WRITE Your Own Story: The Sun Also Rises for Writers

Timmy and Melanie continued to stare at the... well, whatever the hell it was that was occupying what was normally Timmy's room for another couple of seconds before either of them could muster any more words. It's doubtful anyone could do anything but stare for a few seconds upon seeing what they saw. Eventually the initial awe passed and they started trying to process what they were seeing.

"So, just to be sure," said Timmy, "You're seeing this too, right? This isn't just my head going into la-la land?"

"Yeah," said Melanie, "I'm seeing it too. Now, question is, what exactly is this?"

While the door frame and the door itself were still looking fairly normal, the room on the other side had been replaced by... for a lack of better words to describe it, a colorful swirly energy... bit of space. It was hard to tell from here if there was any shape or bound to the... room? Area? Interdimensional Hyperspace Pocket? It wasn't even clear if it had a ground, or a ceiling. It looked like it was possible to enter, but it wasn't really easy to tell how to actually move around inside of it.

Timmy stared at the key for a second, which was still in the door. It didn't take a big leap of logic to figure out that it was probably responsible for opening the door to this... place.

"Just... just what the hell IS thing? How does it work, how does it open a door to this Swirly... Acid-Trippy..... place, for lack of a better word, instead of to my room? Is it, like, magic or something?"

Melanie thought for a second and then said, "I'm trying to think of a non-magical explanation for this and I can't come up with anything other than top-secret government... thing... that somehow ended up on a sidewalk for you to find, or aliens. Currently leaning towards aliens, magic seems about as likely. Maybe... magic aliens? Or something?"

"What exactly is this, anyway? Some kind of portal?"

"Your guess is as good as mine... I can't really think of any way to find out without actually going in there and looking."

"That sounds a bit dangerous, we don't have any idea what could be in there..."

"You're telling me! Think we should... tell anyone else about this? Like, is there anyone else who might be better-suited for exploring weird... dimensional portals or whatever this is?"

"Is ANYONE well-suited to exploring dimensional portals? This sort of thing doesn't exactly just pop up on street corners every day."

"True, but surely someone out there is less poorly-suited than us. I mean, we go in there, we probably get eaten by ghosts or something."

"I guess... but who exactly could we tell? It's not like you can just call anyone up and say 'Hey, there's this swirly energy place where my room used to be, can you help me?' Anyone we told would think we were just messing with them or totally tripping balls or something."

"Good point... we could try to get someone to come here for some other reason, but we're still not sure how this thing works. Maybe it returns to normal after a few minutes, maybe the key doesn't always open to this place... we really don't know how all of this works."

"I was thinking that too... and that I kind of want to figure out how exactly it works, through trial and error if nothing else. And, besides, while I know this... thing... could be dangerous..."

"You kind of want to see what's in there?"

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

"Yeah... I kind of want to see what's in there myself..."

They continued staring at the place on the other side of the door. It was... cool-looking, if nothing else, and it didn't immediately look like there was anything that could kill them in there, although maybe there were invisible ghosts that would eat them, or something.

Timmy decided to poke the box containing his sandwich into the place a bit, just to make sure it wouldn't vaporize or anything. It did look a little bit weirder when it was partially in there, and it also felt like a lot lighter, almost weightless, but after pulling it out, it looked completely untouched. The sandwich also looked just fine.

"Well, it looks like it's okay to at least walk a few steps in there and have a quick look around... what do you think?"

"Yeah... but, just in case, I'd rather not spend too much time in there, at least not now... maybe take a quick look now, a slightly longer one tomorrow if it looks reasonably safe?"

"Sounds good to me... but just in case we need a quick escape, do you have anything we could use for a rope, or something?"

"I guess I could go tie some bedsheets together..."

"Couldn't hurt, could it?"

Melanie agreed, and went back to her room to go get some bedsheets. Timmy spent most of the time waiting for her to return by eating his sandwich, finishing the last of it right around the same time she had come back with a makeshift rope made out of bedsheets.

"Think I should throw this box in and see if something eats it, or something?"

"Assuming this weird place doesn't have any kind of littering problem, and it sure doesn't look like it, couldn't hurt, could it?"

Timmy threw the box into the swirly energy place as hard as he could. It went for a while... then kept going... and going... and going... and going, fading off into the distance, seeming to move more or less in a straight line.

"Well, that's good to know- apparently there's no gravity in there. We're probably going to need that bedsheet-rope. It's tied together well, right?"

"Yeah, I think so..."

"So... who goes first?"

"Flip a coin, loser goes in first?"

"Sounds good to me..."

Geeze, Choxorn contributed twice!

I'm still on the fence on this .

CivGeneral said:

Geeze, Choxorn contributed twice!

I'm still on the fence on this .

Click to expand...

Resistance is futile.

NinjaCow64 said:

Resistance is futile.

Click to expand...

But my writing sucks compared to the ones here and I'll just be an intrusion anyway .

CivGeneral said:

But my writing sucks and I'll just be an intrusion anyway .

Click to expand...

I doubt your writing would suck and even if it does we wouldn't mind. Heck, my writing isn't that good anyway.

I've been hanging out with TB too long. I read 'Timmy' and immediately think Turner.

I figured one of you might think that...

I would say that's where the name came from but... it didn't come from that, it was just "sure, this name sounds okay" and I ended up going with it.

Benjamin Gabriel sat on the doorstep to his apartment, watching the occupiers march past as he munched on a delightfully prepared Ham and Swiss from the local Tim Hortons with the slightest hint of mayo. From his point of view it was one of the few high points to moving to Ottawa, away from his home in Peterborough. After all, there was a certain pressure to be felt when trying to find a job in a bilingual city but for whatever reason he could order a Ham and Swiss sandwich without worrying about the person responsible globbing it on like they do in Peterborough.

But then there was also the Gnome occupation... that really was a bit of an issue.

For nearly 2 years the Gnomes had controlled Canada, digging up all the neat rock formations that Ben enjoyed looking at on his drive out to work and turning them into more gnomes. The oppression was one thing and the personal freedoms that the gnomes worked so hard to stamp out were difficult enough, but it was also incredibly hard to go anywhere without tripping over a gnome. Truly gracious hosts to the end, the Canadians always felt horrible when finding one of their diminutive occupiers underfoot. This would always prompt a hasty exchange of apologies followed by silent orders to report to the local work camp.

But the Ham and Swiss was downright delectable.

this

you just

it's



Game over, man! Game over!!

I began to think I might've physically bonded to the armchair, given how long I'd been slouching in it. Mug hooked loosely around index and middle finger, it teetered on the edge of the armrest, half-finished contents icy cool, a coincidental (but no less delicious) metaphor of my artistic motivation. Truth be told, I couldn't remember how long I'd been sitting there, time register having shut off and eyes only casually noting the passing pedestrian traffic. It took my colleague a thwack to the shoulder to restore me to full consciousness.

"You've been immobile for a whole five minutes," he said. "Something wrong?"

"I have become my sworn enemy," I muttered, gaze still fixed ahead. "D'you know how many webcomics I've read that make the rookie mistake of lobbing their core cast into some world-spanning power play after the first arc? I mean—" I leaned forward, and an audible crack sounded as my jacket peeled away from the faux-leather padding; "I knew all the warning signs, and yet out of some sort of willful blindness I still did it! Me! Mr. Nonconformity!" I jabbed my chest with my left hand.

"So, you've diagnosed the problem; what's your remedy?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be wallowing here." I settled back into the chair's sweaty embrace. "I bit off too much, too far, too fast. At this point it might be easier to torch it all. Maybe if I'd narrowed the focus, saved all the conspiratorial claptrap for further in. Half of these I don't even know where I was going in the first place." I reflexively took a swig from the mug, froze as my palate registered the un-hot chocolate, and covertly replenished the reservoir.

"Sounds like you're thinking of a reb—"

"I mean, if only there was some way I could just... start over, you know? Reset the parameters and try again?"

"Like a reb—"

"Hold that thought," I interjected, "What time is it?"

He pushed back his sleeve. "1438 hours."

"Drat." I was on my feet in an instant. "That livestream playthrough should've started thirteen minutes ago and he didn't even call me!"

Bidding a hasty adieu I tore through the hallway and slid into the IT room so fast I nearly side-checked the inner wall. But rather than the half-dozen backseat gamers I'd expected to find, Misha sat alone at the far end, and judging by his expression he was either playing Sonic '06 or no game at all.

"Don't tell me I missed it?" I called.

"No, the show's cancelled until stupid Windows re-learns how to run itself," he grumbled. As I joined his side I found him troubleshooting through DOS; pretty much the polar opposite of a good omen. "System froze up right as we were setting up the recorder, now it won't recognize the graphics card. You know how many times I've had to reb—"

"Kinda wish I could work that into my story," I mused, "'Hacker with a Hand-Me-Down PC'. Buuut, I'm in something of a BSOD myself right now."

"Oh?" he turned to face me, "What's up?"

"Not so much writer's block as a logjam. Got flooded with ideas and now I can't even disentangle the mess."

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" he smirked. "Speaking of..." He frowned as whatever diagnostic tool he'd been running apparently froze for the umpteenth time. He pounded the small button just above the desktop's power button several times and the machine restarted.

I watched the ritual bemusedly. "I wonder how the professionals do it," I asked aloud, "How they just... take the old world and start it afresh?"

"You mean like a reb—"

"I'm gonna think on this some more. Call me if you get it fixed."


My method of meditation that afternoon was to binge on an old Canadian CGI cartoon set, somewhat ironically given the previous scenario, in the world of computers. The present episode was in the midst of one of the show's iconic conflicts: the never-seen, god-like 'User' just dropped a giant cube called a 'Game' on a city sector. In order to better survive the environment, our heroes took on personae suited to the setting by double-tapping the badges ('icons') on their chest and shouting the titular catch-phrase:

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

"ReBoot!"

It must have been how Newton felt, sitting under that tree. For a moment, I was in something of a daze, index and middle fingers subconsciously tapping my chest. I came to with a start, pausing the TV and leaping from the chair so fast I think the cushion followed. I was halfway across the building in the blink of an eye, grabbing my colleague by the shoulders and hopping up and down like I'd just won the lottery.

"Reboot!" I cried.

"What?" he mumbled, still trying to process how I'd appeared before him.

"I figured it out! Reboot!"

"Reboot!" he grinned, catching up.

"Reboot!"

"Yes!"

Finally letting him go, I spun this way and that in a state of pure euphoria. "I mean, it's so obvious now, I can't believe I missed it!"

"I can—"

"It's so simple!" I gestured wildly. "All these plots stay in their separate universes, but they interface with each other through a common cyber-dimension! It doesn't matter how incongruous the stories are because they're both non-canon and true canon at the same time!! ...It's the perfect crime!"

The expression on his face was priceless.