[stylist] Writing prompt

[Jacobson, Shawn D]

Here's a story that I originally submitted for an NFB writing contest and refurbished.  It definitely has some fantasy elements in it.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Shawn Jacobson
Mathematical Statistician
Phone# (202)-475-8759
Fax# (202)-485-0275

The Faerie Choice
by Shawn Jacobson

Once back in the day, one of our professors theorized that faeries led cattle to higher ground before thunderstorms so they wouldn't drown.  Rather than keeping this idea to himself, as good sense would demand, he wrote a letter to the editor of the largest newspaper in the state.
Well, you can guess what happened.  Everyone from the alumni association to the campus Bible study got up in arms about it.  Some alumni said the letter was an embarrassment to the university.  Some people thought it was evidence of the decline of rational thought at our great university, a sign of degeneration and imminent doom.  Still others said it just proved that these academic types lived in a world of their own and needed their heads aired out, preferably by a psychoanalyst.
The whole thing climaxed when the regent's meeting, originally called to discuss dorm fees, was hijacked by the various intellectual combatants. The result was a shouting match where the usual people said the usual things about academic freedom, scientific inquiry, and public good. At least, that's what my older brother, who claimed to be there, said.
Eventually, people moved on to the next scandal, I believe it had something to do with steroids.  In time a general consensus arose that having a nutty professor around added some character to the university making it more than just another cow college.  In a sane world, this would have been the end of the matter.  Yet, with the funky persistence of fish odor, the letter lived on taking its place in urban legend.
It should not have surprised me at all the mad Merrill would have gravitated to the letter.  Don't get me wrong, the man was a certifiable genius.  Had he not been certifiable in other ways, he might have been teaching at someplace like MIT or Cal Tech.  No one said he was crazy, (you don't use that word for someone that smart).  Instead, they used words like eccentric, unorthodox, and maverick, to describe his work.  So it surprised me not at all that he had developed a way to test the theory at the heart of old Dr. Griffin's letter by seeking out the realm of faery.  What surprised me was that I had decided to help.
For that I have Tim to thank.  "Hay Joe," he said, "you're into fantasy and all that stuff.  Why don't you come to Dr. Merrill's office with me and here about his new experiment; I promise you'll be blown away."
I'd talked to Tim about my graduate work in the English department.  The point of my thesis was that space aliens were the faerie folk of the technological age.  The work was too good, and too fun, to be true.  Best of all, I could read authors like Gaimen, Yolen, Bradburry, and Swanwick and tell my mom that it was for my school work.  I had no idea that my work would get me out here, literally in the field, to play with a bunch of other crazies as a truly terrifying storm moved above us.
"Hello" a voice boomed breaking my reverie "what you guys doing?"
"Science" replied Dr. Merrill "very important research."
"Same here" replied the voice "we're storm hunting. We heard that there was a big one just north of Boone, a twister, maybe half a mile wide.  We're checking it out.  We should get some great data and some awesome photos; real front page stuff."
"Good luck" replied Dr. Merrill as the storm chasers drove off.
"No one left but us fools" commented Dr. Jones, the campus skeptic.
"So" replied Dr. Merrill "Are you including yourself?"
"Hey" the skeptic replied "I got to see this.  I might even write an article about it in my newsletter.  I've just finished a piece about Baptists who think that God will protect their church from lightning, so they don't need lightning rods; I might be able to put together a special issue.  I could call it 'Wackies VS wild weather'."
"He's such a good writer" chimed in Amanda, his assistant.  "His peace on Dr. Goode the psychic and the radio in his ear was a classic."
"I'm sure it is" replied Tim as he scurried about hooking up Dr. Merrill's various arcane machines doing marvels with tape, clamps, pliers and other tools that would have made Merlin green with envy.  "If it ever comes out in Braille, I'll have to read it."
Tim made the last connection putting together a mess that would have fit into from Dr. Frankenstein's yard sale.  The main piece in all of this was the electron flipper, a gismo that looked like an oversized grill with connections to a lot of other stuff, a generator, a range finder, a generator and a bunch of other stuff.
Dr. Merrill had explained it to Tim and me the previous week.  Dr. Merrill had explained that spinning an electron once got you an upside-down electron.  You had to spin it again to get pointing in its original direction.  He theorized that there was an alternate reality where the electron was right side up after one spin.  This, he theorized, was where Dr. Griffin's faeries might live.
I pulled myself back to the moment and fired up the computer.  "You're a magician out there" I said to Tim as I invoked a wizard to connect the computer to the range finder.
"It's engineering" he replied "best damned magic in the world."  He sat down and asked in a shaky voice "could you hand me a beer?  I've always been willing to do anything for someone who will give a blind guy a chance; now I'm not so sure that was wise."  Tim seemed worries that I wouldn't be the only one blown away by Dr. Merrill's latest experiment.
As I invoked the powers in the computer to align the system, Dr. Merrill and his assistant Beth talked about dark energy, thought forms, strange matter astral projections, charmed quarks and planes of existence.  Where the physics left off and the occult stuff began I couldn't tell, so I contemplated Clarke's law, that any sufficiently advanced, or weird, science is indistinguishable from magic.
"Time to test the system" I said finishing my computer wizardry.
"We're ready here" Dr. Merrill said as I pointed the field projector, a contraption that looked like a cannon, capped by a magnifying glass, at an empty stretch of field.
"Testing it now" I replied as I clicked the start icon.  A droning sound, like a hive of disturbed hornets, arose and something that wasn't light began to gather at the target.  Suddenly, a patch of strangeness appeared about thirty feet in front of the projector.  The black thunderheads that had been wallowing across the sky looked even darker viewed through the, whatever it was, than they had before.
"We're drilling right into the astral plane" cried Dr. Merrill with the profound joy of lunacy.
"Looks empty to me" Dr. Jones replied "it looks like the faeries are staying in where it's dry.
Suddenly a bolt of lightning lit up the sky on the other side of the dark region we had projected.  The new territory, or maybe the darkness within, seemed to act as a prism breaking the light into a fearful spectrum that also expressed the darker colors of the rainbow, a sight more awfully wondrous than beautiful.
"You can turn that off now" Dr. Jones said with a voice trembling with awe, or perhaps with fear.
I played around with direction and field width to make sure I know how the controls worked.  Then, to Dr. Jones relief, I clicked off.
"Be on the lookout for strange behavior from the cows" admonished Dr. Merrill as Tim went back to checking the connections and I made sure everything worked.  The sky continued to darken.  Clouds with great black distended bellies full of rain crowded a sky that felt ten months pregnant with a storm; I was sure that the water would break at any minute.
Ironically, it was Tim who noticed something happening.  "Hay folks!" he exclaimed; the cattle sure sound upset."
"OK, turn it on!" yelled the physicist.  I hastily fumbled with the keys to get maximum width and tried judging how far it was to the milling herd.  I hit start and gasped.
The droning began again and the preternatural dark was back, but this time it wasn't empty; beings, faeries I suppose, flitted about the cattle using prods, or were they magic wands, to get the attention of the beasts and to move them towards a low hill in the middle distance; it seemed to be working.
As for the, well call them faeries for want of a better word, they were small, I'd say between six inches and a foot tall with iridescent wings; they shimmered against the bizarre darkness.  The ones herding the cows seemed dressed like cowboys as envisioned by Disney; the one supervising, the faerie queen I called her for it was definitely a she, was not dressed at all as if clothes would not dare trespass upon the golden beauty of her body.
"The next time you run this," Professor Jones quipped striving to stifle the reverence in his voice "you should get a grant from Playboy to study nymphs."
I think his attempt at humor was meant to shore up his battered fortress of rationality; what it got him was a slap in the face from Amanda.
"I don't think this is going in any skeptic's magazine" muttered Tim.
I continued to scan the scene, the weird cattle drive, the rationalist losing his reason, the academic discussion between Dr. Merrill and his assistant now suspended by high weirdness.  The faerie queen then turned and it seemed she was looking directly at me saying "I at least thought you had enough sense to come in out of the rain."  Suddenly, thunder blasted through the gravid air with a sound like the world being sundered and torrential rain slammed down from the sky.  We were instantly soaked.

.............................................

I don't remember much that happened after that save that we lived through it.  I do remember that the tortured electronics gave out and the electron flipped exploded sending balls of actinic fire into the sky, but from where I was at the time it seemed like nothing more than a Roman candle burning in the storm.
I had gotten up from my computer and walked into the astral plane, or wherever it really was, that evening and had conversed with the faerie queen and her people.
People have asked what this was like, the police who rescued us from the storm, my parents, reporters from the local newspaper, even Dr. Merrill and Dr. Jones before his premature retirement.
However, I have never been able to give justice to just what happened.  It all seems to have transpired in some dream state where we talked in the language of spirits and angels.  To translate these things into English seems akin to trying to translate the works of Shakespeare into COBOL, or some other language meant for mere machines.  I seem to have sensed a playful affection from the faery queen and I seem to have picked up the impression that the faerie folk cared deeply about all of us, but this I am interpreting and the whole interpretation process seemed fogged in dubious comprehension.
Tim was the first person to hear a coherent version of the tale.  This might have had something to do with being drunk, perhaps that breaks down some of the berries, or maybe that the time had come for the message from the other side to be made clear, I really don't know.
"You're not going to pose the question to the world are you?" he asked in a slurred voice.  We had both at several beers too many and neither of us was real clear in our speech.
"I don't think I can refuse" I answered "It's like I'm compelled by magic or really advanced science or maybe it just doesn't matter what it is.  Maybe it's just what it is and you have to accept the mission you're given."
"I'm not accepting any of this" said Tim raising his voice.  "You may think it's OK to have the faeries run your lives for you but I can't stand the idea.  I've been in the Braille school for thirteen yours having people decide everything for me, like I couldn't think for myself, and, let me tell you, that was God's plenty.  I'm not going back, not willingly, not without kicking and screaming, not if I can help it at all."  He turned toward where he heard the bartender.  The barkeep was talking to folk halfway down the bar, "another beer for me and my friend" he said in a loud forceful voice.
"You really don't think that people are just going to choose to have someone run their lives do you? I asked trying to calm Tim down.  The bartender walked reluctantly toward us as if walking into uncharted territory, a place where he feared to tread.  "No one I know would choose that.  Don't worry" I continued trying to allay my own fears.
The bartender took our order doubtfully, as if he were thinking of cutting us off.
"I wish I were that certain" continued Tim echoing some of my own secret fears "but I see so many people who are so busy and talk about how they wish they could get some rest, cast their cares on someone else, get out from under all the responsibilities they have as if there weren't people in the world who would die for their busy life.  Maybe they would think that the faeries would solve all their problems.  Thinking for your self is a lot harder than just being a sheep and if you don't know what that's like you might think it's not half bad to live that way."
"Then" Tim continued his voice rising "there are people who would gladly sacrifice their freedom to make sure that other people were protected from themselves.  They'd just be happy to have faeries run these other people's lives for their own good, or the public good, or, I can't talk about it anymore, it just makes me sick."
"Damn" I said "I'd not thought of that.  You might be right."

And so I prepare to walk out on stage, into the wasteland of daytime television.  "OK Joe, you get ten minute" my handler says thinking me nuts; well, who can blame him.
So I give my speech of the fair folk and their love and how they feel about us.  I speak of their anger and pain at how we treat each other and ourselves.  Our stunt with the electron flipper in the midst of the storm wasn't the stupidest thing man has done, but it was what got their attention, what had finally prodded them into action.
They had always guided the lesser animals, the beasts, away from danger, but they had always left man to his own devices figuring us to have enough intelligence to protect ourselves from danger.  But now, they were no longer sure that leaving us to ourselves was wise.
So now they ask us to make our choice.  Live for ourselves and live wisely, or let the faerie folk rule over us and protect us from harm.
My allotted time came to an end; my handler started making hand signals for me to wrap up my speech and make room for the next fool to speak his peace.
Watching the on-stage audience I remembered, as if from a dream, the last part of my communion with the faerie queen.  I remember her getting in my face, though she seemed too small and delicate to do so as she gives me the final message, a message meant for all mankind.
"The fair folk have one more thing to say to us" I said preparing my exit.  "This time, don't be stupid."