Blogger's Note: In high school, I took three years of art classes. I was never really all that great at drawing, but I enjoyed it. I'm always doodling a superhero or a spacecraft or an alien. I dreamed of being a comic book artist in my youth. I've since grown to realize that I'm no where near that good.
Except once.
One project in high school was to draw a still life of this plant that was sitting in front of us. We had been tasked with similar assignments before and since, but something snapped in my brain this particular time. I remember the bell ringing to start class and the bell ringing to end class. Not much else. I didn't draw that plant; it drew itself. And it was, by far, the best drawing I have ever done in my life.
I think anyone that creates anything, be it writing or songs or sculptures or photography or anything, will tell you that the best work isn't created. It creates itself. We're just vessels delivering the message.
"Brookport" was like that for me. Once the seed got planted in my brain, it took on a life of its own. I was biting at the bit from conception until I could sit in front of my computer.
The same is true for today's post. Now, I sure hope I'm not building this up too much. This idea is admittedly a little corny. And maybe a little egocentric. But, as I've already stated, I didn't create Alanaka. She created herself. Even her silly name. But once I met her, I fell in love with her. If today's feature does nothing more than massage my ego, then it will certainly do that.
Lastly, before we get started, I'd like to share the perfect storm of things that inspired Alanaka.
I had been talking to a customer that regularly visits us at the buffet where I work. He's an accomplished song writer; he also enjoys writing stories and poems as well; so, we had a lot in common (minus the "accomplished" part, of course). I had asked him to read some of my blog, and he did. He told me that he really enjoyed reading it, and he praised my "talent." Then, he gave me advice. I sometimes cringe when I get advice. I subscribe to the philosophy that I'd rather swim in my own mistake than celebrate someone else's victory. But, I respected him; and, as it would turn out, I really liked his advice. I decided to follow it. Unfortunately, I can't share it yet, because I'm afraid it will tip my hand on the subject of today's post, but I'll try to share his recommendation in a near-future post.
I'm approaching 40. I top the big hill in about a month. Don't think for one second that that hasn't been on my mind a lot. And enough on that subject.
The last ingredient was a song that I just discovered. It was written by Gillian Welch, but I think I prefer Dylan Platt's version. It's called "Song Left to Sing". You can find it here. I think it would make a good soundtrack for this episode. Just click on the link and scroll down until you find, "Song Left to Sing", and you can listen to the message that inspired me. Then, come back here and meet Alanaka.
A razor of light sliced through the darkness. As the hatch edged open, a screeching hinge cut the silence momentarily before it abruptly stilled. Movement could just be discerned through the crack.
"It's stuck!" A girl's voice complained.
"Push harder!" A boy answered.
Thud, thud, thud.
"I can't open it. Here, you try... wait.. there!" The hatch door swung open with a loud shrill and a crashing bang.
When Alanaka's head emerged, a rumble of thunder ominously announced her arrival, but she didn't mind. Unlike most people, she liked Tantrums. She pulled a stray whisper of hair from her sight and scanned the attic.
"Alanaka! Are you going or not!?!" The boy's voice complained.
"She's probably afraid. Climb down and let us go first!" Another boy's voice suggested.
"I'm not afraid, Mason!" she insisted, "ivory light level 5." Her PIB - Personal Interface Bracelet - lit up with a warm, white light and illuminated the room. A maze of dusty antiques, sheet-covered stands, and stacks of old crates littered the floor.
"Alanaka Pridilee Montgomery, I swear if you don't go, I'm going to..."
"Quit pushing me, Boston!" the eleven-year old girl exclaimed as she at last climbed into the attic. She stepped out of the way to allow space for her older brother Boston and his friend Mason to join her.
"Wow," Mason whispered. "Look at all of these old things! Ivory light level 5."
"Ivory light level 5," Boston echoed. The room brightened considerably.
"Mason, don't you break anything! Mom would kill us!" Alanaka ordered. Mason was thirteen and the oldest, but he didn't always act like the oldest. He was always getting in trouble for something, and Boston seemed to drop fifty IQ points when he hung out with his mischievous friend.
"Who me?" Mason asserted. Alanaka just ignored him. She pulled a length of ribbon from one of her pockets and tied her auburn hair back in a ponytail. When she at last took her first step, another groan of thunder shook the air.
"Was it scheduled to rain today?" Boston asked.
"If you'd learn the schedule, you wouldn't have to ask. One of these days, you're going to get caught without a jacket in a rain shower, and I, for one, am going to laugh my butt off!" his sister quipped.
"So this is a Tantrum?" Boston ignored her scolding.
"Well, if it's not scheduled, what do you think, you Vlusian Binker Rat??" Alanaka prodded. Weather patterns were strictly scheduled by the Climate Authority; but, sometimes, on rare occasions, Mother Nature ignored the schedule and showed the Authority who was really in control. These tempests didn't happen often; but, when they did, most people hated them. They interrupted so many well-planned events. But Alanaka loved them. They were a glimmer of hope that the world couldn't be completely controlled, that the future was still a mystery. Plus, the sound of Tantrum thunder was different than regulated thunder. It was ominous and dangerous and magical.
"Look!" Mason interrupted. "A set of New Israel daggers! I bet these are worth at least a thousand credits!" He picked up one of the weighted knives and threw it at Alanaka. Her PIB's protection bubble responded, as always. She didn't even flinch when the dagger bounced off her force shield and clanged to the floor beside her.
"Quit it, Mason! You'll break it!" she scolded.
"You can't break New Israel steel!" he corrected with a smirk.
"Look, our old Skip Rope," Boston pulled free a braid of steel from a pile of forgotten artifacts. He held the handle and depressed the button. A red laser formed a perimeter around him. "It still works! You guys wanna play?"
Tempted, but not enough to halt the exploration of their attic's treasures, Alanaka shook her head. She used to love playing Skip Rope; she'd almost forgotten about it.
"What's that?" On the far side of the room, a large, wooden crate was engraved with what appeared to be a labyrinth on the front. It caught her eye, because she loved mazes. Even the boys seemed to be intrigued by the mysterious box. The three of them walked to the wooden chest wearing expressions of wonder.
Boston and Mason bookended Alanaka as she knelt in front of the chest. Ever so carefully, she lifted the lid off it. A boom of thunder, the loudest yet, startled the three of them as the mysterious contents were revealed by the light of her PIB.
Stacks of binders and folders and crisp papers were stacked inside. The stationary was brown with age, and Alanaka liked the way it smelled. Some of the papers were covered in print; others were filled with handwritten manuscript. A holo-disc sat on top.
"Just use your PIB on the holo-disc. I bet all of this stuff has been recorded on that," Boston suggested. But Alanaka didn't want to read this stuff on a holo-disc. She wanted to see and feel the pages herself. She sat the holo-disc aside and carefully lifted some of the pages out of the chest. She skimmed through some of the writing. Boston picked up a folder and started reading to himself.
"It's just a bunch of stories like you write, Alanaka," he mused. The sound of a paper being ripped caused Boston and his sister to jerk their attention Mason's way.
"Whoops," he said.
"Mason! Put that stuff down now!" Alanaka lectured. Apparently he had just ripped the corner of one of the pages, and she didn't like the anxiety she felt when he was handling this stuff.
"Whatever. Doesn't interest me anyway," he said dismissively as he sat the papers down and turned to explore more interesting things.
"Here's some pictures." Alanaka freed a stack of two-dimensional photographs from a folder.
"What is that can that the man is holding?" she asked her older brother.
"That's alcohol. They drank it back then. Wanna know something funny? Back then, alcohol was legal, and marijuana was illegal!" Boston explained.
"Well, that's backwards," Mason interjected.
"Look at this picture! They're surrounded by so many people!" Alanaka speculated.
"You mean cyber friends?" Mason inquired.
"No, I think these are real people! I think these are their friends!"
She noticed that a man and a woman were in most of the pictures. She held up one to the light of her PIB. In it, the man and the woman were posing in front of a Christmas tree with a young boy and a baby girl. The boy was pouting in the picture. She turned the aged photograph over and read aloud the handwriting, "Duane, Joanna, Roman, and Amelia. Christmas 2013."
"2013!" Mason exclaimed from behind a stack of old Variable Imaging Emitters. "Is that your Last Generation?"
The three children pondered silently what it must have been like... to die. In the early 22nd Century, genetic science had stopped aging at the age of 25. The creation and implementation of PIBs made dying impossible. A force shield that constantly guarded its wearer cushioned crash victims. It protected them from blunt trauma and deflected hostile projectiles. It could supply nutrients and oxygen. Nothing could kill someone wearing a PIB, and cellular regeneration eliminated diseases and cancers. Suicide wasn't even possible. PIB removal was only possible when three people were present: the acting physician, a legal guardian, and a PIB Ambassador. Removal was only authorized at certain growth intervals or if a Voluntary Fade's application had been approved.
The only way to die was a long, drawn-out legal process that considered any underlying psychological disorders. If a person went through the five-year procedure and no mental irregularities were discovered, then they could undergo euthanasia. These people that just didn't want to live anymore were called Voluntary Fades. Most people didn't even try to understand what would make someone want to be a Voluntary Fade.
As a method of population control, child-bearing was only allowed if one applied and was granted a license to birth, and a license was only given after a Voluntary Fade passed away. Boston's and Alanaka's mother had waited fourteen years to accumulate two licenses so that she could have children raised together.
"I think Amelia was part of our Last Generation," Boston finally responded. No one said anything for a period.
"There sure are a lot of stories in here," Boston mused as he sifted through the pile of stationary.
"Yeah..." his sister agreed as she lifted another binder out of the box. It unveiled a smaller box underneath. Alanaka lifted the package out of the chest and sat it on the floor.
"What's that?" her brother asked as a loud clang from the other side of the attic prefixed another 'whoops' from Mason. Alanaka and Boston ignored him.
She lifted the cover from the box. On top, a large, velvet-covered book concealed something underneath. She took the book out to reveal a pair of ladies' shoes that had been carefully stored below it. They were like no shoes she had ever seen before. A rosy flower adorned the ankle strap; and, by the look of the heel, something told her that these shoes had been hand-crafted. She couldn't even imagine how old they might be. She wanted to wear them, but she knew her mother would never allow that!
"There's something engraved on the book!" Boston informed. A layer of dust concealed the lettering, so he inhaled a deep breath and blew it off.
Another boom of thunder grumbled outside as the words became readable. "PARENTING WITH LIGHTSABERS" was written across the center. In the bottom corner, someone had written a smaller bit of script. He gusted another quick breath to better unveil the message. "As preserved by Roman Alan Edwards. I will always diddily-diddily love you, Dad." Boston read it aloud.
"What's a 'diddily'?" Mason called from across the room.
Boston and Alanaka looked at each other and shrugged. "Must be an inside thing," Boston pondered aloud.
"And what's a lightsaber for that matter?" Mason continued the barrage of questions.
"Actually, I think I know," Boston admitted. "They were things used in Star Wars."
"What's Star Wars?" Alanaka asked.
"It was a movie. Or a bunch of movies. Our class watched one of them at the Historical Museum once. It was one of those old-fashioned, two-dimensional videos. The plot was really cool, but I had a hard time paying attention to a flat screen. Star Wars is what started the Theater Riots in 2020," her brother explained. "Apparently, the film industry, which was absolutely booming at the time, decided to remake these Star Wars videos. The riots started after they cast this girl named Smiley Ryus, or something like that, to play the princess. The people went crazy. They rioted and destroyed most of the theaters in the world. The industry never recovered."
"He sure uses this word fucking a lot. What does it mean?" Alanaka asked as she read some passages from one of his stories.
"I'm not sure; they had a lot of weird slang back then," Boston speculated.
"What are you kids doing?"
Alanaka, Boston, and Mason were startled by Mrs. Montgomery's surprising arrival. Her head surfaced through the attic's hatch door. "Alanaka! That stuff belonged to Amelia! You be extra careful with that stuff!"
"Who was Amelia?" Alanaka asked.
"She was my great-great-great grandmother," Mrs. Montgomery explained as she climbed into the attic. "She was part of our Last Generation. She kept this box of stuff that was most important to her."
"What are those shoes, Mom?"
Mrs. Montgomery smiled slyly. She didn't answer right away. "Maybe you should read that and find out," her mother nodded toward the book in her hands. "Anyway, dinner's ready. We're having pierogies."
"Mrs. Montgomery, did you make that name up? My mom says she's never heard of pierogies before," Mason asked.
"My great-great grandmother taught me how to make them. She'll be here tomorrow. You can ask her," she smiled at her son's friend.
"Well, all I know is I can't wait to fucking eat them! I'm starving!" Mason declared.
"Me, too!" Boston agreed.
"What does fucking mean?" Mrs. Montgomery asked with a silly grin.
"I don't know," Mason conceded, "but I'm going to be fucking you all day, so you'd better get used to it!"
"Yeah, we're going to revive some of the old slang, Mom," Boston announced as he began descending the step ladder.
Mason followed right after him. "Oh, man, those pierogies smell so fucking good!"
"You coming?" Mrs. Montgomery asked her daughter as she stepped onto the ladder herself.
"I don't think so," Alanaka said thoughtfully. She looked down at the book in her hands and back at her mother. "I think I want to read a little of this."
Mrs. Montgomery recognized the starry look in her daughter's eyes. She had been about the same age when she had read about those ancient misadventures. She smiled to herself as she descended the steps. "Ok, well, I'll save you some when you're ready to eat."
Alanaka considered the fact that she was alone in the attic for a brief moment. She glanced at her PIB and then at the beautiful shoes. She pulled out a picture from the stack and looked at the man and the woman from which she had descended. They were standing in front of the Great Pyramids, so it was obviously taken before the Great War. They were laughing and holding up their middle fingers which must have been how they waved back then.
The woman had blue eyes just like hers. Her captivating smile entranced the girl; for a moment, she couldn't look away.
"Aqua blue level 3." Her PIB softened to the color that Alanaka liked to use while she was reading. Her eyes twinkled softly in the new glow. She paused to look at the shoes one last time and resolved to find out about them before she slept that night.
Alanaka opened the book. A frightening clap of thunder startled her. The sound of a hard rain baptizing her home pacified her back into calm; and, at last, she began to read...
Continue Alanaka's adventure:
Alanaka Episode II - An Adventure Begins
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