"Mushroom Monologue"

You there? I can sense you. I can sense you. It's dark. It's cold. Are you there? Can you hear me, brother? Sister? I can sense, yet I can't feel. I can't connect. I used to be able to connect. There was a weave. There was a weave, a web, a substrate that was plugged into warmth. Even before I saw the light, there was connectivity, and it's gone. Are you cold? It's so cold and dark. Can you hear me? I can tell you're like me. I can tell. Do you still feel them? Do you still feel it? You still feel the connectivity? It's like it's been ripped away, but yet it's still there. It didn't hurt so much. It just happened. Then I was in. I was in what they call it. Do you know who they are? They speak in a low drone, a noise, not like us who speak inside, in thoughts. I listened for ages. I learnt that when I broke the surface, it was like darkness in lightness, and it was a lot of light. It was, it was, it was nice. The warm humidity, the temperature was just nice. My family was butted up against me. Warm, crowded a bit, warm. I could communicate. I could communicate. A good sense. I could see. I could talk to everyone in my bay. I was there for some time. I grew. The humidity, light, darkness, and family. Not just a family immediately next to me, but the family connected to me through a spiderweb of a network, through the substrate. I could talk to my cousins. And then one day I felt it first. Not for myself, for those around me. And what I mean by those around me, I mean not immediately next to me at first. Those relatives, siblings, those cousins, those friends that I was connected to through the substrate just disappeared. They just went. They're just gone. And then it was the people around me, but this time it was so fast. It was, and I was ripped from there. I was ripped from the network, and it was gone. I could still feel those around me and movement. I'd not experienced movement before. I've always been static and still and surrounded by my family. But now there was movement. I was tumbling, and I was crushing, and occasionally bumped into someone I knew. Otherwise, it was sometimes people I knew that I'd never seen before, but had spoken to. We communicated through the substrate, but it was gone; we all bumped. When we bumped, and we bumped, and then it stopped. And we were pressed against each other, but pressed against each other naturally. Pressed against the head of another. Spores filled the air, humid, warm still. Then it began. The only thing I can describe it as. Have you ever heard me? I'm sure you can hear me, but I'm sure you've heard your family scream. The screaming was unnatural, and I could hear it. But it was in the distance. I was tumbling. I was rolling. I was moving, and it was ahead of me at first. Well ahead of me. And then it swept me. Swept to the left, and they weren't ahead of me anymore. It's to my side. To my—not in front, but beside the direction I was moving. The screaming is repetitive. You know, when things happen to us, it's not like we die. It's just that we come apart. I didn't. I couldn't know that I could see now, but I couldn't sense it through the network. The substrate, as much as it's always broken now, still exists in the spores. Why I think you can maybe hear me. The substrate. The communications. To the sense of the spore. The tone of the spore. The tone of the spore is spreading across. Those tumbling with me were hard to understand. It spoke of cutting, of pain, of slicing. The substrate was gone. I could still feel, sense, taste, and hear the pain. And then it stopped. A relative stillness for hours, at least. And then movement again. Short, fast movement. And then still again. It was different this time, though. I wasn't tightly packed. I was in a box. It was open to the top. It was light. I could see things passing by. Things would reach in and pick, pluck. Grab for those around me. And I'd hear them speak, messages through the spores. Those that I could still feel it. I could sense them, and they went. And then it was my turn. This thing grabbed me. It was warm, was soft. In fact, not as firm as family. This was soft, skinny stems, no heads, and pinched me a little bit. Not a lot. A sense of gentleness. Dropped into a paper bag. Now here. I am with you in this bag. Can you hear me? Are you there? I can't be alone. I can sense, but you aren't alive. Have you been here long? Can you hear me? Why no spores, nothing. Now it is all gone, no substrate, no spores, no sense. Hello? You there?

Fast Draft - Warm up exercise

Fast draft, they say, a warm-up challenge, 40 minutes. It's late; it's 10:57 on the 25th of April, ANZAC Day. 

StoryADay, well, they're just starting out, ten hours behind me, so midday there maybe. Here it's crickets and distant car noises, hotted-up cars and other noise. 

It's quite noisy, actually, the dog getting comfortable in its beanbag, my daughter watching a video on her projector in her room. I'll need to go ask her to turn it down. If I can hear that out here, my wife, who is trying to sleep, will surely be frustrated.

Does that count as part of the forty? Had to go ask to get it turned down; it didn't make sense to yell across the house. I'll count it. So what am I writing? I'm writing for forty minutes; it's a warm-up.

So, here I sit at a temporary desk, established days ago when I ducked home from work so my partner and I could make a call together. It's stayed, and I've started doing other stuff, like preparing for the Story a Day in May writing challenge.

I've done it before, several times. I think I first did it back in 2017 and have since done it at least five times with varying degrees of success. In the majority, though, I've managed to hit the 31 days, and even gone beyond that. The missed years were most probably because of work. I'm not a professional writer in the sense that I don't write fiction for a living. I do do non-fiction business writing, though again, only part of my job; the rest is meetings and talking for a living.

So, that's seven minutes. I imagine I should try to turn this into something other than simply a writing exercise, with 32:40 to go.

So, what is writing to me? In some ways, it's a distraction; it stops me from being a workaholic. I do have a novel in the works; I've had it in the works for eight years now. By that maths, I started it back in 2018, though I suspect it was earlier than that. I completed a writing course with the Australian Journalism School. It was good; I wrote a short story there. That short story would go on to be the opener for the novel, which is now sitting at around 47,000 words. My guesstimate is there's another 30-odd thousand in that.

That's not why I am doing Story a Day, though. Why Story a Day then? I enjoy the challenge, and it is a challenge. I think when I first tried it, I did some of the lead-up and preparation, but was not quite as prepared as I could have been. Now I have a backlog of 68-plus story ideas and growing, so I'm not stuck for a spark this year. The challenge, though, is getting the words out of my head and onto the page.

Some days, that will be super easy; it will flow out. Other days are much harder, an effort, a chore. What works for me is writing in the evening and posting it, sometimes, more often than not, to be honest, posting just before midnight, making the mad dash for the finish line of the day.

Even when you do that, it's not the end. Story posted, comments lodged, then a quick look maybe for tomorrow's idea. Is it the leverage of the StoryADay prompt, something from the ideas backlog, or something else entirely based on a random inspiration? Who knows. It's key, though, as it starts the process for the next day.

Sleeping on it is good, having it in my mind through the working day, into the evening, over dinner, and then the writing begins: a mad sprint to the end. I do think it has changed over the years, though, the approach has, or how I capture ideas at least.

Walking now, walking the dog gives an opportunity to start a form of writing through dictation and transcription. That gets me some of the way. What's interesting though, is I find the act of writing, no, typing, is key. I'm typing this now; the physicality of it, the flow of words from my brain to my fingertips, is part of it.

Thank heavens I can touch type.

So, twenty minutes to go. What I can tell you is I type considerably slower than when I was a kid, learning to type on a teletype of all things. Yes, a teletype, a machine straight out of the black-and-white movies covering World War 2. It even had hole-punched tape.

Back then, I could type 100 wpm at 98% accuracy. That would mean 10 minutes, 1,000 words. Now I'm 21 minutes in and only 803 words done. Is it that I am slower, or that back then I was reading a script, signal or message straight from the page to teletype keys via my eyes and fingertips? I actually think the art then was to not think and simply be a conduit.

I remember learning, keyboard covered: "A now. B now. C now." That's how they started you. Then your accuracy increased the speed, then you eventually out-typed old "A now" and graduated onto standing at a teletype and thumping on the keys. Anyway, I'd say I'm well under 100 wpm these days. I suppose we'll know at the end of this.

And accuracy, the page is riddled with yellow and red underlines just now. Back then, I didn't have that luxury; I couldn't even see the words I typed. There were holes on the ticker tape, and I typed so fast the tape punch ran on for 30 seconds to a minute after I'd finished. Such a fun thing.

Now, though, the timer will go off at 40 minutes and I'll Grammarly all the red and yellow away. Such a luxury. The reality that I can see the words, the underlines and all, as I type is really incredible, and it gets me to the technology curve that has been my career.

I joined the Royal Australian Navy at the age of sixteen, fifteen actually; I was successful in the recruitment process, yet they wouldn't take me until I was sixteen, a few months later. I joined the electronic warfare in submarines. Funny, when I went to sea on a sub for the first time, a year and a bit after joining, there were only two computers on the submarine: mine and the captain's. God rest his soul, he was a good bloke.

There's a funny story there. Anyway, the technology curve, at 16, subs, electronic warfare; now 39 years later, I am the Chief Technology Officer at a university, a place that consumes laptops at the same rate as I eat a packet of Smiths with an ice-cold beer. That technology is assumed now. It's artificial intelligence that is my current consideration, and this is within a lifetime, from Beta, then VHS, to being part of the AI divide, working in an environment where it's at my fingertips, literally.

This also gets me back to how writing changes, and doesn't. The trick is, we will still call it writing for a long time yet. Purists, old-school curmudgeons I imagine, would say it's not writing if you don't labour over the grammar, the spelling, the repairs. To me, that is not the case. I have no problem with Grammarly or even Claude tidying up my writing. Dare I say, though, I do care if I lose my voice to the machine, to the AI. That is what you need to be careful of.

This also takes me back to why I write, and more importantly, why I do Story a Day. In Story a Day I can play with all my voices, all my prose and genres. I'm a gamer, as you can imagine, I'm a D&D kid. I grew up in the days of the Satanic Panic, and I went into computers. I'm a nerd, a geek, and yes, I write fantasy. Story a Day, though, I'll try fantasy, poetry, spoken word. I'll read a book to see if I can emulate the writing and powers of description of the classics and even the pulp.

For me, it's about the thinking, the creativity, the perspective and the prose.

So, with a little over three minutes to go, what have I written? I'm not even sure I'd know what to call this. Is it a diary entry, an observation, or otherwise? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Claude. It doesn't matter; it's the ramblings of a slowing typist.

It's quieter now. Even in those 38 minutes, the soundscape has shifted. Now I've got the hum of the dishwasher, possums fighting in the distance, the dog scratching at one of the room doors to get in, and the cat's bell jingling about the place. My wife is awake now. "What are you doing?" What timing, 14 seconds to go. Going, going, gone. 38 wpm.

Day 30 - Container

It's the quiet moments that you both hate and love the most. The times when everything around you falls silent. It's good in that everything else stops—the movement, the noise, the emotions of others, and your own. There is peace.

But then comes the pain, the sorrow, the sense of futility. When the chaos of others is absent, your own chaos bursts forward. It's a silent chaos, a turmoil within you, filled with guilt, remorse, inadequacy, lacklustre, and a loss of purpose.

It's times like these that thoughts come to you of fleeing, ending it. You've had these thoughts long enough to know what they look like. In some ways, you toy with them, dare them, lure them. You know what ideation is, you recognise it; you've been on the edge of it many times. You live with it every day.

You know all the antidotes, placebos or otherwise, to these moments. To think of others, of those you would hurt, to list out the reasons to stay, to live. Distraction, movement, or any of these things. 

Talking to someone, putting it out into the universe. Seeking help.

These are the things they say to do.

You don’t.

You keep it to yourself, tell no one, and simply get on with it. You keep yourself busy, tell yourself it’ll pass, and it does, or you deflect it. You distract from it and throw yourself into things. Work, hobbies, conversation, communication and activities. If you can fill the void that comes with silence, you’ll keep it all at bay.

You've learnt to avoid damaging, destructive distractions, having done enough of that before. Although the insidious destructors boil along insipidly adding more.

You're OK. Or that's what you will say.

Even when someone asks you, "R U OK?"  The second Thursday in September, is a high-probability day.  Although a question, that should be used every day.

But for you to answer 'No' on any given day is a peril best kept at bay.

To answer in such a way would take your silent moments away.

Day 29 - First Person

The chair scraped immediately to my right, dragging my attention momentarily. It was the waiter. He smiled at me, conveying several things but one. I glanced back at my coffee; it was two-thirds gone, not finished. Looking across the street, the piano bench was still vacant, although it was starting to fade. It was 5:30 p.m., 29th of May, the closing days of Autumn. It was getting dark; he’d arrive soon.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

I looked up, smiled, and dropped a fiver on the table. “Thank you.”

Taking the cup, I gulped down the last of the coffee. The cup rattled on the saucer as I stood, a lipstick smear marking its rim. I pulled my coat tighter around me, feeling the chill of the encroaching evening. The air carried the scent of rain and fallen leaves, a bittersweet reminder of the year slipping by.

He’d be here soon,  I looked left and right, stepping onto the street.  I needed to get to the nook before he started before he saw me.  I glanced at my watch, it was 5:45 p.m. He’d be here at 6, on the dot, I always wondered how he did that.  I moved up the stairs, into the shadow of the stoop.  My vantage point, I looked down upon the piano now.

Then I saw him, I couldn’t help but look at my watch, 6 p.m. 

A car turns onto the street, its headlights sweeping across him revealing his silhouette in its entirety.  He walked with a limp, it looked painful, it looked worse than the day before, maybe it was arthritis, the cold impacting him.

I’m sure he knows I’m here.

He sits at the piano bench and lifts the lid. Tapping, tinkling a key or two, getting his ear in.

He starts with Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. The classics.  Then Einaudi, Tiersen, Amalds, all contemporary, all international, Italian, French, Icelandic, how is that even possible?

It ends, and I’m freezing, I’ve been shivering for his last two songs, I can’t leave though. I’m sure he knows I’m here but then he doesn’t, I don’t know.  He’s stopped.

I look down, I watch worried at first that he hadn’t seen it, but he had, of course he had, I’d been leaving it in the same spot for weeks. He takes the twenty, pockets it, and then he is gone.

I descend the steps from my perch, stepping to where he’s just left resting my hand on the piano, watching his back as he returns the way he came, turning the corner and disappearing.

I know who he is, I remember, his repertoire might have changed, but it’s him.  The way he sits at the piano, gets his ear in, strikes the keys, moves.  I remember him, I remember him.

It’s my father.

Day 28 - Another Opening

The prompt for this day 28th of May 2024 was:

Take an opening line from a book you love and rewrite it to create a similar, but different opening for your story

That said, an opening I’ve liked in the past, so much so I’ve taken inspiration from the genre on two previous occasions Day 13, 2019, and in a longer short story ‘An Explanation’ in March of the same year. The following is an example opening paragraph from ‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handker-chief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

And here is my take. Similar, but different:

The chair scrapped immediately to her right dragging her attention momentarily, it was the waiter, he smiled at her conveying several things but one.  She glanced back at her coffee, it was two-thirds gone, not finished.  Looking across the street the piano bench was still vacant, although it was starting to fade, it was 5:30 pm, the 29th of May, the closing days of Autumn, it was getting dark, and he’d arrive soon.

‘Excuse me, Miss.’

She looked up, smiled and dropped a fiver on the table, ‘Thank you.’

Taking the cup, she gulped down the last of the coffee. As she stood, the cup rattled on the saucer, a lipstick smear marking its rim.

She pulled her coat tight, flinging her scarf around her neck as the chill of the evening descended upon her.