Storys Take Work

One thing I find very discouraging about writing is the impression that stories shoot from good writers in their final state.

Things don't work that way for me.

Instead, I have to work at creating a story, often one word at a time, until I have enough to get started. Then I have to figure out what the story is about, if it has the right structure, etc.  Nothing comes to me fully formed,

To reinforce this notion, I will try to post each chapter (about 1,250 words), in all it's ugly glory, as soon as I finish it.  That way anyone reading will see that my stories go through quite a bit of change before they're "done."

Here is chapter 1 of "Squats and Mobiles"

Elsie looked at Frank.  He was a giant (1m) brain in a jar.

"Best out of 3?" Frank said hopefully.  They had been playing trivial pursuit.

Elsie got out of her chair which was pulled up to a table near where the jar where Frank sat and walked away in disgust.

It wasn't because Frank lost, he could beat her easily if he chose to, it was because Frank always turned every game into some sort of experiment.

"Thanks for dropping by."  Frank called as she left the room.  Elsie reflected on the nature of Squats.

Squats, the slang term for artificially created humans, were almost always giant brains these days. They were called that because they usually stayed in on place while "mobiles," like Elsie walked around.

While you could make an artificially enhanced person, nobody bothered to these days.  After many years in which the status of artificial persons were in question, these days Squats were pretty much treated like everybody else. 

And nobody much gave a fuck.

Elsie was something of an anomaly among modern humans.  When you could screen for pretty much any physical condition, "shooting the moon," as making a child the old fashion way and leaving everything up to chance, as Elsie's parents had done, was very uncommon.

Unlike many of her compatriots, Elsie had a zest for life that "people" like Frank found interesting. She spent a lot of her time as "under a microscope" as she jokily referred to her time with Frank.

Squats were interested in why the human race was dying out.

Over the last few thousand years fewer and fewer people were having children.  Now the Earth was only home to a few hundred million of homo sapiens, and Squats wanted to know why.

Most of what she did with Frank fell into what previous generations would refer to as "social experiments," were Frank would do something and see how Elsie responded.  It was hoped that somehow, her interest in life could her transferred to her colleges who didn't give a damn.

That was the problem, Elsie reflected, as she left the building where Frank lived, most people just didn't care.  While today's Earth was, in many ways, better than it had been in the past, there was very little pollution, humans just milled about on it.

Elsie passed groups of people who were staring at nothing, like a cat.  People would do things like that when there was nothing else to do.  You would think that, at a time like this, when humanity has achieved so much, that people would be out celebrating or something, but they just sat around.

Elsie crossed the street and ducked into a subway, on her way home.

On the subway there was the usual quota of riders, going nowhere and getting there fast, that one would expect, but Elsie ignored them.

Getting off at her stop, Elsie bustled into her apartment.  She had 10 rooms to herself, there wasn't a lot of competition for real estate these days because people just didn't care.

Elsie had dinner and looked at several other apartments with her computer.  All of them had more rooms than she currently had.

Elsie changed into her pajamas and went to bed.

* * *

"Where are we at" Frank asked one of his colleagues, called Aristotle.

"300 million give or take, and decreasing steadily."  Aristotle replied through the network that linked them.  Aristotle was actually in Europe.

Frank thought about this.  Since the 2000's, the worldwide population had been decreasing steadily until they were at the point where they were at right now.  When everything had been done what was the point in doing anything?

The inclusion of negatively traits like greed was necessary to continue the race: at least greedy people did something.

Elsie was a strange one.  She actually wanted things.

* * *

"Thank you all for coming." Elsie said brightly.  Her guests looked like they didn't give a damn.

A servant came in bearing a tray full of ordeuvrs.  Her guests looked at them with tepid disinterest. One or two of them took a few.

Another servant came in bearing champagne. Only Elsie took one.

She went over to a window and looked down.

"They look so small form up here."

Her guests stared at Elsie without betraying any thoughts.  A man chimed in.

"That's because we're high up."

Elsie glared at him, but he returned her stare, a helpful look on his face.

"If we were down lower you could see them."

The man, whose name was Adam, said.

 The guests milled about inspecting Elsie's book collection.

"I collect first edition" apropo of nothing.

Her guests were not impressed.

"You have My Pet Goat." One of them observed.

"It is a first edition."  Elsie's smile became brittle.

The guests milled about some more and then left.

Elsie sighed.  Today's people just didn't get into the spirit of things.

"The guests seemed to enjoy themselves" a servant, name Bosely, observed.

Elsie stopped and regarded him.  Bosely was dressed in a black waiters' outfit (Elsie had insisted on this, but most people were not even aware of the outfit's significance) and had that look that all servitors had.  For time out of mind (a few hundred years ago), humanity had come up with another race specifically designed to serve them.

The servitors looked human, but you could always tell a servitor from a regular human being. The servitors looked like they actually cared. During previous times, a minority of human would have championed against creating a slave race but at this point, no bothered.

Elsie sighed and said "As things go, it wasn't a total disaster."

"Do you want me to grovel?" Bosely asked.

Elsie stared at Bosely for a little bit.  The fact that he really wanted to make her happy took all of the fun out of it.

"No, that won't be necessary." 

Elsie wandered up to her first editions and perused the titles without interest.