Theories of Things, Time, and Space

Jail - Part 5 of Fate Adjuster

2012-01-31T09:30:00.000-05:00

I've been remiss in the posting of this short lately. Part distraction, part I'm not sure I like where it's gone and where it's going. It's a bit flat as I read it again. However, instead of spending time rewriting this I'm working on a few other things. My brain is not wanting to work on one project at a time and I find it a challenge to actually sit down and work on the projects I've already invested a fair amount of time into. Eventually I'll take my brain to behavior training so that it'll pay attention to what I want done, but for now, read Part 5 after the break.

Detective Julia (Jules) Morgan and I typically didn’t get along. Walking into her and almost knocking her over in front of her partner wouldn’t have helped the situation at all. Detective Morgan was tall, blond and full of the ability to put me in a headlock of the sort that I would never be able to remove myself of without her agreeing to it. She wore the clothes of a plain clothed detective. Button down shirts and slacks with flat boots that looked like they were made to stomp on things. She somehow always had a coat of some sort. Even in the warm summer months she wore a jacket to hide the side arm hanging from the shoulder holster under her arm.

“Geez Tyler, quit playing grab the detective that wants to lock you up and throw away the key. It’s a good way to make my day.” She shoved me hard enough to put me into the door, it’s metal handle digging into the small of my back.

“Sorry Detective Morgan.” I tried to not even really look at her and make myself scarce. I tried to duck out of the way as quick as I could. “Good Day to you, and you too Detective Jackson.” Detective Charlie Jackson wasn’t quite as much of a hard-ass as his partner was, but he didn’t tend to go in for any magical explanations I would give either. He was a grounded fellow and had the muscles to back up his point of view regardless of his sensibility. The muscles showed right through his suit and tie and wouldn’t have fooled anyone.

I didn’t fool them at all. So, I tried to stay out of their way. Occasionally that wasn’t possible. And when it wasn’t I kept my head down and tried to be as far away as I could physically be. Running straight into Jules was not one of the first things I wanted to do during this investigation. In fact, it would have been better if I hadn’t seen her and Charlie muscles at all for a good while after I finished the job as well.

I started to hurry my way down the sidewalk beside the building and towards the nearest exit from the city and possibly state when I heard Detective Jules Morgan call out my name. “Tyler, what on earth are you even doing here. I find out you were within twenty miles of my case and so help me I’m going to string you up by your ankles and leave you handing over the Mississippi overnight.” While I was fairly certain that could amount to a police threat, I was only half sure she would follow through on it. I didn’t look back and went straight for my favorite place on earth. Jail.

Okay, so it’s not my favorite place on earth, but I needed to see my client and this would be the only place to see her at least until they let her leave. This time I would have to check in. There was no way around it. I went in and did the security check thing. Thankfully I could even screw with their machines a little bit so that the sonic screwdriver in my coat never needed to leave my side. Imagine what they would say if I made a full on wizard staff to wield the power of eternity with. The desk clerk would go nuts and probably lock me up herself for even suggesting such a thing.

I didn’t bring a staff. I got through security easily enough. For some reason I always get the additional pat down, but the misdirection spell on my sonic screwdriver works on people as well as machines. The officers all gave me a knowing grin. Either they’d all heard Detective Morgan complain about me, or she’d warned them that I’d be coming by to see Mrs. de Levine. It didn’t bode well.

I sat down at the table in the jail cell interview room and waited. Rachel walked into the room in attire a far cry from what I’d met her in. Her makeup had been washed off and the wealthy appearance was replaced with the stoicism of someone that had endured hardship before. Perhaps I had underestimated the woman. She sat down, held her chin up and sat up straight and she made herself look like she was adorned in silks and jewels instead of a prison jumpsuit. It was really quite amazing, I almost certainly would be crying and possibly in the fetal position in a similar situation.

“Ahh, Ms. de Levine, I see you’ve gotten yourself into some situation. I trust they’re not giving you too much trouble in here?”

“Yes, Mr. Tyler, I should hope so.”

“Well, we should have you out soon enough I would think. I just have a few questions for you first.”

“Go ahead, I really have nothing to hide.”

“Did you know that when you went to meet your husband he was already dead?”

Her face faltered slightly from it’s stoicism. It showed a brief appearance of sadness, perhaps a longing for what was gone. “Of course, I had been to the morgue just before I went by the courthouse. I was coming here to ask the police to find my husbands killer. I didn’t know that I would be the subject of interest when I left your office.”

“Indeed, I must admit I didn’t really know why you hired me until I started looking for your husband. I found him right away at least. Although that is an image I won’t be able to forget.”

“Oh? Did you find him on the table at the morgue? I trust that is where found him?”

“Ahh, no, although I do find it interesting that you went to the morgue to see your husband before allegedly shooting him though. It really is quite the conundrum.”

She looked more shaken here than when I mentioned her husband being dead. “Yes. Now you see why I hired you.” Her voice lacked the cutting edge that gave her the natural certainty. “My fortune teller told me that I would be finding myself in a mystical and magical problem. So I opened up the phone book and there you were. You advertised as a wizard, it was like fate telling me who to call.”

“That wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Usually though it’s because someone lost a necklace, not a husband.” I’m certain a flash of embarrassment flashed across my face as I realized what I said. “Anyway, we need to try to nail down your time line if there will be any chance of getting you out of here quickly. Oh, and hire a good lawyer, because I doubt the police will accept any magical sounding answers I can give to them.”

My timing never lets me down either as I heard the click of the door shutting behind me and saw Rachel’s eyes flicker up to look behind me. I should have known, being a master of seeing fate and time and knowing what should come to pass, but I didn’t. That’s when I got whacked in the back of the head.

Interlude

2012-01-06T12:19:00.001-05:00

I keep forgetting to post the sections of that short story to the blog. Shame on me. For your trouble, a brief interlude. I wrote this in late December just on a whim. Anyway, enjoy. Jump to after the break for the full thing.

Water was falling again. It turned to crystals part of the way to the ground. Small crystalline structures piled upon each other, turning the ground white, if only for a moment. Without intervention the white was soon covered with dirt and grime. It had been there all along, hidden from view by muted perceptions. A single pair of foot prints began to disturb the coat of snow and dirt across the parking lot. They were booted feet, rugged in their leather and rubber outer shell; insulated from the cold, the dirt, and the wet. They left impressions in the the light crust of crystals. Crunching through and breaking structures leaving wet imprints of ridges and troughs before they deformed into only a memory of what they had been, leaving the white and black of the surface below to peer through to the sky again.

The boots were connected to feet, which in turn were connected to legs. Were they long legs or short legs? There was no frame of reference in the endless lot. The legs were mostly responsible for the forward motion of the entire body across the parking lot. It was a man. He pulled his blue worn coat tight around himself, an end of the scarf wrapped around his neck flapping over his left shoulder. He left duplicate imprints across the lot, taking long and hurried strides. Crunch, crunch, went the snow and blacktop under his boots.

The street lights came on in the muted darkening sky, reflecting off the surface of the ground and throughout the myriad of crystals still falling to replace their broken brethren. The man stopped and pulled out a small clear glass bottle filled with a brown liquid with hands wrapped in gloves missing their finger tips. He slowed only enough to take a long drink before replacing the cap and putting it back into his pocket, giving his uncovered fingers a chance to regain their warmth as the fire burning in the liquid warmed his throat and stomach.

There was almost a moment of contemplation on his face, but the crystals of snow alighting on his face kept it from manifesting in the world. He looked, but didn’t see. He breathed, but didn’t smell. He touched, but no longer did he feel. His senses were muted, ignored, repressed. He did not see it coming. The lead spinning forward at hundreds of feet per second. Time slowed, a single moment stretching for seemingly minutes as recognition appeared on his face. His gait didn’t change. It was impossible for his muscles to change direction and velocity to pull his body out of the way. There was only time for the muscles in his face to move. He smiled. It appeared in his mouth, in his eyes.

It wasn’t surprise that was the last thought plastered on his face. No, it was a look of peace, of tranquility. It was a smile that encompassed the knowledge the man possessed. It spoke of days spent walking under the sun. It spoke of nights spent talking with loved ones. It spoke of the future that was left ahead and the past that was left behind. Briefly, there was peace.

The lead thumped into his chest. It tore through the jacket leaving synthetic warmth exploding as it exited. It exited through the inside of the jacket and tore into the skin. The flesh tore, bones shattered. The life that had seen and known much escaped through the hold in his chest as the lead compacted and expanded through and out the back of him. It escaped through the front and through the back.

The crystals of water on the ground turned red. It mixed with the snow in spots as his body slumped over in a heap. The smile had left his face. His body limp and loosing his life and his essence. There was no help coming. The ambulance wouldn’t come until later. His heart skipped a beat as his blood stained the snow in the middle of the parking lot. His face was silent, his eyes empty. The snow stained in a syncopated rhythm. It took only a moment, but he was gone.

An hour later, maybe two, a second set of boots, with legs and a person attached walked across the parking lot. The body was covered with a thin sheath of snow, the stain of death beneath it spoke to the cold and the absence of life. The man’s hand had fallen out of his pocket, still grasping the liquid warmth that had carried him through the day.

The new legs were attached to a woman. She screamed. Muted by the falling snow. It was muffled by the crystals and the careless and methodical nature in which the world blanketed itself without regard for the life moving upon it. She fumbled with a phone, punching in numbers with a shaking hand. She sobbed into the phone, a calm and passionless voice on the other end telling her to keep calm. Help was on the way.

Time passed again. Uninterested in the events which comprised it’s meaning. Tick tock, it moved and then the lights came. The car crunching the snow under it’s tires, leaving a trail across the parking lot. The woman was still there, sobbing and shivering in the cold, the tears starting to freeze as she wiped them from her face. It was streaked with black where her makeup had ran.

A paramedic went to the body, leaving footprints in his wake. The wheels on the gurney pulled behind him. Another went to comfort the woman. He wrapped her in a blanket and sat her on the back of the ambulance. She shivered there, the warmth from the truck billowing out in waves as the cold fought back to balance itself and assert it’s dominance. It didn’t take long for the body to be uncovered from the light blanket of snow. It was only moments longer before it was loaded into the back of the ambulance and a second trail was left. The flashing lights faded and the snow continued, unimpeded from covering the world.

Motivations

2011-11-30T14:17:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about what makes a character good. What really makes the character latch onto the reader's mind and burrow in and drives the person to read on. For some markets and age groups, just a simple desire and the drive to obtain and fulfill that desire might be enough. It's not enough for me. I want to understand the character. I want to know where he or she is coming from. What drives them to get out of bed in the morning and put on their crime fighting shoes, or their evil villain cape (and no, just looking good in a cape doesn't work).

That's what I'm going to be working on before I rewrite the first draft for the increasingly muddled novel of pieces and sorts that I sort of completed for NaNoWriMo. It's a complete mess. The first 60 pages makes some sort of sense, but I worry that it's just too slow thematically. And I'm struggling to find the right voice for the female lead still. So it needs work, but that's not what I wanted to ramble about today.

What is it that makes our heroes and villains get up in the morning? Villains, I'm finding, are easier to deal with. It's a sinister desire. They have a want for control, for accumulation of both money and power. They may want fame with that power. That I can understand and potentially write about. It's the less ominous and more subtle motivations of the heroes that I'm still working on.

For instance. What motivation could a wizard private investigator have to save people he hardly knows? There's the standard, "it's just doing what is right" nonsense, but I don't buy it. There must be a reason for it. Even for the police officer type characters; if I want them to have any depth, I need to give them a reason for upholding the law? Questions I'm asking myself are almost self-searching. Why does a person uphold a law? Is it a sense of duty or honor to a meta-morality? Is it self guided or selfish? Even then, I'm having issues buying it. In my world, there is nothing that is 'just because that's the way it is'. The world I'm trying to portray is not black and white, it's grey, and that's my hurdle.

Invested - Part 4 of Fate Adjuster

2011-11-17T13:40:00.001-05:00

I apparently forgot to post part 4 of my short to post last week. I'm trying to bury myself in the NaNo project and it's getting to my head. Oh well, I'll get it done and then the rest of this will go up as well.
Rest of it's after the break.

The first step in trying to figure anything out is collecting all the facts. It was pretty obvious to me that the material facts were going to be difficult to overturn in their stark appearance. I did witness my client pull the trigger. Not that anything I would be able to do would help her in the civil courts, but I kept thinking about that to-do shopping list that she left on my desk. I’m not quite certain it was left by accident, but more certain that it was left on purpose the more I gave it thought.

Depending on the order of operation the list could mean two very different things. The best way to sort that out was to figure out what time she visited the morgue yesterday. I grabbed my jacket off the rack to keep the brisk autumn winds from cutting to the bone and making the day miserable, slotted my sonic screwdriver into it’s easy to retrieve location that I’d sewn into the inside and grabbed the keys to my jeep.

The county morgue is on the east end of downtown near the stadium. The foot traffic was light, and the bureaucracy and police presence was thick. It was going to be a difficult thing establishing the time when my client was in the morgue yesterday. You see, unlike the early part of the previous century it was no longer as easy as slipping the attendant a few dollars for his trouble. Now there was paperwork and even then they may not tell me. I didn’t want paperwork. Anytime I had to deal with paperwork with the government it left a trail that sooner or later the police would follow and then there would be more questions asked than possible to answer. Interaction with the police wasn’t a strong suit of mine. It would work if there was a mutual agreement to just leave each other alone, but they had this sense of honor or duty or something that kept getting in the way. That and I don’t think they liked hearing that I was doing my job with magic and not being able to prove it. Magic and law enforcement don’t get along when proof is required, which is to say, always.

I parked in the lot and entered the door of the squat and monotone government building. It was still relatively early in the day and like the desk attendant I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Good thing I had the forethought to grab a couple of coffees on the way downtown. I set one down on the desk and brought up my best smile. A moment or two later the attendant came around the corner. She wasn’t one that I’d seen before, so either this would go really well or sour very quickly.

I raised the second coffee and motioned it towards her. “Hello,” I squinted for the name tag, “Maggie. I was wondering if you could help me with something this morning.” I really was trying to smile, it probably came out more as a half scowl than a smile, but that was genetics and the lack of caffeine, not my overall disposition. I was feeling somewhat cross at being dropped into the middle of this mess.

Maggie was dressed in scrubs so just must be a little more than the receptionist. The light blue was worn as if it had been washed many times and the clipboard she was carrying perhaps suggested as if she was a little more important that receptionist. She couldn’t have been far into her thirties though. Sort of an odd career choice, but she must have the stomach for it. I had maybe caught her unawares. The morning hadn’t caught up with her completely either as she reached out a hand and grabbed the coffee. “Are you here to see someone or identify someone?” Straight to business was her tired and melodic voice. She sounded tired as if the morning had already been very long.

“Look, I can see you’re busy, so I’ll jump straight to the point. I’m a private detective of sorts and need to double check what time my client was here yesterday. A Mrs. Rachel de Levine? She was wearing a red dress and left me her itinerary but I need to double check the time. Is that possible to do quickly?” I hoped my sense of restricted time for her and my awareness of that would work to my advantage.

“I’m really not sure if I’m supposed to tell you or not, but today I really don’t care. I figure if the police are around and asking then someone who works on the other side of the fence should be able to ask as well. She was here at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I remember because I was just getting ready to perform an autopsy on her late husband, Bernard. She had to come in to identify the body.” I smiled and nodded my thanks. “Hey, you wouldn’t by chance know what exactly the police were asking about? My client didn’t really have much time to elaborate on the phone before I started putting the timeline back together for her.”

Maggie tipped the coffee at me. “Can’t help you there. I listen to them as much as they listen to me when I’m explaining something.”

“And that means?”

“It means I have no idea. Look, I’m sympathetic if it was some sort of lover’s dispute, but I really didn’t listen. Sorry.”

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything they said? That’s too bad I was hoping to get everything squared away so that she could go home today.” I flashed my best smile and gave her the come hither look that I’d been trying to perfect for years and hoped for the best.

“Look, you’re kinda cute with the hair and the doe eyes, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

“Doe eyes? Damn, and here I was thinking that was a sexier look.” I tried to not pout. “Here, take my card and if you hear anything I really would appreciate it.” I passed over one of my business cards and watched her read it. A single eyebrow raised as she almost assuredly got the part where it said wizard. “And if there’s anything you ever need sorted, you just give me a call and I’ll see if I can help.” I flashed a smile again and didn’t give her a chance to respond before leaving the morgue. It was time for a trip to my least favorite building in the city - the jail. At least it would have been had I not walked out the door and straight into the arms of Detective Jules Morgan.

Mourning - Part 3 of Fate Adjuster

2011-11-04T12:58:00.002-04:00

Part three of Fate Adjuster is below the break. It's a bit short, but it's the full section. I'm adding the sections around the same time as I post them to additional pages on the side bar. Take a look there if you want to see it all in one place.

NaNoWriMo is off to a good start on my end. I hope it's going well for everyone else as well. Over target by a fair amount for 2 of 3 days. 2k a day is the mantra, but I'm shooting for 2.5k a day. Sometimes I question my sanity. Part 4 of Fate Adjuster up next week.

The next morning I woke up with ringing in my ears. It took me a minute before I realized that the ringing was from the gunshots and from the phone as well. I wasn’t much for technology, and the old bell in the rotary phone rung loudly. It was much better at waking me up than some digital speaker thing would be anyway. That and it was much simpler to use when distracted. Mostly it was just because I’m technologically inept. I’m not ashamed to admit it either. It’s part of the reason I have an old Jeep. It’s easy to take care of and it’s good in the snow. And we get plenty of snow.

I answered the phone on the fourth ring that I could count, I’m certain there were more before that, but it’s hard to count while you’re asleep. “Tyler.” There was a dead sounding moment, the phone beeped three times and a computerized voice came on the line. “Mr. Tyler, if you are receiving this automated call the worst has happened. If something bad has happened I will not have been able to stop this message from playing. Your fee will still be payed as negotiated. Thank you, Mrs. Rachel de Levine.” The system beeped three times and hung up.

It took me a minute to process what happened. The locating spell had found the target without any trouble. That fact should have put me off the case. See, finding people is supposed to be difficult. If it were easy then every wizard in existence would be the bane of humanities existence. It would be possible to gain individual omniscience. That is a very dangerous thing to release on the world. So built into magic is a safeguard. I have no idea where it came from, but if someone put it there, it was for a good reason. And I was able to home in on this poor guy with no difficulty at all.

If that wasn’t enough to drive me away from this case, the eerie to-do list, the automated message and the fact it appeared my client murdered the man she was trying to find should have. But what private detective didn’t have a soft spot in their heart for a dame? I fit into that category well enough, and the now widowed Rachel de Levine was certainly a dame. I’m going to regret this.

The Rabbit Hole - Part 2 of Fate Adjuster

2011-10-28T17:02:00.000-04:00

Right, so part 2 on this short story thing. I've decided to not try to sell this yet, so instead I'm just going to post it so that people can still read it. Again, I haven't done much revision yet, so hopefully my quick grammar/spell check will have been enough. I'm going to start posting these by working section titles. I'll come back next week with Part 3. Read on after the break for the section.

I walked quickly out of my office and around the corner to my apartment around the block. Yes, it conformed to the stereotype of wizards and their rat hole apartments. It was more due to the fact that the rent was cheap, and the location below ground made it less likely that I would ever be disturbed while actually doing any magic. It wasn’t that I couldn’t perform around people, it was just that they never believed that what I was actually doing was possible. It made it a lot more difficult to work the magic and no one wants to ever give away all his trade secrets anyway.

My apartment was at least relatively large for it’s basement location. It wasn’t exactly the best neighborhood, but the door was hidden in the side of the building on it’s way down a dimly lit alley. That’s why I had to rent office space around the corner. Asking paying customers to visit my office in this area of Minneapolis was already a stretch. The parking was terrible and the crime was a bit higher than the local suburban housewife really wanted to deal with, even in the light of day. It’s lack of windows hadn’t helped my case. There was a single window, it was smoked over with dirt and grime. It was the way I liked it.

I went in through the door and looked around pulling out my checklist. All my books were where I’d left them, check. My phone was still off the hook and making that beeping noise, check. The wheel on the wall calendar was pointed to Tuesday, check. It wasn’t Tuesday, but the wheel didn’t know that and having the day on the wall say it was a day different that today made it difficult for anyone trying to make sure things were back where I’d left them. I went and put the kettle on to make some tea and locked the door with all three deadbolts, the chain, and the little lock in the handle as well. The I pulled out my precious metal reproduction of a sonic screwdriver, put it to the door frame and uttered the words that would keep me from being disrupted.

Did I forget to mention that I tend to be just a tad paranoid? At least I didn’t prop up a shotgun to the door in case of intruders-at least not anymore. Scared the crap out of a chinese food delivery guy once, it left buck shot holes in the wood of the door and left the delivery guy with a twenty dollar tip. Now I just left the shotgun propped next to my little workroom. I made the tea and brought the rest of the boiling water into the workroom.

I keep it neat and tidy in there. Never really know when you’re going to need something quickly and it’s nice to know where things are. The water went on the low table along one wall and I started pulling what I needed off the shelves. The silver bowl came out, as did the bunsen burner and tongs. The hot water would help catalyze the dusts, copper and grass, and I measured out the right amounts to make a creamy green and orange paste and placed them in the bowl and set everything to start cooking.

In the meantime I was going to try the easy way, but the majority of the time the easy way either didn’t work, or the person was inside a building somewhere. Yes, it sucks that my easy way couldn’t see through walls. It would have made looking around a lot more entertaining. I didn’t see through clothes either, believe me, a younger version of me had already tried that one. Hormones of a teenager and magical ability lead to some creative and somewhat perverted attempts at seeing inside the girls locker room. Admit it, you probably would have tried too.

Back to reality though. I pulled out my trusty sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the map. It wasn’t really a sonic screwdriver. In fact it had no moving parts and didn’t make that whistling noise either. It was more an ironic poke at the fact that while it supposedly helped the Doctor through all of time and space, it actually helped me control time and space. Not all of it, but enough of it where I could change the course of events enough to warrant a real visit from the Doctor. Good thing he’s a fictional character and magic is real, right? Screwdriver, pointed at the map and I cleared my head of distractions. I read the name on the back of the Bernard Louis de Levine and pushed my consciousness out through my arm and into the map.

The lights changed from the dimness of my office to an arial view of the city. I was poised above downtown and had to make sure I didn’t crash my consciousness into any of the buildings. The buildings wouldn’t be worse for wear, but I would have a splitting headache for a week. I said the name again and pushed out my senses into the fabric of the city. I felt a tug to the east end of downtown, near the government building. I let my consciousness follow it until I was poised just above the walking heads. The area was filled with police and I was drawn to a specific head.

Bernard Louis de Levine. Odd. I said the name again, and my disembodied eyes followed the man. He was dressed in a pinstripe suit and carried a briefcase as he walked along in his patent leather shoes. I watched for a minute or two, but he was just walking from the city government center to the federal courthouse. It wasn’t all that interesting and being disembodied was just a little bit chilly. I was about to withdraw and call Rachel to let her know I’d found her husband when I saw a red dress come through the crowd from the opposite direction. It was Rachel de Levine.

She approached her husband with a straight face, reached into her purse, and pulled out a revolver. She aimed the gun straight at her husband and pulled the trigger three times. The muzzle flash and noise sent shivers up and down my disembodied spine and sent my self fleeing back into my body. It slammed back into my body with a shiver and I could do nothing but sit there rocking and trying to deal with the impressive amount of endorphins that were released all at once into my body. With a shaky hand I turned out the burner and crawled over to my couch. I pulled a blanket over me and fell asleep.

The Deal - Part 1 of Fate Adjuster.

2011-10-14T17:20:00.000-04:00

I'm currently writing a short story and wanted to let people know about it. It's mostly so that I can sort out just exactly the character that will be central to my NaNoWriMo book for next month. So here it is, unedited and completely raw. Find it after the break.

-Edit- I've decided to post the rest part by part. I'll make an index et cetera once it's completed.

“Working. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m going to just keep telling myself that. Ignore the stray squiggly lines that are ruining this otherwise perfectly good piece of scrap paper. As long as I keep telling myself that I’m working then no one can really argue with it, can they? At least no one in my head can argue. Although I suppose I could take to arguing with myself. There I go again. Arguing with myself. Wouldn’t that just be quaint.” I almost didn’t realize that I’m arguing with myself aloud. That would have been awkward if anyone had walked in.

It must be an opportunistic day, as that’s what someone proceeded to actually do. I shouldn’t be all that surprised. I do have an office and most days like it when someone decides they need to stop by. See, I’m a fate adjuster. At least that’s what I call myself. The sign on my door says ‘Malcolm Tyler, WizD - Problems Adjusted’. WizD of course stands for Doctorate in Wizardry. Not that I actually have one, but people like to think that I’m accredited by something. Right, there’s a person standing in my office staring at me now. I should probably talk to them, instead of myself.

“Hello, come in, sit down. Have you had your coffee yet today?” Acting a little crazy helps with nailing down some solid business. At least from my experience, people who are ‘progressive’ enough to come to a wizard for problem solving help aren’t looking for someone who looks and acts like an insurance adjuster. I finally looked up at the person who came through the door. Good, not my landlord.

“So what can I coffee for you today?” I smiled a small, not a big one, and no teeth. Teeth can just be downright eerie. You can find out so many things from a persons teeth. Some people think that the soul is stored in the heart. I call that balderdash. The soul is definitely in the teeth. Maybe not all of them, I think canines would be right out, but that’s just my personal feeling on the matter. The person who had come in stood there, staring at me blankly. I often have that affect on people.

I suppose I should actually identify the person I’m staring through. I let my eyes focus and almost immediately was disappointed that I’d let myself ramble. Blonde, leggy blonde. She was too much to take in, not literally of course. She could be a work of art, the skirt she was wearing could have ended wars. The look on her face was certainly one of confusion and I can’t blame her. “Or rather, hello. Have a seat, miss.”

“Madame Rachel de Levine, and I have had my coffee today.” The look on my face must show disappointment, and if I could look in a mirror I’m sure it would be obvious. “And I think, despite my fulfilling my coffee intake during a meeting this morning, I may still need your help. That is if you are what you say you are.”

“Of course I am what I say I am. I am me, you are you, and we’re… wait, you need my help?” The singsong in my voice died as quickly as the synapses in my brain actually processed that this woman actually needed my help. There’s something you should probably understand about what my services usually entail. I’m more of a lost goods finder. I don’t actually get much work in the real field of problem adjusting, and the tone of her voice suggested that she didn’t need me to find a bracelet lost at a party or arranging for a cheating spouse to be caught in the act. “I mean, if you need me to help, it must be very serious. What sort of trouble are you in?”

Making it seem common for me to be dealing with high level problem adjustments seems like it may get me a larger fee for the case. “My husband seems to have disappeared. I’d like for you to find him. What are you usual rates?”

Now we get to the important question. Although likely the husband had just run off with a mistress, although why he would is a mystery that the ages just won’t be able to solve. “For my full attention on your case I charge $1000 a day with a two day minimum plus expenses.” She immediately nods. Usually there’s a jaw dropped or two at that price.

“You’ll need to start immediately. What do you need to start your search?” I expected a little floundering, some haggling, some uncertainty. I received none from her. It definitely was an extraordinary situation. “I can start right away. I just need your husband’s name, his full name, and if you have any of his hair, a toothbrush, or maybe even a blood sample?” No one ever has the blood sample, I suppose that’s because normally I’m looking for objects. Difficult to collect one from something that doesn’t have a working cardiovascular system. That doesn’t make it impossible, just difficult. “And you can start by telling me the last time you saw him and the last time anyone else saw him as well. Did he miss any meetings, go into work late, that sort of thing.”

Mrs. de Levine pulled out a brush in a plastic bag. She had come prepared. That was unusual and a little disturbing. “You’ve done this before?” She nods and passes it over. “Not me exactly, but my grandmother. She recommended you. You might remember her, Eugenia Hart. She spoke very kindly of her after you were able to solve the problem of her missing purse. Said you found it across town in a dumpster and her wallet and watch in the west end of town outside a pawn shop. Seems like a lot of running around to find such small objects. Not only that, but how could you have known where they would be?”

“Magic of course. I just go booga-booga and then poof, I know where they are. Of course it’s a little more difficult, but trade secrets you know, trade secrets. I wouldn’t want everyone opening up as a wizard, it would put me right out of business. Now, if you’ll just leave me a phone number or way to reach you and I’ll get started on this right away.” She pulled out her her purse, and her beautiful hand reached over and extended a business card to me. I took it from her and placed it on my desk.

“I’ll call you when I have something to update you on or to approve expenses.” She proceeded to take her beautiful self, legs and all, and made her way out of my office. I sat there and watched the red dress that was certain to give men both dreams and nightmares. I will likely be one of those men. It would be very difficult to not become one of those men.

My eyes took me back to my desk. She had left a note next to the business card. I picked it up and gave it a quick read. It made absolutely no sense.

Milk

Cheese

Fortune

Yellow bird

Adjustment

Morgue

I didn’t really know what to do with it. Obviously it looked like it was a list of things to do, but why would she be going to the morgue after buying groceries? And that certainly is quite the list. It was at least written in a woman’s hand, the slowly looping curls in the cursive gave that away. If it was Rachel’s hand, then she was equally gracious in more than one aspect. She could also be equally complicit in her husbands disappearance. That wasn’t something I wanted to think about, but until I started down the rabbit hole, there wasn’t much evidence to confirm it.

Green-thinking masked bandits

2011-10-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

So I have raccoon that are frequenting the tree outside my bathroom window. It had previously been only a single one with a long slender noise, beady eyes and a desire to massacre the local bug population. I don't blame it at all. Or, her rather. For she seems to have given birth this last spring and has a little one still tagging along. Two nights ago there were supposedly two little tag-alongs, but I didn't see them. For certain there is one that mom is still dragging around with her.

I probably would have missed them entirely had they not made a ruckus and roused the local canine population (my dogs), who proceeded to bark back at the screeching. Anyway, mom and kid (kit?) hung out and climbed the tree for a while before running off to wherever they make their bed. I'm just happy they don't use our yard for their latrine. I've not smelled it, but by all accounts it can be rather obnoxious to the olfactory sense. I think I'll keep to watching through the window for the time being. I suppose for some people this isn't really that odd of a story. Having local wildlife running through their yard and making a tiff. I'm much more used to the local coed population making noise pollution in the early hours of the morning after the bars close though. For I live in the city, and not anywhere near the country regions.

It made me think though about adaptation. The natural habitat for raccoon is not exactly the backyards in the middle of a city. Maybe if a city contains a very large park they could find some solace there, but I'm not used to sharing the concrete jungle (aside from suburbanites that like to create traffic 'situations'). At least not sharing it with other species (see previous parenthetical).

Indeed I've been thinking quite a bit lately on how we use the space we have. Most of us don't share it very well. Sure, may have little gardens in the backyard, but even just on a cursory look through my neighborhood on walks with the dogs there are very few gardens in backyards that we can see when walking down the alleys. It may be poor statistical methodology, but I would imagine we as a society don't do much more gardening than mowing the lawn.

Photo By: Robert Goodwin

This is saddening. I know with a clock-time society and the increasing disparity in wage structures that many people just don't have the time to commit to gardening, even at a base level. But just think about how many vegetables could be grown, how much we could offset our own carbon emissions by just growing squash in a patch in the yard. Or maybe something that takes up less space. How about a 16 square foot potato garden (just a 4x4 square). Over the summer you can build it vertically and have enough potatoes to make a lot of potato salad. Or maybe some cucumbers and then make pickles. Or some self-contained watering tomato plants. I mean really, there is a lot of innovation of the square foot gardening variety and even a cursory search can give you days and days of reading material.

It's something I would like to try, and hopefully I can convince the association that the sunny part of the backyard could use a good dig up and garden transition. Not for this year, but perhaps for next. Until then I have to figure out what to put in the planters on my porch. I wonder if 2 months is long enough to grow anything with shortening days of sun. Probably not, but I'm not done searching yet and let's hope the squirrels keep out of the pots if I do. The masked bandits I might consider sharing with yet.

Disconnectedness

2011-08-31T13:07:00.004-04:00

Space. I'm not particularly always pleased with the location in space I find myself. It's far too hot for my liking, way too much humidity, and not nearly enough good snow in the winter. It's on these occasions I find it more palatable to remove my consciousness from this spatial location and imagine the pleasant immediate surroundings to be located spatially elsewhere.

It's not that everything in my immediate vicinity causes an angst-ridden existence, but there is certainly enough to cause daily discomfort and dissatisfaction. The suburban feel of the urban is enough to drive me mental on most days. And if I were to try walking more than a couple blocks in any but a handful of very specific directions I would find myself surrounded by the idealization of the American dream. Or at least the one from the 1950s.

For those who know me well, you by now surely know that I don't particularly buy into that dream. There is no white picket fence for which to house the small nuclear family with 2.1 replacement fertility children and a lovable guard/family dog to play inside that fenced in yard. This isn't me saying that the dream itself is ridiculous, realistically without it we would be decreasing in population and that isn't particularly a good direction to move.

What I am saying is that I can't stand it. There's far too much compromise in the faces that I see. Far too much sadness and dissatisfaction with the world. Or maybe it's the face of an absent mind. The question for me is, can happiness actually be obtained in the world of compromised ideas? In a world where the media directs us to what to think and believe? If so, why do we make believe so very much? There seems to be a very basic logic problem. Either I can believe that zombies are real and were invading my neighborhood the other night, or I can suspend my sense and state of being and participate in the illusion that zombies are real and are walking the street.

This question seems to boil down to a very specific point for me. Can we suspend our 'self' from our 'Self' often and long enough to navigate the world around us? The lowercase 'self' in this case is being used to define the person that we show to the world around us. The thoughts, ideas, feelings, and opinions that we choose to share with the social world around us. The uppercase 'Self' is the person that we truly are when we introspectively understand our thoughts, ideas, feelings, and opinions. It's not the person that we share, but it's who we really are.

If we suspend the two from each other and create a large enough disconnect between them, are we just lying to ourselves or to each other? In the same way, who am I lying to when I imagine the space around me to be located elsewhere? Myself or everyone else?

Hallway Photo: jeffk Zombie Photo: Lousiville Zombie Walk

Lights in the dark

2011-08-14T16:21:00.002-04:00

This isn't some ominous post, and I'm not talking about anything high fantasy. There is no ring and no short hairy-footed hobbits that need to toss it in a giant volcano. No, this is far less world changing in sorts.

The electricity went out in my neighborhood and city yesterday. It wasn't until 20 hours later that the power and lights came back on. We weren't particularly prepared for the eventuality of losing power for an extended period of time and had only a single candle in the house. No batteries for the old flashlights to speak of. Just a single candle found as the last rays of sunlight were illuminating the dark streets.

It was the first time in my adult life I'd been without electricity for an extended period of time. Sure, I've had the power go off for a few minutes at a time, but never before 20 hours. I can think of once or twice I've gone without power because I was camping, but that's an intentional choice to be without and care is taken in planning for it.

It got me to thinking about electricity and the roll it plays in our lives. It cools us. It warms us. It cooks our food often enough. It's there with us from the moment we wake up to an alarm clock to the moment we fall asleep to the timer on the radio. We spend so much time using and being with electricity that it's the silent partner to our daily routines. Most people have a cellphone, or a digital phone. Rotary phones are few and far between these days.

It reminds me of the robots in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (Penguin Classics). Only instead of us fighting the robots. We have become part robot - or cyborgs. It's not that we've put computer chips into our bodies, or we run partially on electricity, but rather how we operate and move through life. We have lights in all our rooms for illumination. We have computers, televisions, satellites, cellphones, and DVD players. All of these things have become part of what makes us who we are. Do we fight these inclinations as the humans fight the robots? We certainly do, but at the same time we also embrace the advancements that make our lives easier and more filled.

Social networking for the younger generations is an ever increasing part of this cyborgization. So without electricity for even 20 hours, the pain is easily felt. And I still had my smartphone to get me through the hours. Next time I'll at least have more than one candle.

Absolute Space and Perception

2011-08-04T16:51:00.002-04:00

Isaac Newton had this theory about space and it's absoluteness. He thought that space was basically a giant grid. And objects could be seen to be moving by their change of coordinates basically. It's really not that bad of an idea. Granted, he was eventually shown to be incorrect and now we even know that space itself is moving-sort of. Expanding would be a better word for it.

That concept just blows my mind. How can space, the areas of life that we perceive as empty, be expanding. Scientifically I have fewer issues understanding the concept. The emptiness isn't really empty. On earth it's full of air which is more of a fluid than anything else (next time someone complains that they can't swim remind them that they're constantly swimming in air and watch for the slow reaction of realization). Outside earth space is still filled-sparsely-with molecules, elements and who knows really what else, dark matter maybe. Aside from the obvious issues with scientists not coming up with interesting names ('dark' matter? really?), I tend to run into a conceptual issue with the word 'space'.

For English speakers and likely most of those of Western Europeans ideological descent space is the absence of everything else. At least that's the first reaction typically. It's what is out past that big blue sky. The eternity of nothingness. At least that's what we can perceive with the naked eye. No optical or radio telescopes to assist. Not even a sextant to guide us like Brahe and Havelius in their recordings. How do we understand our universe then?

Perspective.
It's not going to be particularly useful for modern science, but for philosophical exercise and understanding the world it's wonderful. Perspective gives us everything we need. Motion, reference for distance, the ability to place something into our world view. For space it gives us everything we typically need to think about. When we're driving we can judge relative direction and velocity. When we're walking we can gauge how long it's going to to probably take to get somewhere. Riding a bike it let's us anticipate our turns. Sure it's more complicated in our minds when we're collecting and processing the data, but for the most part simple perspective gives us all the information we need.

So Newton wasn't that far off. He had telescopes and ways to record the information, but he still needed perspective. He could still figure out how objects moved. We run into trouble when two objects were moving in the same velocity and direction without anything else to use as reference, and when something was moving at the same velocity and direction, but even general thinking allowed us to sort that out. It becomes more imprecise and with large distances it becomes even more difficult.

Think of it like the beginning of the movie Contact. There's no Jodi Foster in it, just the earth being rapidly zoomed away from in the images passing us by. Smaller and smaller the Earth gets, Mars flies by, Jupiter is there and gone before we blink twice. They become dots. Tiny little dots that aren't any bigger than the dust particles floating around in the air when they catch the light coming in through the window. To even claim some absolute grid of space implies omniscience. Sure, it does the trick, but at the end of the day, we don't know even a millionth of a percent of all there is to know in the universe. And I made that number up, because at the end of the day, without some perspective we can get lost. I'm sorting out what's important to me, and all the space in between, well, it just became relative.

The numbers of writing

2011-08-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

I'm writing a book. I'm not trying to make it a very long book, nor is it non-fiction and requiring an abundance of facts and figures collected from outside sources. It's purely fiction (as pure as fiction can be while rooted in reality). And it's still not easy to do. I have a good idea of where I want to be going with the book, but it's more an exercise in trying to actually write everyday and to a high number of words.

If you figure at only 350 words a page for a 200 page book it's 70000 words. It seems like a lot, and depending on how well I'm writing on any given day I might be able to produce 1000 words. Those are still the good days. I'm hoping for closer to 2000 words a day. I figure if I can average about 750 words a day over the course of a week if I'm doing well and actually able to write in the direction I want the story to go.

So with those numbers and assuming I actually average 750 words a day it will take me 93 1/3 days to write the book. Or, at 5 days a week 18 2/3 weeks. About four and a half months or so. This isn't really fast enough to suit my liking as it's becoming more and more difficult to continue with the book I'm trying to write.

It's one of the reasons I've started writing here as well. I wondered if perhaps my mind was starting to get one dimensional in my writing and I needed to add another facet to my writing to both pursue the other random thoughts bumbling around my mind like the people leaving a bar after last call. In less metaphorical words, randomly with no discernible rationality to them.

That's my question then for today. Is it possible for a person to become too lost in one idea or thought that even it starts to suffer in it's isolation? And does anyone have any tips on how to write more productively?

Cooking chores

2011-07-30T16:01:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I love cooking. It's coming up with what to make that's the chore. I even usually enjoy the time I spend at the grocers picking out produce and meats and mostly people watching. There's never an end to the interesting people you can see at the store.

It's interesting to me to think about all the people in the chain of food process. First we start with the farmers. Ideally, it would be nice to get produce and meats directly from them, but that's not always an easy thing to do. Sure I could buy a cattle and have it butchered, but without a big chest freezer that's impractical and I don't exactly have such a large chunk of change to spend. Produce is easier if there's a farmer's market in the neighborhood, but even that is once a week and can be a little impractical in timing.

The next step-one that I wish was easier to come by-is the butcher and green grocer. I'm not talking about a butcher in a grocery store or the produce section of the store, but rather a store that buys the meats and produce much closer to the source and locally. Fresher product is a fresher dinner. That and you can at least be sure that the money you're spending is at least taking another round in your local economy before getting shipped off to Arkansas. There are other social benefits to this. Getting to know the butcher and green grocer you'll start to know what's freshest, what the nicest cuts are, the freshest fruits and veggies. You'll also get to participate in community building. You may not meet the farmers, but you may know the guy who does.

Maybe it's just something that I like, but knowing who and where my food comes from is nice. I'm not a huge fan of large corporations even while I use them for goods and services. I think I'd need to be an actually economist to know whether or not there is a net negative impact. It's part of society though, so I may take a more thought out go at it eventually, but not today. Today I get to keep paging through cookbooks trying to figure out what to make this week. And until there's a better solution I'll at least buy my groceries at my locally owned grocers. They have the best produce in the area anyway.