Flash: The Dream of You and I

Photo by Boshoku on Unsplash

“Who is more powerful, the dreamer or the dream?”

I look over. “What kind of question is that?”’

“Just asking,” you reply.

“Nope, start making connections, I want to follow how ordering calamari led to this my ADHD friend.”

“You sure?”

I shake my head in exasperation, “Of course I’m sure.” Seeing the server walking over, I do say, “But hold that thought until we get the food order in.”

Placing the order took almost no time, both of us being well familiar with the menu, though the calamari appetizer was an experiment. One new dish a visit to help me break out of my autistic bubble. I once ate nothing but mac and cheese or tuna salad for a year according to my mother, and I wouldn’t eat both of them the same day, let alone the same meal. Drove her nuts. Added to the fact I couldn’t swallow pills until my early twenties meant she had to ground up vitamins and hide it in the food to keep me healthy. I have since learned to go further afield, though I still ordered the lobster mac and cheese tonight.

What can I say, it was a rough week at work.

Once the server left, I nodded to you, “So…”

“What?” You reply fidgeting with the napkin and fork, folding the cloth through the tines.

I sigh, used to this as much as you are used to extracting me from my house for our weekly Friday dinner, even though I like it enough once we have left my comfort place. “Calamari to dreamer or the dream.”

“Oh, oh yeah.” Your face lights up and my heart skips. We aren’t like that, you are too ace, but I love it when I can make you happy. “So calamari is tentacles right?”

“Sure.”

“And I am working my way through Lovecraft at the moment.”

“Why are you doing that again?”

“Trying to figure out racism in writing and how it changed over time,” you inhale deeply, “But anyway, so Lovecraft has Cthulhu. Tentacles.”

“Okay, calamari to tentacles to Cthulhu to Lovecraft?”

“Nah, Lovecraft isn’t in the chain, other than present hyper focus.” The fork in your hand bounces against the table making a nice chime, and I am once again glad my stims are related to doodling, much less noticeable and socially acceptable. I have enough other issues in social situations. “Anyway, in some of the stories, so I guess Lovecraft, anyway, in some of the stories, the Outer Ones—”

“Never heard of Outer Ones, I thought they were all the Old Ones.”

“Yeah, you don’t like horror so you never studied this shit, anyway, the Outer Ones cannot be part of this existence, but in some of the stories it can be interpreted as though the Outer Ones are dreaming of the Old Ones, and I was thinking of which is more powerful, the crazy half-realized Outer Ones who can’t be here, here-here,” you wave at the restaurant using your fork like a wand, “or the Old Ones which can exist in our world, but only as dreams.”

“Ah, hence the question, who is more powerful, the dreamer or the dream.”

“Exactly.” You reach across the table and squeeze my hand with the hand not holding the fork.

I freeze a moment, until you say “sorry” and stop touching me. “No, it is okay. Just give a person some warning please.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Forgiven. It’s okay.” I twist up one side of my lips while pressing them together in a semi-smile. “Back to the question asked – strictly rhetorical, or can we talk about it, because it is interesting.”

We stop for a moment as the server drops off our sodas and the bread basket with bread straight from the oven. They always run a little behind on the bread on Friday nights, which is one of the reasons why we like to come here on Fridays. We both adore hot, hot bread, so instead of cool bread in a basket being ready the minute we sit down, on Fridays we have to wait for it to come out of the ovens. Sometimes that means we don’t get any until our food is ready, but most Fridays, the bread hits the table about the same time as the salads. Speaking of which, a second server comes up behind our primary server with a portable table and a tray filled with greenery, mine with no dressing and yours smothered in raspberry vinaigrette.

When the servers retreat, I reach for the bread. I always eat one of the buns before anything else. It’s too good to pass up and I slather it in salted butter. You use the fork you have been playing with to move around the salad until every inch of the leaves glisten with lightly pink oil.

“I’m thinking the dreamer is more important, until the dream takes on a life of its own.” I take a deep inhale of the yeasty bread, then take a bite. Life with yeasty bread is good, especially compared to the store-bought loaf sanitated to an inch of its life so it can stay in the fridge for three weeks without mold while I make my sandwiches to take into work. “Like Martin Luther King Jr.”

You point with your fork, agreeing with me. “Exactly, yeah, I see that. ‘I have a dream.’ He was a dreamer sharing a dream.”

“A dream which lived beyond him but couldn’t have lived without him. An infectious dream.”

“A COVID of dreams.”

I snort. “I know some political people who sure think the dream of ‘when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’ is worse than COVID.”

“I can tell you which one I rather catch,” you reply.

Having dropped off food for a week at your doorstep during your round with the disease before the vaccine came out, I know which one you rather catch too. I had been worried sick about you even though I barely knew you at the time, just a coworker who was badly sick, even though you weren’t sick enough to go to the overflowing hospitals, thank god.

May the goddess keep Morgan wrapped up in hugs until we can all met again on the other side. I miss you, you big craziness.

“Hey, come back to me,” you say.

I look down at the salad, now carefully sorted into lettuce, carrot strips, cucumber, and olives. I would have eaten the tomatoes automatically. They drip on the other food and need to be removed quickly. “Sorry … Morgan.”

“Oh.”

You never met my high school best friend, and I hate that. You and I, we had only met at the office Christmas party in 2019 and only got to know each other in the year the world ended. During that time, everyone needed to help the ones near them and Morgan lived on the coast. City lights of New York had drawn Morgan in and so many COVID arrivals from around the world.

I inhale deeply and breathe out. Your eyes grow soft.

Breaking the melancholy, I pull out one of our standard Friday questions, “How was your week?”

Morgan is a topic for sofa, blankets, and ice cream at home and you understand this.

“Funny you ask…”

(words 1,255; first published 2/4/2024)

Flash: Hope for the Future, the First Baby Born Off Earth

Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash

Five percent gravity just wasn’t enough. Carolyn bounced the three-month old baby on her shoulder as best she could. “Anything yet?” the annoyance in her voice made the convicted murderer running coms wince.

Being a convicted murderer on a ship of convicted murders meant little, but Larry Jackson had been an organized serial killer before being caught whereas Carolyn Haywood embraced her disorganized anger. If she flew off the handle, they could end up being down one of the sixteen women on the ship, or one of the few people with enough of a brain to operate the machinery around them. Namely him. It was a toss up if his chosen guards would react in time to subdue her or help him.

Keith and Akeem also had more brains than brawn and he had assigned them guards accordingly. If they were to make Sirius in forty years, or at least their children, brains and training had to survive. He wasn’t sure if money people back home cared if the convicts actually lived to arrive, or if the machine dropping into orbit was all they actually cared about. It didn’t help that theirs was the ship with the longest run of the four sent out in the “volunteer” program of life sentences being served offworld.

“We are four light months away from Earth. We sent them a message as soon we knew for certain you were pregnant. If they responded immediately, the earliest response would have been twelve minutes ago. That is if the relays are even working.”

“They fucking well better be.” The woman paced the small room in the stride they all had learned since gravity had become noticeable again under the constant acceleration. “It’s bad enough we had to listen to all the shit they send to us, we better be able to send stuff back to them.” She spun carefully, still bouncing the baby in hopes of a burp. They all lived for the burps. “Let me tell you, if we don’t get help, if we don’t get answers, me and the girls are locking our legs until you figure out how to turn all of this off. Or, best believe me, I will be castrating the lot of you.”

“Carrie, I do believe you. Here, let me take Hope.” Larry stood, extending his arms slowly. “You need to get rest.”

“None of us fucking parents. What were they thinking sending us up here before fixing us.” She handed over the baby and left the comm room, her two guards following her.

Just over two hundred people to start, they were down to ninety-seven in one year. Larry rocked the crying baby over one arm, patting the back, hoping for something. Back up by eight without a loss of a single precious woman since Larry and Farrelle established order in their own ways and merged their groups. Only two women weren’t pregnant or new mothers. With a ratio of five to one male to female, the only reason the other women weren’t pregnant was Missy had her insides ripped out because of cancer and Eve had entered menopause during the trip at thirty-four. Bastards made sure everyone was young and fertile when plucking them from the prisons.

Guess that answered the question. The billionaires funding this experiment wanted someone to arrive on the other end.

“Come on, Hope. You can burp now.” Larry wasn’t sure this one was his, but Carrie had been one of the ones he fucked, the dates matched, and there weren’t many white guys on ship, especially after the initial dominance games. As dark as she was from her mother’s side, Hope’s father had to have been white. Hell, her daddy might be among the dead they were changing over to fertilizer according to the manuals left behind by the scientist bastards. “You need to burp so you can eat some more little girl.” She was weirdly thin around her rolls of baby fat. No gravity to fight and constant colic for all the kids made a mess.

They would need to keep better mating records for the future, so their children didn’t end up with three eyes and one leg. That would go over like lead balloon with the disorganized members. He walked over to his notebook to write the thought down to discuss with the gang heads.

The comm dinged as he was closing the book. He bounced the baby on his leg, as he deciphered the message. “Reproductive Procedure Manuals stored in folders 369SXE with the passcode HaveFun; and Progeny Procedure Manuals Years 0 to 5 stored in folders 963EXS with passcode GoodLuck.”

“You are fucking kidding me.” Larry worked his way the folder system. “I really hate the scientists. You think me keeping thumbs as trophies was sick. If I had you in my dungeons…”

His two guards took a step toward the exit. Both were disorganized anger killers, and even after being assigned to him for months, still couldn’t figure how his cold temper worked. They did understand his methodical psychopath brain had kept them alive, killing others until their gang was one of the last ones standing, and that ability to make people suffer and die whenever he wanted shook them to their core.

“Got you. Search on baby gassy colic burp.” Larry clicked the button with flourish. “Hope, my little baby doll, get your fingers crossed.” For the next thirty minutes, during which the baby fell asleep across his legs, he flipped through the screens, after which he stood and passed the baby to Lester.

With a voice as cold as ice, he informed them of what he found. “There is a tool to draw air out of the belly and mouth. It worked for adults on the space station, and they adjusted it for something they think could work on babies and toddlers. It’s with the rest of the newborn equipment they have stored behind section six-eight. I now have the code to open it.”

“We could have used that shit for the last six months.” Lester said, struggling to hold the now awake and hungry baby. “Why didn’t they tell us before?”

“They better hope I never figure out how to turn this ship around.”

(words 1,041; first published 1/28/2024; created 11/15/2023)

Book Review: Ring Shout

Amazon Cover

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan’s demons straight to Hell. But something awful’s brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

 

MY REVIEW

A historical urban fantasy set against the backdrop of the South between the world wars, in the spirit of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” where normal circumstances are changed by adding horror elements. For Ring Shout, it’s making the hate-filled Ku Klux Klan into hate-fill monsters using KKK as their entry into our world.

Action-packed, this narrative follows three women – one a WWI war veteran, one a survivor of a Klan attack, and one a hot-head tired of being stomped on. They have the Sight and use it to hunt the monsters that have gained entry into our world. But can they keep ahead of the hate summoning more and more of the monsters into our world?

***

On one hand this book fits well into the monster hunter historical fantasies so popular lately.

On the other, it felt somewhat like the assigned reading in school – when I read “Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank” and “1984” by George Orwell – things that made you stop and think and examine your world. Are you eating the meat of hatred? What is the difference between righteous anger and fearful hate?

Both a simple read and a complex one, my book club had some deep dives for this story.

(Checked out through the public library; read for book club)

Other Cool Blogs: Geek Girls

Photo by Patriçio on Unsplash

“Ideas to Consider When Creating BIPOC Characters.” GeekGirls. 7/10/2020. https://geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=13436 – last viewed 12/14/2020

Also – MediaChomp. 9/21/2021 – https://mediachomp.com/ideas-to-consider-when-creating-bipoc-characters/ – last viewed 12/14/2022.

This article points to an amazing short infographic about incorporating people of color and indigenous people into fictional writing, created by charisjb of Burbank, California. From touching on historic archetypes, like the Mammie, to character presentation and agency, this visual presentation can help a writer banish toxic tropes and embrace better ways of presenting The Other (or the Same) in their writing.

 

Geeking Science: Capturing Bubbles in CGI and other Black Matters

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Movie Poster from Internet Hive Mind

Photography has been a white person game for a long time. The film for photos and film was optimized for light skin. When computer special effects came around, CGI illumination of skin likewise concentrated on the melatonin levels found in the layers of Caucasian skin. CGI hair mimicked either clumped animal hair or straight Caucasian hair.

Time for change.

Quick background – really, lighting for film concentrated on making white people to look good. It’s hard to make someone look good when the tools aren’t even on your side. For example

“Shirley cards” used by film-makers to calibrate skin tones and light, only featured Caucasian models until well into the 70s (and only changed because of complaints from photographers trying to advertise chocolate or wood furniture).  (Latif, 2022)

During the creation of Shrek, animators discovered skin looked more real when created with layers of reflection.

If you shine a laser pointer on a wall you’ll see just a small spot of light. But shine it on your hand and you’ll see a blob of red light because the light is spread around,” said Stephen Marschner, a professor of computer graphics at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.  (Onion, 2005)

To get skin to look real, the CGI character models needed layers to the outer shell replicating light interaction with skin. The programmers in the early oughts (00s) tapped research in the medical community studying skin for cancer and to find the difference between young and old skin to create their algorithms. (Secondary Rabbit Hole: The medical community used light refraction to study the difference between old and young skin, by analyzing “the skin between the thumb and the first finger of 400 Caucasian women ranging in age from 10 to 70.” (Onion) – and some of the discoveries are really cool and will impact makeup and health for decades to come. Note the studies used to create the algorithms were from Caucasian subjects.)

Change was needed when Wakanda Forever wanted to do underwater scenes with people of color, both Mexico-born and African heritage. Not only did they need to redo algorithms to account for different melatonin amounts in different levels of the CGI character model layers, but also deal with the underwater light diffusion.

Then the Wakanda Forever programmers had to start all over with the CGI algorithms for hair. Aquaman came first, and those movie makers said that the CGI effects for hair were tough. (Failes, 2018) Unlike Aquaman, Wakanda Forever did a lot of wet shooting and discovered something. Curly and kinky hair captures air – bubbles happen. Not only does kinky hair flow different underwater, but if reproducing people who recently went underwater, air bubbles need to be taken into account.

The science of filmmaking is worth geeking about, especially as inclusion and representation pushes technology boundaries, even in the CGI algorithms. If you are interested in photograph or filmmaking or CGI animation, I highly recommend diving down this rabbit hole.

Also check out a third rabbit hole on the hair styles for Wakanda Forever (Cummings, 2022)).

Bibliography

Alter, Ethan. “How the ‘Wakanda Forever’ visual effects team evolved the way Black skin and hair are digitally replicated onscreen.” aol.com. 12/21/2022. https://www.aol.com/entertainment/wakanda-forever-visual-effects-team-213304735.html – last viewed 12/27/2022.

Cummings, Faith. “The Story Behind the Stunning Array of Hair Looks in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Vogue. 11/21/2022. https://www.vogue.com/article/black-panther-wakanda-forever-hair-camille-friend – last viewed 12/27/2022.

Failes, Ian. “In ‘Aquaman,’ Underwater CG Hair Was Surprisingly One of the Toughest Effect.” Cartoon Brew. 12/30/2018. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/in-aquaman-underwater-cg-hair-was-surprisingly-one-of-the-toughest-effects-167947.html – last viewed 12/27/2022.

Latif, Nadia. “It’s lit! How film finally learned to light black skin.” The Guardian. 9/21/2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/21/its-lit-how-film-finally-learned-how-to-light-black-skin – last viewed 12/27/2022.

Onion, Amanda. “Shrek Animators, Dermatologists Share Beauty Secret.” ABCnews. 4/4/2005. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Health/story?id=609818&page=1 – last viewed 12/27/2022.