On Discovery vs Outlining

A Tribute to The Dead Robots' Society
http://deadrobotssociety.com/

Road Map to Memphis Hell

by

Mark Lee Pearson

There was once a scientist called Kaiser, who built two robots. She fitted them both with the exact same model of positronic brain. She called one J-Max and the other T-Mix. The two robots were exactly like humans in every respect. They could eat and drink, they could think and feel, and they even had the capability to die.


As an experiment Doctor Kaiser cultured two positronic viruses to infect the positronic brains. She called the viruses The O virus and the P virus--after the two philosophers Bertrand Outliner and Ludwig Pantser--respectively. She then infected one brain with the O Virus and one with the P Virus.


The scientist then set both robots the same task. To plan a vacation for himself. Robot J-Max planned to drive to Memphis. Robot T-Mix decided on a dice-throw to take a plane to the North. He wasn't sure where, he would just figure out the route as he went along.


Robot J-Max purchased a map and a navi for his automobile. He typed his route into routefinder.com and chose the easiest way to get there. Then he searched the internet for a decent steak house and a comfortable motel. He even sought out the cheapest gas stations en route. While surfing the Internet he found by chance there was an all night showing of Lord of the Rings in the local theatre. J-Max rubbed his metallic hands together in glee and booked tickets.


When T-Mix saw J-Max writing out his plan in the greatest detail he scoffed at him, saying, "I'm just gonna get on the plane and see where it takes me. It's more exciting that way."


Doctor Kaiser waved goodbye to them on Saturday morning and they both set off.


J-Max drove carefully and at a steady speed all the way to Memphis. He arrived after lunch and spent the entire afternoon sightseeing and enjoying the ambience of The King's house. Then he treated himself to a steak house meal and rounded off the evening at the drive-in movie theatre watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy back to back. It was a perfect holiday, thought Robot J-Max.


Robot T-Mix was kidnapped by a character in a green hat on the way to the airport. She said her name was Eliyanna and that she was on the trail of a Ripper Robot, but she was really a bounty hunting drummer called Ryan in disguise. This was gonna be some holiday, thought T-Mix as they drove south with him tied up and gagged in the trunk of her BMW.


Robot J-Max returned on time. He now makes a living writing interminable travelogues and selling them online to pre-paying customers.


Doctor Kaiser has recently traced Robot T-Mix to a brothel on a minor planet in the  70 Virginis System in the year 1969. The bounty hunter sold him as sex slave to a Time Traveling minx from Erotica V, and he still lives out there taking each day as it comes.


Doctor Kaiser and Robot J-Max are planning a way to free him from the clutches of the evil tentacle queen.


UPDATE:


The last we heard Doctor Kaiser was working on a way to combine the two viruses.

On Inspiration

On Inspiration

By

Mark Lee Pearson

On New Years' Day, Hideki dreamed he was standing at the summit of Mount Fuji looking out across the Japanese landscape. He woke up and called his friend, Kimiko.

"I've just been inspired," he said. "Let's climb Mount Fuji this summer."
"Sure," said Kimiko.


Kimiko set about preparing for the climb. She bought a new pair of boots and wore them in. She trained every day. She even joined a hiking club and climbed the low mountains in her district to get herself ready for the big climb.


While Kimiko perspired, Hideki spent the time trying to recapture the moment he had dreamed. He surfed the internet looking for images of Mount Fuji. He drew sketches in his pad. He bought a book about the 100 most famous views. He rode past it on the shinkansen to take in its beauty. He even wrote a haiku.


View from Mount Fuji
Sprawling colors vivid shades
Summer vibrancy


When the day finally arrived Kimiko turned up prepared for the climb. In her pack she had warm clothes, food, and plenty to drink.


Hideki brought his camera, a sketch pad, and a little Japanese flag he intended to have his picture taken with at the summit.


"Race you to the top," he said.


Of course she beat him. Hideki didn't get past the sixth station before he collapsed, out of breath and physically exhausted.


At the summit of Mount Fuji, Kimiko observed the view. She thought it was quite nice. There she met a backpacker from Australia called Alan. He was very nice. He invited her to Nepal with him the following summer. Of course, she went.


She sent Hideki a postcard from the base camp at Mount Everest. On it she wrote a haiku. It said, 


Mountains we may climb,
But dreamy wings fly us not,
To the snowy peaks.

On Rejection

On Rejection

(Or What’s the Best Recipe for Fish Pie?)

By

Mark Lee Pearson

Imagine that you once ate a fish pie that tasted really bad. It was so bad that you told your friends, “I can make better fish pie than that.”

One friend says that he wants to make a fish pie someday, but really doesn’t have the time now.

Another friend says that she once tried to make a fish pie, but she didn’t quite manage to finish it. She decided to leave it in the cupboard because it wasn’t quite right.

You want to ask if her fish pie is still there, but you know by the crazed look in her eyes that it is, so you don’t.

You go home and look in the fridge. There’s a bit of cod and a jar of white sauce. You experiment with these ingredients, but when it comes out of the oven it doesn’t look as appetizing as you thought it would, so you trash it. The next day you make another and trash that one too. You repeat this process over and over again, until you get sick of trying. The refuse collector appears to be gaining weight.

You decide to go ahead and try to sell your fish pies. You do your research and discover that salmon in parsley sauce is popular. So you make a batch and set up a stall at the local market, but it appears that salmon is out and haddock is in. The girl on the stall opposite is making a fortune with her haddock in béchamel sauce.

You steal her recipe and go home to experiment. You emulate her fish pie and try it out on your grandmother. She says it’s the best fish pie she has ever tasted. You decide to set up another stall at the market, but the girl you stole the recipe off is there and hers look so much better than yours. She is making a fortune and the customers just turn their noses up at yours.

You go home and cry and tear up the stupid recipe and throw all your cooking utensils away. That night you have a dream. In the dream a time traveler comes to tell you that he has eaten your fish pie in the future and it was the best he ever tasted. He tells you that you must not give up making fish pie. The time traveler is hot and you wake up realizing that if you give up baking fish pies you will never meet your time traveling dreamboat again. You experiment and experiment and finally manage to create your own style of fish pie.

The next time you arrive at market it is clear that fish is out and meat is in. Against all the odds you set up your stall. A gourmand passes you by and you catch his eye. He says he loves your fish pies and he knows the world will love them and he will help you to sell your fish pies to the world. You sign a contract and celebrate together with a bottle of champagne. Unfortunately he dies in a car accident on the way home that very same night and your fish pie falls into obscurity.

You decide to give up making fish pies and write a novel about your experience. You send it off to a publisher and it gets...rejected.

After one-hundred rejections you decide to give it all up and return to university to get a degree in physics. There you meet a dreamboat who is writing his doctorate on The Practical Application of Time Travel. You are convinced you have seen him somewhere before, and you invite him to dinner at your apartment where you bake him a fish pie and tell him the story of your life.

This time you might just live happily ever after.

On Writers' Block

Blocks
(Or a Modern Day Sisyphus)

by

Mark Lee Pearson

Once there was a writer, who carried a block upon his shoulders wherever he went. It was a very heavy block, filled with atoms to the highest density, and finished off with sharp corners and rough edges. If he had ever dropped the block on his foot, which by sheer luck he never did, he would probably have crushed his toes.  

One day the man was carrying his block through the park when a young woman approached him. She said, "My dear fellow, you look as if you carry the weight of the universe upon your shoulders."

The man replied, "What I have upon my shoulders is a magnificent block of which I am extraordinarily proud."

On seeing there was in fact nothing resting upon the man's shoulders, the woman decided to humor him. "Why not put it down and take the weight off your shoulders for a while?"

"I am afraid cannot do that," said the man. 

"Why ever not?" the woman responded.

"It is very precious to me. If I put it down the Muse might steal it from me."

The woman offered to carry the block for the man. Thinking she was pretty and therefore certainly trustworthy, he thanked her and handed her the block.

She easily took upon her shoulders, thinking it wasn't as heavy as the man made it seem.

Relieved of his weight the man was overcome with another affliction. His hands twitched, his eyes whirled, and he started to chatter to himself incoherently.

"I've got this great idea for a character, you know. There was this boy wizard, who... Or should I start with the world building? No, no, no plot comes first. I'd better get the outline down now..."

The woman looked on in horror for a few moments until she could stand no more. "Here," she said, passing him back the invisible block. "I think you were better off carrying this."

The man loaded the invisible block back onto his shoulders and walked off into the sunset. Of course, he lived happily ever after in the knowledge that it was the weight of the block and not his own laziness that prevented him from ever finishing a single tale.

The End

The Tide Jewels

I have just completed a 15,000 word novella called The Tide Jewels. I wrote it as part of a challenge set by Wicked East Press. Ten authors get together to write ten prompts. The prompts are then sent in, divvied up, and sent out to a different writer. When I first got my prompt my muse groaned under the weight of having to write something which appeared to be high fantasy sword and sorcery--a genre I have so far avoided. But, after a good deal of thought I came up with a way I could put my own spin on it. I am very happy with the outcome.

The Tide Jewels will be published later in the year in the second book in the Wicked Bag series; Wicked Bag of Fantasy Tales edited by Jessica A. Weiss. In addition to the two main characters the story features a dragon, a cat, and a turtle. It is a re-imagining of the Japanese creation myths that can be found in the Nihongi and the Kojiki. I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you have fun reading it.

From Shadows and Nightmares Nightfall Publications

...is here.

Included is my short story "The Little Contractor Tool Kit."

 I am excited about having a story appear alongside so many other  fabulous writers in this anthology.

From the website:

From Shadows and Nightmares - Our third anthology explores the dark imaginations of our authors. From the traditional stories of zombies and werewolves, to haunted items that will surprise you, our new and established authors challenge you to read this book with only one light on.

Zombies, werewolves, mentally disturbed individuals and ghosts fill the pages of the newest anthology.

New stories by James Dorr, Jeffrey Wooten, Michele Wyan, Mae Empson, Diane Arrelle, Quintin Peterson, Vince Darcangelo, Karyne Corum, Barry Rosenberg, Anne Lessing, Joyce Frohn, Janet Lorimer, Jennifer Moore, T.S. Charles, Devyani Borade, Mark Lee Pearson, Steve Coate, Stacey Longo, Michael O'Neal, Hall Jameson, Claire Rowland, Tamara Eaton

Whale Screamers: read an excerpt

This is the first part of the short story Whaling the Multiverse that was published last month in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Thank you to Inna Basman for her artwork: an interesting interpretation of the whale screamer in action. If you haven't got your copy fly on over there now. http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/

Whaling the Multiverse

 by

 Mark Lee Pearson

We were in a harbour tavern on the floating city of Osaka when the skinny urchin flicked the noren aside and stepped in. He stood in front of the blue cloth with the white koi design and scanned the bar until his eyes fixed upon our ship’s captain.

“Captain Montagfire?”

Montagfire, a thickset half-breed in a sea green jimbei, was slouched over the bar, chewing the froth from a schooner of Asahi. He raised his shaven head and looked over his shoulder.

“What?”

The kid approached the bar. “Are you Captain Montagfire?”
 
“What is it to you?”

“I want to be a screamer.”

Montagfire furrowed his dark eyebrows and spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

“A short, skinny wretch like you? You couldn’t tickle a trout let alone scream at a minke across the multiverse. Why, you are all skin and bone! Those lungs,” he said, prodding the kid’s chest with his titanium finger—“Those lungs are barely keeping you alive.” He turned back to the bar to order a fresh Asahi. The kid didn’t take this as his cue to leave.

“With respect, sir—”

Montagfire spun his stool around and glared at the boy.

“I don’t need your respect, fish hole,” he said, tapping his titanium finger on the katana in his belt. “Give me one good reason not to slice you up and feed you to the sharks.”

Now, I’m not one to watch people disrespecting others like that. Montagfire may have been ship’s captain, but that didn’t give him authority to treat anyone like the barnacled end of a beluga’s backside. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood for the kind of bloodbath Montagfire was alluding to.

“Give him a crack,” I said.

“What?”

“Give the impudent rascal a chance. We just lost Saline Kid. Maybe—”

“He ain’t no match for Saline Kid.”

“And you ain’t no Ahab,” cried the kid. “Who are you to judge how well I scream just from the size of my body?”

Montagfire prodded the kid’s sternum with his titanium finger. “It is customary for a screamer—”

“Pollocks to your custom! I can compete with the best in the multiverse! Come outside. I’ll show you.” The kid thrust his chin out, clenched his fists, and stormed out of the tavern. Montagfire, never one to pass up a challenge, drained his schooner, spun off the barstool, and drew his katana.

“Wait, Captain,” I said. “That urchin knows no better. His life will be short enough without you cutting it shorter.”

But Montagfire was already halfway to the door when he yelled back at me, “You think I’m some kind of fool? There ain’t no way in this damn multiverse that kid can—”

Before the captain could finish the sentence a typhonic scream rattled the wooden walls. The windows shattered and splintered onto the floor. The side of the tavern came crashing in. Chairs and tables were thrown into disarray. Everything— fixtures, fittings and even customers that got in the way—was crushed as a mighty sperm whale forged headlong through the room, bowling Captain Montagfire off his feet and pinning him to the bar.

A ship’s wheel, the last fixture left hanging, dropped off the wall and cracked open on the sawdust floor. The bar fell silent.

The kid stepped back inside and called up the flank of the whale, “Now, Captain Montagfire, will you give me a chance?”

“Get this whale out of my face and perhaps we can talk business.”

The kid grinned at Montagfire then winked at me. I winked back. I was right; he was impudent but he was a character, too.

“Get this damn whale out of my tavern,” cried the landlord. “I’m trying to run a business.”