The exercise:
Write about something that is: bottled.
Max was up at 4:30 yesterday morning, bouncing off the walls in his excitement about what he'd discovered in his stocking, not to mention that Santa not only ate the cookies he left out, but also left him a jar of salted nuts in return (a last minute decision that I do not regret).
And yet somehow he was still going full blast until around 9 last night.
Bottle that energy up and I would pay a lot of money for it.
3 comments:
They package that energy already, in kilogram bags... but you diabetics aren't allowed any of it :-p That said, I think I shifted to getting much of my energy from caffeine when I was around Max's age, so you can always give that a try. If you find yourself thinking "that's too much coffee for today" you're doing it wrong.
Sounds like you had an excellent Christmas though, despite being woken up rather earlier than you'd wanted, and I hope you get a lie-in on Boxing day to compensate :)
Until the end of the year, I think I'm just going to write vignettes. After that I'm up for tackling a longer tale again, so now would be the time to mention anyone you'd like to hear more about. The only restriction is that it can't be whoever just had a longer tale, but other than that, anyone goes.
Bottled
The Ziggurat, as it was both affectionately and officially known, sat on the waterfront of the Columbia River. Steel and glass sprawled across well-maintained green lawns, and trees and plants were embedded into the structure of the building. From a distance it looked like a waterfall happening at the edge of light forest; up close the man-made nature of it was clearer, but it still felt organic. Much of the glass on the upper stories and across the roof harvested sunlight to power the building, and deep below, in the fourth basement level, large pipes pulled up geothermal energy to make up the remainder.
Roxana breathed in deeply as the doors in front of her whisked aside with a faint puff of air. Each level of the Ziggurat focused on different things, and the plants that grew there reflected that -- sometimes obviously and sometimes with subtle metaphors. The smell of vanilla, from the eighth-floor's food technology labs, was fading and the snake-like smells of the ninth floor wafted downwards to her. She walked along the corridor to an escalator over an atrium that reached down to the fifth and up to the roof, and let it carry her upwards in the warmth of sunlight. She didn't stop there, but crossed over the white-tiled walkway to another escalator, and rose to the tenth-floor where the smells were salty and crystalline. She always thought of seashells, though she was sure they had no smell of their own. Waiting for her at the top of the escalator was Quibeth, a demure older lady who reminded her of Tilda Swinton, an actress from nearly two-hundred years ago.
"Beth," she said, smiling broadly. "I do know how to find your office, you know. You don't have to meet me every time!"
Quibeth nodded, unsmiling. "Roxie," she said, warmth in her voice that didn't reach her face. "I hope you had a good Yule. Larry was in Stockholm, and has decided to stay there an additional week. He says that the eclipse calculations are worrying him, but he's refused to answer any email about them. He can be so annoying when he's too involved in something."
"This is about the Za'abagatar?"
Quibeth nodded again and gestured to the other end of the walkway. "Rather than my office, let me take you to the astrogation lab, Roxie. Like I said, Larry is worried and he's getting engaged in this, so I thought I should take a look myself."
Roxana fell into step, a half-step behind Quibeth who would have considered her walking directly alongside to be a challenge. "You still think we should have left them bottled up," she said. "That's your position at every Director's meeting."
"And it's not changed," said Quibeth. "We've learned a lot, we are still learning a lot. But what we haven't really learned at all yet is what they actually want. And, if you want to be brutal about it, we have no idea why they were bottled up at all."
"They told us--"
"They told us what they want us to think," said Quibeth. "And we've found no evidence in either direction. Which is rather interesting, isn't it?"
The doors to the astrogation lab whisked open, and it took Roxana a moment to realise that they were in the restricted section; part of the building that normally would ignore her.
"The eclipse," said Quibeth. "It's going to be visible from South America and Antarctica."
"The Za'abagatar have a home--"
"An output."
"-- on the bottom of South America," said Roxana. "So you think the eclipse is important to them?"
"Larry does," said Quibeth. "And that's good enough for me."
Greg - hah. Well, I actually was off coffee during my time off, but I've been making up for that this week now that I'm back in the office.
And I hope I'm not too late to take you up on that offer! I shall have to catch up on comments quickly to see if you've started anything already.
Ah, it is good to see you exploring new territory again. I think I shall enjoy this interlude. Though, clearly, I enjoy all of your writing. It's just nice to see it in a variety of settings. Spice of life and all that.
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