[Karn Evil 9]

Call me a diarist. I keep a diary, but I don't date it. What's the point of that? It was forty degrees and cloudy today. So what? I'm depressed. So what? I need to eat. If only there were some way I could live without food. Then I would never have to work. I could lie in the sun all day (when the sun was out). I guess I could use some water. I could lie in the sun all day and drink water. And scotch. And if I had no wife and kids I would never have to move because there would be no one asking me to do anything. I could just lie there all day and drink scotch and water. And watch Star Trek. I could bring the TV out into the yard, over by the hammock, under the tree. And my tapes. Or, I could bring the hammock inside. I guess I could stand some chips. And some dip. For some reason I never get bored with Star Trek, no matter how many times I've seen every episode. It's really all I want to do -- just float around in space indefinitely, five years, ten years, who knows how long we'll be out there? Seeking out new life. I'll be nice to all the aliens as long as they're nice to me. I'll think about the woman I left on earth and always wonder whether or not I made the right decision joining Starfleet. But I've heard stories about Klingon women. I need to become an astronaut. I need adventures. I need to sleep under the stars. Fly like a bird. I need to be free. This is the first time I've ever really thought about suicide. I mean I didn't think about doing it, I just thought that if I didn't have a family, there'd be nothing keeping me here, but too many people would be hurt if I left. There's my wife and kids. And my mother's still alive. That's it, really, but that's enough. Yes, it would hurt them if I left this place too soon. Sometimes I resent them for it. Sometimes I feel shackled. A warm breeze is blowing. I'm swinging in my hammock, falling asleep. I feel free. I don't think about the office. I think about how I'm not at the office. I wouldn't need an office in space. Just a bunk. A hammock to swing in, so I don't get spacesick. I would have all the time in the world. There's a little league game going on down the street. There's a low buzzing in my ears, coming from somewhere. I don't know what it is. A cloud covers up the sun. A car door slams. My wife is home. I love my wife. Come here, honey, and give me a kiss. She looks like a star. "What's gotten into you?" She says. Her hair is red like fire and her eyes a cool shade of blue. You are a treasure, I say. And I mean it.

At the office things are not so cool. I crunch numbers and all the numbers look the same to me now. I can't tell a six from an eight. I suck down coffee and watch the clock. Jeremy makes the coffee, now. **** Jeremy. He's got to go. He's trying to move in on me. But he won't be much of a challenge. He's no good. None of them are. I don't even need to go after him. I just need to be consistently better than him. And that's easy. I won't even say a word that doesn't relate to the task at hand and then I'll watch him fall apart like they all do when they get sufficiently overconfident. That's what usually does them in. They claim knowledge they don't possess; thinking it will magically come to them in the night. Then it's I thought you said you could handle this and that's when I come in. I can handle that, Sir, no problem. I'll have it fixed in a jiff. And then it's bye-bye, Jeremy. I'd have saved your ass if you'd let me. I'm bored. I need a challenge!

Maybe the next guy will be better and then there will be two of us. Sometimes I want company. It's noon. There is no such thing as time. And yet the hands on the clock move, I'm sure of it. The more work I can get done, the faster the day will end. Sometimes it feels like the day will never end, and I keep telling myself Come on, you know it will end. It always does. Didn't it end yesterday? And the day before that? Trust your instincts. It will end again today. It's just a matter of time, but that doesn't make the clock move any faster. Why do they do that? Why do they put the clock right there for everyone to see? Don't they know what it's doing to us? I am looking out my window at the rectangles going up, the smokestacks puffing smoke, the worker ants at work. I believe they really can lift a thousand times their weight -- more. The glass is cold. Somewhere, out there in the city limits, within those enormous buildings, are the men who move the clocks. If you look long enough you can see them move. It's two-fifteen. I'm writing in my diary and drinking coffee and I feel I should eat but I don't know what I want.

I remember when I could smoke cigarettes wherever the hell I felt like it, like Jane Fonda in Agnes of God--restaurants, hospitals, police stations, and convents. Now I'm up on the roof. It's the funniest thing I ever saw, doctors and nurses smoking cigarettes. I'm gonna quit tomorrow. No -- I can't. I hate myself for that. But there it is. Slow suicide. I can quit, though. I'm sure I will, someday. I'm too smart to die from cancer. Cancer would hurt. There is not a cloud in the sky, but there is some smog. My shadow is blurred. I look at the city and it looks clean from here. The people look like ants. In the mountains where my mom lives you can see the moon moving across the sky in broad daylight. But not here. Still, I look up and can see forever. It would take forever to travel to the edge of the universe, but it could be done. There's nothing out there as far as I can see. No people, anyway. How big is the world? These people put up buildings faster than I can believe. Like little worker ants. When average lifespans reach biblical proportions and the population explodes, we will run out of space on which to build. In a thousand years we will need to begin building upwards, directly on top of existing buildings. I can see skyscrapers miles high. Tenements high enough to break up weather patterns and render them harmless. It will take forever to bake a cake. These buildings will be secured to nothing else but each other. An intricate system of bridges and catwalks will tie one to another, several forming gigantic rectangles stretching hundreds of square miles, containing cities within cities, so large that any damage to the structure as a whole would be sufficiently localized. Rectangles don't fall. They last forever, like pyramids. A chief industry will be organ farming, and there will be an unlimited supply of fresh organs for all. Some people will never need to touch real ground, because there will be golf courses and restaurants up there, and taxi-cabs, and muggers, and hate-crimes committed against clones. Alas, I think there will always be bad people.

Couldn't I survive on IV fluids alone? Just strap on a bag and hook it up to a vein? It would have to be concentrated, of course, so that a bag would last a long time. But you wouldn't need to wear it all the time. It would be very convenient, I would think. There would be no need for restaurants or supermarkets unless they sold IV fluids. Maybe they could make different "flavors," I don't know. But you would never have to stop to eat. Like astronauts. Perhaps a pill might be better.

Last night I had an odd dream. It was odd because I know what it means. Most of my dreams don't make any sense. But this one seemed to follow a logical order of events. I had on a bright and colorful new suit. It was so bright and colorful that it reminded me of a Superman costume my son wore on Halloween a week prior. I was very happy and proud of this new costume and was very excited about showing it off and being seen wearing such a special thing. When I had spent much time and effort getting this thing on and making sure I was presentable, I had gone to a mirror only to find that I had done it all wrong. You couldn't see the costume. I had put it on first, which seemed logical at the time, and had put on my "regular" clothes last. So, all those bright colors were hidden, but I didn't care. It would have seemed a silly waste of time to undress and do it all over again. Redundant. The moment had passed. I couldn't relive it. I didn't want to. I was quite content to go about my day knowing full well that I alone knew what was beneath my clothes, next to my skin, what colors lay hidden. And I am happy in this dream, which surprises me, and delights me.

My son won't let me help him open his granola bar. He wants to do it himself and he has no idea how it's done. He's shaking it and screaming and hiding in the corner probably smashing it to pieces. Finally he comes to me. Open, pyeez. I oblige him. He doesn't eat it. We play hide-and-seek for hours, but he keeps telling me where he is. He counts to ten too fast and then he cries when he catches me hiding. He cries when he can't find me. He cries when I tell him I don't want to play hide-and-seek anymore because I'm running out of hiding places. We are in danger of becoming repetitive. He has trouble with transitions. The sun comes in through the blinds and shines on the carpet. I roll in it like a cat. It's cold outside. My son jumps on my stomach and kicks me in the balls. I feel shackled, and in pain, and happy. My son is laughing with all his heart. He hits me in the head with a drumstick. He cries when I tell him I don't want to play drums anymore.

I long for my hammock, for the day when my boy will be content to lie in a hammock. He's growing so fast, people say. But it's not true.

I share my dream with a co-worker. Coffee sucks, eh? She doesn't care about dreams. Neither do I. Numbers come in. I crunch them. As many as I can in the smallest amount of time to make the day go faster. So I can go home. I used to read a lot when I was a kid. When the kids come home from school they tell me about their day. There was a shooting in our neighborhood. A liquor store clerk. The killer got away. But the cops will catch him. It was sweet of them to care. Just you stay out of liquor stores, I say. See what can happen? The liquor store clerk was the store's owner, Bob Frank.

In bed at night I can hear the traffic on I-81. I can hear the hum of the power moving through the house. Three rooms away, the fish tank bubbles ever so softly in the dark. The fish don't sleep. Neither do I. I am crunching numbers again. I don't know why. The sex was great tonight, honey. Mmm, yes, it was. Sleep is welcome but never comes. My mouth is parched. I watch news about the war until the sun comes up. It's too early to shower. The sun comes through the blinds in pale lines striped across the body of my sleeping wife. She feels nothing. Coffee is brewing. I touch her and she moves. Sunlight feels good. Coffee smells good. We are aroused again as the familiar voices of our morning news team tell us what time it is and if the sun is shining. I think about the office again. And the clock. And my wife. I feel like Edgar Allen Poe. Everything is humming. And the face of the digital clock blinks twelve, but I know it's really about six.

[Karn Evil 9]

Now, that stinks. Start over. Old stuff? Show, don't tell.

KE

[evelyncanarvon]

Hmmm.... It starts out kind of interesting but then I'm afraid it falls into that group of stories that are only interesting to the person they're written about. I have a diary too, but it's not much fun for other people to read. Now, your main character (I'm assuming it's you) is pretty interesting. Maybe you can put him into an interesting situation and then you can make a good story out of it. Right now it's just a bit too boring.

[osofoaddo]

The story needs a lot of action to hold the reader'a interest..
Peter Addo

[Epsilonist]

It doesn't seem as though this was meant to be a story.
I like it for what it seems to be: a peek inside someone else's mind and life.

It wouldn't have any luck as a published story, but as a way of conveying a few philosophies, it's good. This style, perhaps a bit more focused, would be great for detailing a personality and outlook in a larger story.