NPR 3 Minute Fiction 74E

74E

In some respects I am typical of my time. In my work and life I observe. I analyze. And I don't jump to conclusions. When things happen in this life, you want to make the most of them. But you must be cautious. Like science, proximity can contaminate results. And information is power.
I could drive and spend the money but I like to keep in touch with the average guy so I take the 74E to work. Not that we talk. The bus is early, sleepy and pretty quiet. No one ever talks though some have seen each other for years.
When I get on at Negley the two of them are already on. She always stands towards the front. She's cute. Always wears a skirt. Even in winter. He must get on early; he always has a seat way in the back.
I always stand in the front by her.
Today he got up and worked his way through the standers as usual to get off at the University stop at Morewood. He's geeky looking, tall and thin. But as he passed the girl today he discreetly dropped a letter into her leather shoulder bag. He continued on without a word and got off. Her back was toward him as he passed and she never saw the letter. And she never saw it fall.
I watched for a minute. At first I was concerned it might be some kind of test. Then I waited to see if anyone would call attention to it but no one noticed. So I picked it up and pocketed it. She got off at the hospital on Simmonds, none the wiser.
I could not wait to get to my desk. There were countless fascinating possibilities. Spies. Terrorism. Blackmail. I admit I was a bit disappointed. It was just a love note saying how he had admired her for months and inviting her to coffee at The Coffee Tree in Shadyside tomorrow at 11:00. He was smart enough to enclose a picture and a short bio.
The coffee was a good idea. And midday. If it's a disaster everyone can escape. But for an apparently shy guy it was a risky thing to do. And what will he do when she doesn't show? Will he be angry or just disappointed? And how will he handle next Monday on the bus? Will he ignore her? Will he approach her and question her? Maybe he'll take a different bus.
I'm going to go tomorrow and see what happens. The Coffee Tree is big and open; he'll never notice me. I could bring him the letter and say I found it on the bus and used the picture to find him. I could save the day. He could take the letter and the story to the girl; it could put a better spin on it. We could become close friends.
I think I'll just see what happens. It could be fun.

Penitent Rap

Leave a message after the beep....

Hey, hey, Father, is that you there?
You always seemed to me to be a guy who'd care.
It's been quite a while since my last confession   
And I guess this moment here will be a useful lesson.
Like, does this count, recorded and all?
Can I really be forgiven with just this call?
We have group confessions now; we confess to us
Just sitting in the church without a fuss.
If I confessed from a steeple or maybe a tree,
Or a building or a pulpit, would I be free
Of the guilt I hope to purify?
Would my good intentions be enough to sanctify
My soul, and set my mind at ease?
Or does ritual and pageantry please
God more, and help to make my regrets more real
So the circumstances are the things that seal the deal?

It doesn't seem right that God would change with times
But I know we do, and that the crimes
Of one time are not the crimes of another.
Like now it's no crime to take the wife of your brother.
So Hamlet's tragedy might be partially caused
By the local traditions, quirks of the laws
That in any other time might not be so grave.
So Ophelia and Hamlet--they might be saved
If the setting had just been another place or time.
Order would not have a reason or rhyme
To destroy them so. It's not so great a sample.
Claudius kills the king. I guess it's not a good example.

Father, you know I am sincere
And I certainly can say that I respect and fear
The consequences of my acts in God's eye:
Eternal damnation should I die
Without his forgiveness. Who would dare
To take a chance like that? But, to be fair,
There are thinkers who say we should randomly act
Because all acts are equal, and that's a fact.
But you could equally say we should be inert
Because God's mind is unknown and if He's hurt
He'll punish your immortal soul with death.
Immortal death, alone in space with nothing beneath
Or around or above
Estranged and isolated from God's love.
Maybe when we die the soul still stays
With the corpse in the ground and always
Is mixed with its fraying mortal cloak
That hangs about it like some ironic joke.
Better we're buried like Indians were, in a stand or tree--
In the air, at least. I saw that in a movie.

Father, you should know what I want to do
And what made me want to talk to you.
"By their fruits you shall know them" is troubling me.
Does that mean an apple's from an apple tree?
Or a good act is the product of a soul that's good?
That's simple enough. That's understood.
Or does it mean more? Could it be
The parent's the cause and someone like me
Is passive in what I can be or do;
That nothing in my family can ever be new,
But will repeat itself again and again,
And no one can escape a family's stain?

I'm an angry fruit from an angry tree.
The fruit is what I do and the tree is me.
What I am and do, it must be one.
Whatever I do, it must be done.
The fruit and the tree are really the same,
Father and son with a different name.
I'm sorry to go on like some Mad Hatter.
So let me get right to the meat of the matter.
I really don't want you to think I'm sick.
So, here's what I'm planning, I'm going to...Click

NPR 3 Minute Story: 3-D

3-D

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. It was time.

"Burn it," she said to her handler.

She reviewed the instructions once more in her mind: Out the door and right, thirty-five steps, left, eight steps across the street, forward forty-three steps, left, four steps, turn right and stop at street edge, at the phrase "Good afternoon, Excellency" fire twice from her handbag gun directly ninety degrees left, 0 degrees up from her breast level, step into the car in front of her.

Braille instructions could be very economical. And precise.

As was she. Confines, structure--those things violated by fire--drew her like a moth to colorless, sometimes textured, shape. The blind have a love of geometry. With numbers, it is one of the few things in the sighted world that makes sense. She recalled for a moment her love of the wooden geometric blocks she played with as a child at the Blind School, the spheres, cones and cubes. How she hated it when one became chipped or lost its sharp edge. In her mind a circling bird of prey carved out a tight circle in the sky, the base of his cone of sight, the apex his huddled target.

Of course she had never seen a bird of any type. But she understood the cone.

In all eleven assassination attempts she had been successful in, only once had a witness ever insisted the assassin was blind. Seemingly people could not believe their eyes. They were blind to her.

She had no love for the irony; women don't appreciate irony much. But she loved the architecture, the precision required. She heard a television show once, Discovery Channel maybe, and the recorded voices of several men on a Cousteau ship watching an orca. Over a mile in the distance a shark trailed a pod of porpoises looking for placenta or miscarriages. The orca dove and the amazed sailors described him. He was not tracking the shark; he did not adjust his course. He had calculated where the shark would be in time and space and met him there in the completion of a beautiful, bloody triangle.

She did that. Usually she was more queen bee than shark or hawk; her handlers usually brought her prey to her. It was easier but unnecessary. Her understanding of angles and planes was so fine she had killed accurately from thirty yards away.

She trembled ever so slightly as she smelled the book burning. The evidence. The blind also have great regard for trust.

She opened the door, felt the sun on her face, tightened her grip on her purse and her cane, turned right and began to count.

NPR 3 Minute Story: Homesteader

Homesteader 2 She closed the book, placed it on the table and finally decided to walk through the door. Or in the door. She was not sure which. She knew what to expect. The three "Advisers', "Advisers of The Human Experiment" they called themselves in unison--they always spoke in unison, had given her explicit description of the process, reiterated in the book in a surprisingly cartoonish way. The door would be heavy, on opening it there would be a red glow, when she stepped through she would experience that upsetting nausea of the downside of a roller coaster. Then she would be there. Apparently the River of Time and such figures of speech had a certain accuracy. Time seemed to have a kind of force or structure and intervention was like fitting a foot into a shoe too small; it required effort and caused a reaction, force for force. When she asked if it was history that had the force or rather time itself--like gravity--the three Advisers laughed uproariously and together cried "Good, Good" in either congratulations or simple approval, as with a favorite pet. The Advisers tried to explain further but usually got sidetracked, bemoaning the difficulties created by the modern world; too much was known about people now. And the social networks! The Advisers needed low profile people of quality who could be inserted into history without suspicion; they could not be missed from their time and their entrance into history should create only a ripple. On the other hand, the anomie of the modern world led to surprisingly ready defection. Unfulfilled in the present, anxious about the future, many capable people were willing to go back in time. With growing governments and corporations and shrinking individuals the past was being seen as a "time of opportunity." One could live a life. According to the Advisers, there was a long queue developing. They began to refer to them as "immigrants." Nostalgia could be proactive. Some saw a future in the past. She felt this way; she and most of her friends were loathe to bring a child in to such a confined and dangerous world and longed for a time and place where childbirth could be optimistic, regardless of how primitive. And she loved the idea of the adventure, of participating in slight improvements that might make the discouraging present more appealing. The Advisers spoke glowingly, and synchronously, about small changes in early agriculture and smelting that had worked their way to the present. A young geographer had become a minor help to Philip the Navigator. "Nothing dramatic. Just a nudge," the Advisers would say, synchronously, and smile, synchronously. Apparently that wasn't always the case--Tiberius' goldsmith who developed aluminum had not gone well--but generally people sent back adapted and, if anything, the goldsmith's lesson was, indeed, "nothing dramatic, just a nudge". Once comfortable with the inconveniences and with care of disease and awareness of war, most "immigrants" settled in well. This was good because there was no rescue, no recall. Those few entrepreneurs who hid artifacts in prearranged places for their families to retrieve and profit from in the present were tolerated. "I hope my being French isn't bad luck,' she had said, thinking of Joan. The Advisers had collectively shaken their heads and tittered. They had denied Joan of Arc was an immigrant--or Shakespeare--but always enjoyed the joke. She looked back at the book one last time and took a deep breath. She adjusted her clothes then pulled on the heavy door. There was a rose mist visible through the crack as it opened.