Security

Written for the Ranting Room for the 1/2/09 challenge, I think.

Jackie straightened her back with a low groan. She had been planting seedlings for hours. It was time to stop and refuel. Before leaving the garden area, however, she took a moment to look over her work, as required by the SSA. Not a single plant was out of place, missing, or damaged. The feeling of satisfaction and pride stayed with her all through the lunch period.

Robots were good for a lot of things, but there were some things that could only be done by humans or by robots that were so expensive it just didn't make sense. The seedlings had been grown in greenhouses manned by simple robots who planted the seeds, checked the temperature and moisture content of the soil, and monitored the lighting cycles. But handling the young, fragile plants when they needed to be transplanted to their permanent homes was a task too complex for them. The SSA provided manpower for many such tasks.

Jackie lived in the Oakville SSA complex, built only two years ago. She thought it was beautiful. There were rooms for all kinds of recreation, filled with art and attractively designed furnishings. The sleeping rooms were soothing and private, and each occupant was allowed to choose the colors and style of the walls, bedding, and clothing. It wasn't cheap to live here, but she thought it was well worth the amount she paid out of her modest paycheck. She didn't really need anything that wasn't provided here. The medical care and continuing education were free. Of course, they were mandatory, but that was only common sense.

Considering how her life had begun, she felt herself to be very fortunate. She had been abandoned before birth. At this thought, she looked around furtively. The SSA didn't approve of that way of looking at it, but it was the truth. Her "parents" had used in vitro fertilization and chosen only one child to keep. It was just too expensive to raise very many children these days. Most families had only one child. Any other embryos, or even full-term babies, were abandoned to the SSA, who had their ways of raising and nurturing them, and along the way training and moulding their view of life.

The SSA had made a business of it, with quite a nice profit. They specialized in supplying people to work in jobs that were best done by humans. Most technical work could be done well by robots, but the arts were beyond robot design. Whether it was gardening, acting, architectural design, or music, nobody wanted the lifeless, boring creations produced by robots.

The best part was the security of being brought up and trained by the SSA. She knew she would never be out of work and living on the streets. She wouldn't ever lose her home or a husband or child. If she got sick, the SSA would take care of her. There was nothing to worry about. Her life was stress free. She knew about stress. The SSA education on health covered all that.

When the lunch period ended, Jackie returned to her gardening. The afternoon would require the help of a robot assistant for tilling the soil in a new garden area. She had already drawn out a design in the computer's landscape design program, but she would need to supervise the robot to make sure it stayed in within the lines of her design. Robots tended to square off curves and straighten lines. The robot was waiting at the appointed spot.

"I am 4235," said the robot. "I have design 778. Beginning tilling now."

"Wait!" Jackie said in alarm. "You are to use design 788. Do you have that?"

The robot stood motionless for several seconds. "Yes, design 778. Beginning tilling now."

"No!" Jackie moved closer to the robot to use its small touch pad. She would need to override its commands and change the design number.

Just as her fingers reached the touch pad, the robot's tiller burst into action. Design 778 apparently began with a forward path of tilling. The tiller ripped into her left foot, tearing her soft fabric shoe into shreds and tilling it into the ground. She shrieked in agony as the tiller tore off strips of flesh and pieces of toes and flung them into the soil.

She fell to the side, still screaming, while the robot continued on its oblivious path. Jackie saw people running toward her, then her vision went black and a loud buzzing filled her ears.

As she was carried into the SSA medical center, her sight returned. She was lifted to a gurney and rolled down the hall. She saw the engraved sign over the doorway as she rolled under it, "Social Security Administration." Various people came and hovered over her, then left. There were voices yelling out instructions and other voices asking her questions. Her mind couldn't seem to sort them out, so she didn't answer. Gradually things calmed down, and she could concentrate on what they were saying.

"It's a wreck. Even the bone's gone."

"She's a gardener? Not likely she'll do that any more."

"How old is she?"

"36, it says here."

"Too old. She won't be able to pay in any more. She'll just be a drain on the system."

"Time to retire her."

"There's probably a lot of good body parts. That'll help."

"Yeah, sedate her and prepare her for surgery."

"I'll contact the organ registry."

"Hello, this is Dr. Hogan at the Oakville Facility. We have a termination here. Fatal injury. She was a gardener. Do you have a replacement ready?"

The Bride Collector, by Ted Dekker: A Review

This review is written from the perspective of a reader, not an editor or professional reviewer. I do dabble in writing now and then, but only for fun. Furthermore, I am a fan of all books by Ted Dekker. He became my favorite author while I was reading Black, my first and favorite Dekker book and one of The Circle series. So I am making no attempt to be objective. I am a proud Dekkie. Hey, I even dreamed about going to the Gathering last night, probably because I got my ticket in the mail yesterday.

I loved this book. My goal here is to try to tell you why.

It is a thriller, although it fits the horror category, too, with a little touch of a mysterious something that moves it into the spooky realm. Like all the Dekker thrillers, it is loaded with suspense. There are no spots where your environment intrudes to make you stir and think of getting a cup of coffee, no boring places where you can skip over stuff. If it was a movie and you had the iPhone app RunPee, it would tell you there were no places good for deserting the theater long enough to run and pee. Even when the story moves away from the villain to other fascinating characters and scenes, you still feel in the back of your mind the dread of what he is up to while you are not watching him.

The story is about a serial killer who dresses his victims as brides and drains their blood to "purify" them, and an FBI agent who is trying to catch him.

Dekker's characterization is very good in this book. My previous favorite author was Stephen King, and I have thought for many years that his best talent as a writer is making his characters true to reality, even when they are female. I wondered how he could know so clearly how a woman thought and felt without being one himself. The Bride Collector shows that same talent, not only for female characters but also for characters who have been emotionally traumatized and become mentally ill because of it. Having experienced some of this myself, I can see the real-life thinking Dekker has put into these characters.

Another excellent feature of this book is the way mental illness is portrayed. We are able to see each character as merely a human being trying to do the best he can to deal with life as it has happened to him. He learns how to protect himself during trauma and then he learns how to relax those protections when they no longer serve his best interests, which takes a great deal of courage. There is no feeling of judgment toward these characters, although society's view of them is mentioned as a fact of life. Rather, their eccentricities and differences are seen as gifts.

Most of Ted Dekker's books have a good versus evil theme in them, and this one does, too. The FBI against the serial killer is one facet, and the struggle in each character is another facet. The internal battle is most obvious in the mentally ill characters, because it is their job to get well. It was a surprise to me, though, to find the serial killer proclaiming the idea that God sees each of us as His favorite and as the most beautiful. I took this as an expression of the infinitude of God's love toward us: He doesn't just love us, He loves us infinitely. This idea in the serial killer's mind showed he wasn't 100% evil, and he too was fighting an internal battle.

Of course, I loved the brief allusion to The Circle stories. It made it even better that it was included as one of the "hearing voices and seeing things that aren't there" experiences of Paradise, one of the main characters. I mean, if you were to see a Roush, a large, talking, white bat, wouldn't you think you were seeing things that weren't there?

Add to all that a love story and a Colorado setting (Paradise can't be anywhere else), and you have a very enjoyable book.

The Room of Reflection

For the Friday Challenge of 1/22/10, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.


At night it was a nondescript vacancy. The moon's pale cold face shone weakly into it, blurred by the thick barrier, but produced no glimmer of response. Dawn brushed delicate pastels into the sky with no more success. It was the sun that knew the secret. Its red rim peeked over the horizon, filling the room with fiery glints that quickly blossomed into orange and yellow bursts. Within a few minutes, the crystal walls reached brilliant perfection. The sun's warm white light was separated into its seven components, each creating an aura of deep color suspended in the air and shining on the floor. As the sun moved through the sky, the colors moved around the room, each bringing out its own patterns from the gems and stones in the floor. Evening subdued the sun's heat, and the colors softened into each other, until all that remained were blue and purple tatters fading to gray.

Today's view

Starbucks mug

For the 12/11/09 Friday challenge.

What I want

For the Friday Challenge 12/11/09 - write a letter to Santa

Voice 1
Do your best.
I try so hard.
Not good enough.
I bury my heart.

I want to be loved.
You don’t deserve it.
What do I deserve?
To be punished.

Voice 2
Come to me and I will take away all your pain and give you pleasure.
Here I am.
Eat. Drink. Rebel.
It tastes so good. No more trying.

The pain is back. The pleasure is gone.
Eat more. Drink more. Rebel harder.
It hurts more. You lie. I am going.
Too late. I have you now.

Voice 3
Come to me and receive my love.
I am imprisoned.
Ask me to free you.
Free me. Rescue me. Deliver me.

I want to be loved.
I love you.
I want to be enjoyed.
I enjoy you. I treasure you. I sing over you.

Do my will.
I am not good enough.
Your strength is not needed. Use mine.
Hold my hand. Don’t let me fall.

It hurts. I want to eat. I want to drink. That used to take the pain away.
Your suffering now will be for your good later. If you don’t eat. If you don’t drink.
Will you take away all my pain?
One day pain will have no more purpose. I will wipe away your tears with my own hand.
Will you punish me?
I took all your punishment.
Will you give me pleasure?
You were created for pleasure. You will find pleasure in me and in all creation.
Will I accomplish something good?
I will accomplish great glory through you.

I accept.

Inspired by Green by Ted Dekker. Voice 2 is the vampire Marsuve.

S&M Vampire Girls

The Friday Challenge for 10/16/09 - The second annual Halloween story challenge



Amber turned her head away as soon as the scene was over, so the camera wouldn’t see her clench her teeth. They had shot it eleven times, and if she had to do it one more time, she knew she would lose it. She walked over to pick up her cigarettes and then moved toward the door. She had to get outside and calmed down somehow.

She managed to get out without the others noticing, although it was only a matter of time before that ape Tommy would be out here, supposedly smoking, but what he would really be doing was drinking beer out of the cooler he had stashed in the director’s car.

She wrenched her thoughts away from Tommy. Thinking about him would only cause her to be more upset, and she still had a small hope that this movie would lead to something, so she didn’t want to go berserk in front of everybody.

“Are you okay?” Amber jumped a little at the voice, but it was only Lynn, the actress playing the other vampire. Lynn was perfect for the part, and Deanna had done a great job on her makeup. She looked exactly like a female vampire ought to look, and she played her part with wicked enjoyment.

“Yeah, I just really needed a smoke,” she replied to Lynn’s question.

Lynn smiled knowingly. “That a*****e Tommy is ruining the film, isn’t he? I don’t know how much more of this I want to put up with.”

Surprised at this admission, Amber looked into Lynn’s eyes. “I didn’t know he was bothering you, too. You are really a good actress, because you make it look like you think he’s great.”

“Well, that’s what the role calls for. I’m supposed to think he’s cool. What I’d really like to do is torture him for a couple of days and then kill him in the most painful way I could think of.” She smiled again.

“Wow. I’d love to see that,” said Amber, her voice oozing with admiration.

Lynn looked at Amber thoughtfully. “Would it help you get through the rest of the scenes if I told you I have a plan to get revenge on him? I guarantee I will make him pay for every time he has touched me when we weren’t shooting. The slob can’t keep his hands to himself. And he gets right in my face with his disgusting tequila breath. Yuk.”

Amber giggled. She couldn’t help herself. “What are you going to do?”

“We don’t have time to go into details. Just believe me: he will be sorry he ever laid eyes on us. Here he comes. Let’s go back inside.”

The two girls walked back into the house huddled together, giggling and whispering, completely ignoring Tommy’s loud protestations.

As the evening progressed, Tommy got more and more obnoxious to all the women, and more irritating to the men, even to the point of telling Carlos how to direct and Michael how to shoot each scene. He changed the script on the fly, adding his own little touches, like bumping the ax into Shanna's jaw, the actress playing the part of the wife in the home invasion, who was to be beheaded with it in the next scene. He didn’t bump her hard enough to leave a bruise, but it was obvious she didn’t like him flourishing it in her face. She channeled her anger into her acting, however, which produced a superbly triumphant performance.

Tommy’s growing belligerence was explained when a crew member caught him drinking out of a bottle of tequila he had found in a kitchen cabinet. One thing he was really good at was ignoring anybody who told him not to drink, so the crew member eventually resorted to hiding the bottle. That didn’t faze him in the least. He just rummaged around the cabinets until he found a different bottle, bourbon this time.

A quick conference was held the next time Tommy was outside, and Carlos decided to try salvaging the movie by getting the filming done as soon as possible, before the actor became too drunk to continue. He cut some scenes and shortened others, and finally the last scene was done for the second home invasion.

The movie consisted of two home invasions done by Tommy and James, and the first one had already been filmed. All that was left on the schedule for today was the night scene with the car. Tommy and James were supposed to stop on the road to help with a flat tire, although they were only interested in chasing away the two men and absconding with the two women, who turned out to be the vampire girls participating in the second home invasion. Of course, Tommy and James hadn't yet learned they were vampires.

Making sure James was driving the SUV, Carlos, Michael, Tommy, and the vampire girls drove off to find a good spot to film the flat tire scene. The remaining actors and crew gathered in the kitchen to snack on pizza, soda, cheese and crackers.

“Finally! He's gone!” gloated Deanna.

“Yeah!” seconded Dan, who had played the husband. He fingered the holes in his t-shirt made by the special effects bullets. “I'm glad it was James who shot me. I would have freaked out if Tommy had pointed that gun at me.”

“I am so sick of that loudmouth jerk. He won't listen to anybody, not even Carlos. I kept pulling him outside to smoke because he wouldn't stop talking when they were filming. They'll probably have to throw out most of what they shot tonight.”

The others joined in the venting session, listing Tommy's many faults as an actor and a man. When they ran out of new character defects, they pulled out their phones and texted for a while.

After what seemed like forever, the SUV returned. Carlos gathered everyone together to let them know he wanted to continue filming the next day.

“We will be shooting the scenes where James and Tommy find out the girls are really vampires, so I need all of you to meet at eight at Tommy's house, except for Dan and Shanna of course. If any of you need the address or directions, talk to Tommy.”

“It's gonna be a party!” Tommy burst out. “Lots of food and beer and anything else you want. It's gonna be a real party!” He walked around through the group, repeating himself with great enthusiasm, while Lynn rolled her eyes and smirked at Amber.

The next night was a dark and cloudy one, but inside Tommy's house all the lights were on, and there was a lot of food, beer, and noise. Carlos seemed irritable, perhaps because he had been watching what had been filmed the previous night.

“I want you two over here, and James here, and Amber, down on the floor here. Okay, QUIET!” He glanced at Tommy, then said, “Action!”

James bent down toward Amber and began strangling her, laughing cruelly. She struggled and choked dutifully. After shooting that several times with variations suggested by Carlos, the scene shifted to Tommy and Lynn.

“You grab her and take a handful of her hair to hold her head back. Then you try to bite her on the neck. She gets mad and pushes you away. Got it?” Tommy and Lynn nodded, and Carlos called, “Quiet! Action!”

The scene went according to plan up until Tommy decided to add some pawing of Lynn's breast while he was trying to bite her neck. She snarled and wrenched his hand away, gouging his wrist with her nails. As Tommy howled in pain, she shoved him into the wall, and he slid down and landed hard on the floor.

“Wow, that was great, Tommy!” Carlos leaned toward Michael and muttered, “See, he really is a good actor.”

Tommy slowly got to his feet, looking a little dazed. Then he noticed his wrist was bleeding.

“YOU B**CH!” he yelled. “YOU CUT ME!” He stomped over to Lynn with a vicious look on his face.

Lynn leaned toward him and said very quietly, “You keep your hands off of me or you'll be the b**ch.”

Tommy looked at her with a strange expression on his face, as if he couldn't figure out what she was telling him. He evidently decided she wasn't making any sense, so he ignored her and went into the bathroom to clean up his wrist.

As the evening progressed, Tommy continued to take liberties with Lynn during the scenes, and she continued to fend him off. Finally they reached the scene where the vampire girls get tired of the men trying to kill them, and they turn the tables.

Carlos was very pleased at this point. He could hardly believe his luck in finding such a good actress as Lynn, who was obviously bringing out the best in Tommy. James and Amber were doing a good job, too. The film was turning into magic in his mind. He took extra care to set up the climactic scene, and called, “Quiet! Action!” with great enthusiasm.

This scene called for Lynn and Amber to overcome the two men by their vampire charisma and put them into a trance. Then they were to bite their necks and drain their blood. The girls had been instructed how to use the fake teeth and the fake blood to make it look real, and they did a good job. It looked incredibly real.

But with each take, Carlos grew more disappointed. He wasn't sure what was wrong, but something was missing. James and Amber were doing pretty well, but Tommy was messing it all up. He had become quiet. Too quiet.

“Tommy! You are too quiet. Ham it up! Moan like you're having sex. You're just lying there, and it's boring!”

Tommy tried. He moaned, but so softly it was hard to hear.

Carlos exploded at him. “What's wrong with you? Come on! Put something into it, for Pete's sake!”

Tommy sat up and groaned. “I don't feel good. I need some beer.”

Carlos threw up his hands in disgust. “Somebody get him some beer, and let's take a break.” He walked out of the room.

After two beers, Tommy agreed to try the scene again. Everybody took their positions and the camera began recording. Tommy started out moaning loudly, and James was hamming it up, too, but then Tommy grew so quiet he looked almost dead.

Carlos impatiently called, “Cut!” Amber sat up tiredly, but Lynn only laughed coldly and kept on draining Tommy's blood.

“Cut, I said! CUT!”

He stared at Lynn in disbelief. What was she doing? Finally, Lynn raised her head, a single drop of blood ran down her chin, and she said, “Okay, I'm done. Wait, one more thing.”

She walked over to her backpack and pulled out a long wooden stake. Returning to Tommy's body, she plunged it into his heart.

“You better keep that in there. We wouldn't want him to return as a vampire.”

She picked up her pack and walked out.

Nobody moved for several seconds, then Carlos turned to Michael. “Did you get that?”