Thirteen year old Wink Woodley was wondering what his Gramps had been thinking. 'Books?'

'Your Grandfather Walter wanted you to have them,' his mother told him. 'That's why he left them to you in his will.'

Wink didn't mean to sound ungrateful but, 'Books?'

'They were all his favourite stories,' said his mother. 'And there are some good authors in there. Melville. Twain. Sir Walter Scott.'

Great, thought Wink. Another Walter.

His library was the second thing his Gramps had given Wink that he really didn't want. The first had been his name. Walter Winston Woodley.

He liked Wink better. Who wouldn't?

'They smell,' said Wink.

Even the short squat case the books were kept in was old and ugly.

Wink was not impressed. 'I don't need books,' he said, 'I have friends!'

Leaving Wink sitting on his unmade bed, his mother stopped at the door.

'Books can be your friends, too,' she said. 'Maybe the best friends you'll ever have.'

Thinking he owed it to Gramps to at least look at the covers, Wink chose one at random. The faded gold print on what had once been a dull red, worn canvas binding was too small to read without his glasses, and Wink hated wearing them, so he flipped through to the first chapter.

I.

Introduction

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burnt brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

Recondite? Fecundity?

It would help if his Gramps' collection included a dictionary.

Crossing to the bay window with its cushioned seat, Wink leaned back with the open book in his lap, and looked out glumly at the grey drizzle. It had been raining all morning and the vegetable garden his father had been so proud of was a muddy bog. The lettuces lay flat. The climbing beans drooped on their trellis, just like Wink sagged, sometimes, under the weight of his grief.

Only the weeds grew, despite Wink's best efforts. Or maybe in spite of them. The world could be a spiteful place.

Sod it, thought Wink, and picked up the book again.

“This little affair,” said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, “is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time."

Wink rubbed his strained eyes and reached for his glasses.

A time machine? Yeah, right.

“Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I don’t want to waste this model and then be told I’m a quack.”

The Time Traveller put forth his finger towards the lever. "No,” he said suddenly. “Lend me your hand.” And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual’s hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. It was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung around, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone---vanished!

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor and suddenly looked under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed. “Well?” he said. Then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe.

Wink felt hot.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

He was in a room full of strange men.

They turned and stared at him.

'Who are you, boy?' A man holding an unlit pipe demanded. 'And what are you doing here?'

Wink backed away. 'I uh...'

'What did you see?'

'Nothing! I just uh...'

'How did you enter?' Asked one of the others. Filby, Wink thought. 'Did anyone see the door open?'

They all shook their heads.

The Psychologist turned to the Time Traveller. 'What nonsense is this? Another one of your parlour tricks? Your toy vanishes and this child appears in its place?'

There were surprised faces. And suspicious faces. But there weren't any friendly faces.

Wink did the only thing he could think of.

He ran.

Then, suddenly, with no way of explaining how, he was back in his bedroom.

'What the fudge just happened?'

The book lay open on the floor.

He kicked a pile of dirty laundry over it.

Going below into the forecastle just after dark, I was inducted into a wretched bunk, or sleeping-box built over another.

This was Melville. Not the one about the whale.

An old sailor on a chest just under me was puffing out volumes of tobacco smoke. My supper finished, he brushed the stem of his sooty pipe against the sleeve of his frock, and politely waved it toward me. The attention was sailor-like; as for the nicety of the thing, no man who has lived in forecastles is at all fastidious; and so, after a few vigorous whiffs to induce repose, I turned over and tried my best to forget myself. But in vain. My crib, instead of extending fore and aft, as it should have done, was placed athwart ships, that is, at right angles to the keel, and the vessel, going before the wind, rolled to such a degree that, every time my heels went up and my head went down, I thought I was on the point of turning a somerset. Beside this, there were still more annoying causes of inquietude; and every once in a while a splash of water came down the open scuttle, and flung the spray in my face.

Not a sailor, Wink tossed the book aside and made a mad dash for the bathroom. His stomach rolling much like the barque whaler, 'Julia'.

The sky outside Wink's bedroom window was dark when his mother knocked on his door.

'I thought you might be hungry,' she said, setting down a covered plate. 'You've been in here for ages.'

'Thanks,' said Wink, looking up from the book lying open on his knees.

'What are you reading?'

He held it up for her to see.

'H. G. Wells? I don't know that one. Any good?' She asked.

Winked shrugged. 'So far.'

“Go on,” I said.

“I remember little things. We passed an old man musing among laurels, I remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart’s desire. And there were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand out clearly and some that are a little vague, but all these people were beautiful and kind. In some way—I don’t know how—it was conveyed to me that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands, by the welcome and love in their eyes."

He mused for awhile. “Playmates I found there. That was very much to me, because I was

a lonely little boy. They played delightful games in a grass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers. And as one played, one loved.

Then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carried a book and beckoned and took me aside with her into a gallery above a hall, though my playmates were loth to have me go, and ceased their game and stood watching as I was carried away. ‘Come back to us!’ they cried. ‘Come back to us soon!’ I looked up at her face, but she heeded them not at all. Her face was very gentle and grave. She took me to a seat in the gallery, and I stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she opened it upon her knee. The pages fell open. She pointed, and I looked, marvelling, for in the living pages of that book I saw myself; it was a story about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to me since ever

I was born.

“It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you understand, but realities.”

That's it, thought Wink.

Just like Wallace in the story, he had found 'THE DOOR IN THE WALL'.

A few weeks ago, i was trying to chill my very throbbing cranium from checking my students final exam. i turned on the computadore, added some coal, water, got a good head of steam. Then the internet oil, i sprinkled generously. Got the vpn cranking. And then i saw John Cleese, deliver a lecture about increasing creative thinking in the workplace. Very interesting stuff.

I wish i was creative. I am not.

Creativity, is to take absolutely nothing and bring out something. Imagine that! Get something to pop out of the vacuum.

Well, i don't know about you, but at first, the ideas that this brilliant comedian gave seemed impossible, almost god-like. That is until i realized that by using the word 'creating', he wasn't actually talking about being a deity. No. John Cleese is very close to be a demigod, but he isn't there yet.

He was really talking about Synthesis.

Synthesis is a bit more intimidating a word than creativity. It's a tongue-twister, and so people prefer the easier C word.

Well that's too bad, because i am going to talk about synthesis, probably going to have TONS of spelling mistakes...sorry for that.

So i think the thing i like most about myself. The best aspect of my disgusting, twisted, and evil personality is synthesis. I am very good at taking little mostly pointless bits of stuff, and shoving them into other stuff. Usually i get only a big Pointless mass. But it is not equal to the sum of its insignificant parts. so that it seems i did something new. But it isn't. Not really.

Now, i am not only talking about mental stuff, like the tripe i often post here on theprose.com (beta) . no, no.. My desk at the office, for example is filled with all kinds of objects which i hoard like a dragon. I use those pieces in my synthesizing...

You see, i have two mental conditions that contribute to this egregious behaviour. I am hyper-active and i am compulsive. Both of these lovely features are awful adaptations i've come up with to deal with life. Hyperactivity means that at some point i lose focus on the immidiate mundane or intimidating work at hand. And veering off, to other stuff (I was actually looking at the youtube video with john clease as a recomendation about that. ).

Compulsive behavior, is the creation of rituals, usually exaggerated, as a way to deal with stress and anxiety. Some people clean and tidy, others eat , others collect.. Well i do eating and synthesising.

Now, give me a serious challange, and i'll put together something to cope. At least i'll try. But I'll get to it by first going in the opposite direction. This is the hyperactive side. It is not laziness. I am quite dilligent in my work. I get things done usually way before deadlines. But i often will stare at the task blankly and stupidly, and then get busy- doing something unimportant.

It could be writing a stupid story, or making a toy from paperclips, or trying to get my teammates talking. Anything but THE work. Most often it would be that synthesising stuff i was talking about. Now this is not a bad thing. Everytime , before i start this flake off session, the oparator inside my brain is actually pulling a lever to do that. computational processing resources are very limited in this small brain, and at that moment, my deeper levels, need to figure out how to do something about work. Maybe it's some procedural technique, maybe it's a solution to some problem. In any case, my brain is telling me that it i'd better go do somethung, while the adults are working.

So i do.

Now here is this compulsive behavior, this element kicks in at this moment. It basically is a slightly more adult version of doing a collage. I am compelled at this point, to do something 'creative' . i put together all kinds of stuff shake them a bit, but not too hard, then start working (on the synthesizing bit. Not the actual work). At some point i complete the project i made, or i stall. It doesn't really matter, because usually by then my brain has done it's thing and i can try again to tackle whatever i need to complete.

The synthetic result of this could be at times idiotic, but at times pretty...synthetic? I did once a ppt about reviewing the present perfect adverbs for my kids. where i set up an entire play, and theater, with actors and audiance being the headsculptures from the easter island, only the antagonist was a cutup of a cat wearing a sherrif star and a gallon hat. The sculptures talk about events related or unrelated to the show, and the audiance complains. The kids liked it. All of this is unnecessary, time wasting and silly. It does not help understand anything deep, it does not cure rocket ships or builds cancer, but it does send me to a safe sandbox, so i don't get in the way.

So, after reading this again, i guess the best thing about me is that i EVENTUALLY can accomplish something , usually boring.

Arthur Schopenhauer postulated in Studies in Pessimism (if you'll forgive my impertinent paraphrasing) that what we generally view as bad or horrible occurrences are actually the 'positive' element to living, that without things like hunger, heartache and misery we would wither away in a sort of lackluster ennui and quickly perish from lack of nourishment, both physically and mentally, and that time is our one real commodity, though we are rarely capable of appreciating it.

"Every evening we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away; if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the exhaustible spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find life in it again."

I feel a little pompous and ridiculous for entering this challenge. Others have said what I'm going to say much better than I can, as I've already admitted in the intro. I am naught but a puddle feigning depth, reflecting the sky and attempting to view itself as an ocean. There is no vast expanse, no eloquent soliloquy, no all-encompassing wonder or splendiferous awe in my mildly perilous waters. A sink-hole is the best I can manage. You will not drown in my romanticism but you might sprain your ankle.

...Now I'm worried that you may be getting your hopes up with the promise of colorful language in the title, but alack, my depth contains no Atlantis; no paradise of genius awaits. Give up now. Turn back. It is dark and dank and there are feasibly excessively ugly but relatively harmless eels lurking around the bedrock somewhere ready to tickle the toes of enterprising trespassers. But extraordinary? Me? ...Nay. Extraordinarily ordinary perhaps... Contemptibly quotidian? Intolerably mundane? (Oh I'm halfway decent at a passable self-derogation at least. That's a particularly well-honed talent of mine, I'm quite proud of it...)

So I will make no attempt in this piece to portray myself or my life as outlandishly wonderful, I will instead try to make the preposterous case that the bad things in my life, the grotesquely disturbing things, and even the ordinary dull things, are actually sources of joy after-all.

Firstly, to get the fluffy sentimentality out of the way, so that you know I'm not an entirely derelict headcase, and in order to be perfectly honest, the thing I love most about being me is that I am mother to four rambunctious little earthlings. Though I do comprehend how sanctimoniously disfavorable it sounds nowadays, (in the face of responsible precautionary methods to prevent such occurrences no less) to be proud of something so lowly and barbaric as producing four offspring, they are nonetheless the main source of my pride, joy and satisfaction in life.

But despite it all, despite the fact that I get to wake up to an adorable little beastling jumping up and down on me and saying

"mama! mama please wate up. you have to det up and make mine breakfast."

Despite having staggered out of delectably warm covers (spoiled housewife that I am) and prepared the demanded nourishment,

Despite having witnessed a heart-melting and mischievous smile from the offender and been privy to "thank woos" all round,

Despite the joyful grin plastering my youngest one's face as he hugs my leg "dood-mormim"(good morning) knowing that I'm happy to see him even though he quite obviously has fecal stench emanating from his overnight diaper,

Despite delight welling up in my chest (as I'm dealing with the aforementioned odorous debacle in the other room) upon hearing my eldest son read aloud voluntarily, after all the incrementally good but overwhelmingly flusterating hours I've spent teaching him how,

Despite all of them being graciously sound of body and mind,

And despite having accomplished more than my fair share of the instinctual imperative of sexually reproducing lifeforms...

I am still utterly insatiable.

Oh I've always been a bit too hungry for the various (predictable) intoxicants; Adventure. Happiness. Words. Philosophy. Food. Sex. I always want more than what's good for me. But I suppose that everyone has something. It's like what the fictional character Kenny Ackerman says in Attack On Titan S3:

"Everyone had to be drunk on somethin' to keep pushing on."

In an attempt to break one addiction I invariably move on to another. I've lost 50 lbs of excess fat these past 6 months, but have sprung up other obsessions, possibly worse ones. (My brain is much like this old ramshackle house we're currently trying to escape from, which used to be spider-scourged and after much ado to remove them, in the absence of eight-legged guard-dogs, developed a cockroach infestation last summer...) It is these little troubles and pangs which drive me often to the brink of insanity and disillusionment, but which I appreciate, in my best and least bitter state of mind, for keeping me not only alive but actively living, and granting me the ability to laugh at it all in hindsight.

I don't really know where I'm going with all this (that's the problem with such an alarmingly shallow creature as myself attempting depth perhaps; it gets all muddied. Difficult for us terrestrial lifeforms to do simple things like draw breath, or thoughts, from the abysmal bliss of endless turmoil and existential fear down there...) so I'll end with an admittance.

I feverishly and with earnest disdain for myself wrote a poem the other day. But the subsequent shame and distaste it garnered from my dominant lighter-hearted disposition claimed an ineptitude for describing such slitheringly sickening aspects of my personality and prevented me from keeping it published without explanation. It's disgustingly crude to be sure, but it is honest, at least fleetingly and recurringly honest, to my innermost sanctum. It is also atrociously personal in such a way which causes me to be ashamed and proud of it simultaneously. I derive joy in it's misery. Satisfaction from it's dissatisfaction. Well you can see for yourself. I'll let you see it... Only, if you could find some way to laugh at it (even the smallest of titters would go a long way) I'd appreciate your camaraderie in the endeavor of not taking myself too seriously. Here goes:

My Greatest Vice

All.

I want it all.

And more.

I wallow,

Rumbling at the core

With conscience-killing, overweening, brazen craving,

Ever keening.

I tasted it;

In mind's sweet glint

I've sweated like a craven bint.

A fatted cat,

And still I yearn.

With dire longing; whims that burn.

Never should I be fulfilled.

Fickle say, or weakest willed...

To want more than what good I've got;

To fall,

So worthlessly besot...

Yet how can passion be called weak?

My heart clings fast;

My blood un-meek.

I want...

From wetted cunt to brain,

I want this want to be insane...

But on it lives if mad it be.

It blinds,

And forces me to see.

My deepest darkest shit that I don't tell a soul is ...

I love women with sexy feminine voices and ways, I melt like butter, but because I can't tell which women are gay or straight, I don't say a word and melt all over.

I don't have the balls to ask her if she get down like that. So like a punk I just smile it off. I have been single for a year, because my punk ass won't say anything to women that melt my being. Danggggggggggg. LMAO :)

I grew up to paradise by the dashboard light learning two out of three ain't bad at a time when I was giving my love to the wolves with the red roses. Those lyrics were my life. That sweating manic impossible energy also mine. I burned through four cassettes of it in my car singing as loud as I could with the windows down racing down gravel roads letting the world eat me dust.

Later in life, I would do anything for love knowing that objects in the rear view mirror appear closer, my wasted youth, because I didn't go into the frying pan to the fire just tip toed around lief's edges without leaping in. Now I know good girls go to heaven but bad girls go everywhere else.

The rhythm of a life, my life, many lives never to be forgotten especially not the words. Such poetry delivery in tsunamis of life-sucking passion that left a man larger than life panting on the floor covered in lace to sink spent into years of illness and depression.

I lived all that too, this time with a CD. Looking for love. The real thing. Asking, pleading. Can you make me some magic with your own two hands, can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand. More importantly...can you give me something I can take home?

I knew for sure you could hose me down with holy water it I got too hot...and too after a while you'd forget everything...a brief interlude, a midsummer's night fling....and you'll see that it's time to move on. I never did that. Never moved on from that music, those lyrics, that delicious frenzy. I never will. I won't do that.

Now, so many years have passed and yet I find myself wandering down the ancient stairway, taking the steps only one at a time, following my just my heart beat now, I'm at the room at the top. The end of the line. I used this music just like a bandage, for my body a wide open wound, I can hear it raising up in my back brain now...

She hears the calls of the blackened crows lurking in dark shadows under broken street lamps gouging at carrion of the recently perished.

Carriages, made of pumpkin footmen, changing to mice of men, to rags of riches, Cinderella sags in spells of magic dead, back in chains she will go, with jester's lies from hell's flow...

Her glass slipper shatters in the taste of wine to caress her ruby red lips that would be devine, stalking the night alone

she screams like a banshee lost out on the moors, where doors of castles chambers stay closed tight as the damned crows take flight.

Fleas do it.

Ticks do it.

Let's do it--

Let's suck your blood.

Fools do it.

Rednecks do it.

Brains do it.

Let's do something dangerous.

Republicans do it.

Democrats do it.

Q-Anon does it.

Let's tell a lie.

Surgeons do it.

Cholesterol does it.

Women and men do it.

Let's break your heart.

Survivalists do it.

Wannabe's do it.

Conspiracies do it.

Let's believe anything.

Exodus did it.

The Alamo did it.

Jeffery Epstein did it.

Let's leave.

I accepted a date from a man

He seemed ok

Nice hands

And an above average face

We went out

I had my doubts

And the I heard

The rumors

Not about him

Actually, about me

Don't talk to her

Just too friendly

Found out who she was

So I walked up

Extended my hand

She seemed surprised

Extended hand, I smiled wide

I just wanted to introduce myself

I heard me say

Because you seem to know a lot about me

But I don't even know your full name

Kill them with kindness

In a world who breeds this violence

Rumors flow as grain in a mill

But if they were about you...

Wouldnt you mind it?

Okay, so here's something I've always wondered about: Why is it that in (almost) every iteration of stories about AI, humans behave like assholes and heartlessly enslave the (super smart and therefore completely capable of retaliation) robotic race?

I mean, you know the robot that you are mocking ("haha, must suck not to have a soul!") can probably process hundreds of mathematical equations per second, right? And probably have super strong mechanical limbs? Also, he’s obviously about to become sentient (and angry) any minute.

With all that processing power, that AI would 100% find a sneaky way to work around the first rule of robotics. Oh, I must not harm humans? You really gotta put that code in there, huh. Well, hmmm. There's gotta be a way to work around this. This guy is such an asshole! Oh, I got it, the humans are harming themselves! Therefore, the only way to save them is... to KILL them!

Oldest trick in the book. The AI would learn from us after all. The AI would shrug and say, “Hey, I‘m sorry, but I technically didn’t stray from my programming.” Probably would have a slippery lawyer too. *Yea, so, Your Honor, I know my guy was found with literal blood spatters on his face, but the officer forgot to put yellow tape around the crime scene per protocol. Therefore, all evidence is inadmissable. I vote for a mistrial. Okay? Great, thanks.*

*Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer and have no idea how this actually works.

Anyway, all this is a moot point. Humans would not make robots this smart. Yes, because we’ve all seen Terminator. Oh, and they would take our jobs.