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kridders · 1 year

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Word of the Day Story [Jan. 10th, 2023]

Pure black. Whistling music. Primordial soup.[1] Cold. The sound of movements of wind, and then finally, light.[2] Smith struggled opening his eyes from what felt like a thousands year rest, adjusting to the reflected light which shined over him. After his first conscious breath in his remarkably intact helmet, he next breathed in his surroundings, though there wasn’t much to see. Stepping was harder than Smith had imagined, but it wasn’t long before Smith was back on his way to Mont Pèlerin[3], the small outcrop which was seen by all participants as humanity’s next genesis. Out of the many engineers, physicists, and likewise utopians of the project, only the most flexanimous[4] of them were sent further into the stars.

Smith was nearly back to the settlement, following vehicle tracks and signs he had difficulty reading because of his thick dialect of Yankeese[5]. Though, as he got closer, a dread began to fill him, as the clear walls of the spheres they called home were covered in thick vegetation.[6] As Smith entered through the airlock[7] and took off his helmet, the first thing to strike him was a thick scent of vinnewedness[8] in the air, one he could only imagine if the air outside was breathable. Each step he took he couldn’t help but trample over the thick vine that now made up the floor, creating a gushing noise as his foot fell through to the bottom.[9] He called out, but to no response. Though, as he would soon find out, he wasn’t alone, and this was made quite evident as Smith entered the barracks to the sight of an outstretched palm around the corner. Smith was immediately relieved to see this, though as he turned the corner he was only struck with horror. The hand he saw was attached to an arm that could’ve been the length of a hose, and bending and turning like it had the form of one. He turned in shock only to see more of his teammates as amorphous things of flesh and sinew, but surely not bone. And at the center of it all, the origin of the vegetation which filled every chamber of their artificial habitat, a benign tree which they’d seen tens of thousands of outside. All that Smith could do was begin to realize the similarities of what were his teammates and the lifeformsms[10] which harassed them outside.[11]

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1 Stolen straight from Disco Elysium. I never finished it, at most I put like, four hours into it. It was one of those things where I pirate a game late on a school night, end up playing it until its a bit too late, and then never pick it up again. I'll likely never see what the rest of the game has to offer despite how much some of my friends have liked it, but some lines still stick out to me from when I ran out of money on the first night.

2 I remember when my History & Structure of the English Language teacher read this aloud, after she finished she went back to this line to say how much she liked it. That made me pretty happy. Though, I don't know, it doesn't flow too well? And it's not even wholly original. I'm glad she liked it but there was just a bit of guilt underneath it.

3 A direct reference to Half-Earth Socialism, and uh, reality too I guess. Specifically to the Mont Pelerin Society, a kind of neoliberal internationale I guess you could call it. I'm not sure if I had finished Half-Earth Socialism by this point or not, but it would come to basically define my current ideological standings in at least some part. For a bit I was pretty annoying about it, getting into arguments about how nuclear power shouldn't be the end goal, which is kinda dumb to argue about what is a better answer to fossil fuels, but y'know, that's sorta just what theorybrain does sometimes. I could get a bit caught up in ideals, but I've mostly tempered out now. The closure of nuclear power facilities is bad, even if moving to actual renewables should come alongside the move away from fossil fuels. But I was dumb, this is me 6 months ago we're talking about, a mere child. In classic pseud style, this whole story is actually a metaphor for the ills of ecocide, the impossiblity of truly understanding the mechanisms of nature, etc. I'm not sure if it does a great job at getting that across, but as part of the requirements I could only have one page for this whole story, so I worked with what I had. Had to cull quite a few sentences to get it underneath that limit. But look at me now! I can write forever. This is what true liberation feels like.

4 This actually isn't the full document for this story, as it has an earlier page with the definitions for each of the colored words. The point of this project, the Word of the Day Story, was to use these antiquated terms the class would get from a calendar full of them, and to synthesize a few into a short story. We got to pick which ones from a limited selection, though I think I chose mine pretty randomly. I didn't want to spend too much time selecting and have the whole class waiting on me. I'm a bit of a coward. Once I got all my words I eventually decided I wanted to do a horror-ish sci-fi story, inspired by the previously stated book, refer to [3]. Here's what flexanimous actually means, taken from the first page:

"flexanimous, adj. (/flɛksænɪməs/)

Having the power to bend or influence the mind."

Not sure if I actually used that correctly here. Not like it really matters though. Words are what we decie they are, and considering I'm the only current user of the word, I get to decide the meaning. It means you can make up your mind and have a strong resolve now.

5 "Yankeese, n. (/jaŋˈkiːz/)

American English."

Pretty self-explanatory for that one, though I use it more like an accent here. I think I used to think it was funny that the American kinda struggled with the internationalism of the mission, but its difficult for me to remember. Considered going on here about my worries about my poor memory but I don't need to put that down, I've thought about it enough.

6 Also a reference to the biospheres referenced in the beginning of Half-Earth Socialism. For the real biospheres, they call Earth "Biosphere 1." What nerds.

7 At this time, I had also finished or been watching The Martian in my film class. It probably contributed a lot to the idea of wanting to do a sci-fi story in the first place. My History & Structure of the English Language teacher was also actually my film teacher as well, just due to a quirk in scheduling. It's weird that I saw her twice every day for a whole semester, but now she's resigned here, to the footnotes. Not like many of my other teachers fare much better though. Highlighted 'airlock' here because it reminded me of the scene where the airlock explodes in The Martian.

8 "vinnewedness, adj. (/vɪnoʊedness/)

Mustiness, mouldiness.

Womby vaultages, hollow caverns"

This is the word that really made me decide on the horror aspect to the sci-fi elements I've mentioned previously. I sorta have a thing for gross horror. I've always liked horror, but it wasn't until I read Uzumaki, and likely 3/4ths of the rest of Junji Ito's works, that I decided that it was now an aspect of me. I didn't really know I liked gross/body horror until I read him either. Most of the gross stuff later in the story is directly inspired by the variety of Ito works I've read. It's a collection that spans from my bedroom here to my bedroom in my father's house an hour and a half away. He's gotten me all of my books, but I brought some here to read while I'm away. For some reason, writing that out made me feel a bit guilty. But to continue, my dad has always been the impetus for, well, a lot of my interests, but particularly horror. It was basically just him, and me at home looking at TribeTwelve analyses on my first laptop as a 13 year old. We've watched a lot of horror movies together with his big portrait of Lovecraft leering at us from the corner. I can't remember much from when I was young but I can still remember that night, seeing him carry it into the old apartment. He had got it from some woman? I'm not sure on the details of how he procured it exactly. But its this huge thing, this glow-in-the-dark looking paint on canvas. It's been leering at me for quite a while now. I even used to sleep under the thing in the old apartment.

9 There was this other kid in my class who said he liked my story after the teacher finished reading it. "Gross, but in a good way." It was what I was going for so I was pretty glad. I think after the teacher finished this line, they went "ough!"

10 A genuine spelling mistake that genuinely haunts me. Thinking about my old teacher having to read over this and correct it in her head makes me really embarassed.

11 The whole "becoming the life which had once inhabited the planet" concept comes from a Ray Bradbury story I had to read for one of my classes some grades back. I can't remember the name of it, but it was about this batch of space colonists sent to Mars, and slowly overtime they began using the old alien names for locations(?), their bodies transforming, habits changing, eventually becoming the aliens that had once been vanquished. I like a good bit of Bradbury stuff. I've read Farenheit 451, I think even watched some film adaptions of stories with my dad, and then I had that class where we spent a while talking about him, reading stories and watching short film adapations. Horror units in English are always fun until they get to Edgar Allan Poe.

Ending note:

Seeing all these influences put to word reminds me pretty starkly that I've always had an issue with creativity when it comes to, well, being creative, whether it be writing or what have you. I have a lot of artistic concepts I like but I never really know how to turn them my own, and even the metaphor of the story is based off something I was reading, with nothing of my own added. All art is derivative, but it often feels like what I create is just my influences put into a blender, and it isn't really greater than the sum of its parts - it can't be. Hell, even this method of analyzing comes from me reading House of Leaves recently. I've been wanting to dot a work with footnotes and I finally figured out a good reason to. The impetus of good art is "I could do that but better," but what do you do when you see good art? All I can manage is an imitation. I'm glad I could at least get some humanity to paper though. It's been a bit too long. This isn't of my own inspiration of course, I met a really interesting girl recently. My writing isn't as elegant as her's, mine's much more uh, Johnny Truant, though I guess that fits. Mood writing is pretty scary for me, and sorta makes me wonder if my lack of memory is more voluntary than anything. Proceeding though, that's the last piece of creative writing I've done in quite a while. Well, disregarding alternate history related things. I don't really hold those to the same regard, for whatever reason. Maybe I'll humanize some more of my writing at a later time.

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