Saturday, December 09, 2006

(WT 10) we were so poor

I moved the text into the comments to save space

The Dung Bearers

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Dave, sorry to crash in, but the door was open, and you know nuts... we're a curious lot. Could I ask:

1)What's illegal?
2)No undead. I get it. What about unborn?
3)How about aliens? Illegal aliens?

Love the Human/Chocolate thing. I could just imagine small kids getting hungry and eating their chocolate parents...

Okay, okay, I'm going, no need to throw scientific implements at my head...

Dave Fragments said...

YIKES!
let's see - snuff and kiddie porn are illegal. Or at least so seriously wrong that I won't write on those topics. Senseless cruelty is off the blotter, too.

I don't do vampires because Anne Rice is too good. I don't do zombies because George Romero is too good. I won't do Frankenstein, again the existing treatments are too good.

I got beat up on the chocolate story. It was one of those writing sessions where I tried too hard and wrote the opening into oblivion.

Anonymous said...

Second Character sais:
"Rear entrance? Bah! We just jumped the fence. At least until one day..."

Third Character:
"What's that noise?"

Alien1:
"Humans. We come in peace."

First character:
"@#$%&*!"

Alien2:
"I don't think they understand us. Maybe we are not speaking the right language." Turns the switch on a glove to French.

"Bonsour... Wait, where are they going?"

Alience go inside the zoo. Front door, because all the humans flee.

Alien1:
"Strange place..."

Alien2:
"You said it..." Looks at the animals in the cages. "Looks like some sort of prison."

Alien 3 walks up to a skunk:
"Why are you impreasoned, creature?"

Skunk:
"I don't know. Humans like to imprisson creatures."

Alien1:
"Its just as we feared. What shell we do?"

Alien2 unlocks lion cage with its fingernail:
"What else could we do? Liberate the poor creatures."

****

Okay, that's all Dave, and thanks for your patience. Back to torture other minions.

P.S. of course, I never spell check. Unless it's my manuscript.

Dave Fragments said...

I'll clean up the spelling and repost it Monday or Tuesday.

Dave Fragments said...

Nuts said this:

Second Character says: "Rear entrance? Bah! We just jumped the fence. At least until one day..."
Third Character: "What's that noise?"
Alien1: "Humans. We come in peace."
First character as alien freezes him in some sort of blue ray: "@#$%&*!"
Alien2: "I don't think they understand us. Maybe we are not speaking the right language." He turns the switch on a glove to French.
Alien2: "Bonsour, mes ami’s... Wait, where are they going?"
Aliens go inside the zoo through the front door, because all the humans flee.
Alien1: "Strange place..."
Alien2: "You said it...," Looks at the animals in the cages. "Looks like some sort of prison."
Alien 3 walks up to a skunk: "Why are you imprisoned, creature?"
Skunk: "I don't know. Humans like to imprison creatures."
Alien1: "Its just as we feared. What shall we do?"
Alien2 unlocks lion cage with its fingernail: "What else could we do? Liberate the poor creatures."

I added the italics.

Dave Fragments said...

OK - here's the story, complete with NUTS' idea of alien abduction:

The Dung Bearers

It is the year, 18,397 and mankind has extended itself into half of the Milky Way galaxy. A group of explorers has just crossed the galactic prime meridian. They find a planet spinning around a rogue star. It has a population of anthropomorphic zoo animals and rough-looking young men. The anthromorphs lead polite society and the young male humans serve them. There are hourly wanderings of dung heaps led by hooded men with censors and other religious accouterments. It’s like a religion, when the time comes, the anthromorphs add to the heaps.

The explorers are invited to a history presentation to learn just how human genetics got this far out in the galaxy.
The children of the anthromorphs and three young human boys tell the story. They do it with a planetary broadcast and a huge dung heap as background.

“We gather each year to acquaint the new ones with our history, our legends– the story of how we came to be here. Our young must learn the story of our past, a distant past. They tell the story of how we came to be, of the abductors, the snatch and grab, the augmenters, and the Holy Ones. We say the prayers each year to the holy ones so that they collect and maintain the new zoo, our new world. They keep it fresh and renew it. The droppings must be spread around to make little things grow into mighty things.

Our story begins in a dark room.
"We were poor, dirt poor. We were so poor that when we went to the zoo, we weren't allowed in the front entrance, we had to go around to the rear entrance. Several times, we had to stay in the back of the cages to see the animals. That gave us a good view of the dung heaps. It's fascinating what dung heaps look like at a zoo."


Second Character says: "Rear entrance? Bah! We just jumped the fence. At least until one day..."
Third Character: "What's that noise?"
Alien1: "Humans. We come in peace."
First character as alien freezes him in some sort of blue ray: "@#$%&*!"
Alien2: "I don't think they understand us. Maybe we are not speaking the right language." He turns the switch on a glove to French.
Alien2: "Bonsour, mes ami’s... Wait, where are they going?"
Aliens go inside the zoo through the front door, because all the humans flee.
Alien1: "Strange place..."
Alien2: "You said it...," Looks at the animals in the cages. "Looks like some sort of prison."
Alien 3 walks up to a skunk: "Why are you imprisoned, creature?"
Skunk: "I don't know. Humans like to imprison creatures."
Alien1: "Its just as we feared. What shall we do?"
Alien2 unlocks lion cage with its fingernail: "What else could we do? Liberate the poor creatures."

Alien 3: No, no, prison is not the word, their language fails us.
Alien 2: Then take them and remake them.
Children of the future: “And so we began – the poor, the wretched, the unswift and just plain slow. They abducted, them seized them, and took the land around them.”
“Huge alien machines lifted our world from the planet and resettled it inside.”
“Until the space ship encountered this wanderer, now we make its path ours and our paths its.”
“And so they changed us, adapted us, and let us build this world.”
“We created all this.”
“And now we tell you the story so that you may return to your world and tell your people.”


This is over 500 words. It's going to be tough to tell in less than 5000 words.

Anonymous said...

Ha, ha, ha!

Dave, I didn't expect you to even read this one, let alone EDIT it!

Thanks for your patience with the insane, and, hey, GREAT rewrite!

Dave Fragments said...

I made an offer and I Stick by it.
Besides, there's a writing contest on dung in the far future and I'll use the story as an entry.

Anonymous said...

Cool!

What's the prize for your 'dung contest', do they present you with a dung statue, or something? Okay, okay, kidding.

Well, time for nut to clean out the tree. See ya, Dave.

Dave Fragments said...

This was my original post - -

It's all over and decided - read the comments
Where does this story go? I am looking for reader input on the plot for this opening.

One of the characters says:
"We were poor, dirt poor. We were so poor that when we went to the zoo, we weren't allowed in the front entrance, we had to go around to the rear entrance. Several times, we had to stay in the back of the cages to see the animals. That gave us a good view of the dung heaps. It's fascinating what dung heaps look like at a zoo."

Now rules are this:
1) it must be Sci Fi
2) it must not be illegal
3) your idea must be posted on this blog
4) I have to have an e-mail to contact you
5) I will pick an idea on December 17, 2006
6) all characters must be adults and at least one character must undergo a transformation
7) no vampires, werewolves or zombies, please let the undead stay dead (sort of)
8) no Effing Fan Fiction

Dave Fragments said...

Well, it's time I began writing the story. Here's the first 1100 words as told from 20,000 years in the future. THe original post that set all of this up is #10 in the comments. The reasons for certain elements are in the comments, too...

This is draft writing. I intend to clean it up.

The Dung Bearers

The burgundy colored fabric swept back from the proscenium revealing twenty-first century structures. Large piles of steaming dung filled a courtyard surrounded by graying buildings and iron cages. A large orchestra, heavy on brass and weak on strings, burst forth with music at once familiarly human and yet strange animalistic. The anthromorphic players, half-human half-animal, watched the maestro, a cougar-morph, for guidance as dissonant notes climbed in complex and syncopated beats from the basses up to the piccolos. Three singers, avian-morphs wearing human masks, stepped forward. Captain Joshua Conrad listened intently.
"We were poor, dirt poor,” one of them sang.
“We were so poor that when we went to the zoo, we weren't allowed in the front entrance,” the second singer sang quickly.
“Fateful, fateful that we had to enter by the rear entrance,” the first man sang. He raised a hood over his head.
“We saw the dung heaps and we realized how fascinating dung heaps looks like at a zoo," a third singer added. The three began a fugue on the benefit of dung heaps – their gloriousness, their usefulness, their healing capacities, their near god-like presence.
“This seems to explain their worship of dung.” Captain Conrad leaned to Lieutenant Garbedian Slattern and referred to the ubiquitous piles of animal dung that dotted the city. Another trio of singers turned to the audience and the music changed character. High pitched flutes, oboes and clarinets twittered a second motif.
"Rear entrance? Bah! We just jumped the fence,” the tallest male figure in the second group sang out.
“Until one day."
“One day.”
“One day,” the three intoned the words and blended their harmonies with the first singers.
"That noise. They came." Six voices intoned in broad harmonies. The orchestra swelled behind with fanfares, splitting into four groups that called and answered each musical motif.
Non-human scales and chords in atonal modes filled the hall. An ovoid structure descended from the ceiling carrying two non-human blue figures. The opera continued as it described the aliens encounter with the human zoo, the paying and non-paying patrons and the animals. The story traced the communication attempts with both animals and humans. The aliens inferred that the zoo was a prison and began to liberate the animals. When they realized that wouldn’t work with some of the more aggressive carnivores, they froze everything in a blue energy field.
“No, no, prison is not the word, their language fails us,” the first alien sang. The chorus was at once dissonant and mysterious.
“Then take them and remake them,” the second alien waved its appendage as the stage trembled under the singers’ feet and levitated from the ground. Captain Conrad gasped, Lieutenant Slattern’s eyes nearly popped from his head. The effect required vast amounts of energy. They had measured only minimal energy generation when they orbited the planet.
“Abduction, abduction, abduction,” the players sang. Ensign Brick elbowed Privates Cotswold and Morgan to stop their giggling.
“And so we began – the poor, the wretched, the unswift and just plain slow. Abducted, seized, kidnapped, probed, duplicated and recreated. They took us and the land around us. Huge alien machines lifted our world from the planet and resettled it inside their spacecraft. And so they changed us, adapted us, and let us build this world.” The ensemble sang a march-like fugue that reminded Captain Conrad of demented caterwauling. They sang of the merging of humans and animals to create the current anthromorphic culture of planet Highland that greeted Captain Conrad and his crew only days before, and they sang it in excruciating detail.
“I’ve never liked this musical part of our history but this is legend and no one can change it,” President Barrett Thor whispered to Captain Conrad. President Thor was a pleasant, obsequious humanoid with a broad, squirrel-like face, a luxurious red tail and soft fur over most of his body. A series of sforzando chords broke out of the march. Another dozen anthromorphs had populated the stage and the group shrieked a resonant passage.
“Until we encountered the wanderer, the explorer, the traveler, the strange one, the interloper. Bright and radiant, the rogue one ripped us half formed from our outpost and carried us along its errant path. Now, its path and our path are one. Once again, we were alone. Once again, we were masters of our own fate. Once again, we could seek our fortune with the wandering star. Our children, and their children have been born under this wandering star of white-hot beauty. Oh beauteous light that saves, light that creates the world, oh necessary bad boy that provides our sustenance, our glory, our passage, your children thank you. You who enable all this, you who have sustained us twenty millennia, we honor and worship you and the dung that brought us together.” The music subsided into a faint twittering of the strings. A young, male lion anthromorph stepped to the edge of the stage. He almost sang a capella, only a lute accompanied him in an astounding a capriccio aria.
“This is our legend, our story as we know it, as it has been handed down through the years. We tell it to you so that you may return to your world and tell your people. We tell it to our young so that they learn of how we began and why we are here.” Everything stopped in silence for a few seconds before the throng of Highlanders screamed and applauded their historical opera. They threw their small tokens of dung into braziers set at the edge of the stage.
“That was magnificent. The best opera me or my crew has ever seen.” Captain Conrad said, faking sincerity. He’d never heard an opera before and after this, he hoped he’d never hear one again.
“Nearly an eon ago our ancestors came from another planet. The Blues never revealed what planet out ancestors came from before they were lost to the liberating star that we now follow through the galaxy. We’d like you to submit to genetic testing to see if our humanoid sides are related to each other. You may be the children of our ancestors,” President Thor explained.
“The Terran High Council would like to develop a broader diplomatic relationship before we exchange DNA for genotyping,” Captain Conrad explained. Terran Council didn’t want a link established between humanity and the Highlanders. The first explorers had gathered enough DNA from the Highlanders to prove their relation to humanity but Terran High Council object to the addition, impurity they called it, of animal DNA that created the anthromorphic creatures entertaining Captain Conrad.