Category Archives: Sci-Fi

Episode 101: Anything Is Possible

Flash and Lem cruised through space with everything they needed, and they both felt that this was a very good life they lived.

At the same time, Flash was often nostalgic about his life back on Earth, particularly his childhood.

He told Lem stories about life on the farm with his parents and brothers, more for his own enjoyment than hers, although she enjoyed them, too.

Part of him longed to reconnect with something from his past. Some tangible item that he could hold, and reconnect with.

Even the cells of his body changed. Old cells were constantly being replaced with new ones, and he began to wonder if there was anything at all left of the child that he had been.

Perhaps a facsimile would suffice. He could ask the table of elements for anything. Why couldn’t it make an exact copy of a relic from his past? But what should he request?

This became a major topic of conversation between Flash and Lem… an old book that he had read as s child… perhaps a toy.

What is it that you miss the most? Lem asked.

My cat, Flash answered without hesitation. You remind me of her.

But why would you want a dead cat?

No, I want her back alive, of course, he mused.

He was sure that this would be crossing a line.

You said I remind you of her, Lem thought aloud. What if… her voice trailed off. What if the cells of her body somehow came back together… those basic building block elements… reunited to form… me?

That sounds pretty unlikely, Flash admitted.

Oh, we’re already unlikely! Said Lem, but you have to admit, it’s possible!

She was right. Cells are recycled. A body goes into the dirt. It comes up again in grass. The grass may be eaten by a cow.

The cells get shared around.

Theoretically it could happen, Flash agreed.

His mind presented all the obstacles to such a thing actually happening. If there was one thing he had learned, however, it was that anything is possible. She did remind him of that black and white cat he had had as a child. The more he considered this idea, the more like her Lem seemed to become, and he realized that this is why he had loved her all along.

I’ll call up one of my favorite toys, he said.

A wizzzer? Lem asked.

Flash smiled. She had been listening.

He asked for the wedge in green and yellow. Soon, the toy appeared.

Screenshot

What does it do? Lem asked.

It’s just a toy, Flash explained, but it demonstrates the conservation of angular momentum and gyroscope stability.

He glanced around the cockpit and realized there wasn’t sufficient space with a flat surface to demonstrate it.

Let’s try something else, he suggested, and ordered up a view master.

Screenshot

What is it? Lem asked.

it’s a special-format stereoscope.

Lem only looked at Flash, and then glanced at the high tech viewing screen that was built into the ship.

He had forgotten to ask for a set of reels, and as Lem appeared unimpressed, Flash didn’t pursue it further.

It didn’t matter. He hadn’t wanted to play with these items. He only wanted to hold them. For the nerves in his fingertips to reconnect with a memory. The plastic toys felt cheap, and were much smaller than Flash had remembered.

After a few flicks of the view master lever, he looked at Lem and sighed.

The sigh turned to a giggle, and soon Lem joined in laughing.

I should have asked for a book.

One nice thing about the table of elements was, whatever it produced, could be broken back down into its component molecules. Even plastic, unlike the plastic that clogged the oceans and continents of earth.

And so the Wizzzer and view master could be reabsorbed if Flash decided to send them back to be dismantled again in the system.

Episode 100: Fish In A Tree

For Ian. From one fish in a tree to another.

Flash thought back to some of the wonderful things he had seen, and how those visions had changed him. He only had five or six ways of putting information into his brain. Sight was one of them. And every single thing he ever saw had changed him. Some had changed him a little bit, other things had changed him a lot. Sometimes he didn’t realize the significance of things until much later.

He found himself mentally returning to the hologram in the castle suite.

Everyone feels out of place in the world… in the universe at one time or another. Flash was no exception.

Things didn’t always come easy to Flash the way they seemed to for other people, and yet he persevered through difficulties to find himself looking back from this unique moment.

He was like a fish in a tree, not only because he often felt out of place, but also because he had risen above the expectations anyone had had for him.

Those fish he had seen swimming among the treetops looked right at home, the way he felt now.

In a similar way, everything Flash heard changed him. Every word, every beep and every click reverberated through his neurons, causing a reaction that changed him. Changed his brain. It added to the information that was HIM. Physically and mentally, he was changed forever.

The same was true of the rest of his senses. Touch, taste, smell and hearing. But there was more.

There was another sense that seemed to inform Flash. Perhaps it was the collective unconscious that was born into him. That unseen river of shared experience that ran deep, at the very core of his humanity.

Perhaps it was the ability to merge the tangible information transmitted from outside his body into his brain with his imagination. He didn’t just take in facts about the physical world and spit them back out the way they had been received.

Cold facts were interpreted. Pieced together.

Just as his brain was expanded ever so slightly by each new splinter of information, those electrical pulses had gone through the filter of him, to be enriched by everything else he knew and was.

Flash Meridian was not his body. His body was merely a vehicle for the invisible spirit that inhabited and animated it.

Just as Flash had parted ways with everyone he had known, other than Lem, who still shared the highway of life with him, he would one day part ways with this body that gave him the gift of physical senses to interpret the universe.

for Kurt and Sandy – an aside

Mr. Pumpkinhead awoke early one morning, when the sunlight was just beginning to kiss the top of the tallest pumpkins in the patch. There was a chill in the air, and his vines felt a little stiff from laying on the cold ground. He didn’t usually get up this early, but this was not just any day. He had something on his mind.

The convenience store opened early, and he wanted to be one of the first customers. He rose up, and stretched his limbs. He wiped the pumpkin juice from his eye, and started down the path, through the woods, to the convenience store.

I know what you’re thinking. He was going to buy Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese Dinner. Good guess. But this time, you’re wrong.

He had to be very careful, running along the path in the low light of early morning. If he were to trip on a root, his rind would shatter, and that would be the end of him. So He lit the candle inside his head, and a soft glow lit his way.

Rocky saw him running by, and called out to him, but Mr. Pumpkinhead only yelled, I can’t stop today! I’ll see you later!

Finally, he reached the store.

A little bell rang when the door hit it, and his friend, the clerk said Good morning Mr. Pumpkinhead! Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese Dinner is on sale today! Ten Percent off! But Mr. Pumpkinhead went right to the card section and looked for what he was sure would be a popular category.

He thumbed through the cards. Birthday, no. Anniversary, no. Retirement, no. Valentine’s Day, no. Aah, he found it. One Hundredth Episode cards. They had such a wide selection.

He grabbed one with bold text on the front, happy that there were so many to choose from. This is why he had gotten up so early.

He also had an errand to run. He wanted to deliver the card in person.

You can read about Mr. Pumpkinhead’s adventures on his blog at http://misterpumpkinhead.blogspot.com

Episode 99: Someday, Somewhere

For Kurt and Sandy

Flash sighed, a happy sigh, and smiled as he looked out on the cosmic view from his ship. Lem was always by his side. She didn’t say much, but seemed to enjoy just being there.

Flash picked up the Ololian book. It was like a magic book, because it had the unique ability to write itself… as though information was being downloaded… but from where?

There was always something new for Flash to read, and that helped pass the time, which he had plenty of.

Leafing through the book one day (I use the word day, even though that’s not really what it was), a picture jumped out at Flash, and he looked closer. A grinning, green-skinned alien face looked back at him from the page. The expression was jarring. The color gave the face a ghoulish look. As off-putting as the image was, there was also something familiar about it. Flash couldn’t place it. He had seen the countenance before somewhere.

He began reading the text, and the hairs stood up on his neck.
The narrative described his own visit to the blue planet. The lifeless (but for plants) world that he had considered making his permanent home.

He read about the path leading from the rock down to the beach, his dream of the TNI2 crashing down the cliff, and his swim in the sea.

In this version, however, Flash did not return to the mother ship, but had made the lonely place his final home.

The shocking image depicted what he would have looked like in time if he had stayed. He recalled the dream of sinking his own roots into the soil. It had turned from a dream into a nightmare. More horrifying still, he read that some of the trees on that planet were once people like him, who decided to stay.

He closed the book, and Lem noticed that he had gone pale.

What is it? she asked, concerned.

Nothing.

It was a near miss for Flash. How he could have ever, for one second, considered staying in that place?

Well, now he was home, and had no thought of ever leaving it again.

Flash studied the data that he had been collecting since leaving Earth. Between that, the archive in the computer’s memory banks and the Ololian book, he had more than enough to keep his mind occupied, and entertained.

An alarm sounded. Something was out there.

The radar screen showed an object heading for the mother ship.

What is it? Lem asked, concerned.

I’m not sure. It looks like A sputnik sized sphere.

A what?

Possibly a rogue satellite, Flash guessed.

Lem looked closer at the screen. That is not metal, she announced, wide eyed. It is organic matter.

Flash strained to see what was out there, and Lem looked on nervously, hoping it was not going to collide with their ship.

Soon the object came into view.

Flash and Lem stared at it, trying to identify what it could possibly be. Spherical, as Flash had said. It was orange in color, with some sort of tail that trailed behind it.

Lem wondered if it was a comet. Flash thought it looked like a basketball.

It followed the mothership’s trajectory, gaining on it slowly, until it arrived at the hatch on the TNI 2 which was docked to the mother ship.

Please don’t open the airlock, Lem begged.

Flash was intrigued. Lem’s anxiety turned to terror when an appendage reached around the sphere and unlocked the hatch like a key.

The portal opened, and the strange orb swam, tendrils curling behind it, into the pod like an octopus entering its undersea den.

Lem gasped. They could hear it just below them, manipulating the mechanism of the door to the main cabin.

Their worst fears were realized as the hatch slid open.

This was not the first time Flash had had a surprise guest come aboard his ship. These visits shot through his mind in a fraction of a second. Galaxy Girl from the Procyon, Geronimo, the Shepherdess of the Stars, Peck, and even Lem herself had arrived in just this way. And then, of course, there was his daughter.

Flash derived some comfort from this, but Lem cowered, her eyes wide. She did not like surprises.

There it was, now in plain view. An enchanted Jack-O-Lantern floated into the cockpit.

I heard you were having a celebration! it said through it’s enormous hollow grin. Flash could only laugh. He knew he must surely be dreaming.

It was as though Mr. Pumpkinhead could read his thoughts, because he said, as his vines unfurled, taking the form of arms and hands, I am not a dream.

I don’t think you understand the power of your imagination.

You spoke me into existence a long time ago, planting my seeds in the fertile minds of children.

You said it yourself. If the universe is infinite, then everything is not only possible, but everything IS. You thought I might show up again someday, somewhere. Well, here I am.

Once Lem understood that he was not a threat, the three sat and talked together about their adventures.

Flash ordered up a hot, steaming meal of macaroni and cheese, and Mr. Pumpkinhead said it was the best he had ever tasted.

They talked for hours, and then Mr. Pumpkinhead unlocked the hatch and left, the way he had come. Lem and Flash were a little sad to see him go, and very happy that he had come.

Twelve years ago, I posted this to my blog, about something that had happened about twelve years before that:

I used to make up stories called “The Adventures of Mr. Pumpkinhead.” They were silly, fantastic stories about an enchanted jack-o-lantern who loved Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese Dinner. He had a friend named Rocky, who was an enchanted Lake Superior beach stone, and another friend named Sylvia, who was an enchanted spaghetti squash. I’ve lost my one copy of the book I made, and maybe it will show up again somewhere, someday. One day as I was recounting the time Mr. Pumpkin head used his magic finger to open and start a car at a car dealership, drive it away, get arrested for grand theft auto, and then be put in jail (he used his magic finger to unlock the jail cell and walk out), my friend’s son looked at me and said “You’re Mr. Pumpkinhead, aren’t you?” I don’t know that I’d thought of it that way before, but the question resulted in this oil pastel that I call “Self Portrait as Mr. Pumpkinhead.”

Episode 98: Magenta

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. -Carl Jung

The eyes are useless when the mind is blind.

The outside is never as much as the inside.


Flash sank into a deep slumber and woke in a dream. It was as though sleep were just a portal to another world… another realm. He had learned, long ago, to differentiate between big dreams and small dreams. The small dreams merely recalled details of his life in the waking world. Big dreams were an inroad into something not new, but something outside of his experience. Some aspect of the universe of which he was a part, so nothing could truly be alien to him.

Somehow, Flash knew he was dreaming, and yet… the ground on which he stood felt solid. It gave just a bit beneath his feet. The soil, while dark brown (almost black), shimmered with the iridescence of crystal dust. The crystal layer was invisible but for the way it reflected light.

The sky was dusky blue, illuminated only by distant stars. It might have been night. This place, wherever it was (or wasn’t) may not have had a nearby star, like Earth’s sun, to give it day and night. Or perhaps it showed only one face to its sun, as the moon did to Earth.

Flash took these things in within seconds of opening his eyes, his brain orienting him to his surroundings.

He knew he was safe.

This was travel. Without making plans. Without packing bags. Just instant teleportation from one place to another.

There was a sound. At first, Flash thought it was the sound of running water. But that did not quite fit. It was intermittent. He glanced around, taking in dark rocks that protruded from the dirt. They were stark, unadorned by any vegetation, and their severe shapes were silhouetted against the gentle, starlit sky.

He walked, in search of the source of the sound. He rounded a promontory, and there he saw a tall figure. It was licking the rock wall, oblivious to Flash’s presence.

Not wanting to startle it, he cleared his throat.

The person turned its head quickly, and met Flash’s gaze with one eye. The other eyelid drooped, almost obliterating the orbit.

Magenta

Flash stood very still as the alien being sized him up. That eye felt like a spotlight, focusing a beam on him that could reveal all of his secrets. All the while, he also studied the creature.

It was tall, like I said, and its skin was red. Magenta. It had a long, thin neck with a raised spiral encircling it several times from top to bottom.

Two appendages rose from its elongated cranium, looking like antennae or horns. Or pigtails.

That eye. It was so round. So white. So intense. It looked startled, of course. Was it unfriendly? Aggressive? Flash couldn’t be sure, so he remained still and reminded himself that this was a dream. Or was it? Now he couldn’t be sure.

It sniffed the air in Flash’s direction, and then, apparently satisfied with its investigation, turned back and resumed licking the rock face.

Flash walked closer and sat on a rock near the alien.

What are you doing?, he asked between the loud slurping sounds.

Have you tasted these rocks? They are delicious.

Nothing shocked Flash. Where I come from, we eat mostly plants.

Disgusting! I went to a place once where they ate plants. I couldn’t wait to come back here. I hope I never see another plant. No, I’m never leaving home again.

Flash could relate, as much as he loved eating plants. Once you find a place that truly feels like home, nothing else will do.

The scene faded, and Flash caught a glimpse of the cockpit of the mother ship through his half closed eyes before another vista came into view.

Rocks again, but not the black silhouettes that the pink alien had been licking.

These were brown boulders. Raw sienna that looked yellow in the bright light of day. Burnt umber flecks and streaks punctuated the surface of the stone, and the landscape fell away on every side. Flash found himself on the top of a large hill or small mountain.

A cool, relentless breeze buffeted him, and was balanced by the heat of sunlight on his skin. A pale blue dome of sky arched over everything, flooding the place with an even light. It was refreshing. Flash filled his lungs, breathing deeply of the untamed air.

Flash felt a presence. He knew he was not alone here, but glancing about, he saw no one else.

He walked around, avoiding the small rocks that were hidden in the grass. The grass up here was dry and sharp, pale green in color. It’s edges were like saw blades that could cut your skin if you weren’t careful.

Something moved, catching Flash’s attention. But when he looked, it was just grass, flowing like liquid in the wind, lapping against the base of a large boulder.

But no. The boulder itself was moving. It was not rolling, the way a rounded rock might move, but changing position and shape like a living thing.

It raised its head and looked around. When it turned, it saw Flash Meridian, who felt small compared to this giant.


Hello, Flash said aloud. Silently, he reminded himself that this was only a dream, and he did not need to be afraid. Still, it looked grumpy.

Sorry if I woke you.

It yawned and shrugged. I came up here to be alone. I guess it’s not as remote as I thought.

How long have you been asleep? Flash asked.

I don’t know. A thousand years? A hundred thousand years? What do you want? I’m tired.

Flash noticed that the giant also had one drooping eye. The upper lid sagged, almost completely obliterating an opaque eye with no visible pupil.

What happened to your eye? Flash asked.

My eye? The rocklike alien retorted. I have one good eye, he continued, and then there’s this one. He pointed to the other eye. The clear, wide eye that stared at Flash. It’s useless.

I think that’s your good eye.

No. It’s no good. All it can see is the world around me, the giant explained. This one, pointing to the milky eye with the drooping lid, sees inside. That’s what really matters.

A moment later, Flash realized that he was in his chair aboard his ship. The rough mountain grass had been replaced by his thick black rug, and he was thinking about dreams and eyes. Small dreams were like the eye that can only see the world around you. Big dreams were like the inner eye that sees what you are really made of.

He felt at home like the red alien and its delicious rocks, and he never wanted to leave again.