Smith-Corona

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Warren sighed as he extracted himself from the truck and carefully shut the door behind him. Damn thing was near rusted to pieces, and here he was driving all over creation for a typewriter ribbon. Of course, he hadn’t expected to have so much trouble actually finding the ribbon; but he’d already tried the Harpersville Office Depot, the Staples and Frederick’s Office Supply in Dillimore, and the Wal*Mart and other Office Depot in Blackwater Point, all with no luck. He was starting to worry he’d have to go up the city to find what he needed. There were over five thousand souls in Palomino Creek, and being surrounded by that many people always made Warren feel claustrophobic.

A puff of hot air hit him in the face as he passed through the sliding doors, and then he was in the air-conditioned cool of yet another store. He made his way toward the back wall, where a huge sign reading “OFFICE SUPPLIES” hung from the ceiling. Rows of computers and fax machines and other technological marvels seemed to glare at him disapprovingly as he sought out the customer service desk.

“Helpya?” muttered the bored-looking employee behind the counter. Warren tried to give him a friendly smile, but was stymied by merit of the man’s apparent unwillingness to look up from the computer in front of him. It looked like some kind of card game on there – poker, maybe, though whatever it was, Warren doubted this fellow was being employed to play it –

“Helpya?” the man repeated, interrupting Warren’s mental rambling. This time he deigned to glance up briefly before returning to the computer.

“Well, I.” Warren cleared his throat. “My Smith-Corona T34 needs a new ribbon, and –”

The employee looked up at him again, and something about the expression on his face made Warren falter. “This a joke, buddy?” he drawled. "We don’t sell beer here, and we don’t sell guns neither.”

Warren sighed, seeing the long drive to Palomino Creek ahead of him. “No, it’s a typewriter.”

“Uh huh. Got a lot of writing to do, buddy?”

“Yes,” Warren answered, brightening somewhat. Maybe he wouldn’t have to brave the big city after all…

“I got a recommendation for you, then,” the employee sneered. He pointed toward the aisle Warren had just walked through. “It’s not the nineteenth century anymore. Buy a goddamn computer.”

Warren sighed again. “Thank you anyway,” he said, and walked back out to his car. People these days, living crammed five thousand to a town, going in for all this strange new technology when they already had ways that worked just as well. He just didn’t know what the world was coming to.


Throughout most of my high school career, I did not have a computer; when it came time to write a paper, which was quite frequently in my honors English classes and not too seldom in any of the others, I had to use an electric typewriter that we’d picked up at Office Depot for a hundred bucks. It was extra-fun when we had to do a rough draft, submit it for peer evaluation, then “edit” it and bring in the final version… because while my classmates got to make their edits, print out their new versions, and go off to have fun, I got to sit down and type the entire thing over again. Good times.

These days I honestly cannot think of a good reason to stick with a typewriter instead of a computer. I guess some people really, really like the idea of having to type an entire document over just to correct a couple of typos.

Back In My Neighborhood

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“Of course, that was assuming you didn’t ask where the car’d come from,” he added offhandedly, pulling the Porsche back onto the highway. “You could be particular about that if you wanted, but then you’d have to pay a bit more.”

“Oh?”

“Local guy ran the biggest stolen-car operation in the state,” he replied. “Small-time mobster, name of Magliore. Half the teenagers on my block were working for him – running errands, or… ‘supplying’ him with stock. All under the table, of course.”

His passenger frowned. “How dreadful. I assume you weren’t involved in all this.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “I was one of Magliore’s boys before I’d even learned how to ride a bike. How did you think I learned how to hotwire cars?”

“Well,” his passenger sniffed, her frown deepening. “At least you’re old enough to know better than to mess around with any stolen cars.”

There was expectant silence for a moment; finally, he coughed. “Sure. Of course I am.”

Mushroom Soup

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The mother ladled what was left of that night's dinner into the container, scraping the pan clean. No sense in wasting food, after all, and the leftovers would make a lovely meal some other day. She set the pan down, fitted the lid over the container of leftovers, and then carefully placed that container on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

The son pushed it to the back of the shelf ten minutes later, while rooting about looking for the last can of Coke.

Nobody gave much thought to the leftovers, not even the mother who had so carefully saved them; and as days turned into weeks, it quietly brooded beneath a package of stale flour tortillas. The life stirring within it went unremarked, its original contents long since forgotten.

At last the tortillas were pushed aside, and the daughter's hand closed upon the plastic container. "Oh, here's something," she said over her shoulder. The leftovers were once more brought out into the light.

"What's in it?" the mother asked from her post at the stove. Pots simmered and bubbled, though the saucepan on one burner yet lay empty.

The daughter peeled back the lid and looked into the container. "Looks like mushroom soup," she replied.

The mother smiled, took the leftovers and their new growth from her daughter, and began preparing them to serve to her family.

In The Trunk

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Norm started getting a bad vibe from the guy from almost the first second he set foot on the huge lot, but he needed a car bad enough -- and right now, if he wanted to make it to the plant tonight and thus keep his job -- that he forced himself to overlook it. No sense walking back around the woods to the car lot on the other side of town, just because the salesman seemed a little odd.

After all, it was kind of a warm day. Maybe that was why the guy -- "Vincetn", to go by the nametag, although Norm assumed that was a typo -- was sweating so much. And there were plenty of non-sinister explanations for why mister "Vincetn" had quickly agreed to sell him the old Chevy, rather than trying to take him around the lot and interest him in something more expensive. And so he kept grinning at seemingly random moments. What of it? Probably was swapping dirty jokes with the other salesmen back at the office before Norm showed up. Probably that was why he was in such a hurry, too -- Norm'd interrupted his break, or something.

Dammit, he is not a serial killer who is thinking about just where in the woods to dump my corpse, Norm thought to himself as "Vincetn" handed over the paperwork. He signed in all the appropriate places, then looked up as a thought struck him. "Hey, uh, I don't suppose you could throw in a pair of jumper cables while you're at it...?"

Vincetn's face twisted up alarmingly. "They are already in the trunk," he replied, oddly formal, and then grinned his biggest grin yet.

"Uh. Right. Thanks." Norm handed back the paperwork, got into the car, and drove away from the lot as fast as he possibly could. Vincetn's grinning, waving form dwindled to nothing in the rearview.

A half-mile down the road, the strange gravity with which Vincetn had spoken of the trunk finally registered on Norm, who pulled over and walked reluctantly around to the back of the car. He took a deep breath, then popped the trunk.

The jumper cables were there as promised, though Vincetn had said nothing about the dead racoon around which he had lovingly wrapped those cables.

"Ah, Christ!" Norm shouted.

A half-mile back, Vincetn giggled, then scurried back into the woods before the actual salesman could find him and chase him off again.

Side Mirror

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His eyes drifted closed for the thousandth time, and somehow he managed to wrench them open yet again. Couple more miles, now, and then he'd be back home, where he could actually get some goddamn sleep. The very thought was soothing enough to send him drifting off again. He blinked himself back awake, cursing, then laid into the accelerator a bit more.

Just had to concentrate, that was it. Keep his mind on the road for just twenty more minutes. He rolled the window down, hoping the cold air coming in would wake him up a little, but it didn't seem to help much. He reached out to fiddle with the side mirror, peering at it through heavy eyes; eventually he gave up and turned back to the windshield, to find it oddly filled with tree. "Hey, what -- " he began, now fully awake.

Then his car slammed into the tree, and he died.



Just a short one, because DAMN that dog does not look safe to drive.

Preparing Next Week's Medications

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She watched him out of the corner of one eye as she worked, carefully removing the cap from each of her prescription bottles, measuring out seven or fourteen or twenty-one of each pill and depositing them carefully in her pill organizer. He was doing the same, brows furrowing every time he had to twist open another bottle. His arthritis had been so bad lately, despite the medication.

She waited patiently, and at last he raised his head to look at her. "Could you do the rest of mine, dear? My hands..." He flexed them, once, then winced.

"Of course," she answered calmly, reaching across the table to take the bottle from him. "Shall I do all the rest of them for you, too?" He nodded gratefully, and she busied herself with the task as he rose and padded to the fridge. She could have offered to help without waiting to be asked, of course, but it was better this way. He wasn't even paying attention to her, now; he was up to his shoulders in the refrigerator, looking for the milk that she had buried at the far back of the shelf.

She worked with unhurried efficiency, opening the bottle that had stymied him -- the big orange pills, prescribed by Doctor Farson for his blood pressure -- and carefully placed one pill into each of the seven compartments of his pill organizer. Next were the pills for his kidneys; two small green pills each day, tik-tik, tik-tik as she filled out the container. The last bottle was his arthritis medication, nondescript yellow things with numbers embossed into them far too small for his failing eyes to detect.

Without pausing, she uncapped this last bottle and measured out a week's dosage. Then her hand slipped quietly into her pocket, to emerge bearing seven nondescript yellow pills, which she distributed methodically into each compartment. No numbers showed on these pills; there were, in fact, no markings of any kind, but she needed none to know what would happen to him if he kept up this dosage. Very soon they would start doing more than simply fail to help with his arthritis. Perhaps even this time next week she would be preparing her medications alone.

She closed up the prescription bottle and set it back with his other pills on his side of the table. When he finally came back over, glass of milk clutched carefully in both gnarled hands, she was just finishing up with her own medications. She smiled briefly at him as he approached.

"Thanks, love," he said, reaching out to take the container of pills. She smiled again at the sight of it in his hand, seven little boxes in a row, each with its own little secret of a clever yellow pill that was not for arthritis.

Ran

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"Spare some money for gas?" Elly called, as a smartly-dressed man approached her on the sidewalk, head tucked down into his collar against the cold. The smartly-dressed man gave no indication that he had heard her, and she sighed inwardly and pulled her jacket a bit tighter. It was starting to snow, and she wished yet again that she had on something warmer.

For about the millionth time in the last couple hours she glanced back over her shoulder, checking that her car was still parked by the curb. Not that anyone could steal it with the tank dry as it was, of course. She'd run it till the very fumes were used up. Run it as far and as fast away from home as possible. "Or what was home, anyway," she muttered to herself, and then made a sound something like a laugh. Not that the situation was particularly funny.

"Spare some money for gas?" she repeated yet again, as two women passed by. One of them gave her an odd look, then quickly turned away; they both sped up slightly, as though wishing nothing more than to escape from Elly's request. One of them tittered brief laughter as they disappeared into the thickening snowfall.

Elly shivered, then uttered a series of deep coughs. Stupid to have left without coat or hat or even a pair of gloves; stupid to have left with a dollar sixty-three in her wallet. Stupid to have even done this in the first place, but she'd had to do it, she just couldn't take any more...

Making that not-quite-a-laugh sound again, Elly felt gingerly at the latest bruise on her face, the one that had been the reason for her sudden flight. "Never again, you bastard," she said through a humorless grin. "I don't even care if I freeze out here, as long as you never get to hit me again."

Meta: Post Slowdown.

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At least I'd posted more recently than the Viscount Stokington. I mean, geez.

I blame the slowdown of plugfics partially on school, but -- it must be confessed -- mainly on knitting. Yes, the art of moving bits of yarn through other bits of yarn. I have recently taken it up, and am now obsessed. There is simply so much power in looking at a basically formless lump of yarn, telling that formless lump that you have decided it will now be something else, and then actually bringing about that metamorphosis through sheer force of will.

My guess is, this is what it's like to be God.

Fortunately(?), the God of Moving Bits Of Yarn Through Other Bits Of Yarn is still interested in writing about Pluggers now and then. Thus this is not a blog abandonment, but only a post slowdown.

Feel free to enjoy reading about towels, below.

Towels

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I never go anywhere without my towel.

All right, so that's not entirely true. I go plenty of places without my towel, mainly because it's sometimes rather inconvenient to lug a lump of terrycloth around. But it's always in my backpack, which is always with me on campus, so I at least only sometimes go anywhere without my towel. It's one of those life lessons you pick up from such people as the late great sage Douglas Adams.

The towel I carry is one that could easily be considered an antique, as bath towels go. I've had it in my possession since the last century, and before that it belonged to a friend; the pile was already worn to nubbins by the time I gained possession some time around 1997. I have no idea how long its previous owner had it. It could well be older than some of my fellow-students at Good-Sized Midwestern University, on whose campus I happen to be sitting right now.

Its design was, at one time, a swirl of brightly-colored musical notes, though by now everything's sort of munged together into a vaguely purply-blue-reddish-yellowish blur. Its seams are holding up wonderfully well, though I should probably take a needle to it at some point, because it's not going to last many more washings before something gives. If I could do something to make it last forever, I probably would.

The thing about a bath towel is that it isn't necessarily only for bathing with. You can soak up other things with it -- a spilled can of Coke, for instance. You can wrap a book or an mp3 player in it on a rainy day, so that said object stays dry, safe, non-warped and non-shorted-out. You can whip it out when the temperature's below freezing, lay it on a cement bench, and thus sit down without acquiring frostbite of the butt. You can lay it on the muddy ground by a beautiful lake, sit on it with the person you love most in the world, and enjoy one of the very last days you will ever spend by that person's side before they suddenly die without warning.

These are just some of the things I have done with my towel.

Never Tired

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"Again," came the command, and he winced. Small hands tugging at his sleeve; small eyes boring up into his own. "Again, Grampa, please?"

He rubbed his aching eyes. His mouth was dry, his throat parched. He had a feeling that he had been hungry for a very long time.

"Grampa." The thing tugged at his arm, harder this time. "Read it to me again." Its voice still didn't sound quite human, but it was eerie how close it was. He could almost believe that it was his granddaughter seated on his knee, begging for another recitation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

Of course, the illusion was weakened somewhat by the presence of his actual granddaughter's corpse a few feet away.

He forced his attention from little Vera's body, back to the book he had already read so many times before. He cleared his battered throat, once more wishing for something to drink, or eat; or for sleep; or for death. "Once upon a time," he began again.

The thing which was not his granddaughter -- which was not human at all, but only some thing which had somehow taken her place, tossing her aside like a broken doll -- leaned into him, a grotesque mockery of the little girl whose form it took. He had no idea what it was, or where it had come from, or even why it was making him read the same storybook for what had to have been weeks on end. He didn't even know how that was possible, but it was true all the same. Vera's body remained unchanged on the floor; he knew neither sleep nor any more permanent form of respite; yet here he sat, reading Goldilocks over and over again.

The thing looked up at him with wide eyes, so much like Vera's, only strangely offset, as though the skull itself were somehow distended. It had not looked much like her at the start. No, when he had come into the room, seen Vera on the floor and the thing standing by her bed, book clutched in one... he could not properly call it a hand... there at the start, it had not looked human at all.

It appeared to be learning, though. He wondered what would happen to him once its transition was complete.

"There were three bears," he continued, once more; and the thing offered a contented little sigh.



Look, you tell me what's with that kid's eyes. I mean, yeesh.

Can I really be blamed for assuming the Lovecraftian worst?

Of course, after this and "Typewriter", I should probably go back to the regular kind of depressing, existential, properly Pluggers-esque horror for a while. Ia! ia!, and such.

Typewriter

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Oh, the typewriter?

I just dragged it in from the garage for a little project. Kind of a secret, really... oh, what the heck, I might as well tell you. But don't tell anyone else, all right? Eventually I'll want everyone to know, of course, but not quite yet. I'm still getting it off the ground.

Complexity.

That's what starts it, you see; all the complex things they can do with computers now, things that people couldn't even dream of a hundred years ago. Huge math problems, and genes, and whatnot. And all of it stored on computers. Think about that for a second -- how many tiny little bits of information there are. It's actually zeroes and ones, my nephew told me, and then they get translated into English. Like Morse code for computers. Ones and zeroes and zeroes and ones until there's enough to bury the whole human race in 'em. And that's just in one computer.

The problem is, you don't necessarily know where all the ones and zeroes go. Maybe you put a picture of your cat on the computer, and the ones and zeroes go somewhere in there. And then maybe you write to your sister on the e-mail, and in go all those zeroes and ones. And then your nephew puts on a game when he comes over to visit and the ones and zeroes just get all jammed in the middle somewhere. He explained it to me. The information isn't all in the order you put it there in; it's all broken up and mixed around because that's how the computer works. So all the ones and zeroes get all mixed up.

So how do you know just what the computer actually says inside?

What stops the numbers from lining up just so to unlock something that wasn't there before?

There's a lot of computers in the world, after all. Billions, I suppose. And every one of them with billions of zeroes and ones in nearly every combination. But there are some combinations that open locks that you just don't want to mess with, aren't there?

That's why I've got the typewriter out, and why I've been working so hard -- you can see what I've got so far in the drawer on the left there. I typed every copy myself. By hand. Because we can't trust computers or copier machines or all these new things -- we can't -- we're courting a fate worse than death if we do.

Yes, every copy's the same, or as close as I could manage. I think there's a couple thousand so far, even though that's not nearly enough. Every single man, woman and child in the world needs one of these flyers -- everyone has to know the danger we're in, and how close we might already be to unlocking Yog-Sothoth -- he is the gate -- he is the key --

Wait, where are you going?

Take my flyers with you!

Warn the world!