I woke up early after dreaming a dream. Here’s the result:
Absurdist sci-fi, in the vein of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve been working on both a sci-fi epic and an absurdist allegory for years; it remains to be seen if I will finish the following, or incorporate it into one or the other.
Warning: contained swearing, but I decided to censor it.
Part 1 - Escape
The wife looked up from tying her bonnet. “Are you ready, you old a*****le?” she called to her husband in the next room.
“Yes, my hateful w***e,” he replied.
Good, she thought. All was going as planned.
Petty insults were the order of the day. They did this, for if they responded jab for jab, hate with annoyance, then they knew their memories hadn’t been wiped and their plans reset yet again. Today they would escape. Travel West somewhere. Get off the planet. After robbing a stagecoach for gold or something - that’s where things got hazy.
[ . . . ]
It was where they respond all lovey-dovey kindness to an insult that they would know the game was up; as long as they were mildly annoyed with each other and could still apologise that they knew they were alive.
[ . . . ]
Part 2 - The Aliens & Empire
The Aliens were sufficiently advanced that they use naturally-built Rube Goldberg machines of rocks and space debris as their craft and to enforce their bidding. Asteroid hit metal pole bumped static meteor reflected pulsar with an old purloined solar panel dish to start turning and push a final meteor with the message:
“Tell Planet X in System 7, status 1, to 0.”
It would then helpfully implode in a planetary suicide. Before the all-encompassing might of the Galactic Armada, one scarcely needed more than that to force obedience: no-one wanted years-long war with skull-shaped spaceships ravaging the atmosphere, so they would save the aliens the trouble. Normally they didn’t need more than rocks to do their bidding; they’d inevitably win. Except this once.
Planet Y was a breeding ground, reserved as such, with a tech level of around 1900 A.D. Overseers oversaw the resident space cowboys in camps. Naturally, some were free, but they mattered little, as our free-range home-grown minions would outnumber them. We always won in the end, remember?
[ . . . ]
Part 3 - Later
“My darling, let’s go home,” he said fondly.
“B****rd!” she shook his hands from her shoulders and stormed to their other room at the inn. She knew she shouldn’t have left him alone with that enthusiastic crowd in front of The Sheriff’s Arms. They were home free until ten minutes ago. A crowd of well-wishers had gathered at the bar, and carried Mister Popular outside for a photoshoot for the Gazette. It wasn’t every day you met escapees from the alien breeding camps. This was a victory for the resistance! See, they’re normal people just like us! Drinks are on me, boy! Let’s get your happy smiling mug doing everyday people things for tomorrow’s newspaper.
A quick flash, and his memory was gone. The newspaper boy was most certainly an Overseer in disguise, though you could hardly tell for the crowd.
They were most helpful; they grabbed him as he wandered away to to develop his photos.
“We’re really sorry this happened,” said the innkeeper. “D**n near have ourselves a lynching. We can’t have alien scum running the show.”
“Oh, thank you, Sir!” She put on her best grateful face while wringing her hands. It wouldn’t do any good, moron. Her husband was a lost cause, and it would be no “home free” without him.
“See, we even got his equipment!” The bell-boy proudly held up the newspaper’s camera from the table where he sat surrounded by well-wishing vigilantes.
The innkeeper was all smiles. “This is a powerful blow for the Resistance, milady. Thanks to you, we have some of their artifacts that we can reverse engineer.” He wandered over and held up regular-looking notebook, compass, penknife to examine. The bell-boy had claimed the camera. “Filthy. Just filthy. Masking their tools to look just like ours. Who knows what this actually does; looks just like a regular compass, but inside, what manner of sinister engine, just waiting for the press of a button–”
The bell-boy was pointing the camera viewfinder around. He was clicking buttons. He was smiling as he looked at her, not altogether kindly. Waste of film, the innkeeper said. Stop, she screamed. Glass broke. Camera flashed. Dog barked. Boy smiled.
She knew it was too late, even as it happened. Everything turned white, like a blank paper. She felt her memory fading. Once again, the game was up. Did it matter?
Part 4 - Escape, continued
She put her gloves on. “Are you ready?”
“What, no curses to see us off?”
“How about kisses?” She caressed his beard. “Here is your hat. We had best make haste, or we shall not pass the perimeter fence before we are seen.”
“I have bought us time, my dear lady fool. We are free, or as good as.” He looked back from the door at the house they were leaving behind after so long.
“Coming?”
“Itching to go?” he smiled. Then turned and hung his hat up next to the door. “I wore that every day of slavery. Not today. There, maybe that’ll confuse ’em, give us another five minutes – it looks like we never left.”
Husband ushered wife out, turning to lock up behind them. All was quiet throughout the camp compound. The forest was foggy, perfect for escape, and town wasn’t far. From there, they’d catch a barge downriver to the sea.
He paused, key in hand. “I wonder how many times we’ve done this before?”
Shook his head. “Not like we’d remember. Sorry for all the insults; I hope we’ll have little further need of them.”
End.
Author’s Note
I was given this story, fresh out the oven and fully formed, by God as a dream last night, probably 5 minutes before waking early at 0600 21 June 2022. Having seen the movie in dream form, I sketch the gist here to complete later.
Literary analysis
The basic idea is: a couple of cowboys have to escape from alien internment, before their memories are wiped again by Men In Black-style memory wiper flashpots. They have to keep checking in with each other, as they expect the memory-wipers to appear by surprise from nowhere, and have the idea of keeping each other annoyed. Treating each other badly, an unexpectedly kind response will alert the other that the Aliens are here.
Where the idea actually came from, I’ve got no idea. I haven’t read or watched any sci-fi or Westerns recently, least of all late late last night. Perhaps space-Westerns like Disney’s Mandalorian (S1 was was good) or Obi-Wan (I’ve heard it’s garbage) were on my subconscious mind. It has nothing to do with the B-movie Cowboys & Aliens, which I’ve never watched.
It is fragmentary and a bit random, as suits a remembered dream, but has a surprisingly satisfactory structure, which I saw clearly while waking. 4 Acts: Act 1, the good guys and their objective; Act 2, the world and the villains approach, with their predicted loss; Act 3, climax, good guys apparently lose, contradicting the prediction; Act 4, flash-back to finish Act 1? or is it a future repeat of the same events?
Further development
The main characters are likely to be made a bit more sympathetic and less potty-mouthed. The cursing was there in the dream, and I recorded it verbatim, but I do think it’s a bit much and adds little to the story (censored in an update to the page). “Show, don’t tell” is a good principle, and if the idea is for them to be mean to each other, there must be a better way.
The “alien nature” of returning kindness for mistreatment will receive further commentary, should I write more. As a Very Wise Man once said,
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Style
You may also notice that I used exclamations! sparingly, to indicate characters’ cheesy enthusiasm, whereas to build tension I prefer to use short sentences. Fragments even. Shorter. Until, “Boom!”, something happens.
I like to structure dialogue in response blocks, à la stage play, as is the mode in both Michael Connelly’s (and similar) crime thriller novels, and the great bard Shakespeare. This avoids having too much “he said/she said”, which gets tiresome, while simultaneously avoiding the opposite problem of having to think up wacky synonyms for “said”, e.g. Harry spoke/quoth Hermione/John shouted/Paul whispered/interjected George/ Ringo stated/ Watson ejaculated… (yeah, English is odd and some meanings change or fade)
What do you think? Worth further development? Just thought I’d share some Work-In-Progress.
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