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Changing role patterns. Haarlem, The Netherlands. CC photo by **Nationaal Archief.** Find the description **here.**

Bacon sizzled on the stove.

Noelle sat playing the crossword.

“How do you want your eggs?” Hugh asked.

“Same as ever. ‘Studious apartment.’ Starts with E.”

Hugh looked around the tiny apartment. “Efficiency? Breakfast is ready.”

They ate bacon, eggs, and burnt toast, straddling the rickety card table with their knees.

“Can you pick up Addy and Mark from school this afternoon?” she asked. “I picked up an extra shift at work.”

Hugh cleared the table as Noelle adjusted her overalls in the mirror. “You know things will change,” Hugh told her. “Once my business takes off, we’ll have new clothes, fancy breakfast foods…”

“A house with walls?” Noelle smiled, oblivious to the gray in Hugh’s hair, the years of wrinkles on his face. Their eyes met. “I love–”

Suddenly Hugh stood alone in an empty black space.

“Your simulation time has expired,” a voice announced.

“Already? Two thousand doesn’t buy what it used to.” He frowned. “Restart the simulation.”

“Mister, out of all possible simulations, why do you keep reliving this old memory?”

“Because I can, and I want to. Restart the simulation.”

Bacon sizzled on the stove.

Written for Fire&Ice Sol 12/19. This week’s prompt was to write a story about the image above, of less than 200 words, including a dollmaker.

Whispers in the Mouse’s Ear

*Woman Pushes a Wheelchair. Hitsujiyama Park, Japan. CC2.0 photo by **Ajari**.*

Attic stairs and creaky floorboards were rainy afternoon fun for two adventurers. “Shh. Quiet, like a mouse!” They tiptoed to a wooden box. Dee lifted the lid to their treasure chest. “See? Mama keeps old dress-up clothes and stuff in this trunk.”

“What’s that chair in the corner?” asked her sidekick. “It has wheels.”

“Mama doesn’t like us playing with that. It’s Uncle Andy’s.”

“Uncle Who?” She pushed the chair; the wheels squeaked.

Dee’s attention was on the bounty of treasures before her. “He left before you were born, when I was little little. Mama said the chair was because of his sit-stick five-roses.”

“You remember him?” asked the littler sister.

“Uh-huh. Mama pushed him up the park hill one April. The flowers were all a-bloom, and we picked a bunch.” She found a floral straw hat. “See? He put the prettiest ones in the hatband. Then he gave it to me and told me never to forget him.”

“Those flowers are all dead.”

“Yeah,” Dee said with a sigh and a smile. “But you should’ve seen it, Drew. The sun was shining bright, and the flowers were so pink!”

Written for Fire&Ice: Sol 11/19. This week’s prompt was to write between 185 and 195 words about the image above, including an unexpected joy.

Owen and Layla

*“Burmese musicians performing at the Shwedagon Pagoda in 1895.” Public domain photo by **Philip Adolphe Klier.** Read a description of the photo here.*

Ask and he’ll claim he’s a tenured student of the music of life. Only knows one song: he calls it “Owen and Layla,” but he never plays it the same way twice.

Sunny days find him busking in the quad, pouring his soul into music on any of a dozen instruments.

Campus security hassles him. Students pass him by. A few toss coins his way. Only one stops to listen, sometimes, but she never stays long.

The truest human emotion, he says, is not love, nor hate, but longing.

Written for Fire&Ice: Sol 10/19, where the week’s prompt was to write an 89-word story, based on the image above, including a student.

This week I went for something a little different: instead of doing world-building for a sci-fi story with dramatic life-or-death consequences… I just wrote a story about a busker on a college campus.

If These Rocks Would Talk

*“Eternal Procession” . CC4 photo by **Marc Toso**, Ancient Skys Photography.*

The coroner’s van rolled away. Chief called it an easy case, but my witnesses were uncooperative.

“Your people never listen,” said one crimson petroglyph.

“Sir.” I puffed the cigarette, wishing Digsby would hurry with my coffee. “A murder was committed here.”

An antelope shook its ocher head. “Many murders were committed here.”

“I’m interested in just the one.”

Digsby returned with a mug. Black, no sugar. “We can obtain a court order,” he said. “Compel you to talk–”

“Or what?” a stick spearman demanded. “You’ll carve your Presidents into us?”

I held Digsby back; he was a hothead, and might say something I’d regret.

“All I can promise,” I said, “is that if you’ll talk, I’ll listen.”

A line of warriors, outlined in reds and yellows, agreed.

So I sat on the cold desert, scribbling notes by moonlight, as the procession of timeless figures gathered to tell the saga of the greatest crime they had ever known.

Written for Fire&Ice: Sol 9/19. The prompt was to write a story of 150 to 160 words, based on the image above, in a genre other than your usual. I chose the genre of crime magical realism.

The Fire&Ice contest runners also note: “Read about Bears Ears (‘Shash Jaá’)’s current political troubles here.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks “No Small Parts”

Wherein I watch episode 10 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, entitled “No Small Parts”.

The CBS Synopsis: “Season finale. The USS Cerritos encounters a familiar enemy. Tendi helps a struggling recruit find her footing.”

Pre-Show Thoughts:

It’s the season finale already? Isn’t this episode ten? Maybe ten is the magic number nowadays — ST:Picard was similarly short.
A familiar enemy? I recall no enemies on this show, unless we’re broadly referring to “the Romulans”, or “those crystal-worshipping cavepeople with starships”. Certainly no one that would give me a Khan! moment.

The Good:

Not only does this week’s guest appearance offset any negative… it’s so awesome it even makes me forget about 1/5th of the stupid things from earlier in the series.
Captain Freeman(?) and Ensign Mariner seem to have come to understand one another, and look like they’ll actually work together.
Boimler ends the episode with some confidence and respect.
There’s no point continuing to mention the steady flow of continuity nods in the show — these are clearly part of the Lower Decks identity.

The Bad:

Even though they’ve gone easy on the Mariner-Boimler pairing in recent episodes, seeing them together in this episode is instantly annoying.
An otherwise great ending sequence is marred by a very dark gag. (At least, I assume it was a gag.)

Post-Show Thoughts:

On the whole, Star Trek: Lower Decks went out on a surprisingly good sequence of episodes — unexpectedly good when judged against its abysmal beginning.

I’ve said before that “Lower Decks” seems less like canon Star Trek, and more like a goofy holodeck adventure the real Starfleet officers might enjoy while off-duty. This episode still feels cartoonish, but there’s nothing in the storyline that couldn’t have happened in the “real” Trekverse.

For a spoiler-heavy summary, keep reading.

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Necessity Is The Mother

Friday is tomato soup and grilled cheese, and My Bonnie as I tuck her in. She made a tinker toy boat; it falls apart as she shows me.

“How neat! Good night, Sammi.”

In my bedroom, I change out of my work clothes and climb into bed.

~ ~ ~

Saturday is sloppy joes and juice boxes. The Water is Wide, and the legos are on the floor, and my feet are sore. “I made a tall ship, like the hall painting,” she exclaims. “This the steering wheel, these the sails, the person sits here, also it flies.”

“That’s inventive, Sammi! Sweet dreams.”

The babysitter is in the kitchen, waiting for her money, plus her bonus for cooking dinner.

~ ~ ~

Sunday is spaghetti and canned meatballs. Row Row Row Your Boat as I fish Lil Bear from under the bed. Sammi’s pajamaed feet dangle over the edge. “Maybe mama comes tonight,” she says. “Her ship sails on the stars, and has a rainbow sail. When the moon’s a smile, she comes.”

“That sounds very pretty, Sammi.”

Alone in the living room, I turn up the TV volume so she can’t hear me cry.

Written for Fire&Ice Sol 8/19. Prompt was to write a story of less than 200 words, incorporating an inventor, based on the image above.

How I Thought ST:Picard Would End

It’s been a few months since Star Trek: Picard ended its first season. Though the show started off promising (in my opinion), the second half of the season disappointed.

But it’s easier to criticize than create, so I thought I’d look at the season finale, with a view toward what I would have done differently.

(This will obviously include spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Picard.)

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Astraea

*Eternal Flame Memorial (Nizhny Novgorod). Creative Commons 4.0 photo by Andrew Shiva.*

Written for (and winner of!!!) the Fire&Ice Sol 7/19 contest. The prompt was to include an act of justice or mercy, in 190 to 199 words, based on the image above.

The war began (as such wars do) with men who neglected the lessons of history. I was an innocent boy with romantic notions of alien planets, great battles, and mighty heroes.

The war ended (as such wars do) in tears, and firing squads, and a vow never to forget. Never forget. My memories fueled my nightmares for a century. Even after I escaped the jail, fled the planet, buried my past deeper than my victims. At night I saw those purple eyes of a girl from Astraea — eyes that watched her family and her future die in a blast of searing plasma.

One day I saw those eyes again, in daylight. They held me entranced as she approached. We stood at the memorial: rippling waters and roaring flame.

“I could turn you in,” she said without preamble. “I should. Though a lifetime ago, justice knows no age.” Her face was pale as mine had been that day. “But the flame falters. Life, I see, has wearied us both. Mercy. Or justice.”

“So which will it be?” I asked. “The water? Or the fire?”

I never saw the pistol — only the glint in her eyes.

“The earth.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks “Crisis Point”

In episode nine, we get a Mariner character development episode, a holodeck episode (holodepisode?), and, shockingly, a sense that Lower Decks is finding itself.

The CBS Synopsis: “Mariner repurposes Boimler’s holodeck program to cast herself as the villain in a Lower Decks style movie.”

Pre-Episode Thoughts: More Mariner hijinks? I don’t think I’m going to like this.

The Good:

By Grabthar’s Hammer… I didn’t mind Mariner too much in this episode!
Tendi speaks up against blatant stereotyping.
The holodeck simulation brilliantly spoofs (or even pays homage to) Star Trek movies both old and new.
We get more named characters, even if they are just faithful simulations of the real Cerritos crew.

The Bad:

Lower Decks continues to be better thought of as a Star Trek spoof, than as something genuinely set in the Star Trek universe.
Despite Tendi’s stand against it, cultural stereotyping runs rampant.
Rutherford’s holodeck bromance of Chief Engineer Jeff Foxworthy (I can’t remember the character’s name) fails to make the leap into the “real world”.

Keep reading, be spoiled.

Continue reading →