Click. Click. Click-click. The Doctor had one of those cheap retractable ballpoint pens that usually have some kind of advertisement printed on the side. Maybe he stole it from a store clerk, or after signing for delivery. Pens like that want to be stolen, so they can spread their message around. At any rate, he was somewhat fidgety. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the pen. One click would toggle the pen into writing mode, and another click would toggle it off. It would have to be a fairly simple mechanism that made it work, otherwise people would worry more when someone walked off with their five-dollar, hand machined pen. Definitely a spring in there, the ball point was retracting up into the pen body, defying gravity. She had a few ideas about how the pen might work, but just by looking, there was no way to tell for sure. Perhaps if she could get it away, take it apart.
"Leah."
The Doctor was talking to her. That was what everyone called her, Leah. She did not really think of it as her name, but it made interactions easier, giving people a word with indexicality, to have something people can wrap their mind around. Much easier that way than thinking or saying, "That woman, with shoulder-length red hair and a heart-shaped, freckle-dusted face, who seems to always become hyper-focused on the smallest details", and so on.
"Leah, are you here now?"
"Yes, yes. I am here, sitting right in front of you. Can you see me? Perhaps you could loan me your pen while you make other observations as regards my existence?"
"It just seemed as if, your physical self notwithstanding, it seemed as if your mind was miles away." He made a brief note on his clipboard. Probably something like, Subject exhibits a sense of humor grounded in sarcasm and literal interpretations. Notes like that never have names, just numbers at the top of the page that get tied to other numbers in an arcane filing system. The observation protocol explicitly requires the observed to be referred to as "Subject". Something to do with privacy, but Leah thought it could be an indication that the problem she had with names was more widespread than a unique little feature of her own mind.
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Now you know why I sometimes laugh for no apparent reason. Updated whenever the mood strikes me.
What the heck?
While this used to be a sort of random collection of thoughts, it evolved into an experiment: can I tell a story that people are interested in? Is it pure conceit to think of myself as a writer? So, there's a thread of entries under the label of "Pretty", which is the working title for my, ahem, book. Of all things. Anyway, you can see the posts organized into chronological order here:
Pretty Chronology
About Me
Neighbors on the Interweb
Content is Copyright 2001-2006, Eric Eslinger. All Rights Reserved.
3 comments:
The last sentence reads funny because there are 2 "might"s in it.
But I am indeed intrigued to read more, which is probably the most important part of the first paragraphs of a book, huh?
Oh, also, you capitalize Doctor in the first paragraph, but not in the 3rd. It should probably be lowercase unless you are making a statement about the Doctor by capitalizing it.
Maybe I could start my career over as an editor... This is more fun than the meetings I have to go to. :)
I am indeed happy to get feedback either in the microscopic or macroscopic form. That's half the reason for posting. The other half, of course, is to give me a reason to keep working on the story.
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