Analog SFF, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Which brings me to why I've invented you. I can visualize a circle of people just fine, but only as . . . placeholders. I don't think my brain is firing well enough right now to summon up more than one imaginary person to interact with. But you'll do fine as someone to listen and keep me company. Just don't interrupt. That's a joke.

  And here's an idea! Let's add a game into the mix. I'll mostly be telling it like it was except I'll add a wee exaggeration or an outright fib now and then. I'll stop the “reading” a few times and you can guess which parts that you just heard weren't true. It won't be easy because weird things were happening even before I wound up in this mess, so you'd best listen with both ears.

  Ready? ]]

  * * * *

  Five years ago, in 2013, during my junior year at UC Santa Cruz, I wrote an essay titled “An Endangered Business List” for the only economics class I've ever taken.

  That title seemed clever to me back then but sly because the paper was really about types of small American businesses vanishing beneath the waves of insolvency. Right after the section concerning ma-and-pa grocery stores, I'd described the fate of ma-and-pa bookstores. Had no idea at the time that last problem would soon get right in my face; but it sure has, because with three great white sharks gobbling up all lesser fish, small fry such as The Page Turner, where I've worked for four years now, have practically become extinct. And the Sharks keep circling.

  [[ Yeah, now that I'm actually reciting this, I can see that the beginning sucks, so don't bother pointing it out. No doubt real authors would say there's too much info coming too fast, and the intro is too cutesy. But I don't have the oomph to start this from scratch. Besides, that essay got an A. ]]

  Our store is situated very near the Pacific somewhere between San Diego and Seattle, but it isn't really named The Page Turner. Sorry to come on evasive, but some of the secrets I plan to share aren't mine, so I'm squirting a little obscuring ink in the waters to protect the innocent.

  [[ Evasive. Ha! If this story were truly meant for publication, I'd have to ink out the bulk of it. In other news, you think maybe I'm going a bit heavy-handed on the oceanic theme? ]]

  One innocent is my boss, and I'm going to claim her name is also Page Turner because I believe in overdoing a good thing. If you'd like an honest description, you're out of luck and not only because I'm hiding her identity but because she changes so much from moment to moment. I'll happen to glance her way and be stunned at how beautiful she is, then she'll turn slightly or catch the light a different way and poof—she's almost a hag. I can tell you her hair is dark and long, and let's just call her eyes gray and leave them be. She always wears blue or green. Always.

  As for me, I'm easy and I don't mean sexually. I've got a nose that's tragically short, too many freckles, and hair that's either obnoxiously red or just red enough depending on your tastes. I suppose my basic proportions will do, but I'm about five pounds pleasantly plump plus another ten that's trickier to justify. And I appear heavier than I am because, frankly, I'm in sad shape for a woman still in her twenties. George W. Bush—remember him?—had a better attitude toward his critics than I do toward exercise. Well, now you can guess where I stand politically, but I don't mind spilling my own secrets, some of them. I've got a Celtic knot tattoo on my butt, an IQ comfortably north of 150, and I'm a monster at chess—almost good enough to be known outside of chess circles where I'm ranked pretty darn high. I'll even confess that I'm somewhat bisexual, although I prefer men. And I'm fully bilingual: English and Gaelic, which I get to use at Christmas and on the phone with my mum. But I won't spill my real name.

  We'll just call me Amy because Amy was my best friend at UCSC. And she died in an idiotic car accident that wasn't her fault.

  [[ Two facts that I'll give you for free: my name is actually Caitlin, Caitlin Mackenzie Shroeder if you must know, Mackenzie being my mum's maiden surname; but my friend who died in the accident was truly named Amy and for obvious reasons I'm feeling . . . close to her right now. ]]

  I'll explain our setup. With a New Borders within a quarter mile and a Barnes & Noble just down the street, not to mention a next gen Amazon megastore already on the drawing board, coming to a neighborhood near YOU, Page has had to be damn shrewd to keep us afloat. She's taken a multitasking sort of approach to keep business flowing in. Here's an example:

  Few consumables earn money in this city as well as gourmet coffee, but New Borders is pushing “Alexandria Café,” which Page thinks is a redux of a discontinued blend from Starbucks and not half bad, while B&N offers Starbucks under its own name. So Page got hold of a friend who got hold of a friend who ships her the really good stuff. Illy is our caféordinaire, a terrific espresso-style brewed in an ordinary coffeemaker, and although it's pricey, we undercut Starbucks on price per cup. But for a few dimes more, we offer authentic Jamaican Blue Mountain.

  [[ Now there's a bit I'd definitely redact if I ever wrote this down and submitted it to a magazine. Anyone who read it and is familiar with the store or who merely stumbled in and took one look at the chalkboard would go “Ah ha!” and start looking around for me. I'd hate that kind of attention. Likewise, I'd think twice before bragging about our homemade pecan cheesecake and the best Napoleons ever. But I might be willing to include other things we offer since pretty much every baby bookstore still limping along has to do similar stuff. Care to guess what I mean? You're too late. ]]

  Page also uses what she calls her “social hooks” to bump business. We do an art show every month, have live music every Friday night, and sometimes offer stand-up comedy. In addition, we have three semiformal bookish clubs infesting our couches and chairs on designated evenings: the Fantasy Guild, a short chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, and finally a writer's group, the Literary Lions, which has two honest-to-God published authors.

  [[ I guess the “Lions"—actually named the “Bookworms,” I'm bummed to admit—infected me with the writing bug, bless their squinty bloodshot eyes, and I didn't even know it until now. We used to host my chess club, the Rooks, but it wound up doing too little business to make it worth staying open late; we board heads know how to concentrate. That's why Rooks meet mostly at my house. Or did. Looks like we'll need a new venue. ]]

  Then there's something of an informal club. Every morning from around nine to noon, we've got the Regulars. Sure, swarms of irregulars—not the Baker Street kind—show up during those hours, and a few such even appear consistently for a week or two, then vanish as if responding to some invisible slow tide. Our five solid citizens, on the other hand, practically homestead their couches during the early shift. They all walk to the store rather than drive, arrive usually within fifteen minutes of each other, and they never begin the day's discussion until all five are seated and equipped with java and goodies. I understand they got to know each other through the Page Turner, but they've coalesced into a sort of clique, an unusually accepting one that grants temporary visas to anyone wishing to join the morning blab session. Still, full membership is subtly reserved for the core group, Page and I being honorary members in those moments when we're not too busy.

  One thing that keeps Paul, Page's part-timer, and me hopping is that our Regulars are bean fiends; most gulp down a cup or two of our best brew per hour. You heard right. Professor J, for example, inhales five cups before lunch every blessed day we're open—that's six days a week—which I always figured accounts for his over-the-top energy and twisted sense of humor. Around eleven you'll hear my boss muttering, “Amy, we've got to cut them off."

  Even when I can't participate in discussions, they're worth eavesdropping on. Maybe it's all that caffeine whipping their brains cells to a frenzy, but our five “clients,” as Paul puts it, are some of the brightest people I've ever met—with some of the nuttiest notions.

  Maybe it's time to introduce you around, and sorry about the bogus names.

  Tara always settles in the green couch, probably to match her eyes. She's very blond, somewhere in her forties I
suppose, big enough to make me look skinny, and has lovely and delicate features. If she dropped fifty pounds, she could be—no, don't want to go there. I refuse to be one of those chubby girls who look at other overweight people with narrowed eyes. Anyway, she's got a sexy voice with a Scottish accent that reminds me of my mum's, only mum sounds more like Shrek. Tara totes crutches around, but uses them sparingly. She's a professor of marine biology on a sabbatical.

  Serge—Sir-gay—has to be on the far side of fifty. He's got a lean but not hungry look and seems taller than he is. Very polite and always calm, decades of gentle smiles have engraved his face with gentle wrinkles. Gray hair, but plenty of it. Retired librarian, which is more impressive than you might think since his particular library has the words “of Congress” tacked on.

  Professor J is Serge ten years younger, facially speaking, but shorter and infinitely less serene. Don't think I've met anyone else with such electric blue eyes. Semi-retired, but only from the teaching aspect of his life. J also shows up for Lion get-togethers. He's the other white meat: the less published of our literary giants and his work is strictly nonfiction. Archeology tomes.

  Dusty is the club's toddler, and I've never learned why she doesn't have to be somewhere else every morning. I'd say she's not quite thirty and would describe her as hemi-goth, although I suppose most people have forgotten what “goth” used to mean in a fashion sense. Anyway, hair dyed carbon-black, black eyeliner and fingernails. Eyes so dark you can't see any pupils and lashes so long and with so much mascara, you barely see her eyes. But she dresses mostly in blazing colors and tends to show a lot of high-quality tanned leg. She's the kind of person Page describes as “entitled."

  Finally, there's good old Doc Abraham. Sixty, plus or minus five years, tall enough to play pro basketball, gray kinky hair, skin almost light enough to pass for Caucasian. Extra large eyes, usually all lit up with enthusiasm. Of the Regulars, he emits the most words per minute by a wide margin. Doctorate in physics and a spare one in computer science, a genuine nerd's nerd gainfully employed in research. Just not before noon most days. British, veddy.

  If I sound especially fond of Abe and talk about him more than the others, it's because he's the only Regular I have a connection with outside the store. He's a Rook, a fellow chess nut, and we frequently have private matches, just the two of us. He's good, so good that I actually have to sweat a little to checkmate him, and I must admit that he's even taken a few when I was daydreaming. That's three losses for me out of one hundred ninety matches so far, so you can see who pwns who.

  [[ Neat, huh. “Pwn” does suggest “pawn.” Or is that one of those too-clever word games? ]]

  Five months ago, Abe raved ecstatic about a piece of equipment his lab had just slapped together. Sometimes he called it a GHD, other times a “field portable gravitational harmonic detector.” For weeks, he blathered about it incessantly during the morning sessions and our late-night matches, but he might as well have been spouting Urdu for all I got out of it. I mean he made nice clear statements such as, “the GHD uses the polarization of microwave beams to modulate a laser inferometer.” See what I mean? I finally asked what the thing was for and he goggled at me, startled that anyone could miss the obvious, and sputtered, “Why, detecting the highly elusive; everything from spacetime distortions to De Broglie waves generated by objects many magnitudes larger than the subatomic.” At this point his eyes took on a gleam any fanatic might envy. “In one lightweight unit, Amy, we now have a device for measuring gravitational waves with capabilities far beyond LIGO 3, and which can also pinpoint oscillations, or rather the consequences of oscillations hitherto too minute to be more than theoretical!"

  Seems ridiculous to end a sentence as geeky as that last one with an exclamation point, but it was right there in his voice.

  Anyhow, I couldn't summon the courage to ask him to translate all that into English but was nervy enough to ask about practical applications. I got a lovely lecture about pure scientific exploration before he went on to admit, reluctantly, that he supposed the machine could waste its time accomplishing various tasks beyond its intended purpose such as sniffing out deeply buried radioactive materials, or warning of incipient earthquakes by measuring subterranean pressures. He went on to add, in a fit of British whimsy, that the GHD could even locate a kitty that had fallen down the backyard well, so long as it kept treading water. Apparently some feline motion would be necessary to isolate the kitty's vibration from the general vibration of the well.

  Okay, that's all five Regulars. And the cuckoo-clock widget on my screen just roared so I'm putting this and myself to bed for the night. Got an extra long day coming up. The Literary Lions and their hope-to-be-maned followers will be extending our hours. And while the writer's group isn't nearly as sneaky or crazed as the Fantasy Guild, I'll want to be sharp for smuggled-in booze, which we could get busted for. So I need my less-than-beauty sleep. Goodnight, sweet whatever.

  [[ See what I did there with the widget? I just gave the “reader” a clue that the story is really some kind of e-diary I'm writing on a computer. I wish. And if only I could go to bed. I'll probably conk out soon anyway. That's been happening more lately. A bad sign, I'm sure. ]]

  Bummer. The Lions kept me up past midnight and today I'm burned out.

  [[ Got a hunch I really was up past midnight, but since it's pitch black and I can't see my watch or move the arm it's on, or even touch its light button with my free arm, who knows?

  FYI, I'm not loving the transition at this point in the story. And I'm beginning to see why a lot of writers are so down on first person narratives; it's easy to overdose on commentary. Maybe I should've gone third person or spiced up the remarks by using blog format. Mood: moody. Nah. Ten to one, editors are flooded with bloggy tales and I wouldn't want—hey! Why am I talking like an editor would ever be involved? I think my mind is starting to strip gears. We won't talk about that. Okay, the next part really happened but hardly last night. Nothing good happened last night, if it was night. ]]

  Near the meeting's final yawn, one of the wannabe authors asked Gerald, the most opinionated and famous Lion, to detail the worst kinds of writing blunders. At first I only listened with an earlobe because Gerald rehashed the boo-boos we hear about every few weeks, the ones so standard they've been named. Such as “I've suffered for my art and now it's your turn,” which means dumping irrelevant junk into the storyline simply because you've gone through the bother of doing some research and want to show off.

  But then Gerald jumped the tracks and started in with his own pet peeves. The one that caught my whole ear he called “HGTV syndrome,” although he claimed he could've picked on any number of informational-type cable channels just as easily. Definition: trying too hard or too cutely to match narrative with subject through imagery or puns. Seemed abstract to me until he rattled off examples:

  "Watch any HGTV program where, say, a doctor is attempting to buy a house, and you'll hear lines such as ‘Will the doctor give this home a clean bill of health?’ and ‘Now all he has to do is cough up the down payment.’”

  [[ Come to think of it, those oceanic references in the beginning would have to go if I were seriously working on this. I wanted them for the—now I'm showing off—adumbration, but being clever isn't always smart. Still, the sea is a big part of the picture I plan to paint, so I'll try not to throw the baby out with the you know what.

  Gerald says you should open every story with a “hook,” usually some kind of action or quick-setting mystery to get the reader involved. So maybe I should've started this yarn more like: When Page arrived to open her bookstore Tuesday morning, she found a large fish flopping around on the front step.

  Oh dear, we have another loser. Doesn't exactly make you smell the weirdness, and besides, it's wrong. Dusty was the one who found it and it wasn't on the step until we'd been open for some time and it wasn't that large. Maybe it's not even so dramatic, although I suppose it's a bit freaky to run into a fish out for a
morning swim on concrete. We're near the ocean, not on top of it. Oh heck, I hadn't planned to change the story during the reading, but why not throw that intro in right now with a few changes? ]]

  Two hours after the Page Turner opened last Tuesday morning, Dusty, the last of the Regulars to arrive, found a large fish flopping around on the front step.

  Naturally, she was more concerned about the inconvenience of having to step over the thing than how it had wound up in her way. And naturally, she complained about it in her usual pre-coffee whine the instant she stepped through the door. Tara, our guru on matters aquatic who'd been sitting in a pile of herself on the couch, has sharp ears. She hove up and went to investigate, leaving her crutches to hold her place on the furniture. Page and I followed.

  Tara's limberness surprised me as she squatted down to take a close look at our finny visitor, which was about a foot and a half long, wide and flat. "Limanda aspera," she murmured. “Yellowfin sole. Strange..."

  "You bet,” I offered helpfully. “Usually we only get hammerheads coming in for the morning croissant."

  "What's strange?” Page asked, blinking rapidly as we both turned to stare at her. “I mean about the species, damn it.” I wasn't used to my boss losing her cool and wondered what was bugging her.

  Tara aimed a thumb in the general direction of the ocean. “There's a stretch of Pacific dead-zone running along our shores for kilometers. Not enough oxygen in those waters to support any kind of rockfish. And that's why"—she turned those emerald eyes on me—"I'm taking your report of pastry-seeking sharks with, let's say, a wee drop of salinity.” We both smiled.

  [[ Well, that's what Tara should have said. What she really said was “Sharks prefer meat, dear.” Do tell. Rats, I just remembered a pearl of wisdom Gerald dropped way back when. He said fish or birds appearing in unexpected places have become almost inevitable in humorous SF or fantasy. But I don't mean for my story to be funny, and besides, I'm stuck with Joe “Fins” Piscine because that part's true although Joe showed up DOA.