"No food or underwear lying on the floor; you have a girlfriend?"
I snorted. "What part of computer nerd did you not understand about my introduction?"
She laughed, flashing her smile at me again, and I have to say that my fickle little heart was having second thoughts about Jane. I went into the kitchen and attempted to pull things from the fridge with my mind, which gave Michelle another chance to laugh at me. I gave up and assembled omelet components the old-fashioned way, and she walked over to give me a hand. "I'll grate the cheese," she said, looking through my cabinets and drawers. "If you'll tell me where the grater is."
I pointed above the sink, where I had it hanging on a peg. "If it'd been a snake…"
"I'd have screamed and run from your apartment."
"Like so many women before you."
I was totally killing with her. I'd pegged Michelle as a severe, serious person when I saw her, but she was guffawing the entire time we cooked the omelets. It might have been nerves, but the laughter sounded genuine to me. Once the food was done, I poured us some orange juice and we sat down at the table to eat.
"So, what did you do?" She was digging into omelet with a good appetite, which did my heart good. "For work, I mean."
She wiped her mouth and held her hand in front of her face as a shield to keep me from seeing her chew, which I've never understood, but is supposed to be polite. "I teach business administration at Howard." She paused, swallowed, then added, "Taught. Will we even need businesses after the change?"
"People had businesses in Star Trek."
"You're not making me feel better."
"Well, they were a post-scarcity society, too, where all necessities and most other things could be made out of thin air using waste atoms and their limitless energy supply. People still had vineyards and taught and performed live theater and wrote and ran restaurants and tons of other things."
She set down her fork and reached a hand over to pat mine. It was condescending and endearing at the same time. "You do realize that was just a TV show, right?"
I stared at her in grim silence for a minute before sighing heavily and saying, "Yes, Miss Buzzkill. My point is that we've got a role model to look at, and draw ideas from."
"Role model." I nodded. "Star Trek." Another nod. "I am not going to be Uhura." Then she cackled madly, and I had to join in, because, yes, damn it, I had already envisioned her in the short skirt. She calmed back down in a minute and returned to her omelet. She considered what I had said, though. "So, intellectual property. Methods and procedures of doing things will be very important – a hand-made item will be of more value than one we can make with a machine."
"As long as there's creativity involved in the making, or some kind of unique quality that only you could bring to it. That's what we're going to value, now; the unique qualities of each individual."
"Sounds a little utopian to me," Michelle said, finishing her last bite and swigging down some orange juice to chase it.
"That's what we're building," I said, "a utopia."
"On the bodies of the rest of the human race."
"That's why it's got to be a utopia," I said, finishing my own breakfast. "It's got to be worth that sacrifice."
After breakfast, Michelle and I turned on the TV to see what kind of news was coming out. I know it was recorded and you can play it any time you want, but I'm glad that I caught the president's news conference live. Seeing her struggle with the reality of what had just gone down, with her desire to comfort the nation as opposed to her own desire to just step away and be with her family, because she had been marked – the way she handled it all made me proud to be an American. I had to grab a box of tissues a couple of minutes in, and Michelle and I needed another before she was done.
"And to those who will be left behind," she said in her conclusion. "You now represent us all. You are our legacy to the universe. Do us proud." She looked over at her teleprompter and then back at the camera. "That's all the prepared remarks, folks. Depending on how well we're all doing in these last couple of months, I may or may not be back in front of you. I would just like to say that it's been an honor to lead this great nation as its final president, and I hope that the American left behinds will be a force for democracy and freedom in the Coalition; show 'em how it's done, y'all." She let out her breath, gave the people at home her highest-wattage smile, and exited with, "God bless us all. Goodbye."
Well, I was a wreck. Michelle wasn't much better. We sat on my couch, holding each other and wiping our eyes for a good ten minutes after the speech was over. It was cathartic. "You know it's only going to get worse," Michelle said, getting up to throw away the mound of used tissues around us. "That was someone we don't even know. I don't even want to face my family."
"I'm saving mine for near the end, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna get through that."
She flopped back down on the couch next to me. "Well, at least we left-behinders have got each other."
"That's what we're goin' with? Left-behinders? Really?"
My disdain made her cross her arms over her chest and lean back.
The 250 Word What?
The 250 Word Project is an ongoing commitment to create 250 words of a story every day for an entire year. Exactly 250 words. No more, no less. And every week, you will get to read the exactly 1750 words created during that week right here. But, you'd better read them that week, because the next week, they're going to be replaced by the next 1750 words, and the previous will be lost to time and the Wayback Machine until 2 months has passed.
Every two months, the 14750, 15000, 15250, or 15500 word output of this project will be gathered together into a small ebooklet and sold for a buck - except for the first one. Like any good drug-dealer, I have to give away the first one for free. At the end of the year, the 91250 or 91500 word story will be completed and compiled together for sale as an entire ebook for $3.99, and the smaller installments will be taken off-sale, lost to the winds of time and piracy.
I use the 250 word project to warm me up for writing on my main projects but it is taking on a life of its own, and I want to share that life with you. I have about a 4-week head start on what you will be seeing appear here and for sale, but otherwise you're seeing the story as it is being created - not exactly Harlan Ellison-level writing as performance art, but as close as I want to come to it. Who knows, come next July, I might cut my lead time out entirely. It all depends on how this goes.
So, enjoy the 250 Word Project however you want to read it - weekly, bi-monthly, or yearly. No matter what, it'll keep coming to you, 250 words at a time.
CURRENT 250 WORD PROJECT
The current 250 Word Project is Elbies, a story of first contact between humans and aliens. The aliens want to bring us into their society, and will help us fulfill all of our hopes and aspirations... but there's a catch.
Read along weekly at The 250 Word Project on Robbie Taylor(.net).
Elbies - part 1 Page 9
