Worserey time. (Son of Worldbuilders)

[chrispenycate]

Fairy tales (suggested in the world building thread)? When I rewrote a fairy tale (see blog) it ran to two thousand words, and I was writing in its original setting, not 'Hansel and Gretel go asteroid mining'. What do we all know which is short? So I'm posting this as a suggestion.

You may well recognise the original. The idea is any nursery rhyme, with a different environment from the ordinary one you might visualise; fantasy or SF.

Eh, qui rient? Le curés d'Oc.​

Call me Algernon. Not the Algernon, of course. My name is just a string of numbers and letters indicating my ancestry, but my family's pink eyes have been swelling up with hypoallergenic tests, and our little whiskered noses finding their way out of mazes for more generations than I can count on my paws, tail included.

I'd found a way out of another one The lab is quiet, the only light coming from the glowing numerals on a timepiece on a shelf, indicating that midnight had long passed. In the green glow, computer screens stand like gravestones over glittering test gear, notepads and my immobile namesakes.

Driven by an instinct for concealment older than laboratory reflexes I scramble towards the glowing green figures. Behind the light, nothing could see me. I am well fed, and no scent of receptive female is likely to draw me out into this sterile space. As – anticipated? – perhaps 'hoped for' is a better term – there is enough space that I can hide behind the time, invisible even if the white coats, bring a cat, and I don't expect them to. I survey all the room, and nothing can see me – far better than a hole outside which anything might be lurking.

BONG!

Limbs galvanise and I scamper down from my refuge. No thought, just reflex action dives me into the dark heart of a PC. Nervously I chew on a piece of insulation as my tail lashes hard disc connectors.

Who would have thought that a modern, digital timepiece would chime the hours?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

A very good story, Chris!

I'm working on something, but it needs to be simultaneously cut down and filled out. It is semi-autobiographical.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Interesting idea Chris. Don't tell Disiney or if you do, get the contract signed first.

Teresa: Little Miss Muffet?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

TEIN: Good heavens, no.

Chris: Mine is not in the same league as yours. It's much too long and there's only token worldbuilding. But to help you get the ball rolling (perhaps by inspiring the age-old cry, "I can do much better than that") I will offer it anyway. Maybe one of these days I can come up with something better.



It wasn’t meant to be that way. Fertility treatments, Rejuvanex, and abundant new food sources had made large families the norm; motherhood at fifty, sixty, even seventy was not unusual. But the older children were supposed to be off on their own, fully self-supporting, by the time the younger ones came along. That was the way Linda and Mark had planned their lives; that was the way it had looked like it was going to be.

But John and Susie were in middle school, Beth and Josie still toddlers, when the economy took a sudden downturn. Within a very short period of time, three of their elder siblings lost their jobs and moved back in. Joe came home first, with his wife, six-year-old twins, and new baby. Eight weeks later Mary arrived with the three kids she had been struggling to support ever since her boyfriend landed in trouble with the law and was shipped off to the lunar penal colony. Barbara and her little girl, Annie, moved in soon after. Of them all, no one had imagine Barb would lose her job at the spaceport, she had so much seniority, but almost nobody travelled anymore, not for business and certainly not for pleasure, in such hard economic times.

For seventeen people living in a four bedroom house it was impossibly crowded. But everyone made a supreme effort to get along and somehow they managed ... mostly. Linda told herself that when the new bill being discussed in Congress passed the economy would start to improve. Joe and Mary could find jobs, maybe she and Mark would go back to work, too, if it was necessary. Sure, they were pushing ninety, but they still had marketable skills.

It didn’t happen. The bill didn’t pass. “A bad economy” became a full-fledged depression. There were no jobs, no jobs for anyone. Mark’s pension went down with the crash. Then the landlord found out how many people lived in the house, and he served them with an eviction notice. Who could blame him? The lease had specified no more than six occupants, and they were almost three times that number.

A blessing he didn't discover the truth sooner, Linda thought as she moved around the kitchen whipping up a casserole of pasta, laboratory-grown “beef” organs, and two kinds of Campbell’s soups. (What would they do when the canned goods and the packets of freeze-dried synthetic protein ran out? Already the shelves were looking much too bare.) Or maybe he had known six months ago, and had given them all the time he could because they had always been such good tenants. She knew there were regulations about how many people could occupy a four-bedroom rental.

They had a month to move out and there was no way—no way on earth—they could find another place they could all live together. Because of those same regulations, who would rent to a family of seventeen? Joe’s unemployment insurance had finally run out, and just keeping everyone fed on Mary’s monthly check, Linda and Joe’s Social Security, and Barb's government food stamps was a challenge—let alone scraping together enough to pay for two or three apartments. She had heard rents were cheaper on the outer planets, but the cost of transport made taking the whole family with them impossible.

Businesses were closing everywhere. How was anyone supposed to find a job? When Mary told her the last four stores at the mall had finally closed, Linda was not surprised, though it was strange to think of that whole huge building gone dark and deserted.

Six weeks later, when they were all living in tents or sleeping in the crowded homeless shelters, Joe came to her with news: the company that owned the mall had laid-off the security guards. The place was empty and there was no one to stop anyone who wanted to from going in.

“Squatters, you mean?” said Linda. “Homeless people? You don’t mean that we—” Never in her life had she imagined she would spend her old age as a squatter. That was how low-life, white trash, hillbillies lived—not respectable people who had worked hard all of their adult lives.

“Mom,” said Joe, “other families are already moving in. If we want to find a place, we have to make up our minds and do it soon. In a few more days, we won’t have a choice. You think it’s bad here? There are ten thousand people living on the streets in Burbank and Panorama City, and once the word gets out every available inch of space will be claimed.”

Linda knew he was right. She talked it over with Mark and they reached a decision quickly, much sooner than she would have thought possible. They would gather together the whole family and go that very night.

It was strange entering the building, it was so dark and quiet. Their flashlights cast a feeble glow on the storefronts they passed. In the FoodBarn and the big electronics store some of their soon-to-be new neighbors had lit Coleman lanterns. Light but no heat, Linda thought, and light only as long as they could afford fuel for the lanterns.

“We want a place large enough for all of us to live, but small enough there won’t be any other families trying to move in with us,” said Mary.

Linda thought that made sense. Barb pointed out that it was all super-stores and restaurants on the first six floors, and since it turned out the anti-grav lifts weren’t working (someone had removed the solar cells that were supposed to power them), there was nothing for it but to climb the fire stairs up to the seventh level.

The stores that high had been the first ones to close, back when the depression was still just a recession, two or three years ago. Most had been vandalized, the windows shattered, graffitti painted on the walls. Not that it mattered. There were three floors overhead and the roof at the top to keep out the weather, and if the walls were scrawled with obscenities, it was going to be too dark most of the time to see them.

Finally she and Mark found a place they agreed was just the right size: a little narrow shop between two department stores. It had been so long, Linda couldn’t even remember what kind of shop it had been. She flashed a beam on the sign over the door. That, too, had been vandalized, broken off at both ends, so that only one word, or part of a word, remained: “Shoe_”

Then she remembered. She had bought a pair of five-inch spike-heels there, to go out dancing on her sixtieth anniversary. Though small, it had been a very nice store, with a deep, plush carpet. She wondered if the carpet was still there. It would make a good place to bed down if it was.

She looked back over her shoulder at the rest of the family: her sons and daughters, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. “Come on kids,” she said. “We’re home.”

 

[chrispenycate]

But you built much more of a world than I did; I only drew one tiny corner of one room, in the dark. And it's the first piece of yours I've seen in an SF vein, rather than fantasy.

'Un petit d'un petit' is just about in useable shape; perhaps I should leave 'digne d'une belle' for Mouse. (I'm not going to apologise for the titles, either, but wouldn't expect anyone else to go that route.)

Anyway, see if the idea appeals to anyone else first, shall we?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But you built much more of a world than I did

Ah, but when I said my worldbuilding was only token, I meant "utterly generic."

I believe I did a little SF once or twice in the Describe an Imaginary Place thread.

 

[The Judge]

I'm not quite sure if this is world-buildy enough to qualify, but inspired by Teresa's (ie I'm too lazy to think of my own story, to the extent of practically copying her last line...) and to help get real world-builders enthused, here's my version:

There was an Old Lady​

The peace mission had failed. The envoys, the United Colonies Peace-Keeping Force, the charities, the bureaucrats, the well-meaning busybodies. They had all failed.

Roshanna pushed back grey hair from her forehead and tried not to let her imagination run on what was about to happen next. What always happened next. The indiscriminate fighting. The looting, the rapes, the murders. The bloodbath.

The order had finally come down from Earth Head Office: she and her fellow workers were to be withdrawn from the colony as their safety could no longer be guaranteed. Since three of her team had been killed in the last week, it had come as no surprise. She had already made her plans.

“We’re ready, Rosh,” Oye called. Everyone was packed into the transport bug which would take them to the hoverport and then onto the orbiting mothership and home to Earth. Everyone but her. And the several hundred orphans they had been caring for.

The dozen colonial helpers had all quietly slipped away in the night. They were from the wrong side. Or the right side with the wrong views. Or the right side but working with the wrong side. Whichever, if they stayed, they would be killed. She had plundered the charity’s coffers to give them as much money as she could spare and had hugged each of them tightly before they left. She could do nothing else for them except pray. They were all second and third generation colonists and their only recourse was to find another ex-protectorate – but since all the settlements were going up in flames, one by one, as the war dragged on, that gave them but little hope. Earth and its safety was forbidden them. Their parents and grandparents had lost all rights to return when they had made the first perilous crossings to the expected Promised Lands.

“Rosh,” Oye called again.

“Go on without me,” she said, coming to stand at the door of the bug.

She saw the alarm in their eyes, heard the fear in their raised voices.

“I know what I’m doing,” she lied.

She closed the door on their protests and remotely activated the drive. The bug sped off without her.

She turned back to the orphanage. The children were crowding at the front steps, standing around the yard, hanging out of windows. All watching her. There was just enough time to get them packed and ready before the Iron Duke arrived. It was old. An old lady, the skipper had said when she’d tracked him down three weeks before. “That makes two of us,” she had said, trying to laugh, trying not to weep at the sight of the worn, decrepit spacer.

Old or not, it was hers now. The skipper had agreed to pilot it all the way to Earth space, but then she was on her own. As “on her own” as she could be with several hundred children aboard.

Several hundred children, several hundred hastily created adoption certificates, and seventy years of colonial injustice to overturn. And if she failed and they couldn’t land – travelling space for ever on the Iron Duke.

“Children, get everything together,” she said. “We’re going home.”

 

[Mouse]

'Un petit d'un petit' is just about in useable shape; perhaps I should leave 'digne d'une belle' for Mouse.

My ears were burning.

Nice story, Chris. (Not read Teresa's or The Judge's ones yet!) Is it Hickory Dickory Dock? Or am I'm being a bit of a divvy?

Nice idea. Me likes.

 

[Robby]

Hickory Dickory Dock ... beautiful and meaningful piece, Chris

 

[chrispenycate]

Um. A problem. Because nursery rhymes all come from retrospective if not overtly fantastic environment, the pressure is to create a science fiction backdrop in contrast, which might well not suit everybody. Fairy tales would give the same problem; Snow white and the seven hobbits just isn't enough different from the original to be challenging. All right, my grand old Duke of York invading an ant hill is an exception. But he's not yet satisfactory.

Un petit d'un petit​

Horses, even intelligent, ultra trained horses, are not well adapted to reconstruction. Nor, actually were royal guards; but nobody wanted the information about the remains found in the palace courtyard to get to any more heads than were absolutely necessary.

After all, if it were known the wall could be scaled, that it was a potential weak point, who knows what enemy agents, anarchists or republicans might take advantage of it?

And the first results did not suggest the intruder had been over athletic. A slim, muscular physique might easily have died of the fall from the ten-metre, glass smooth construction, and certainly broken bones, but would surely not have fragmented, almost splattered, like this. How had he – a supposition, there was no evidence of either male or femaledom – got up there? There was no ladder, not a mark on the vertical surface. The researchers looked for evidence of suction pads or grappling hooks, without success.

The palace servants whispered that an immense bird had carried him up there, merely to demonstrate the royal fortress was not totally impregnable. Some even claimed to have heard the sound of huge wings sweeping off into the night; but servants have always wanted to enhance their importance, and the security investigators paid them no heed.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

That is a wonderful story, chris. Somehow the style reminded me of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms of Elfin.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I couldn't think of a good title, so I ran a bit through the "Lost in Translation" site, and in the spirit of ChrisP, give you this one that made a tortured path to French:

Comment ceux-ci exécutés, voient également​

“Over here – this is the way out!” Tom called to his companions and watched as they followed his route through the small hole.


They had all been exploring the box when it was suddenly closed, rudely picked up and tossed onto some sort of conveyance, then transported at dizzying speeds and at last lifted and turned about and slammed down so hard that Dick and Harry were knocked out cold. Tom had checked on them and assured himself that they were still alive, and then tackled the problem of escape. By the time the others awakened, he had managed to make a serviceable hole with the tools nature had given him.


Now they found themselves in a storage chamber of unimaginable proportions, surrounded by boxes and barrels and bags as far as the eye could see. Harry's heart lurched when he inadvertently looked down from the mountain of cargo they were descending and realized that this room was bigger than the whole world they had left behind. He admonished himself to think about only one step at a time, and eventually the trio found a floor. This came just in time, for without warning they were pressed flat on the floor and barely able to squeeze in the tiniest respite of air. The affliction, whatever it was, continued upon them almost interminably and all three companions lost consciousness. As quickly as they regained their wits, they were free, falling, sliding, tossed to another floor which turned into a wall and at last the world righted itself and weight was normal and welcome.


The self-appointed leader of the group, Tom once again set about discovering a way out. The others were accustomed to following him, and generally counted themselves lucky that he was able to scrounge better lodging and meals than they otherwise would have had.


It wasn't long until Dick and Harry were able to follow Tom's lead through another hastily-enlarged crack and the three friends found they were in a large corridor with wires and pipes running everywhere. They made good time now, going just to be going, with no destination in mind except the ever-present rumble for food.


Tom came to a halt and was overrun, and after they all separated from the pile of arms and legs and such, he shushed their excitement and whispered,
“Do you smell it? Do you smell the garden?”


“Garden, here?” Dick whispered back.


“It's over there, isn't it?” whispered Harry, nodding to his left and up the corridor.


“I think...yes, this wire goes through here, and look, you can see the sun around it!” Tom started nibbling at the speck of light, and the others followed suit. In an instant, the floor gave way and dropped them into the sun.


Well, Harry realized, it must not be the sun, as it wasn't very hot, but now he couldn't see a thing. There had been a flash of the brightest light as they fell, and when they landed below on the slippery surface there was nothing but blackness.


“Tom?”


“Dick! Harry, are you there?”


“Yes! I can't see, where are we?”


“Neither can I!” The other two answered squeakily, panic vibrations growing and gaining strength.


Tom drew in a shaky breath and began to feel outward from his position, cautiously exploring this new prison. Soon he found a wall and traced his way around three corners and then to a fourth. Rectangular, more than a few body-lengths across, nothing but slippery floor, warmth from the light that wasn't the sun above, and still the smell, now the overpowering smell of garden that had led them here. There had to be a way to get to the garden. If a smell could get in, they could get out, he reasoned. Redoubling his efforts, he traced around again and discovered a crack he had missed in his initial panic. Tom called to the others and they followed the sound of his voice to where they could help. Nibbling, scrabbling, the trio enlarged the hole until at last Tom slipped through. His yell of fear was short-lived, as he hit the floor after an alarming fall and lost his breath, but he quickly called to the others and they joined him below. Sniffing joyously, they worked their sightless way across the dirt – real dirt! – and among the plants that blanketed the garden. Dick found it first, a deliciously aromatic and nicely ripe tomato in a thicket of tangy, cool tomato leaves. He called his excitement to the other two, and as the three friends felt their way across an open space in the dirt, an ear-splitting shriek rang out and a blade came down upon them.


“Aaahhh, they got away! Three of them, there were!” The feminine voice was shaky with adrenaline as she shouted to her husband across the rows.


“Three of what, dear?”


“Mice, that's what! I swear, you call yourself Master of Hydroponics for the fanciest colony ship ever built, and you have mice in your garden! Look here, they got away, but they'll not try that again – I got their tails!”

 

[Peter Graham]

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Not Very Far Away

The lands of the south and the east lay ravaged and burned. From Caer Lerion to Caer Ceint, the crops rotted in the fields and the kestrels hung high over the ruins of the great houses of the merchants and the money men. Those who could had escaped west or across the southern sea and those who couldn't wandered the broken roads and the empty towns, reeling and bewildered. The monks wept in their cloisters and warned of God's wrath and the ending of all things.

But yet the Goggledd survived. Hewn from the rock of their homelands, they kept the old traditions alive. The eagle still fluttered on the towers of Ebrauc and Luguvalum and men still patrolled the Wall and the disputed border lands. The sea dogs came and came again, but where the abandoned folk of the south had given supplication and plunder, the Goggledd gave nothing but haughty disdain and cold iron.

They were a hard and insular people, the Goggledd. But their ageing leader - the Dux (or The Gwledic as his own people called him) - was cut from a different cloth. Where his vassals were dour and taciturn, he was joyful and loquacious. He loved music above all things and many was the time when the old king would rise from his drinking bowl in the great feast hall at Ebrauc and dance on the tables whilst his favourite musicians scraped reels and jigs on their fiddles. And his son, the great warrior Ceneu ap Coel, would look at his father and his three bards, his face like stone but his eyes glinting with long-buried glee.

Regards,

Peter

 

[chrispenycate]

!

Well, it seems that this was a bit of a failure; none of the would-be worldbuilders joining in. Can't win them all, I suppose (it'd be nice to win one of them from time to time, though).

One more since I've got it ready (actually, I wrote several in the car coming over, but the training in 'show not tell' description can only be good for me).

Cinque garcons oeuf sexe, pensent​

It was completely dark in there. Normally I would have slept, but it was so stiflingly hot -- and all around me I could hear the shuffling of others in the same situation.

Being close to the edge I reached out and tapped at the wall, but it was even hotter than within. It was clear that what was outside was even worse -- hell, to our purgatory.No, even if I could have damaged the shell, which seems unlikely, I didn't want to.

Our feet were tied down -- as if we had anywhere to escape to -- but we tried to touch each other as little as possible. Panting, we made ourselves small, drawn up thin.

Then everything lurched, and we were thown against each other, against the burn-hot sidewall, to the ground, unable in the dark to judge our motion, keep our balance. The jolting and swayingwent on for an indefineable time before a grating sound, felt as much as heard, announcedthat we had arrived. Muffled voices penetrated our prison; there were people out there.

Then a crack. Cool air flooded in, along with light tat seemed almost blindingly bright, but afterwards turned out to be merely a pair of candelabras.

The crust, dark brown rye pastry, fell away, and I filled my lungs and started to protest "What do you think you're doing, locking us up like that your majesty...?"

Your majesty? Lords, glittering ladies? An audience!

All my companions had made the same analysis, and we stopped shouting. Through the momentary silence: "All together on the three: one, two..."

"By the rivers of Babylon..."​

 

[The Judge]

That's definitely my favourite so far! It's not your usual style, though, Chris -- if I'd seen it without a name I'd have struggled to place it as yours. (Those two sentences are not linked by anything other than geographical proximity, by the way.) I'm struggling with the titles, though. Are these the real names of the rhymes in French, or are they Ursine puns?

As to the world builders, reading back over the original thread, I think perhaps they wanted something a little more, er, world-buildery in the strictly topographical sense. Me, I'm enjoying this version!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Oh, good--I was afraid I had killed this thread! Although actually Peter posted after me, I guess; I just tend to take the blame when threads die in my presence.

I like that one and your first one the best, Chris. Whether you get any worldbuilders or not, I think this is a fun idea. It's the first time in over a decade that I have just gotten a story idea on demand and sat down to write it from start to finish--not counting the 75 word challenge, of course, as that is not entirely the same thing. Anyway, thanks!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Your story is wonderful, TDZ. (And I do not give out such compliments lightly.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Aww, thanks Teresa! That means a great deal, coming from you.

Funny note, after posting it, I realized (past the editing time, of course) that if this were a hydroponics farm it would not be likely to contain *dirt*. Arrrgh! But then again, most ships' farms in books tend to have at least one little patch of actual dirt for purposes of "recycling" lost citizens along the way--though not generally into tomatoes. I must learn to stop posting things as soon as I finish writing them, one of these days!

 

[chrispenycate]

Well, this one isn't really worldbuilding at all, but it's sort of ready, so I added it without shifting to a different world.

​

Lit, telle beau pipe

She wasn't watching us.

Too involved with the handsome tinker boy, and demonstrating that it wasn't only the little bo's that can peep, nor was an eye the only thing she was filling.

Meanwhile we'd sneaked off to where we could watch her panic as she rearranged her clothing and realised we were nowhere to be seen.

The grass was too thick and deep to show hoofprints to anyone but a trained tracker and, face it, she wasn't the brightest thread in the weave. Not a bleat, not a bounce of a branch of the bushes whose fluffy white seed heads mimicked flocks spread over most of the hillside. Perhaps a tiny snicker melded with the skylark's liquid music as she rushed from clump to clump, chased after her beau (already far away, having got what he wanted) to demand aid, knelt down and cried, and finally accepted the inevitable and walked slowly off to the village to receive her punishment, a far cry from the carefree wench who had skipped out that morning.

We were free! No-one to tell us what to do, where to go. No snooty collies showing off their authority herding us into paddocks, no snipping removal of our nice warm fleece leaving us naked to the still cold spring gales. The wild flock. We danced and bleated happily throughthe pleasant afternoon, as the sun sank and shadows started populating the slopes.

Every clump of bushes could now be hiding something. A wolf? Were there wolves any more? At least a feral dog, without the discipline of the human controlled ones? We'd all been chased by such as those.

And those circling black dots in the rich violet blue of the evening sky; crows, waiting for one of us to die, or an eagle, a lamb-eater?

We crowd in close; there is comfort in contact, in numbers, if not safety. Our bushy refuge has become threat, with distant spinneys of trees hiding who knows what further dangers.

The barn seems less a prison than a fortress now, protection against a hostile world.

I am not equipped to put my tail between my legs, but would have if I could as consensus sends us following our outward path, slinking back home.
​

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Ha! That'll teach'em!