The Fredösphere

Jill was late for work.  As always, she blamed her parents.

"Mom, did you make sure Joey is wearing his boots?  It looks like rain."

"Mm-hm."

Mom was looking out the window of the van when she answered.  Jill risked a quick glance to the back seat.  Miracles of miracles, Joey's boots were on his feet.  Jill faced forward.

"Aw, shit!"

Jill awkwardly slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding a collision.  Someone Jill's height really had no business driving a van, but she didn't trust mom to do it anymore, and dad was long past being good for anything.  And Joey?  Joey wasn't talking yet, which at eighteen months was pretty bad, even for an unaccelerated. 

It all came down to Jill.  Only she could cook, pay the bills, find a handyman (a rare commodity these days!) when something broke, and hold down a job.  That she was late for.  Thanks to her parents.  Stupid, selfish, reckless, stupid, parents.

She pulled into the parking lot of the day care center.  It was a big institution, and its intimidating scale was disguised by a series of cutesy facades, one for each homeroom.  The intent had been that each child would recognize, and identify with, "his" or "her" facade, with its unique color and decor.  That the facades were cartoonish representations of homes (and yes, one of them was a gingerbread house) seemed a kind of mocking irony in light of the new reality.  Jill felt the incongruity afresh each time she lead her demented parents to their homeroom.

Of course, the seedy, grimy appearance of the facades added yet another layer of ironic meaning, one even a genius like Jill could hardly begin to sort out.

This was the new reality:  a few normal people, mostly dumb toddlers like Joey; a huge number of accelerated adults at various stages of mental decline, like Jill's parents; and a bunch of accelerated kids with vast intellectual powers, like Jill.

Jill and her cohort ruled the world.  A world that was falling apart.

Labels: FictionOpeners

Dr. Chekhov showed the girl the ancient handblaster displayed on the mantelpiece.

"2145.  From the start of the era of exploration.  In perfect working condition."

Chekhov hoped that didn't sound too smug.  This girl was special.  Smart enough that his invitation for individual tutoring was plausible; beautiful enough that his real interest could be guessed.  Or so he hoped.

As she looked at the handblaster, Chekhov looked over his student.  He had never seen her in person before.  The imagery did not deceive; she was beautiful, and beautifully dressed.  He delighted in the way her modest wrap simultaneously concealed, and drew attention to, her body.  He gave her high marks for her good taste.  And himself, for his.

The girl (so young!  Only 200!) turned around.  Chekhov hoped she didn't think he was ogling her.  There is a difference between an art gallery and a peep show, after all.

She was frowning.  Uh-oh.

"Is it loaded?"

"Blasters continually recharge themselves, drawing energy from whichever sun is nearby.  So, yes.  By definition."

"It gives me the creeps.  I can't help but think it's going to go off before this day is over."

Labels: FictionOpeners

Sam heard the music before he reached the cavern.

His guide was a bearded old man the other natives called MusicLover.  As they descended the gently sloping tunnel, Sam wondered if he could have found the place on his own, lead by the sound of the ever-shifting harmonies.

"A guy could go crazy, listening to this stuff," Sam said, and then regretted breaking the silence.  If the guide was irritated, however, he made no sign.  Perhaps the guide's job was to rescue tourists from madness caused by the music.  Sam amused himself with a head movie:  the music lulling him into a trance, the guide binding him and dragging him back to the surface, and Sam begging to return, like Odysseus by the island of the Sirens.

They entered the cavern of music.  Colored lights played about the ceiling.  Reflections from rippling water of the pool below, along with glints from bejeweled surfaces of stalactites, completed the symphony of light.  I'll bet the visuals are manufactured for the sake of the tourists, Same told himself.

The two men quieted themselves and let the music take hold.  Sam knew something of music theory, enough to know the chords were founded in the overtone series.  Except when they weren't; the "wrong" notes seemed just frequent enough to create a pleasing amount of tension.  They have a sense of dissonance and resolution like we do, Sam thought.  And yet there was something in the timing... or was it the use of competing bass lines?  Or maybe the cadences that always deceived?  ...that marked the music as utterly alien.  Whatever it was, the evidence was unmistakable:  these chords were willful.

"Do you understand them?" asked Sam.

MusicLover didn't seem to mind the interruption.  A hint of vanity tainted the solemn expression on his face.

"A bit.  The life of a chord is so transient, and so commingled with that of other chords, that even I can't tell precisely what they mean.  But I think they're having an argument."

"About what?"

"About you.  They're trying to decide if you're sentient."

"How can I prove myself?  Hum a few bars of something?"

Sam laughed.  His guide did not.

"Try 'My Country 'Tis of Thee.'  They always like that one."

Labels: FictionOpeners

George thought this one was unusually arrogant, even for a crow.

"You can't do it forever, you know," he said.  "Keeping us tied up.  And helpless.  Every human being in the world.  It's gotta end sometime."

"Why not?" the bird chirped back at him.  "We've done it for the past thirteen years."

"Twelve years, ten months, and twenty-nine days!" George cried, with relish.  "You can't count!  Your kind never could!"

Labels: FictionOpeners

John faced his enemy.  The enemy was huge, insect-like, and armed with a blaster.  John was an Earth man, armed with his wits and naught beside. 

The big bug fired his blaster.  The beam of energy approached John at light speed.  Fear can make time stop, they say, but John knew no fear.  Because he wore a space-time continuum adapter field, he was able to step through time in it's fundamental units at the Planck scale.  To John, time slowed nearly to a halt.

John, conqueror of worlds, hero of the Second Galactic War, and now the last hope of the princess whose shapely form lay unconscious at his feet, observed the beam of energy that was surely destined to kill him.  He observed it creep forward by two of the 100 inches that separated him from his enemy.  He had time.

He had time to remember.

He remembered a day thirty years prior, the day of his first piano lesson.

He remembered Miss Thornton, his piano teacher.  He remembered Miss Thornton's imposing height, her huge black eyes and her spindly, insect-like limbs.  He remembered Miss Thornton's angry cries of "no!" each time he tried to play a melody.  John remembered Miss Thornton's rage as he fled her piano studio that day, and the puddle of urine he left behind on her piano bench.

Three inches.  He had plenty of time to remember it all.

Labels: FictionOpeners

Every inhabited planet in the galaxy wanted Zladimir Zlamikof.  He was the greatest conductor of his time, but his time was 4000 years ago, in the frame of reference of planet HD 3843245 d.  He was one of an elite group of performers, politicians, scientists, and soldiers whose jobs required them to travel repeatedly among the stars. Frequent trips at relativistic speeds meant time passed more slowly for Zladimir than for planet-bound persons.

As he stepped off the gangplank and onto the surface of the rocket pad, a young woman from the orchestra appeared to shake his right hand and stuff sheets of music into his left.  He scanned the music for the composer's name (unrecognized, and unpronounceable, of course) and the dates following it.  He tried to perform the calculation in his head.

The woman anticipated his question.  "It was written 3000 years after you graduated from the conservatory, and 40 years after your flight departed HD 870684 Ac.  And since your starship arrived late, you've missed your one chance to rehearse it with the orchestra."

"I can't seem to make sense of this notation."

"Notation has...has evolved while you were in transit.  Your flight lasted 85 years, in local time.

"Ah, well.  It won't be the first time I've conducted by the seat of my pants."

"You won't be wearing pants.  You won't be wearing any clothes at all.  The chocolate pudding would ruin them."

"Chocolate...?"

"You and the musicians will be submerged in a huge vat of chocolate pudding.  It's how we do classical music now."

The great conductor's eyes were looking at the woman, but seeing nothing.

"Isn't chocolate pudding... bad ... for the violins?"

Labels: FictionOpeners

Who would want to live on a planet terraformed into the shape of a perfect icosahedron?  Who would dare carve each planet of an entire star system into the shape of one of the platonic solids?  What kind of mind is driven to reshape every natural object it finds, even objects of planetary scale -- even living objects! -- into simple geometric forms?  What kind of mind?  A very, very alien mind, indeed.

Upon these thoughts, Lieutenant Harold "Hank" Mortensen of the United States Space Force meditated, as he lay strapped to a square table in an octahedral castle amidst a topiary of cubes, tetrahedra and rhombicosidodecahedra at the north pole of the icosahedral planet of HD 98618 c, and observed that the carving tool poised directly over his head was flawlessly fashioned in the shape of a great stellated dodecahedron.

Labels: FictionOpeners

I found him sitting on the park bench at one o'clock, just like he said.

"So, what's this all about?"

He stood and faced me.

"Thank you for coming, detective. I have something important to tell you."

He paused while he brushed invisible dust from his impeccably clean tuxedo coat.

"Tonight at midnight, I will murder my wife.  I will leave no evidence that points to me.  I will construct an alibi that you will be unable to refute.  If you attempt to use this conversation as evidence against me, I will prove it never happened, and you will be dismissed from the force in disgrace.  I will commit this crime and walk, and you will go to your grave raging against your helplessness.  I tell you this now because I expect to derive much satisfaction in watching you rage."

I examined his face for clues he was joking.  His kind are notoriously hard to read; on the other hand, they are notoriously lame when it comes to humor.

"In that case, why don't we head down to the station?  I can find an excuse to keep you locked up overnight."

His two mouths contorted in what I suspected was an alien's equivalent of a smile.

"Just as I planned. Thank you, detective, for being so predictable."

Labels: FictionOpeners

This begins series of posts devoted to exercises in writing fiction openers. 

Generally I find endings easy, both in my fiction writing and in my music composition.  The beginnings are usually torture, however, and consume most of my rewriting time.  In the hope of remedying this, I'm going to spend a week or so creating openers. 

I promise to avoid getting too weird--women marrying giraffes will be strictly off limits--but the nature of the exercise will no doubt bias me toward the eye-catching.  So, we'll see what we get.  Also, I'll be interested to find out how many of these beginnings work as stand-alone pieces.  Will this be an exercise in openers, or flash fiction?

To see all the openers in one page, follow the FictionOpeners label below.

Labels: FictionOpeners