 Fantasy: November 03, 2010 Issue [#4047] |
  Fantasy
This week: Androids: One Version of the Future Edited by: shaara
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1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
As one of your Fantasy editors, my goal is to challenge you to think outside the KNOWN and to help you inject your tales with fascinating facts while jagging left and right through troublesome frolics and teethe-writhing dilemmas.
Perhaps we can help each other to safely jog through these twisty turns of radical thought, alternate viewpoint, and dynamic detail. Come! Let's head down the Path of Dimensions, untextured by any earthly array.
In other words,
let's drop out of reality for awhile.
Shall we?
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Androids: One Version of the Future
Two girls were walking along the side of a friendly babbling brook. My eyes took in their identical pigtailed braids of chestnut brown. The girls' faces displayed their youth - second grade or there--about, freckled innocence, clear-green eyes, heart-shaped sweetness.
The girls were walking past me, hand in hand. I wondered if they were twins, although I could tell they were not quite identical; the one on the right had a more compact body. She moved more athletically than her sister/friend on the left.
Something about them puzzled me. I stopped and turned about. The girls were watching me, too, their eyes as serious as if I'd just asked them a multiplication problem -- one they were having difficulty figuring out.
I started to speak, to ask if everything was okay. Where were their parents? Why were the girls in such a lonely spot, unaccompanied by an adult? My words remained unframed. My eyes had been called to the wrist of the nearer child. It was dripping. Was that blood?
I stepped closer, worried. Had the child become injured? Did the children need my help?
"Warning, warning," a canned voice blared out.
That stopped me, of course. Everyone knows the sound of an android alarm.
I nodded and turned about, but my eyes looked back, scanning the bleeding wrist a final time. Not blood, I realized then, but rust. The morning dew had blended with the android's decaying plasticine pseudo skin. The android was in the early stages of decomposition, its long "lifetime" almost at an end.
The two girls continued walking, their heads together in muffled whispers and giggles. I spied a bench and planted myself, all the better to watch as the two trod further down the path.
The heavy silence of their departure filled my heart with sadness. I sighed heavily, remembering how my impoverished parents had been forced to sell my android, an older model that had still been my best friend.
I sighed again and listened to the flow of the babbling brook. On my right, a brown speckled woodpecker was hammering away at an old oak tree.
I opened my eyes. The sound wasn't a woodpecker, but the alarm clock demanding that I rise from the warmth of my bed.
Blurry-eyed, I sat up.
My images of the android pal I'd once had and of the rusting freckled child-android still seemed vivid. It was as if they were more real than the awakening alarm.
I shut my eyes and once more recalled the dream's memories of how much I'd relied on Franklin, how he'd been so much a part of my life from birth, constantly beside me -- attentive, protective. At least until my father lost his job, and the android was sold.
Those were only dream fragments, I reminded myself, but the bitterness in my mouth tasted of uncooked acorns. I wanted to spit, or atleast to hurl my pillow across the room and slam it against the wall --- and the injustice of it. The loss of Franklin burned my throat and heart.
"The poor get only remnants - older models, androids not well-assembled or assembled with recycled parts that keep breaking down," I whispered.
Then I shook my head. Only a dream, a dream. As such wisps of imagination always do, the images slowly slipped away, taking with them my anger, my heart-ache, my disillusionment . . .
Then came Saturday, the day I judge the Writer's Cramp I sipped my coffee as I read the prompt left by the judge of the day before. And then I gasped. Memories slapped me again. The pain came rippling back.
Life is full of coincidences some may say. Others discount such beliefs and claim that there are no coincidences. Either way, it was very odd. I shivered, I judged. Then I wrote down these thoughts.
Androids. They're coming. Will we be ready? Will all of us have a steadfast android pal? And will the poor still suffer from having a cheap rip-off, an antiquated model, or even worse, encounter the horrible collection agency that might repossess a best friend, their childhood android?
P.S. I hope you enjoy the collection of featured items today. They are all android tales- all of them quite different from my dream - but all possibilities for a future, a future that will indubitably contain androids.
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Nov. 3 Fantasy Featured:
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#1718556 by Not Available. |
What if in the future when robotics becomes more common - when androids walk beside and among us, what if the goal of humans is to become more like androids?
Words and jibes just slide
right on past my shiny pride.
The mechanical woman
mimicking life could be me.
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#1718563 by Not Available. |
The following poems leads the reader to another sharp image of the future of the same androids.
What happens on the day they rebel, demanding not to be our slaves ?
Nay I REFUSE!
life given for selfish thought
hooded lusts
tampered lips
trysts are not I
piano keys dub
energetic-evolutionary
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Suppose that familiarity makes a person choose to keep an android. . . This is an interesting variation on the upgrade syndrome.
Karen paused, giving the impression of thought, "I've spent the last ten years with you, learning you. This morning you needed to be reminded of how well I've been formed to fit your needs. You needed to lose yourself in the moment."
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#1718752 by Not Available. |
The following tale is actually a manual for how to buy, assemble, and utilize an android. However, the ending is quite surprising.
Make sure they sent the proper model. You paid good money for the perfect woman. You shouldn't settle for less just because some foreigner in a shipping warehouse doesn't know the difference between 'B' and 'D'. Appreciate the feeling of power this thought will bring.
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| |  | Moons of Hizara (13+)
Writer's Cramp Entry- Two moons in a distant land serve as catalysts for the lives of all.
#1718879 by Henry   |
The following story presents an interesting variation on alien differenceness. On this planet the two moons control society. To attempt an examination of its rules leads to death.
Many a brave soul had tried to stay and watch the red moonrise of Raz, tried to make the crossing. Their fate was always the same. The people of Zevin's village usually found them the next day, shriveled and black. Their mouths were always twisted and amiss, as if their last actions were cries of agony.
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Here's another tale of multiple moons. I'm glad we don't live on that planet!
It was the season of war. Slow Krah was rising redly in the west, and our armies marched to meet it. I was no soldier, I didn't have the build. Few females do. Males make the best fighters, of course, and neuters are the captains. The generals, though, now they're usually chosen from those few females who fight; I say that makes up for the rest of us.
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#791128 by Not Available. |
Suppose one day in the future, it wasn't parents who did most of the raising of the kids . . .
I loved to sit and listen to my great, great grandmother. She made up the best stories.
"Long ago and far away on the planet Earth, there used to be real Christmas trees," she'd always start off, as I curled up in her cozy, warm lap.
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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Comments from the October 6th Fantasy Newsletter
LJPC - the tortoise
Hi Shaara!
I'm afraid that my weirdest emails usually have to due with spam advertising male performance-enhancing drugs. But I loved your long litany of reactions to yours. Keep those toes and fingers warm, and for heaven's sake, get the kittens off your back! It was very funny and enjoyable. Thanks!
-- Laura
Thanks for the praise. I'm delighted you enjoyed it! Thanks for writing.
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Cynaemon 
Ahhh, but Southern California is another world, on another planet. I speak from personal experience, having been born and raised here. Hoping to make planetfall one fine day. A Southern California girl.
Ah, true! Unpredictable, varied, and crazy, but home. Sigh.
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A thinker never sleeps
Interesting newsletter. I never thought of those sort of emails in that way before.
Now that I've "opened your eyes," you'll have to find one that inspires you to write. LOL
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writetight
I enjoyed your October 6 Fantasy Newsletter Shaara. The question you asked at the end, "What is the strangest e-mail you ever got?
What story did it inspire?", reminded me of one of the first items I posted on WDC. Though not an e-mail, it was from a BBS chat area: | | | Invalid Item
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#550577 by Not Available. |
Fiction created from a moment of reality.
Ah, that's such a sweet story!
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A.T.B: It'sWhatWeDo
Recommending | | | The Heart of a Star (E)
The poetic and moving tale of star in the deep reaches of the universe. (555 Words)
#1713138 by csd |
I came across this short, beautifully written piece...can't quite remember exactly where, but it has an excellent sense of personification, irony, and that cosmic twist that always appeals to me. It reminded me a great deal, actually, of something I've written - looking at stars in a more human light - pun only marginally intended. "Terra Nova" is a good bit larger and from a character's perspective, but it's always nice to see another writer's excellent work on a parallel path as some of my own. Thanks for another great NL, Shaara. Best always ~A.T.B.
What a wonderful tale. I love stories that make us think about things in a different way!
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BIG BAD WOLF is Howling 
Recommending:
I haven't had any emails that made me want to write a story, but I have seen some strange emails.
The strangest of these are these things called "Newsletters". They pop up every week, just as I get done with the last batch.
Well, partners, get ready for a Western with cowboys and werewolves!
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A.S. Hendra [Job-Searching]
Now, that's quite an experience. I probably won't open the email, though. I'll be worried it contained deadly virus to unlock my dearest laptop's life .
I agree. Those viruses spoil all our fun. Who knows what fascinatingly curious critters lie between those nasties!
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Tadpole1 
Dear Spooky Shaara,
What a splendid post! It's poetry with scratching kittens and uplifting humor. It was absolutely delicious from the beginning to the end.
Smiles,
Tadpole1
As always, you're the best. Thanks for liking my humor. Shucks! You just made my day!
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P.S.
Hey! If this is the "Ask and Answer Section," how come no one ever asks me a question?
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Oh, well.
See you next month!
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Shaara
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