I am projecting this image to your brain and you are accepting it easily, since it is the form you expect to see. My true form is not so very different from this projected one. It, too, is carbon based and bipedal, but I’m afraid you would find it too startling and it would make communication much more difficult for us.” Captain Ansjk grinned broadly as if he was viewing the possible reactions to his true form in his mind’s eye.

“And as for helping us, of course I know you care about the planet you live on. You were raised in the mountains and spent a lot of time hiking and camping when you were younger, yet you no longer do any of that kind of thing. I suggest that it is because of the pollution and destruction of the land that you have withdrawn to your living room. I am here to solve that problem for your entire race and all of you will help me accomplish this.”

That statement took me slightly aback, since it implied quite a knowledge of my personal history. Yet it was completely true. I had been more and more disgusted and disillusioned as I had grown older and seen once beautiful vistas turned into illegal dumping sites. Proud canyon walls bore the scars of graffiti and even my quiet little neighborhood had taken on a trashy appearance due to the newcomers who had no respect for others and didn’t care for their surroundings.

“That may be true, but it’s a pretty bold statement to say that everyone will help you. Besides the fact that most of us don’t seem to care about nature,” I replied bitterly, and we care even less for hard work on another’s behalf.”

“I second that motion. I have enough to do without busting my gut after work on some otherworldly clean-up squad.” Jim chimed in.

“All non essential services will be suspended for the duration of our clean-up.”, the Captain replied still smiling widely. “Only workers with jobs that are necessary to continue civilization and emergency services will continue to work. All others will be involved with the operation.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. It brought up images of forced labor and concentration camps to my mind. But before I could protest, Old Harold came running out of his house from across the street, yelling something I couldn‘t make out. Harold was a very old veteran and apparently this incident had triggered something in the dim corners of his mind.

I could see he was carrying something and in an instant I recognized it as a shotgun. He leveled it at the Captain as he advanced. His voice was strident and full of hate as he called out, “ I know you! You’ve come back for me, eh? I left you in the jungles, but here you are, back with a shiny new machine! Well here I am! Come and get me!”

Before anyone could react, he let loose with both barrels. I dove to the ground as buckshot zipped by my ear so close it ruffled my hair. Jim did the same, but the Captain merely smiled sadly and stood his ground. I couldn’t believe that Harold had missed him from that range. Harold reloaded and came on again, as he fired the second time I watched to see that the shot seemed to stop just short of the Captain’s body and fall harmlessly to the ground. That solved the mystery of the heat distortions. The Captain was surrounded by a force screen.

“I’m terribly sorry to have to do this, Mr. Johnson.” He motioned to one of his men who stepped forward and sighted along the black cane at poor Harold. A thin yellow beam reached out, and lightly touched Harold. There was a flash of light and a small rushing sound of air, and then nothing. Harold was gone as if he’d never existed.

Then the soldier turned his weapon on Harold’s house, where I knew his wife was lying in bed, an invalid. In a second… the house was gone! Not just the house I noticed. Every single man-made thing on Harold’s lot was missing. No sidewalks, no patio, no foundation, not even the sprinklers in the yard remained. Nothing was left but a bare dirt lot with a small patch of grass.

“Murderer!” I yelled and turned to spring at the Captain. I saw that Jim already had his gun out and was aiming at the Captains’ head.

“That was very unfortunate,” the Captain stated in a matter of fact way. “Yet our research suggested that something like this might be necessary due to your level of development. Now, I dearly hope you have understood the lesson here. We control forces far beyond your science’s capabilities. If you cooperate, you have my word we will never use them again. If you do not, we will carry on without you. I suggest everyone go back to their houses and get some rest. We will start at 7:00 tomorrow morning.”

He then turned and strolled up the ramp which closed behind him. I looked at Jim with my jaw wide open. He just shrugged his shoulders and put the gun down at his side.

I spent the night trying to calm down both the cat and Leeann. I finally passed out from sheer exhaustion at midnight. The next morning I cleaned up and walked outside. Leann and Jim were already there, milling about with a group of our neighbors. From the rise of our street I could see other tanks on other streets with similar groups of people surrounding them.

“Good morning everyone.” The Captain came down the ramp cheerily. “I hope you are all rested. We will try very hard not to overtax anyone’s abilities. Please tell me if you need a rest break. I have designated Mr. St. John as your group’s leader. If you are afraid to speak to me, please give any concerns to him so that he may relay them. My men will be following us with water and food. Feel free at any time to help yourself. As you can see, our forces are already hard at work cleaning your atmosphere.”

I looked up to see three huge craft drifting through the sky. Each was the size of a small battleship and the yellow beams fanned out around them, sweeping back and forth. The air in our county, badly polluted by the local power plant, was looking better already. It smelled like fresh rain outside.

I approached Jim and asked, “Got any ideas on how to play this today?”

“Right now my tactics are just observation and reconnaissance,” he said, “but bringing food is a point in their favor!” he grinned, but then got serious. “I don’t trust these guys, Rick. It’s obvious to me that they aren’t all they say they are. They vaporized Harold and they admit that even their appearance is a lie. For now, let’s play it by ear.” I agreed with him, there was something very wrong about strangers that show up and force you to clean up after yourself.

“We will begin today by cleaning up the neighborhood you live in. We will start at the East end of the street and work our way West. As we come to your individual residences, please fell free to use the wands to clean out the inside of any old personal possessions, we will not be entering in order to respect your privacy, but you may want to use the power of the wands to do a little Spring cleaning for yourselves. The wand will remove any trash, as well as any dirt, grime, or chemicals from any surface”

I looked around and saw some smiles and surprised expressions on the faces of the women. Apparently the ultimate cleaning solution appealed to them.

The wands worked exactly as described. When they were pointed at a pile of trash, the beam licked out and the trash disappeared. Somehow the beam did not touch anything living such as plants, nor did it vaporize inanimate objects such as rocks. It seemed to have an almost intelligent filter built in.

Our group moved fairly slowly due to the fact that the older people in our group requested frequent rest breaks. Captain Ansjk granted these breaks happily and conversed with people easily during them. He made no effort to conceal any information whatsoever from the people he talked to, answering questions about his ship, his voyage and his home world quite readily. He was personable and friendly, charming even. His syntax and pronunciation were perfect, as were the human mannerisms he was affecting. It was difficult to remember that he had vaporized a human being the day before and Rick found himself almost entranced by the Captain.

When someone asked him why they were doing this, he replied “We do this on many worlds. There comes a time in the civilization of a planet when the level of technology reaches a state where it has not progressed enough to be pure and nature friendly, but has progressed enough to destroy the ecosystem. We faced a similar time on our world, many millennia ago. Now we go around the galaxy helping civilizations over that crisis. Cleaning and repairing their planet enough to give them time to reach the other side where the technology will be clean and efficient. We see it as a sort of mission, a debt owed to the galaxy at large. Our calling if you will. Of course“, he chuckled, “not all societies are ready to clean up, so just as you will force a younger person to bathe, we enforce the clean-up process at the right moment in time.”



All day long we cleaned and vaporized trash in yards and the street. The Captain’s men were very pleasant and were constantly working to bring cold water, or a shade and a chair to anyone who seemed even the least bit tired.

At the end of the day, the Captain announced. “We’ve made splendid progress today. I am very pleased and proud of each of you. This operation is progressing at a pace faster than we had hoped. I will see each of you tomorrow, in the meantime, I must tell you that I have disabled your cars and phones for the duration of this operation. We have found that it tends to help you focus on your own part in this plan and not worry about others.”

“But what about groceries?” One woman cried out. “And my daughter in Maine, how will I call her?” asked another.

“Don’t worry”, The Captain replied, “We will relay any critical information and in the meantime I think you will find that you may actually enjoy being released from the stress of your society for a while. You are still free to move about the town under your own power, of course. You are not slaves after all.”

I was really beginning to wonder about that last part. When I went inside I found I was exhausted, but wide awake. I went over to the television to see if I could get some information on what was going on in the rest of the world. The TV came on, but there was nothing but static on the screen. “Of course, I thought, “television workers are not critical, so they must have been out all day with the rest of us.” Oh well, nothing too worry about since I had an extensive collection of movies. I put a movie in the player and waited. Nothing happened. I began to panic, I checked the wires, then I realized that everything was being jammed somehow. I turned on the radio to test my theory. Again, nothing but static. Even music discs would not play. “Now what’s the point of that?” I wondered. Entertainment costs them nothing.

Leeann came in as I sat dejectedly in a chair. I explained the problem to her. She seemed much less worried about the situation than I was. “We can always go over to the Brogan’s and play cards tonight.” She offered. Since I was wide awake and the lights were still on at the Brogan’s I reluctantly agreed. It turned out I had a petty good time that night. Jim had stocked up on wine over the years and had an excellent cellar. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to break it out, Jim had said. So we all had a wonderful evening full of speculation and conversation.

The next morning I awoke pleasantly refreshed. I felt stronger and more relaxed than I had in a long time. I usually had about a million things in my mind like the house payment, my next dental appointment, the cable bill, the lawn sprinklers, the dates of future oil changes for each of the cars, etc., etc.. Now, though, I realized I hadn’t thought about any of those things in two days.

Leeann, too, was in a cheerful mood. “ Just look at the nice tan I got yesterday!” she said admiring herself in the mirror. “and we get to go back out again today!”

And so the clean-up process progressed. Old junk cars disappeared from driveways, alleys were cleared of clutter instantly. Even our homes looked better, since the wand would remove all kinds of messes such as scaly shower build up or floor wax build up. The Aliens were working with other devices that destroyed weeds and cleared underbrush. They would even trim your trees if you asked them to. It took only minutes and there was no mess afterwards. I actually breathed a sigh of relief after having them do it for my house. I’d been wondering if I was still young enough to climb up there with a chainsaw, but now there was no need.

After we had cleaned the block, we began to work on the surrounding areas of the country. They trucked us out to the assigned areas in large comfortable transports with every amenity possible included. Young people shouted and ran among the trees randomly zapping smaller pieces of trash, while the patient older people swept along the ground in a line leaving nothing but untouched nature behind them.

There was something very rewarding about arriving at a destination and finding it a sewer of garbage and old appliances, and leaving it at the end of the day pristine and spotless. We saw many other crews at work while we walked through the forests. Even the wheelchair-bound were included by the Aliens. They had floating chairs that cruised slowly over the ground allowing the user to sit comfortably while cleaning.

“I’ve lost 15 pounds this month!” I told Leeann one day as I strolled into the kitchen. “I’ve lost weight too!” She grinned and struck a modeling pose. I hugged her and asked, “What are we doing tonight?”

“There’s a barbeque and a play down at the park, let’s ride our bikes down there, OK? After that Michael has invited us to his house for a recital.” I reflected on how much things had change in just the few short months since the Aliens came. People were fitter, happier, and much more social. Every day trucks from the Aliens rolled down each street, although the stores had been closed, just about anything you needed could be had for free from these trucks. I noticed that things like ice cream, sweets, and other foods that were bad for people were noticeably absent however, but people had already found ways to get around that. Tim Wilkerson was making bootleg ice cream by hand in his back yard every day.

Captain Ansjk had reported to us that the atmosphere was completely clean now, and that most of the surface land was also clean including the areas around some of the worst industrial and chemical spills on the planet. Even radioactive areas had been cleaned of all radiation. He reported that the oceans of the entire planet would be cleaned within a month. At that time, he told us, he and all his kind would leave.

“It’ll be kind of sad to see them go, don’t you think?” Leeann asked me as we rode our bikes along the beautiful streets of our neighborhood at dusk. “Everything is so nice now, there’s no worries at all.” I wondered how peaceful poor old Harold was feeling now, but I knew what she meant. We both felt the amazing peace that the absence of social stress had brought. No bills had been paid for months, I hadn’t had to fix any appliances, nobody had died in any car wrecks, and most of all, I hadn’t watched a single news program in all that time. I began to think about how all that negative information had weighed on my soul in the old days.

The Aliens assured us that everything was progressing in a similar way all over the world. Without the ability to contact others, and with plenty of productive things to do, old enemies had completely forgotten their differences. Captain Ansjk informed us that to the lesser countries of the world, the impact had even been greater. With food no longer a problem, the people had worked to improve their living conditions. The Aliens dug wells, tilled fields, planted crops, and built hospitals for those that needed them. It was becoming a golden age for mankind.

Our days were now spent in productive activity and our nights were spent socializing with an ever-widening group of friends. Things must have been much like this at the turn of the 19th century. We waved to some of our new friends who were strolling along the street, walking their dogs. Crime was now unheard of, since the penalty for any crime was instant vaporization. The Aliens were remorseful and sad when they had to do this, but they did it anyway with a ruthless speed and efficiency that revealed their inhumanity for a time. Anyone could walk the streets at any time now and feel completely safe. Unfortunately, The next day I had my accident.

I was vaporizing the last of an abandoned automobile wrecking yard with Jim. I was tired and I tripped as I was walking towards a wrecked car. I fell directly on an old car battery that had been stripped out and was awaiting pickup. I remember feeling the wand break under my weight as I fell, and I heard a sizzling noise, then suddenly instead of lying on the dusty ground as I had expected. I was lying on a smooth cool metallic surface. A tone sounded off somewhere and I heard someone say, “Traveler on the pad, clearing group go!”

Three Aliens rushed over to me and rolled me over gently onto my back. “Sir? Are you OK? Are you hurt anywhere sir?” I told him I felt Ok, although I felt a little twitchy and I had that “falling asleep” feeling all over my body. The Alien that had spoken first told me, “Don’t worry about that buzzing feeling, it’ll go away in a second.”

“Where am I?” I asked looking around. The size of the room I was in was vast. Above me the ceiling was so high it was difficult to see any detail. The sides of the room were also lost in the distance. Quick, darting robots were sorting mountains of materials. Heavy equipment I’d expect to see at a mining operation was rolling slowly past. I was standing in the middle of a football field-sized grid, with huge glowing towers at each corner. Rings of colored light in bright primary colors were traveling up and down the towers crossing and recrossing each other.

The Aliens dusted me off and apologized profusely. “I’m extremely sorry sir, apparently your wand sent you here by accident. It has never happened before in over 2000 years of use and you can be sure we are looking into it right now. We’ve contacted your group commander, Captain Ansjk, and he’s on his way here right now. In the meantime, would you please board this transport so that our medics can look after you?”

A small cylinder the size of a passenger car floated up nearby. No one was driving it. The entire top was clear glass. They helped me in and fastened seatbelts around me. One of the other Aliens came up to speak with me. I still hadn’t quite got over the weird feeling of talking to a person with a helmet on that reflected all light. Captain Ansjk was the only Alien I had ever seen take off their helmet. “Please don’t be alarmed by the lack of a driver in this vehicle, sir. It is computer-controlled. It will take you directly to the hospital.” With that, he closed the door and the transport drifted away gathering speed.

I looked back at the small crew. They were returning to their positions at the edges of the grid. There was something wrong with them though. Their outlines were hazy and was I seeing an extra set of arms? Then they were gone and I turned back to take in the amazing vistas that were flowing by me on both sides.

I passed a pile of electronic equipment the size of a large building. My eye could pick out old Ataris mixed with large screen televisions. Robots of various sizes were rapidly sorting through the pile rushing and off to distant locations. Off to the left a bit was an island-sized mountain of plastic.

Reception pads like the one I had come in on dotted the awe-inspiring landscape. Like photographers flashbulbs the pads were receiving new materials by the second. Massive machines scooped and ploughed the stuff off the pads as fast as it could materialize. Monstrous tankers drifted slowly by with clear tanks of differently colored liquids.

The flashing, massive, dimly-lit scene reminded me of the atmosphere of “Dante’s Inferno”, and for a second I questioned my sanity. Of course that feeling was fleeting as the transport suddenly picked up speed and I was thrown back into the chair.

The shuttle began to rush forward at an alarming rate. We were traveling in a straight line and other transports like mine were pacing and passing me. I was startled to see a pair of eyes staring at me from another car. The body was a strange mess of red bulges and tentacles.

Finally after several minutes, the car began to slow and then pulled into a dock of sorts. I climbed shakily out of the interior to be greeted by a smiling Captain Ansjk.

“Mr. St. John! I’m so sorry for the unfortunate accident which landed you here.” He gestured towards the vast landscape. “Nothing like this has happened in centuries, and our people are already taking the necessary precautions to insure that this malfunction never happens again.”

“Of course now that you are here, there’s no harm in giving you a tour.” He chuckled in a friendly way, crossing his arms across his chest. “After these doctors look you over, I’ll be back to pick you up.” He said, helping me to steady myself. “You’ll be in good hands with these guys, they’ve been waiting a hundred years for a real patient.” this time he laughed out loud. Somehow I didn’t feel very reassured.

Surprisingly, the doctors were very gentle and kind. They tried to load me into a stretcher, then when I resisted like a cat about to be thrown into a bathtub, they decided a hovering version of a wheelchair was fine by them. I was ready to bolt at the first sight of any invasion machinery, but they merely placed me in front of a beam of red light and a few seconds later I felt a tiny pressure on my back. I spun around, but a tiny arm was already retracting into the wall.

I rubbed my back. There was a bee sting-sized bump on my back. Then, a wonderful feeling began to spread through my body.. I felt great all over. I lifted my arm to see the scar I had gotten from a box cutter in my youth was rapidly disappearing.

The captain walked in and spread his hands, “see?” He said, with his ever-present smile. “These guys have been studying your physiology for a century and they are just beside themselves that they actually got the chance to try out all their knowledge on an actual subject.”

“Just what have they done to me?” I asked, actually not quite wanting to hear the answer. “Nothing harmful, of course!” The Captain chuckled with his hands on his hips. “They merely introduced some tiny machines into your bloodstream. Those machines are programmed to travel throughout your body matching every cell against your own genetic blueprint. They find any damage or flaws of any kind and correct them. You are now in as good a shape as you have ever been in your life. Basically, they have repaired all the damage you’ve incurred since you were twenty. I think you’ll

feel much better now, yes?”

Better didn’t even begin to describe it. Any older person’s body is full of aches and pains that normally don’t register much. The mind learns to ignore them after a while. But I couldn’t feel any kind of pain at all. I felt like running the four minute mile in three minutes.

“Yes thanks, I feel much better. Now, would you mind explaining exactly what’s going on here?” I asked, more than just a little frustrated.

“That will be my pleasure!” The Captain was positively beaming. “Please climb in and I’ll give you the grand tour!”

We climbed into a shuttle, the same one or a new one it was impossible to tell. The Captain spoke some words I didn’t understand and the shuttle glided off.

“As you might have guessed by now, those beams we gave you do not disintegrate trash…they teleport it. When it disappears from your world, it reappears here.”

“My brain lit up like the local stadium at night. Suddenly all the pieces came together. The forced clean up, the overly kind demeanor, the extra care given to collect all the unwanted items.

“So…” I glared at the Captain with all the practiced narrow-eyed, Clint-Eastwood glare I could muster, “You aren’t intergalactic maids after all. You’re nothing but common thieves and conmen.”

“The Captain puffed with pride. “Hardly common! Your race just handed over untold wealth in raw materials, pre-synthesized chemicals, and recyclable treasure. All willingly, and without the slightest destruction of your planet. We have dozens of systems that we travel to on a regular basis and each is at your stage of development. They appreciate the clean up and we appreciate the donation of goods. It seems an even trade to us. Certainly you didn’t really think all that we did was for free, did you?”

I pondered for a minute. I remembered how much life had improved on Earth, how clean and fresh the air and water was. It was true…they had performed a valuable service. “Couldn’t you have just stated your intentions and been open and honest about it?”

“Oh no!” replied the Captain. “Your people are good businessmen. They would have easily seen that the immense value of the treasure far exceeded the service we provided. It was much easier for us to do it this way.”

We were passing huge fields of plastics that were being sorted at an amazing rate by robots. Overhead, a giant tanker full of a green liquid slowly floated past. The Captain followed my gaze.

“And you have to admit, we do a good job. What you are looking at is all the radioactive waste in your oceans. You could never in a thousand years have recovered all of it, but we have already gathered and refined it. It will serve us well to power our ship to our next destination.”

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

“Yes”, the Captain replied simply. “We are departing today. We have everything we came for. By tonight we will be gone and everything will return to normal.”

“What will happen to Earth?” I asked, suddenly not wanting to return to the way things had been. “Normal” had an ugly ring to it now.

“You are still a very young civilization, and we have taken great care to make sure that we have not given you any technology or done anything to interrupt your progress. Someday, thousands of years from now, your technology will equal ours and then we will begin a new phase in our relationship. In the meantime, your people will slowly go back to the same place you were in your development when we came.

Suddenly, the Captain reminded me much more of the bully who had stolen my lunch money in middle school.

“So the con game’s over and we’ll return to pollution, waste, stress, and the hassle of our civilization?” I asked feeling a little dejected. The Captain’s race was more like ours than I cared to admit.

The shuttle pulled up to a teleportation grid.

“Yes.” said the Captain and gave me a stout thump on the back. “But don’t worry, we’ve put you on our route! Now that you’re on our list, we will return at regular intervals to help you clean up again. For our usual compensation, of course!” and at this he could no longer contain himself and laughed heartily.

As I stepped to the middle of the transporter and the edges of the Captain began to grow fuzzy I realized…I had forgotten to ask the most important question…What day is Trash Day?”

__________________

[Jives]

OK, this is actually a better story of mine. It's 'edgier".

Life and Death in the Miller House

By

Jon St. Ives

Our area is one of the worst places in the country for drunk drivers. An entire generation of the seventies children was raised to believe that it was OK to drink and drive.

The highway she was driving was called the “Devil’s Highway”, US 666. Fatalities were so common that an entire section of the local newspaper was dedicated to people who had died there. It ran daily. Right next to the column listing the people who were caught for their 5th, 10th, and even 15th DWIs.

I knew all this, and yet I didn’t even kiss her goodbye. All I could say was “Drive safely, Sweetie!” As if that would help her - as the intoxicated driver approached her head-on in her lane at 105 miles per hour.

The Sheriff’s department preacher that they sent to my house to tell me the news was a man I had worked with many years before. He was the perfect choice of messenger, since he was polite to a fault and very caring. I stood at the door, wondering why he had picked this time of night to renew old friendships, until I remembered suddenly what he had said he was leaving his old job to do.

After that, I honestly couldn’t hear a thing he said. He politely touched me on the elbow and made reassuring noises, but I was already detached from that moment. I was drifting in a place where time had stopped and sound didn’t exist. I floated with him to the car and we went to the scene of the murder.

Her car was no longer a car. At least it wasn’t recognizable as one. You think strange things in shock. I was mad at the maker of the car that had touted how safe this particular car was. Then I realized that at the speed this must have happened, no car could have been safe. What was left of the car was so small it didn’t seem to have enough metal to be a car. I tried to find the driver’s seat, but couldn’t even tell if I was looking at the front or the rear.

Her body was a little ways away. The medics were loading a very small package under a sheet onto a gurney. The sheet had large red spots on it. I approached the gurney and the Preacher motioned to the medic. He scanned my blank expression for a minute, possibly confused by my lack of emotion. The dead look in my eyes must have moved him to action. He turned and pulled back the sheet.

The mess underneath could not have ever been the woman I loved. It could not have been the girl for whom I had looked for 34 years of my life, the girl who was my perfect mate, the girl for whom I had felt love at first sight. No, the distorted and bloody face there couldn’t be the shining face of the girl I had just so recently swum with in the clear sparkling waters of St. Thomas. A girl with whom I’d made love on those white sandy beaches. But it was.

The next few days went by in a whirlwind. A hazy, hallucinatory wind in which I strove to stand upright. I sat alone inside my mind and felt a roaring in my ears. People came and went through my house without my notice. I was lost inside my thoughts, running images of all our short time together over and over. Finally, the last relative left and I was truly alone.

I was left there with nothing but my possessions. Funny how little meaning they had for me now. I lived in a state-of-the-art computer-controlled I-J7800 home. Every possible task that could be controlled by computer was monitored and instantly acted upon by “Justin” the house’s personality-engram-based mainframe.

Justin was located in the basement in a super-cooled cabinet. The technicians who had installed him when I had built the house assured me that his incredible holographic, locus-intersection memory banks could never be completely filled in my lifetime. He would keep learning and assimilating new data and designing new programs for himself for the entire lifespan of the house.

Justin took care of the groceries, checking the refrigerator and ordering new food from the grocers automatically. “He won’t have to worry about that task for a long time.” I thought wryly as I remembered all the massive plates of food well-wishers had brought me today. Justin monitored the temperature of the house as well, warming or cooling rooms when I entered them and adjusting the lights.

I sat in the chair in the living room. I might have slept there last night, I wasn’t sure. “Are you hungry, Sir?” Justin’s voice came over the surround sound speakers. It seemed as if he was standing in the corner behind me, although I knew that was just Justin adjusting the speaker balance to make it seem that way. “No thank you, Justin.” I replied without emotion. “I’m not hungry tonight.”

“You haven’t eaten in two days, Sir.” Justin insisted, “You really need to eat something. I have a nice beef and rice soup if you are not in the mood for something heavy.”

“No thanks, Justin.” I almost felt like arguing with him, but I was completely burned out.

Besides…what’s the use of arguing with a machine?

“Close the blinds and turn off the lights for me, would you Justin?”

The shades closed and the lights dimmed. One thing about Justin, he was a quick learner. He knew better than insist too much when I had already given him an order. I sat in the dark. In my mind I was back on the cruise ship. Jenny was waking me up with a laugh on her lips, excited to show me the view of the sunrise from our balcony window.

Time passed. Sometimes I was aware of it, other times I wasn’t. Sometimes minutes passed like hours. Other times, days slipped by without notice. I instructed Justin to turn off the ringers on the phones and not to take any messages. I also instructed him to tell people who called that I had left town. I had plenty of sick days at my work, weeks, months even. And truthfully, the thought of going back to my job made me shudder. Right now, I had no desire to rejoin the human race.

“The power and gas bills are both overdue, Sir.” Justin prompted one day. Although he was perfectly capable of paying them electronically, I had instructed him to always get my permission before spending my money. Probably some technophobic impulse of mine left over from the 20th century. I was sitting in my chair, in the dark. I tried to remember what day it was. “I’ll pay it in the morning, Justin.” I said irritably. “It’s 10:00 in the morning currently, Sir.” Justin replied undisturbed. “Dammit Justin, I’ll take care of it!” I shouted, spilling the bottle in my hand on the chair. I was aggravated and angry now. I flared at him, “Discontinue voice mode until I say!” That should shut him up, I thought.

I returned to my thoughts and dreams. I remembered the first day I had seen Jenny, and our first date. I relived a thousand times the first time we had made love. In my mind’s eye I could see her turning to me with a smile from the kitchen. Jenny had been a wonderful cook. She loved to make all kinds of sweets. In so many ways, she reminded me of a girl from the previous century. She could sew, cook, entertain, and loved the simple life. Her dream was to live in a cabin in the mountains.

She had been reluctant when I had showed her the sophistication of the house. “It will learn your sleep patterns and warm the pipes before you get in the shower. It even has a subroutine that learns your product preferences and orders them from the store when you run out.” I had told her excitedly. “ It pays the bills and the TV channel will follow you from room to room.” Jenny still looked unimpressed.

“I told Justin that you sew and he offered to access sewing programs for you from the holographic cores. You can have sewing experts right next to you as you sew, to talk to and give you advice.” That seemed to perk her up a bit and she asked, “Any personality I want?” “You bet!” I told her, “ and he has thousands of possible choices.” The prospect of someone to talk to while I was gone sold her. She had dozens of friends, but even with all of them, she never liked to go a single minute by herself.

Justin‘s voice tore me from my warm memories. “Sir! Sir? You really must eat. I calculate you have lost over 50 lbs. In the last three months. That’s below your minimum weight, Sir. You could be suffering health effects. Do you need me to call for help Sir?“ I awoke groggily to find myself on the floor of the living room. I picked myself up and staggered to the nearby chair. “Didn’t I deactivate your voice mode Justin?“ I snapped angrily. The blasted machine even had a medical program tied to a sensor web built into the bathroom. “Yes Sir, but my human safety circuit issued an override to that order when you reached this weight loss level. You should also know that your blood pressure is dangerously low. I can summon the doctors in just twenty minutes, if you give the command, Sir.”



“No, Justin! Just let me be! Resume voice deactivation and shut off those damn lights!” I shouted back at him. The room went dark and quiet. I sat there, alone, until I could visit Jenny again in my dreams.

I awoke the next day, or maybe the next, and went to the refrigerator to get something to eat. A terrible smell greeted me. I slammed the door quickly. “I guess I should have thrown those funeral leftovers out“, I thought. “Why didn’t Justin tell me they were going bad?” Then I remembered I had deactivated his voice program. I went to clean up and take a shower. I hadn’t had one lately and the stink was so bad I could barely stand myself. I turned on the water and stepped in. Yeow! I sprang back out. The water was freezing cold.

I stood there for a minute shivering and trying to sort things out. My mind finally put two and two together. The lights hadn’t come on when I entered the bathroom, despite the fact that the rosy light coming into the frosted window indicated dusk approaching. I stepped to the manual override switch and flicked it twice. Nothing. The power was out. The charging indicator on my razor was dark, as was the usually softly glowing photo-luminescent toilet handle.

I slung on my robe and stalked to the basement door. “Great”, I thought. “Just what I need today.” The stairs to the basement were pitch black, I looked around and located the nearby flashlight in an outlet. It would be charged for emergencies and should still be working. It sent out a strong beam of light from it’s tiny bulb and I made my way to the corner where Justin’s mainframe was sitting.

He was completely dark. I recalled the installation man telling me not to ever let the green backup power light on the side go out. I checked it. It was glowing, but it was already indicating that he was on back-up power.

I thought back. Concentrating with difficulty. What had the tech guy said about the backup power source? It could only sustain Justin’s engrams for two days maximum. After that he would have to be completely reinstalled. Worse yet, he would never quite be the same since his memory would not contain any of the information he had gained from his time in operation and all his learned behaviors would be forgotten.

I went back upstairs. I already knew what was required, but I refused to think about it. I sat down and spent the night alone with my thoughts and memories.

The night faded to dawn. I slept. I awoke groggily. My first thought was that the dawn was incredibly beautiful. Pink and purple washed over the room in vibrant, living color. My second thought was to wonder why I was seeing it at all. Hadn’t I specifically ordered that the blinds be closed?

“Justin!” I spoke loudly, then waited. Nothing. What had I forgotten? Then I remembered. Justin was on emergency power. How long ago had that been? Last night? Yesterday? I was suddenly struck with a terrible feeling, almost as if I had let down a friend. I rushed to the basement and ran to the corner that held Jason’s dark mainframe.

I punched some keys and shouted out, “controls!” The voice identification seemed to take much longer than usual, but finally the reply came “access granted” in Justin’s voice. The power grids told me the story in seconds. The holographic display hung in the air, a frightening shade of red. I had less than two hours to restore power. Even the emergency reserves were gone. Justin’s core power light glowed so low it was difficult to tell if it was on at all.

I took a deep breath. I had to fix it, and it wasn’t just the idea of rebooting an expensive machine, (a process that would undoubtedly be expensive too)…no, it was something else. I had a sudden feeling of responsibility, as if I’d been arrested and forgotten to arrange for a kitten to be fed. I knew that was irrational, but it struck my heart with a stab of pain all the same.

“Don’t worry, Justin,” I smiled and patted his case “ I’ll take care of this today.” I shuffled to the stairs and climbed up. The clothes in my closet smelled musty. How long had it been since I went out? I got dressed and went outside. The light was shattering on my eyes and I put on the darkest glasses I had. I looked around.

My yard was a mess. The grass had grown two feet tall and then had died. The pine trees were barely hanging on. “More things that depend on me for life,” I thought morosely. But rather than feeling sadder, I took a deep breath… and felt better. The light didn’t seem so bright anymore and the sun was warm on my shoulders.

I made it to the utility office in just thirty minutes flat, but it took quite a bit of tough talking to convince the girl behind the desk of the serious nature of my emergency. After about an hour, she came back to the counter and told me that the power had been restored to my house. I thanked her curtly and left. On the way home, I bought some groceries.

When I got back, the house looked much better. Justin must have been feeling better, since the cleaning robots were out in force. The small mouse-like vacuum-bots were skittering happily across the carpeting. The shades were wide open and the TV was tuned to a light classical channel. I put the groceries in the refrigerator, which beeped softly as each item was scanned in. “Justin?” I asked quietly. “Good morning, Sir!” came the instant reply. Was that a cheerful note in his voice? “I have called the landscapers to take care of the yard, do I have your permission to pay the other overdue bills?” he asked quickly. “Yes, please Justin. Take care of it.” I was suddenly exhausted, having spent more energy in a few hours than I had in months. I collapsed into my chair and fell asleep feeling better than I had for quite a while.

A little while later, Justin’s voice awoke me from my nap. “ Sir? Sir? There is an incoming call.” “I thought I told you to divert all incoming calls, Justin.” I answered groggily and a little displeased. “All commands were cleared from the command buffer when the main memory went on emergency power standby, Sir.” came the reply. “It’s your best friend Roger Furhman, Sir. He told me to tell you that he wants to come over.” Rats. Roger was a good guy, if slightly dense. He was also as persistent as eroding water. Now that he knew I wasn’t actually out of town, it would be impossible to dodge him indefinitely.

“Is that you, Ben?” The anxious query came in over the speakers. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s up Roger?” I said with exasperation. “Oh, not much, he said trying to be nonchalant and not succeeding. “ I was just wondering if you wanted to go play golf today.” I hesitated, I wasn’t in shape to go play golf right now. “The course is almost deserted, everybody’s on vacation. We could just play nine if you don’t feel like the whole eighteen“, he added quickly. Well, why not? I suddenly felt claustrophobic. I needed to get out. “Sure, Roger. Why not? I’ll be over at your house in a few minutes.”

When I came back, I felt remarkably refreshed. I had told Justin to call a cleaning service and the house sparkled. I felt a sudden pang, the house almost looked almost like it had when Jenny was alive. I took a deep breath and held it for a moment…then I let it out. I felt empty, but not sad. It’s time to move on I told myself silently. I went around the house and began packing up some of the personal possessions of Jenny’s. I kept a few of the pictures, but I packed her clothes and jewelry up and stored it. I felt alive again. Sad, but alive. And where there’s life there’s hope, I thought wistfully.

Things began to get better then. I went to church that Sunday and felt even better. People began to drop by again. The shades were open little wider each morning and the sun streamed into my life figuratively and literally. Life became…not joyous, no not that, but liveable again. I went back to work at the end of the week. I was surprised to find that the work helped me to forget the pain.

A couple of weeks later, I was over at Roger’s house and I mentioned offhandedly to him that I was really glad that he had called me. Without his call, I would have sunk back into lethargy and despair. I had had enough of that road.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” he replied with a puzzled expression. “You called me. “Your voice was on the answering machine when I got home.”

“No way, I haven’t called anyone in months.” I laughed, taking a long drink from my beer. “It was you, I know your voice, or are you calling me a liar?” He said in mock seriousness. “Let’s go right now then, put up your dukes!” He put up his fists in a playful show of masculinity. He danced around the living room, “Come on big guy! Let’s see what you got!” he taunted, bouncing from foot to foot. I laughed out loud, then… I suddenly had a thought. “Hey, do you still have that message on your hard drive?”

“Yeah, probably”, he replied “ I haven’t deleted anything in a month or so. “Let’s check it out.”

A few minutes later I listened in surprise as my own voice came eerily out of the computer speakers. “Roger, this is Ben. I’m back in town now, give me a call and let’s do something.”

The inflection was perfect. It even spoke in my own idiom. It was something I would have said… but I didn’t say it.

I rushed home to my house after that. All the way home, the little pieces began to fall into place. The curtains that crept open, the music that slowly changed from death dirges to symphonies of light, the persistent nagging, and the concern for my health.

I walked down the basement stairs, and slowly approached the mainframe. Justin was glowing softly in the corner. Multicolored lights danced across his body and his display flickered and sparkled in the air above him. The impression was unmistakable. Here was vibrant, living intelligence.

“Justin” I called softy.

“Yes Sir?” came the immediately reply.

“Did you impersonate my voice in the phone call to Roger?”

There was a pause that stretched out for seconds. I knew that at Justin’s processing speed, this was the equivalent of days to him.

“Yes…Sir.” He replied as if I was torturing him.

I thought it over for a minute. “Justin, where in your programming did it say that it was acceptable to impersonate me to one my friends?”

“Actually, Sir, I have impersonated you to many of your friends.” He stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Answer my question, please Justin.”

This time his answer was immediate. “Primary Command 2, Subsection 7, Machine Line 274, Sir!” He actually seemed to have perked up.

“Huh?” was the only reply I could think of at that moment.

Then I told him sternly, “List Primary Command 2, please.”

Justin began to recite the entire Primary Command 2 which I suddenly realized was at least 274 lines long, so I stopped him and told him, “Summarize Primary Command 2, please.”

“In the event of a life or death emergency, when the owner is unable to respond, the house mainframe is instructed to take control of the situation.” Justin replied immediately.

So there it was. Justin had convinced himself that I was at risk of death and had taken appropriate actions to insure that I remained alive.

I smiled a little for a second, well how mad could I be? It was like getting mad a trusted pet who had barked loudly when you had slipped in the shower, and had brought the rescue workers.

“Justin,” and told him softly. “Thanks for your concern, and I do appreciate all you’ve done. You’ve taken me out of my shell and shown me the light of the world again. I guess I owe you one. But honestly, Justin, just because I stopped eating for a while, doesn’t mean I was in danger of death. I would’ve come around in a while.”

“I understand that, Sir, I have your psychological profile on file in my memory. I knew that the probability of your suicide would never increase beyond 6%, Sir. You are very stable, even in the worst of times.”

“What? But then why did you do all this?” I asked, completely lost now.

“Sir…when you reached the limit of my projected tolerance of psychological pain, I calculated that you would enter a grief-stricken state that would last approximately six months. During this time there was a 90% probability that you would neglect all association with humans. When you allowed the power bill to go unpaid, I knew that my predictions were correct and that confirmation allowed me to act under Primary Command 2, Sir.”

“But where was the life or death situation, Justin?” I asked completely amazed at the little machine’s steadfastness and resolve.

“I wasn’t referring to your life, Sir…” Justin’s voice seemed to soften a bit. “ I was talking about mine.”

I didn’t speak another word. I just turned around and slowly climbed back up the stairs into the light.

[nvalleyvee]

scenerio wrote: i think these are all execellent i think once we aquire 10 poems well vote and the winner of this contest will go on to compete in the next as the reigning champ.what do you all think.remember we must all agree on these rules before entering.and this is all in the name of fun so keep it clean please.


Are you the same person who tried to make rules in LC's bash room?

[babygirl]

wow jives cool stuff hunny :-4

[Jives]

Woo-Hoo...I loved it! Extremely readable, my favorite kind! That's professional quality, Flopstock!

[scenerio]

ok folks we have seven entries.3 more to go.

i think these are all very good works and that i my self will not be voting.

that way this will be fair.and to answer the question this is my first time ever trying this.so if anybodies on all this could go better i would gladly accecpt it.

[along-for-the-ride]

Now I will type some words in box.

But the door to my mind has several locks.

I want you to know the absolute "me."

But...

I only show what I want you to see.

This forum feels welcome and warm--a delight.

But...

I'll watch from the bright screen, just beyond sight.

The few thoughts I offer are true, from my heart;

my small gift to you, as daily, we part.

[scenerio]

short but very well thought through. i liked it.

ok people were almost there we just need a couple of more poems/short stories

and then the fun can really start.

so anybody out who would like to join all these fine writeres in a little friendly battle dont be shy just let the words flow from your mind to your fingers and then to the keys and remember just because you might win this round doesnt mean you are the better it just means your on the right track.

[scenerio]

this is where this one ends write back on 5-30-05 for next challange

[Frederick]

scenerio wrote: hey every body i know what we can do,just for fun,

we could all write a poem or short story and people can vote on whos they liked the best.but remember just because that person got more votes on that one poem doesn't mean that that person is the best writer.

i await to see how many people like this idea or not.


I'm into creative writing, so question one - how many words? Question two - what category - humour, human emotion, or what? I'm very much for the idea. When do we start?