Okay gang, here's a delightful little short I wrote for an interview... my first interview as an author, actually. I got a bit carried away answering one of the questions, and here's what I ended up with:
You're lost in a desert and …
I’m lost in a desert and I’m freaking miserable. No trees, no water—it’s my own personal hell. I’m all for sunshine on a hot summer day, but the only sand I like is the sand along a shoreline. So I trudge along, delirious and irritated, following the unreachable mirage of a pristine swimming hole.
Suddenly, the ground starts to quake. A rift opens in front of me. ‘SARLACC!’ My brain screams frantically. I feel a rush of relief for the lack of teeth surrounding the hole, but now I’m gripped with apprehensive curiosity for what else it might be. A strange whirring noise fills the air—a soft, mechanical purr—and, despite my trepidation, I approach the hole, searching for the source. Stopping a few feet from the edge, I lean forward to get a look, but then fall back as a silver, saucer shaped object darts out from within the chasm. The noise grows louder—the saucer is hovering above me now. A small hatch opens, bathing my skin in eerie blue light and leaving me tingling all over.
The next thing I know, the sand is gone. I’m in a small room with metal walls. The ceiling and floor are translucent; I can see the sky above and the desert below. A section of the wall slides away with a hiss, leaving me face to face with a strange being. I can’t say what it looks like. I can see it, but I can’t seem to remember, even for a fraction of a second, what I’m seeing. The creature might as well be invisible.
Moments later I’m sitting in the cockpit of the strange craft, conversing with this being I’m still not sure I can see. The desert whips by beneath us, eventually giving way to a coastal region and, finally, the sea. All the while, the being is telling me the most intriguing tale of a world within our world. Apparently aliens aren’t alien at all; they come from inner-space, not outer. They are as sentient to our planet as we are, but they live in the center instead of on the shell. They don’t come topside very often anymore, on account of how many of them have ended up on a table in a lab somewhere, being dissected like frogs in a high school biology class. Apparently they find the practice offensive.
The pilot prattles on, speaking broken English, and with a very thick accent, and the landscape continues to change as it whips by below. Before I know it, a familiar sight looms into view—an overgrown drive at the base of a hill. The creature seems to know that this is my stop. It hands me a weird object—some kind of rainbow-ish metal disc—and says for me to call if I ever need a ‘Transport Across Xenolith Interplanetary’, or T.A.X.I, again.
Unfortunately, I can’t read the ‘card’. Its iridescent surface is lightly etched with squiggles and lines unlike any letters or numbers I’ve ever seen.
Oh well. At least I’m out of that damned desert.
-END-
So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)
Thanks for tuning in.
--B.
You're lost in a desert and …
I’m lost in a desert and I’m freaking miserable. No trees, no water—it’s my own personal hell. I’m all for sunshine on a hot summer day, but the only sand I like is the sand along a shoreline. So I trudge along, delirious and irritated, following the unreachable mirage of a pristine swimming hole.
Suddenly, the ground starts to quake. A rift opens in front of me. ‘SARLACC!’ My brain screams frantically. I feel a rush of relief for the lack of teeth surrounding the hole, but now I’m gripped with apprehensive curiosity for what else it might be. A strange whirring noise fills the air—a soft, mechanical purr—and, despite my trepidation, I approach the hole, searching for the source. Stopping a few feet from the edge, I lean forward to get a look, but then fall back as a silver, saucer shaped object darts out from within the chasm. The noise grows louder—the saucer is hovering above me now. A small hatch opens, bathing my skin in eerie blue light and leaving me tingling all over.
The next thing I know, the sand is gone. I’m in a small room with metal walls. The ceiling and floor are translucent; I can see the sky above and the desert below. A section of the wall slides away with a hiss, leaving me face to face with a strange being. I can’t say what it looks like. I can see it, but I can’t seem to remember, even for a fraction of a second, what I’m seeing. The creature might as well be invisible.
Moments later I’m sitting in the cockpit of the strange craft, conversing with this being I’m still not sure I can see. The desert whips by beneath us, eventually giving way to a coastal region and, finally, the sea. All the while, the being is telling me the most intriguing tale of a world within our world. Apparently aliens aren’t alien at all; they come from inner-space, not outer. They are as sentient to our planet as we are, but they live in the center instead of on the shell. They don’t come topside very often anymore, on account of how many of them have ended up on a table in a lab somewhere, being dissected like frogs in a high school biology class. Apparently they find the practice offensive.
The pilot prattles on, speaking broken English, and with a very thick accent, and the landscape continues to change as it whips by below. Before I know it, a familiar sight looms into view—an overgrown drive at the base of a hill. The creature seems to know that this is my stop. It hands me a weird object—some kind of rainbow-ish metal disc—and says for me to call if I ever need a ‘Transport Across Xenolith Interplanetary’, or T.A.X.I, again.
Unfortunately, I can’t read the ‘card’. Its iridescent surface is lightly etched with squiggles and lines unlike any letters or numbers I’ve ever seen.
Oh well. At least I’m out of that damned desert.
-END-
So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)
Thanks for tuning in.
--B.