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The Tim Machine
His son though seem gifted with an ability to find new ways to end his life. Assisted by the near total absence of adult supervision Tim found ever increasingly bizarre and improbable ways to kill himself.
This is a piece of short fiction I wrote for a writing exercise for the Writer’s group I participate in. The idea was to take a story everyone knows (in this case The Time Machine by H.G. Wells) and remove one character, the ‘e’, and write a new story with that as the title. This is the work that was inspired by the ‘The Tim Machine’:
“Not again…” Was the first thought that crossed eminent geneticist Dr. Roland Tellers’ mind as he looked at the mess in his backyard, the next was “how does this keep happening?” A dark stain underneath the junior jungle gym led him to believe it had started there, the lack of a body though momentarily confused him until he heard the low growl of the family pet, Tilly, a supposedly harmless chocolate lab, beyond the tree line, as he walked across the manicured lawn he noticed a depression the grass weaving itself back to the sound he was following. Just under the trees he caught a glimpse of Tilly and she of him. The dog, usually playful and exuberant let out a low whine and came towards him her head down, tail wagging, Roland absently noticing her blood smeared muzzle. Dr. Tellers didn’t bother reprimanding the dog, at this point, she knew she was in no real trouble. Besides she’d only being following the instructions coded deep within her, a code Dr. Tellers had was intimately familiar with. Quickly assessing the damage Dr. Tellers recognized that his son was beyond his help and went inside to get a trash bag and a shovel.
He had never wanted a son, never wanted a wife either, the two had just happened Roland considered both of them accidents which had cost him and his work dearly. Roland’s love was only for his work, at a young age he had given up a broader life for the heady pursuit of knowledge. He had made his first notable science experiment in middle school and had managed to get a paper on protein-peptide interactions published in a small prestigious journal, his life unrolled in a predictable matter, college, graduate school, and professorship. The only hiccup was Juliana, who he had met in graduate school, and who for some reason seemed obsessed with Roland. Their “courtship” couldn’t be recognized as such by anyone, Juliana pursued and Roland ignored. It was out of the hopes of reducing distractions that he said yes to her when she proposed to him for the fifth time, a poorly thought out conclusion that was. Juliana immediately intruded herself into the one aspect of Roland’s life he consider important his work… From that low “high” the relationship rolled downhill. Dr. Tellers regretted that he ever had sex with his wife and he very much regretted that after their divorce when she found out she was pregnant she’d decided to keep the baby. The child that shared half of Roland’s genetic makeup was a small, cute, high-spirited boy. Juliana named the boy Timothy. Not wanting a child but unwilling to let the boy go fatherless Roland attempted to simulate what he thought a father should be, when it didn’t interrupt with his work. So it was that every weekend Roland picked up Timothy and took him back to his house, and then attempted to be a father while letting the boy do whatever it is boys do.
The first time it happened Dr. Teller’s was terrified, despite the fact that it was an accident and he himself was blameless, he had been working in his basement lab at the time. Reporting it to the Police or having to interact with Juliana would take too much time. It was dumb luck that Juliana was on vacation and he had the boy for a month, that he had been working on aging, and the simple genius to apply what he had been working on in the lab to his own personal problem. Two weeks and countless failures later he pulled it off, just in time to hand the boy back to his mother when she came to pick him up. Of course, that first model had some kinks to work out, a few bugs and oddities to it, Roland noticed them almost immediately. The boy was lackadaisical, absent mind and ed, his skin took on an odd tint under direct light. Dr. Tellers though had ample time to perfect the process, he did after all see the boy every week. Better though, the work he had done on Tim, had given him insights into aging and the proteins responsible for the process. Paper after paper came out of his lab as he recreated the field of gerontology, making Roland Tellers famous, respected, and rich. Tellers hardly noticed and everything went back into his work. By the fourth model Dr. Tellers had perfected the process, had grown bored, and moved on to other things.
His son though seem gifted with an ability to find new ways to end his life. Assisted by the near total absence of adult supervision Tim found ever increasingly bizarre and improbable ways to kill himself. Dr. Tellers at times suspected that somehow, despite the scientific impossibility, his son knew that it didn’t matter what he did, a new him would be back the next day. As he got older, the boy was ten now, the deaths became more and more ridiculous, and then they became mundane. As Roland gathered his son’s, more precisely another copy of his son’s, intestines in a bag he began to regret ever having cloned and rapidly aged his son 10 years ago, but after all this time it was much, much too late to go back. Having gathered the boy into the bag he carefully took the bag down into the basement and threw it carelessly into the incinerator and started the beast up. As he made his way into his basement lab he absentmindedly started up the machine that he so long ago had callously labeled “The Tim Machine”. He still chuckled at the name… By the morning Tim would be back in his bed and no one but him and Tilly would know anything had happened.
Tuesday Share: July 7, 2009
I’ll talk about why I missed a week’s worth of blogging in the next post. Right now I have to get out this week’s Tuesday Share! Which because of my absence last week is going to be supersized. Enjoy the links, and I hope you find something that questions your assumptions and makes you think!
I don’t have children but I’m currently interested in crafting and making and so when I stumbled upon thelongthread.com and found a list of 50 summer crafts for kids I bookmarked the post and added the site to my RSS feed. There is enough content on that one page to fill an entire summer with activities for your kids, all of which have your kids making things, being creative, and using their imagination. No passivity here!
Not part of their 30 days to a better man project, the Art of Manliness introduces you to knots! The 7 basic ones everyone should know. If you weren’t a boy scout you don’t know how handy a good piece of rope and the right not can make in any situation! If you were a little review never hurt.
I still enjoy a good horror story, though I find much of what makes a horror story absent from the “horror” films of today. This perhaps has to do with my discovery of the works of H.P. Lovecraft at an early age. No one before the man or since has done weird fiction better. This list of real places that inspired H.P. Lovecraft locales is a great read for the avid fan and the mildly curious, of course the best place to start is here!
There’s been a lot of talk recently of green shoots and the economy bouncing back, some banks have even paid back their TARP loans, for those of you who have only been getting the “glass is half-full” story, here is some economic analysis from the “glass is empty and broken” crowd.
I haven’t had time to read the papers on this, but the story is too amazing not to share. According to Scientists at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain people can be trained to echolocate just like dolphins and bats?! There have been cases of blind people teaching themselves but this is the first paper on the subject.
Just going to point you over to this site: Cool Tools. This is porn for those with a tool fetish! 😛
Efficiency has become a sort of obsessive hobby for the techno-hip nerd crowd (those that know what GTD and Lifehacker.com are), I don’t take this stuff too seriously and my organizational skills show that but simple things that help create a clean environment do contribute to flow, little things like organizing and cleaning up cable-clutter are great!
Sometimes the best way to mock something is to show what it would look like if it was actually practiced. Case in point homeopathy hospital.
A anomaly or another sign that climate change is happening right now: Cicada Hawks are hatching early.
I for one am hopeful that the economic meltdown has brought to an end the consumer culture of the United States. I’d much rather go back to an economy that is based on Americans making things and exporting them to the rest of the world, rather than fueled by the mindless consumption by Americans of stuff fueled by cheap credit. One way to start doing that is stop calling Americans “Consumers.”
An interesting post on the book of Revelations: The context in which it was written; how it was seen by those who originally read it; how it was seen by the early church; and, what it has come to mean for fundamentalist Christians.
The allure of an idealized pastoral life for those of us stuck in a technocratic world, and the failure of technology to be fulfilling.
Tuesday Share: June 16, 2009, Edition
Anything good last week? Hmm… Let’s see
There’s this article from former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist for the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, on how the United States refuses to practice what it preaches… In regards to rebuilding an economy. See the IMF and the World Bank make stringent and harsh demands on countries which wish to borrow money from them: cut their deficits, let banks and local institutions fail, etc… Pretty much everything the United States hasn’t done, now that it finds itself in a crisis… This fact will be remembered for a long time down the road by other countries and will do much to discredit American-style capitalism in the future and the best way to set up an economy.
Got student loans? Did you know that the Federal government is changing the rules on the direct loans they give to students? The two big changes are debt forgiveness, for those who meet certain guidelines, and new income based repayment plans. If you’re about to get loans, you might want to wait til after July 10, when the new rules go into effect as the interest rate will be dropping and the size of the Pell Grant will increase. Overview here and the official site here.
Wired‘s Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson, wrote an article awhile back in the magazine about how the future of business was free… This was before the economic meltdown… His book on the subject will be coming out on July 7. I read the article and it was an interesting premise backed by some data… I don’t know see how the model Mr. Anderson advocates can be adopted by all businesses without a huge loss of jobs and capital. I don’t know why the release date wasn’t pushed back, in the midst of recession isn’t the best time to bring out a book prescribing business to give their widgets,services, expertise, etc. away.
The Art of Manliness continues with their 30 days to a better man project. Last week they covered memorizing things, giving yourself a testicular exam, creating a bucket list, decluttering, writing a letter to your father, making a meal, and creating a budget. I’m pretty manly this week as I write to my father and cook meals regularly, am constantly decluttering and de-stuffing my life, have a budget and give myself a testicular exam twice a year. I think bucket lists are stupid and the memorizing thing is something I have to work on.
That’s about it… I know there is more but I don’t know what happened to them… If you’re interested in seeing the stories I sites I read regularly and the items I tag to share you can follow my shared RSS feed here. I also post links to interesting tidbits on Twitter.