[stylist] Writing prompt

[Donna Hill]

Shawn,
This is excellent! The set-up is so witty and well-written that in some
ways, I wished it would just go on like that forever. . And, to have it end
with such a profound conversation and message! Well, kudos to you.
As someone with lots of engineers in my extended family, I loved this line:
Block quote
"It's engineering" he replied "best damned magic in the world."  
Block quote end

One typo did catch my ear. I think you mean thirteen "years" not "yours."
Block quote
"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 
Block quote end

Good job,
Donna
DonnaWhill.com

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jacobson,
Shawn D
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 1:29 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List (stylist at nfbnet.org)'
Subject: [stylist] Writing prompt

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."

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