Fiction Friday: The Find (part 1 of 2)

The basement was not clean, it was never clean. Not dirty, just cluttered. The mound of dirty laundry made the end of the stairs treacherous, but after the mound of tee shirts and jeans, there were paths to the different sections of the big room.

Through the laundry path, you could duck colorful clothes drying on hangers and appear in boxes of decorations. Christmas and Halloween in boxes. Seasonal wreaths fought for space with porcelain houses and candle holders. falling off Out of season it all looked so strange. Memories out of place. The old man stood in the center trying to remember why he was down here.

Paint. He wanted to surprise his son and daughter-in-law with a little touch up work. They were out of town for a few days. Not here the man thought and he moved to another part of the basement.

He stepped on wobbly legs out of holidays and into toys. His grandkids had left stuff everywhere. Undressed Barbies, dress clothes, stuffed animals and coloring books formed a treacherous walkway. It spilled nearly to the workbench, the man was trying to get to. He could see the cans of left over paint on the bottom shelf, a pink see through scarf from the dress up clothes draped over them.

While the man was still, navigating his course, a noise caught his attention. At first he thought it was the dog, the reason he had been coming over everyday, but the dog was outside. It was coming from the cans. Maybe bumping together. A heavy truck he thought at first, but not in this neighborhood. Vermin. Well, in his days, the man had killed a mouse or two.

With determination, the man got to the bottom of the workbench and began looking, bump, bump. No flash of fur, or fearful squeak. He could hear it, but not see it Bump, bump.

The underneath of the bench was dark and deep. Thin cobwebs hung down to the cans in the back. Along the right side were the gallon cans and beside them the smaller sizes. The man looked at the tops of the cans for droppings. He had moved from handyman to soldier, trying to identify his enemy. Nothing. Probably a single animal unlucky enough to get trapped in the house. Bump, bump.

He could see the second can from the back, one with traces of mint green paint shift just a little. The mans eyes narrowed and, with an old reflex, he smelled the air for spent gunpowder. He slowly removed the front can, and then the next. In his mind, he held his finger to his lips and directed his team to flank with a silent finger.

When his hand got to the next can he recoiled immediately after touching it. It was warm, even hot. Bump, bump. It moved just a little. The air smelled suddenly stale. The man looked for heat vents, or what might be making that can feel like that, especially while the others around it were cool.

Maybe he was wrong, maybe there is a nest behind the next can. With a slow, shaky hand he slid it. He expected to reveal lumps of chewed paper, or the insides of an old pillow and a squirming, swarming mass. Nothing. Just the last can and cobwebs.

The warm can in his hand twitched. At first the man thought it was him, he must have bumped it against something. While he pieced together the fiction that would comfort him, it twitched again. He nearly dropped it and immediately tried to figure out how a creature had gotten into a sealed paint can.

Hero Academy

I sit in front of my little iPad screen trying to think about what I will blog today. Elementary school, Middle school. Lost friends or family that have passed. All that comes to mind though, is the fact that I've used an inferno to take out a few of the opposing heroes, but I don't think it is enough. If I can get my ninja out, I need to make sure to use him well. Should I buy the packs for one of the new races? The dark elves look cool.

My thoughts are scattered.

See when I sat down to lunch, I thought I would take a turn or two of a new game my friend James introduced me to. Hero Academy. What I didn't consider was he would taking lunch at the same time, so, as quickly as I taking turns I have a new one waiting.

Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes pass. My soup is gone and my time is draining away. I should be blogging I thing. Blogging, kill that annoying wizard, my gamer half says. How about you blog about the game? I have peace with that.

It is simple, I start with an empty battle field. My heroes enter from one side, while James' will enter from the other side. These are played from your hand, a set of five options on the bottom of the screen. In addition to heroes, this area has potions, scrolls, swords and shield. My goal is to take out James crystals, before he takes out mine. Or kill all of his heroes, of course.

It seems too simple, doesn't it. The kind of thing you would play for a few minutes, then be done with it. It is not though. Once you get the basics, you begin to understand range, then positioning, Soon you are using the undo button to make sure you have made just the right move. The strategy piles on. This is like battle chess.

Why can't there be more time? Lunch us done, but my mind is still running. I have moves to make. Do you think anyone will notice of I schedule a meeting with a subject of stomping James' ninja?

Watching Minecraft

Minecraft is an ingenious game, appealing to both the treasure hunter and Lego builder in me. Essentially you are dropped into a randomly generated world, which you can gather blocks from and the place these blocks to make your own creations. Additionally, you gear up. Loot! You start with bare hands, then you knock down a tree and craft some wood tools. From there you gather stone, then iron and finally, when you dig down to the bedrock of the world, you can have diamonds.

In the time I have played my friends and I have built castles, inns, trade centers, road, railways and even churches and towers. To do this, though, you need to get your tools, iron and diamond. So, when I start playing I waste no time getting my mine going.

After months of try to convey how fun this game is, I finally convinced my wife to play. Ok. That's not true. After I worked for months trying to get her to give this a try, her sister started playing, so she decided she would give it a try. I'd like to pretend it was me, but I'd only be fooling myself.

"Why do I need to use W,A,S and D to move she asks?". She wants the controls to feel like World of Warcraft, but they don't. Her moves are awkward because she is not used to the controls and doesn't even know how to do anything yet. I sit to the right of her, blanket around me because the room is cold, and tell her the recipes and advise her to build a shelter, before the skeletons and zombies come out. As a note, I was not messing with her, at night these monsters spawn across the landscape.

I instruct her how to convert wood to charcoal and then how to make torches. I show her how to convert six planks into a door, so she can more easily open and close the door to her small home and starter mine. Night falls on the land, but she is safely inside. I talk her through building a sword, just in case. It does not ease her mind. She takes her stone pickaxe and makes an ever deeper shaft into the earth.

"What was that?". Her eyes have gotten wide and she is frozen. "It growled at me,". "Probably a zombie," I casually respond, "It'll burn away when the sun comes up.". She climbs out of the shaft she has been working on to see it.

I can hear through her headphones a sound she has never heard before. "wham, wham, wham.". The zombie is beating on the door an arm thrust through the window. My wife, my lovely wife screams. I can't help myself, I laugh before telling her it's nothing to worry about.

"I don't like that," she says.

She quickly gets away from the door and goes back to work on her mine shaft. She should stumble into some iron soon. I am excited for her. She knocks blocks down, carves her steps, places her torches. Deeper and deeper.

She knocks a block away and it drops into the cavern open beneath her stair. Into the dark. I love these moments. Exposed ore and coal, maybe an abandoned mine, this is the basis of adventure. I am again excited for her.

This is not mirrored by me wife. "Nope" she says, and proceeds to fill the hole with cobblestone. Perhaps we'll get iron another day.

When we start working on things together, I don't know what we'll build, but I'm pretty sure I know who will be investigating the dark.

Green Wind

I can remember my Mom, Justin and I in the living room facing the front door. The addition, which would drastically change the home I grew up in is not yet built. There is no stairway to the attic in this room, as there is now. Dark green carpet is under our feet.

As I remember this, my mind plays with what I remember, embedding a computer desk that did not exist yet, painting the walks, removing the furniture that existed then. It hides them from me. I remember an ugly, but comfortable chair. It might have been striped, green or brown, but it is so faded, ghostly, I can't make it out.

Normally, at this time Justin and I would be in bed, but Mom has let us stay up. The weather is not just bad, but terrifying. Even with the shades drawn you can hear the windows rattle agains the wind and you can see the strange light leak out from around the edges. We are up to see my Dad home. I don't really have an awareness why, but I am happy to have my bedtime delayed. As I look back I wonder if my Mom didn't want to be alone waiting, or if she thought it would be nice for us to greet my Dad, or if it was for some other reason. It has become as faded as the chair.

We open the front door. It sticks a little because of the moisture and thick paint. As it pulls inward you can see something is not right on the windowed porch. Running the complete width of the front of our house is a small completely windowed room. What strikes me as being wrong first is the color, the lighting. It is evening and there is a storm, but instead of a dull grey , bright green light fills the space. It is carried on ethereal wind.

Outside the trees bend and leaves flee from the unnatural. You could see branches and twigs and small bits of liter scraping from left to right, toward the train track at the end of the street. Nothing looked like it was supposed to,it was running chaotic and shaded wrong. My dad wasn't just coming home from work, he was coming in from the alien.

We watched and waited. I can see him walking toward the front door of the house. His dark hair is blown in the wind. I don't think he has a beard, but I may be replacing his face with pictures I have seen. His glasses have dark thick rims. We are happy to see him, but as he walks in the door, my memory scatters, caught in a green wind.

Power Outage

The team meeting I had in the Lake Conference room went well. It was a little strange at first with me being the only one on a long side of the table. My staff looking at me from the other three. I sat with my back to a row of large white peaches of paper, left by the group that was here before us. To my left, behind the Karens was a large white board. To my right, behind Brenda was a wall of windows. I didn't know it, but I would happy those were there.

We talked about diversity and planned how to make use if it, like chefs collectively playing with a recipe. Trying to draw the best from our differences. We talked about communication and how it is slipping. Tips and tricks to make e-mail more useful and easier to understand. We talked, Security, Audits, Projects and other work. The hour went quickly,

Krenissa walked in at the end of our team meeting. She is on the team, but on loan to another area, so she attends these based on her availability. She is not really here for the team meeting, she is here because we need to go over her plan to audit all PCPs in the company. This is a big project, and there is not much time left to spare, if she is to get it done on time.

We go over the first few entries and the lights go out. Not just the overhead light but the phone and the lights in the dining room outside are all out. We keep going, because sunlight pours through the bank of windows, but I can hear the fans the circulate air slowing down. The power is out.

When we get to page two of her plan, the phone makes a static crack and the light flick on, only to go back off again. I think to myself, by the time were done, they will have this fixed. We talk for a minute how it is a good thing we have all these windows. Before we are done, maybe twenty minutes more, the crack and flicker of lights happens three more times. When we leave, though the building is lit only by emergency lighting.

No one seems to know why, but there are plenty of rumors. It is the whole area. They don't know when it will be fixed, it could be out tomorrow. They are sending everyone home. I hear Ferren call a meeting of his staff, once I am back to my desk, but I don't yet know what I am supposed to do. I go down looking for Barb, hoping she has more information. My people need direction. I don't see her, but I get the next load of rumors.

Back to my area I make a decision. I tell my staff since they gave laptops, they can take them and work from home. They are satisfied. Once they are all gone, I pack up my things to work from home myself.

I died a 26 year old black man

This morning my wife, mother-in-law and I went to the Henry Ford Museum for a special exhibit. As a result of the 100 year anniversary of the sinking, the Titanic seems to have taken over. Three giant cloth banners advertise various Titanic things going on the the museum. The IMAX is playing Titanica, a documentary on exploring the wreck and Titanic, the motion picture, in 3D. We aren't here for either of these things. We are here for the traveling exhibit, enclosed in a special area of the Museum's floor.

After we walk by the attendant keeping people who haven't paid out of the showing area, we see it right away. Looming over the old stoves and farm equipment is the simulated side of a cruise liner. You can see the portholes and grey and red. What look to be riveted plates. As we get closer it looms above us, but we can also see the first pieces of the exhibit under them.

We give our special admission tickets to the people out front and the lady hands us boarding passes. My wife reads the name on her boarding pass and gleefully announces, by just reading the name, that she lives. These boarding passes give you the name of an actual passenger and a few details about them, but they don't say what happened to them. The lady is not impressed. Part of the exhibit is getting to the end and discovering the fate of the person on your boarding pass. Not many people will know as many of the names of those who survived and perished as my wife.

I tell her the name of my passenger, Mr. Joseph Philippe L. LaRoche, but she doesn't know him. Because he is a man, she suspects he died, women and children first, by she can't say for sure. So, I look for clues on the card. He had a wife and two daughters. He's traveling from Paris to Haiti. Joseph, the card says, is the only person of color on the ship. He's dead I thought. We talked about this tidbit, which is fascinating, but came to the conclusion the a 1912 cruise ship was not going to be a friendly place for a man of color. We also talked briefly about the fact that his wife was white and how that might have not been well received either.

We had our picture taken on the recreation on the grand stairway. We saw bottle and plates, giant wrenches and lightbulbs, all of which had been recovered. We read amazing and prophetic quotes on the walls, from the passengers and tried to read the tiny faded print on papers not eaten away by sea life. We touched a simulated iceberg and heard the events from the final moments. All the while I carried the thought of Joseph with me.

At the end we there are four giant posters. First Class. Second Class. Third Class. Crew. Each divided into those who survived and those who persisted. I'm pretty sure I know where to find Joseph. I make my way through the school kids who are standing there and read through the Third Class, starting with persisted. He's not there. He's also not listed as survived. I read through the boarding pass one more time and I see the X marks 2nd, not 3rd class. Interesting.

This time I start with the survivors. I find his wife and daughter's. I feel for a moment happy for him. They made it. He is not on that list, though. I glance down to those who perished. There are so many of them it is hard to see if he is there or not. Eventually, as I suspected, I confirm he is. He made sure his family was cared for, but he would not take the place of a women or child.

Joseph, an engineer trying to be free of the discrimination he was experiencing in France, was traveling to his wealthy and well connected family in Haiti. He had switched the tickets from the steamship, France, because the France would not allow his children to dine with him. He and his wife did not want to be separated from their children at meal times.

A friend lost

In truth, I don't remember how I first got connected to Art. He may have been a friend of Eric, or someone I met in one of my classes, I'm not exactly sure. Just by looking at my group of friends, you could see he wasn't one of us. He had crazy hair, which I later found out was because he believed he had giant cowlicks like Wolverine. He wore a leather jacket and torn jeans. He smoked. He was clearly of the burnout caste, while the rest of us were nerds.

The game had gone so poorly that just moments before the group of us stood around a bucket in Scott's backyard watching our character sheets burn. Because of our immediate hate of Robitech and the GMing style of the one of who owned all the books, we were on a break. Scott's backyard was not huge, but it was nice to be out from the dark basement. We scattered. Most of us either hung in the backyard or walked over to where Tim's house was, a few doors down, but Eric and Art had taken to swinging giant sticks with each other.

They quickly moved from the yard, to East Middle School, the property of which connected to Scott's property. Through the gaps in the fence I watched them run, hooting and hollering. Taking large, easy to dodge swings at one another. Then they were too deep to see. I turned back, talked to Scott and then we heard it. That quick "whoop " of the half hearted police siren that tells you to quit what you are doing and see what the cop wants. It came from the middle school. I immediately thought, Art is going to jail, I figured if he didn't already have a warrant for his arrest, his mouth would get him in trouble. When he and Eric got back, I might have asked him if he ran away from the police officer.

I actually only remember one class I shared with Art, Heath in the most secluded part of Canton High School. It was in the tiny, hallway with just a few classes above the Vo Tech area. Usually, even though we in no way looked at school the same way, got along fine. We talk and walked in and out together. That is not the day I remember most, though. The day I remember most, was one in which we were not getting along. Art was bugging me and I was working to get him to leave me alone. I teased him, but he wouldn't relent, as often happened because of my viciousness. Instead, he moved from words to hand and he began pushing and dragging on me. I grabbed his hand and he tried to do some fancy move, which not only failed, but left him completely vulnerable. I braced his arm, lifted and spun. His feet left the ground, went over my back and he landed, on his back pack on the floor. The teacher looked over and said to Art, "Leave Jason alone." We walked out of class, friends again.

Not long after that, he lost control of everything. He got a girl pregnant and was kicked out of the house. They got a place together, the kind of place that I was asked if I knew where to get weed once, while we were standing outside if it. Then while I was at Western Michigan University, I learned his daughter had died, which resulted in a court case and ultimately he and his wife divorced. Then... he was gone.

I have typed his name into Facebook, but it is common enough that I can't see him if he is there. I look at the picture and try to compare them to the boy I knew. I've used the same tools I have used to find lost friends and friends biological fathers. I have put my locator hat on, but he doesn't seem to want to be found.

I doubt that we would become buddies who hang out. Who knows if we even have anything more in common than the same stories about our health class and Dungeon's and Dragons? But, I keep looking just to find out what happened to him, if he's happy now, if he's there.

State Video Game

For what ever reason, the states in the United States of America love to declare things as the state X. We have state birds and flowers, rocks and trees. State mottos and songs. Sometimes these things speak to the character of the state, other times they don't exactly make sense. Seven states claim the cardinal as their bird. Only one has the common gull, Utah?!?

Truth be told, knowing that the Gull State became the first state to select a state gun, a Browning 1911, while an interesting bit of trivia, it doesn't really resonate with me. In fact, the birds and flowers and other things don't do much for me either. We get it, Beautiful Ohio, is the state song of Ohio. Does that really resonate with anyone?

If you want to resonate with me, to my demographic, you need to select a symbol which we can relate to, get our hands on. That the character of the object broadcasts something about the state. Perhaps even seeing this object, you could be reminded of the state. For me, the one logical choice is video games.

I don't have them all worked out, in fact you might even think of a few better choices than I have selected, but let me share a few that I think could work.

Michigan (specifically the Detroit area)- Grand Theft Auto (The first one, long before gay Tony)

Nevada - Leisure Suit Larry (google it if you don't get it)

Texas - Red Dead Revolver (a game about horses, shooting and chewing tobacco)

West Virginia - Minecraft (a game that starts by mining coal, but results in Creepers messing up your stuff)

Tennessee - Pong (Old, simple and not much fun after the first few minutes)

New Jersey - Mario Cart (Where two Italian plumbers chase each other and aren't allowed to pump their own gas)

And, Ohio - You Don't Know Jack...

So, if you are behind me, post your own recommendations. Let me know what state us Tetris and why?

Magic in science

"Well, I've always kind of known things," I tell the group of kids around me, kids who would normally pretend my seat was empty. They don't do that today, because one of them heard what happened in home room. I had heard of a trick I modified a little for more easy school performance and it worked. It worked so well, as soon as I got done, people were asking for me to do it again.

"The lottery? Do you know the lotto numbers?". It doesn't work that way, I say with practiced patience. "I'm not telling the future, I'm peaking into your thoughts, and it's not perfect. Sometimes I get stuff wrong."

The teacher walks over and asks me about the electricity we are supposed to be working on. I tell her how the two switches can control the one lightbulb and she suggests that I should start building it and quit talking. She has no idea how I think this might change my standing. Mind reading in middle school is definitely cool. She pulls her white sweater around her and turns to return to her desk.

The kids that backed away came back around me whispering. "Can you do it now? Can you read my mind?". "I can, I say but it helps if you write it, because you are focused, but you don't have to write it first, just be prepared to write it.".

While I'm talking, I pull a piece if paper into ten pieces. I hand half of the pieces to Julie, who wants to be first. I then ask her the first question and tell her to focus on the answer. I stare at her and put my hands to my temples, I do my best imitation of someone focusing. I write my answer then drop it into a little cup, which I gathered in first hour. I then have her write her answer. I take it from her glance at it, with a smile which tells her I got it right and drop it into the cup. Well look at the end. I then ask her the next question.

The kids watch Julie and I like hawks. Some are trying to figure out if she is in on it, others are wondering how I do it, other genuinely think I might be the real deal. The classroom is full of lights going on and off, attached to these oversized batteries, like the ones my grandpa put in his fishing flashlight. There is no science going on at my desk, which might be a problem. I pull a battery out and begin messing with the wires. I whisper the next question.

In ten minutes all the questions have been asked and answered and it is time for the reveal. I dump the crumpled papers out of the cup and look to Julie. Together we start opening them and matching answer to answer. With each correct answer her eyes get bigger. When it is revealed that all five are correct, which doesn't always happen, her mouth is a little agape. "How did you..."

Her words are interrupted with a cough. The teacher's cough. She is standing right over us, I don't know how long she has been there. "What are you doing?". She says, clearly in no mood for games. "Showing them," waving my hands at the kids watching,"how I'm psychic.". "You are not psychic and you are.." "I got five out of five right"

She looks at me thinking, well I'm not sure what she was thinking. "Take your desk to the hallway, where you won't be distracting the other students with you tricks.". I started to tell her it wasn't a trick, but the moment was gone. In the hall, I was looking forward to Math.

Walk in the newness of life

I was talking to my friend on the phone, trying to give the best advice I could, but I was at a loss. It was clear he didn't like where he was at, but the plan ended with what he could do today. I asked a question, in a style I had picked up in my coaching class, what does success look like. His answer suited him, but it was so broad. I was reminded of a woman who leaves an abusive relationship only to fall into another because they don't know how to make a healthy relationship.

Knowing you need a change is only half of what you need to know.

The call ended with me giving some advice, but I didn't know what I know now. It was mediocre.

This morning, while the rain still pounded the windows hard enough the dog didn't even pretend to want to go out, I studied the lesson for my Sunday school class. We are starting Romans 6. Paul makes it clear in this section his is continuing the idea of grace, he starts by battling those who would use grace to excuse sin and he then turns to baptism. Not the command to be baptized with water, but the spiritual baptism which that water represents. The relationship we have with Jesus Christ.

There, in the light of my small silver lamp, was a piece, maybe the most important piece, of the answer. Not just for my friend, but for many of my friends, for all who follow Jesus Christ.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:3-4

Did you catch that? We spend so much time dwelling on the payment for our sins, for the grace God extends for us, for the faith we are lacking, that we miss the fact that this is just steps to something more powerful. The words jumped out at me, we too might walk in the newness of life. Sin is there to show us we need something else, but does show us what success looks like. Success is not, not sinning. Success is the abundance of God, the newness of life.

If we work to avoid the sins we see, we will dodge them and land right in other sins. You can't very easily find out where you are supposed to be just by knowing you not there yet. It's like a GPS which only says,you are in the wrong spot, keep moving. You might travel a long way, but you are not likely to make it to Disney World.

A healthy relationship with God is not focused on the sins and weaknesses and mistakes. God has provided for our failings. Instead it is focused on fully, with arms wide open embracing the blessed life God has for you. Following the Holy Spirit. It is letting that new walk prevent you from giving in to the old self. Imagine what you can because God is with you,, as opposed to what you can't because God is in you.

Lists

1. Things to do before driving to Blue Cross
2. Directions to get to my office
3. Evernote page of things I have done
4. Things I need to do today, sorted by time
5. Accountability calls people are counting on me to make
6. The chapters of the Bible I need to read today, if I am going to finish in a year
7. Reports I run that tell my staff how they are doing
8. Reports I run so my boss can share our accomplishments with her boss
9. The prayer requests I share with Steve and the requests he shares with my
10. The items I need to transfer from notebooks to Evernote
11. The subjects I need to write about for my gaming wiki
12. The items I have not yet written about on this blog
13. The podcasts awaiting to be listened to
14. The colorful images of my Netflix, the Office, Documentaries, kids shows my kuds have Netflix I like
15. Exercise log. Ugh.
16. Food Items used to prepare my meal, the recipe which used to be a shopping list
17. Books I want to read
18. Email to be filed or responded to
19. Freecycle telling me of the things I can get for free and things my neighbors want
20. The contacts on my phone I surf through finding the people I really should put on speed dial
21. The stations on Pandora
22. The projects I'm entertaining in language, theology and music
23. The family budget
24. The performance calendar for the Plymouth Fife and Drum Corps.
25. The things I want, but will likely never buy because I resist buying a 99 cent app, while I eat a 5 dollar ice cream.
26. The things I need to buy for Praise Baptist Church
27. The plugins I need to review for the Minecraft Server I run for my friends
28. The family chores, broken onto index cards,which the kids pretend doesn't exist
29. The ancestors I still need to research, to attach their vital documentation
30. The things I would like to do before I die.

AI Fishbowl

The reports that once took me days had been automated and otherwise my work was done. I talked to Keith and convinced him to let me spend a little time getting better at access, doing a little coding. He seemed to think it was a good idea, not wanting to work too hard figuring out how to keep me busy.

I walked back to my cube, which in those days was just across from him, and looked at my computer. The yellow plastic Twinkie cowboy and the Beanie Baby spider looked on approvingly. They seemed to know I had just been given permission to do my own pet project on company time

I pulled up my chair and opened the first blank module. There was no reason to hide anything. No one in my area had any chance of reading the code and most people see the rows of numbers and letters, make the sign of the cross and flee. If asked, I could easily answer I was learning more visual basic, so I could do more work with the benefit books. They didn't need to know I was making electronic fish.

Yes, that's right, my first foray into artificial intelligence was to simulate fish. The thought was starting with something that was very basic, giving it simple life cycle type drives and see what happened. In my mind I see me wearing the long white scientists coat, I am hunched over me experiment, which you can't see because of the huge mass of unkept hair I have on my head. You know it it me though, because of the unstable bursts of laughter.

"Did you say something?" Keith asks and my laugh catches in my throat.

"No, just trying to figure something out."

I build the fishbowl first. A form with a grid of boxes 8 high and 12 across. I fill it with water, make the whole thing blue, so the boxes disappear into the background color. I give them names to make it clear what row and column each box is in. This is important if my fish are to swim.

I define how they will be born. Decide when they will start looking and how they will select a mate. I program the age they will stop mating and the odds of having offspring per cycle. When they get old. When they die.

I set the first two free. They look nothing like fish. They are colored boxes that move from place to place in the blue square I call a bowl. They don't find each other. They don't have baby fish. They get old and die.

The next time I put 8 in the bowl. 8 different colored squares. A few of them face the same fate as the first two, but the others have a flood of offspring, blending the colored of the parents. Then thy have offspring. Soon the bowl is full of pink and yellow squares crowding each other for space. I can't contain my joy.

I play with the variables and start over. I make more thing change with reproduction and mate selection. I cause color preference and watch the population shift. I loose myself in fishbowl of my own making.

It is time to go, but I am not done. Tomorrow I will add food and maybe war.

Smith Elementary News

Mrs. Eckler walked from student while they huddled over their books. They wrote sentences, telling their stories. Some had Crayons adding pictures to complete their books for the young author competition. I loved these days. This is where I look back to when I am asked when I first wanted to be a writer. In my mind, all of these days are lit with sunlight.

After a time she made her way over to me. She loved my idea, a story heavily influenced by Piers Anthony's A Spell for Chameleon. She help me craft better sentences. More details. Breaking thoughts up. Just learning how to make it, make sense. I had no idea what it meant for something to sound right, or have a cadence.

She looked over my work and approved of what I had done today. She then asked me if I would like to be on the newscast on Friday. Now, this was a huge honor. It would mean being out of class, working with a team, making a news show. This was the next best thing to being Santa Clause in the second grade play. I said yes.

She handed me my assignment. Sports.

I should note that my household was practically devoid of "normal" sports. There was no baseball or football games shown on my family TV. The only way I was going to know anything about the information I would need to read would be if it had to with The Iron Sheik or Bill Elliott.

When I got the details of my assignment, my tension went down. I would read the scores from a few Detroit games and ask a sports trivia question off the back of a Trivial Pursuit card.

The newscast was done from a little room behind the office. There was no video. The five of us, under the direction if the Vice Principal, passed the silver PA microphone around reading our scripts. We lined up in the order we would need to read in and started on our signal.

When it got to me, I took my long nervous breath and began. The scores went smoothly, I knew the names of all the Detroit teams. The same could not be said of the trivia question. I do not remember the question, but I remember the answer I said over the PA was "Cincinnati Beagles".

It would take me about thirty seconds to learn that it wasn't Beagles but Bengals and just a few seconds more than that to realize this was a funny mistake, which would cause people to laugh at me. At that age, I did not know how to laugh at myself. I didn't want to be the loser who knew nothing about sports. This honor had been lost.

A month later, I had an opportunity to do the news cast again. I told the joke.

Walking with Reuben

My meeting ended early, so I quickly walk back to my office. I plug my white earbuds into my ears before I am two paces out of the conference room. There is only a few minutes left of the This American Life I was listening to when I arrived and I love the section at the end when Ira takes some segment from one of the stories and attributes it to his boss in a made up scenario. It never fails to make me smile.

After the hall and the stairs down and Ira makes his joke, I arrive at my office. The desk has more clutter on it than I like and I can see I have gotten some mail. CFI. I can file it later, these are documents I get all the time and Karen has already taken care if the process, off of the e-mail that preceded these envelopes. Without sitting, I type my password into the computer and take a look at my calendar. If I am going to walk, I need to do it now.

I walk out the gap in my cubicle wall, which I call my door and make an immediate left to see if Reuben is in his cube. His computer is on, on his desktop I can see an artists redemption of the throne room of God. Twenty four elders, emerald rainbow, kneeling and praising. Reuben is not here. I walk with Reuben.

"Ready to walk?" he says from behind me. He knows by the time of day why I am standing looking into his empty cube. As always his is impeccably dressed, sweater vest, matching shirt and pants. "You ready?" I ask, but he is already grabbing his jacket. The weather has been nicer, but it is not that nice today.

I grab my own jacket and we walk side by side down the stairs and to the door outside. Our feet begin walking the most common path, down to the Potbelly and then a left at the sidewalk down to the expressway, then we circle back and return. We don't think about the path.

Before we have even made it out of the parking lot, I ask him how his weekend was. He tells me of his friend, who stayed with him in his small apartment, of his church a small black Pentecostal church, he tells me of the goals that slipped as a result of Easter and the surprise visitor. I tell him about my weekend, the services at my church and the time spent with Shelly's family. I tell him I am still tired from the long weekend.

It is only then, I come back to his missed goal. This is not a work goal, but a step for him to fulfill the ministry God is calling him to. We make it to the phone pole, which marks the spot for us to turn around and talk about God's grace. He beats himself up more than he should over not getting the paper stared he said he would. The class is his, the timeline is his, the goal is his, but recognizing that he didn't do what he set out to him, pains him. I hope in the conversation to have him connect to God's grace. I don't know if I do a very good job.

The Zone

There is a moment of mental magic, which I truly love and odds are, so do you. In fact, if I could tell you how to do this trick at a whim, when ever you choose, you would hang on my every word. I can't. It is like telling someone how to fall asleep.

The page, or rather the virtual page, is blank. A mountain of white. Climbing this mountain is slow at first. The thoughts won't become words and the words won't fit together. There is not enough of them. The excitement of that page becomes daunting. It induces sweat on my forehead. I have to force those first few sentences, but then something shakes loose. The next words take shape and the sentences begin to write themselves. Soon, I am just trying to keep up with with narrator who is speaking in my head.

When I get to the end, I do not know how long it is since I have breathed. I do not know the time or even exactly where I am. I am waking up. Before my eyes I see that seven paragraphs have been written, all better than that first one I struggled with, all produced with ease. It is euphoric.

Steve sits at the piano. He is fiddling with the keys, he makes the hammers in the wooden instrument strike the strings. The sound comes back to his ears. His version of my blank page is before him. He plays the first notes of the first song in a way that sound awkward to him, but he knows this is the price of admission. Soon, the songs roll out of him, one after another like flood waters bursting a dam. We call song titles and he plays them, plays them like he has known them for years.

Shelly sits on the couch, not just because it makes her butt happy, but because it is the best place to crochet from. The yarn is drawn from the light purple basket beside her drawn to her pencil-like hook and her pausing hands. She is reading the cryptic pattern from the cardboard book beside her. She makes six stitches and reads, five more stitches, than reads again. The first few rows are slow, spent solving and internalizing the pattern. By the time I ask if she is ready to go to bed, the book is laying on the floor, the yarn is a study stream becoming a blanket or afghan. She is just working to keep up with what she knows comes next.

This place is very different, but very much the same for a variety of tasks. Writing, coding, painting or project planning. It seems you have to have a certain comfort with the task, it is usually creative and needs to have a little challenge. You need to have few interruptions, control over your environment helps. Relaxing helps too. If you are bored, you need to add some challenge. If you are worried, you need to prove you can do the task. Balance between challenge and skill. None of these things are a guarantee, but they are the warm milk for the sleep you long for.

Fiction Friday: Chapter 27

The room was too quiet. Sienna could hear the compressor on a refrigerator or something turn on in another room. Wisps of acrid smoke rose from the bad guys, she could just barely hear them crackle, like leaves settling. Most of her family lay still on the floor, still under the influence of the gas. Then there was Savannah. Savannah stared at the ceiling, her breathing very shallow. It seemed to be the loudest thing in the room.

Sienna rested her hands on Savannah and made a pumping motion, like the do in he emergency room, but nothing happened. The expression on her sisters face didn't change. She was loosing her because she didn't know how to use her power.

She held her. Touched the bullet hole. Changed her breathing. Nothing. Savannah rasped and then stopped breathing.

Sienna knew she had failed. It was up to her and she couldn't do it. She burst into wailing tears. She placed her left hand across her sister's open eyes and thrust her right fist into the air, in the way he did when she played Oakleaf.

She felt Savannah's eyes blink, then heard her take a deep breath, like she came up from underwater. Through her tears, she could see the color coming back into her face. It had worked. In the last second it had worked.

"Did we win?" Savannah asked.

In thirty minutes the family was all up and about. They were figuring out what they needed to do, what they could tell the police. An electric discharge had saved them. They didn't know why they had been targeted. The Mr. Li didn't tell them anything. They spent some time planning, but they did finally call.

While they waited for the police to come to the base, they tried not to touch much of anything, except for Shelby. She managed to make her way into Mr. Li's office and open his safe. Inside she found research he had been doing on the feather, the quest he wanted the locator to go on and why. She took it with her, realizing how important it could be, but that's another story for another time.

Manswers

Hundreds of times a day I am asked questions. Face to face, text and e-mail. From my wife, friends, employees and peers. With each of these interactions it strikes me that their are many, many ways each question can be answered. Direct, direct but tactful, sarcastic, emotional (which might be confused with nonsensical), mean. My favorite, although often kept in my head, is responding with a manswer.

See, a manswer is a special, clever response. The value of a manswer is weighed in laughs (usually your own) and gross out factor. Is does not consider feelings or add unneeded descriptions. They often will offer what might be deemed a masculine solution. As a husband, they might get you smacked, or worse, although they are not usually as dangerous as menquiries.

"What are you thinking about?" is the king of question that deserves a manswer. Sure, you could go the direct route and say, "Nothing," but why loose this opportunity? You are not really thinking about nothing, but to tell your wife you are thinking about socks is boring. It is time to manswer it up. "I was thinking about making duct tape socks to see if my foot sweat would loosen them enough to be replaced once a month or so."

"Are you going to get those TPS reports in today?

"I'm working on it, but I got my ear picking pencil mixed up with my typing pencil and I can't tell by the taste which is which."

"Dad, you're suppose to say excuse me."

"Sorry, but I don't remember eating that."

As a warning, for those of you working up your own manswers, you should be warned. Whats gets you laughing at home, is somewhat less funny when your nine year old daughter busts it out on the Pastor. Don't let this stop you, your pastor probably likes a good manswer, too. So, on that note, let me offer this challenge, the next question you are asked, give it the best manswer you can. If you are not sure of a good manswer, post the question here, I'm sure the veteran manswer-givers would be glad to help you out.

Roddenberry-Dali

When you first see the drawing it is not remarkable. You see a well drawn hand, but it is not wildly colored or melting, or distorted with eyes or doorways. Normal. Drawn in simple pencil. This normal looking hand, though, is holding a pencil, perhaps like the one the the artist used, and with that pencil, the drawn hand is sketching a sleeve. This roughed out sleeve bleeds into a completed drawing of a second hand, perhaps finished by the first. It is then you realize, that this hand is also holding a pencil and also sketching a sleeve. It is the sleeve of the first hand.

On the main page of icons on my iPad there is a folder called entertainment, it the place I store the various apps I have for TV and movies, podcasts and music. There is Crackle and Instacast, Pandora and my U-verse controller that lets me program my DVR from anywhere. The king of the dancing brightly colored icons, though, is Netflix.

I click the red Netflix icon and before my eyes arrive picture after picture of TV shows and movies, lists of what I have seen and what the recommend. I have dived into the screen and am enjoying just the variety of choices available. I use the little search tool and type in Star Trek. The Original Series, from 1966, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and it goes on. I select The Next Generation.

The Next Generation came out in 1987, before the Internet and wireless or even reasonably sized cell phones, but that is easy to forget. The captain sits in his office able to talk to a computer, asking how long it will be before they arrive at their destination. He taps a communicator badge, which allows him to talk to the rest of his crew. He is surrounded by thing which only existed in the imagination of the creator. A pencil sketching the sleeve of the future.

Jean Luc Picard's constant companion is a PADD. When these first came onto the screen they seemed to be something for engineering use. A big scanner, and interface, which looks like a book. Later, though, we see these used other ways. Captain Picard is often seen reading a classic book on one, but he can switch from this to doing research. In one of the scenes I can remember, they do the shoulder view, while research is being done and on the PADD you see the text description and then a short video shows the person being researched. A person from the past, from our era.

I pull back and in my mind am looking over my own shoulder. My iPad allows me to watch an imagined future, where a character uses his PADD to look into my present. For just a moment I imagine the hands of Gene Roddenberry and Steve Jobs drawing each other.

Firing a Friend

The new building Data Constructs was in, was kind of neat. It wasn't down town, where you could walk out on the heated brick sidewalks and get Chinese from a lunchtime street vendor. It was a small two story office building on the edge of a residential neighborhood, with an honest server room and space for the company we had merged with. From my office in the corner I could see the neighborhood through a thin pine tree. To my right, sat my friend Hollis, who also, by nature of my recent promotion, was my employee.

Hollis was getting ready to graduate, so he had just one project left. It was a music classroom software, which did some cool things with tracks, allowed concert playback, CD production and had training packages for use in the classroom. It was a huge, ever growing project, which had not been scoped properly. I didn't know that then, but I can see it in hindsight. I had a project plan for the hours required to get this project done, but the marks were getting missed and Hollis was goofing off, a lot.

He was the guy who invited me to come play Command and Conquer with his friends, he had given me the basics on Flash when I first started. I shared lunches and jokes with him. I was praying for his family, as he and his new wife were trying to have a child. I knew how to be his friend, but I did not know how to be his boss. I was so subtle with my indications he needed to get his project done, that he either ignored them or felt secure in ignoring them.

"Hey, look at this," Hollis said completely unaware of my inner turmoil. He shut down his computer and slipped the disk into the floppy drive. He fired the computer up and it gave a standard non-bootable disk error. Unimpressive. He popped out the disk and restarted the computer and I started going back to my seat. "Hold on," he said keeping his voice low.

I walk back around the desk and he put the disk back into the drive. He started a program and it started with rows of usernames followed by asterisks. One by one they started to be replaced by readable characters. He explained to me that the computer's false start had actually dumped the raw usernames and passwords on the machine into a text file. Then, when he could start the program on the disk, it would, using a brute force method decrypt them, which is how they are natively stored on the machine.

Joe, the owner of the company, called me into his office to talk about Hollis closing his last project. He could see from the task tool it looked like nearly no forward progress was being made. He was tall and a little goofy, but this was hard. I wasn't going to tell him I didn't know how to manage. He told me Hollis had two weeks to finish the project and, if he had a day he didn't have significant progress, it would be his last.

Joe may have asked me if I wanted him to lay down the law, but I am certain I understood it needed to come from me. The room I told him in seems small and dark in my mind. Not enough room for the pounding heart, not to mention Hollis, Mike, another owner, and myself. He emailed what thus meant, he wasn't going to brought on after he graduated. He must have worried about his wife and how they would eat. He lashed out at me, but I don't remember what was said. I understood his pain. You have two weeks, I said, to prove yourself. To find work. It didn't matter, I knocked the bottom out of the bucket.

The next few days were a nightmare. It was clear he was doing just enough to show some progress, but not so much to get it done on time. Additionally, he started playing practical jokes on my computer, with my e-mail. They may have been amusing other times, but now they just highlighted the disrespect he had partnered with my ex-friend status. So, I got harder on him, making it clear today could be his last if he didn't buckle down. I got the equivalent of a sarcastic, I'm so scared.

I went to lunch with Dave, a promising new hire, who had really shown some great skill and imagination. It was a break from the role of friend turned boss, because I had always been Dave's boss. None of the shenanigans I had to deal with from Hollis for the next few days. It was good.

When we got back Hollis was no where to be found, but his car was parked outside. It felt wrong. So, in a fit of, "what exactly do you think you are doing?" I searched the building. I didn't find him, but I found something worse. In the server room, where I thought he might be enjoying the cool, I found one of the servers with a disk not bootable error. I popped the disk out and it was Hollis's little hacking tool. I don't know if I have ever hated finding anything more.

It would be his last day.

Donatello's Demise

My collection of fireworks had grown since I set the bush in the backyard on fire. A bag of firecracker, small but loud, and bottle rockets.

The walk home from where the bus dropped us off from high school was always slower on trash day. We could look through the trash our neighbors had put out early, for broken hockey sticks, to become swords, for small electronics, or magazines, some of which were interesting for all the wrong reasons. On this particular trip, under a tree covered and dropping little yellow-green buds, we found Donatello. He was missing his characteristic Bo staff, it would have taken a lesser fan to identify him, and a leg, probably why he was in the trash. His purple mask/bandana told me it was him, though.

In what world is a pizza munching, radioactive turtle, going protect his identity by covering the area around his eyes? How unrealistic?

Anyway, he was our one find on this trash day, but his days of ninja-ing were behind him. Things were not going to go well for Don.

We stood in the parking lot of the Knights of Columbus hall nearly across the street from my house. I imagine the two story yellow building looking down in us with interest, watching us while my friends and I watched the turtle on his shell.

He lay there, his hand still curled as if around an invisible staff, watching the clouds cross the sky. His good leg stuck in the air, the other leg was been replaced by a bottle rocket, the business end filling the socket. He balanced on the center of his shell. If he was looking to us for mercy, he would find any from the kids from the neighborhood, Justin or I. This was science.

I knelt beside the experiment and using the long stick moved it around so I could see the wick. I let go and lit the match using the fold over method, when you use the card board flap to hold the match to the striker. While the match was still in its initial flare up, I placed it on the wick, which almost instantly disappeared into the rocket.

For half a second it was just a flare from the rocket ganging out from the missing leg. Then, when it was enough force to break the friction, he started spinning on his shell. I imagine delight and smiles on every face as this contraption became a blur if green shooting sparks in a circle, but I didn't dare look away. I didn't blink. Faster and faster, like a Chinese celebration.

The flare stopped, and while the momentum still had the action figure spinning, the normal small pop became a shrapnel spreading crack. The turtle was gone. Nervous, joyous laughter escaped the group and we began looking for shrapnel.