photo credit: Sam Ili?

nebulous/tenacity/birthplace

from Steph’s prompt

The road trip down to the farm started out awkward. The radio tuner on my ute doesn’t work and my sister has always had a bit of trouble with silence, so she determinedly filled the air up with stories about her job in the city, and kept filling it up until I had to wind down the window just to get a breath. At that point she looked at me sideways and apologised. She didn’t say anything for a while and and neither did I, though I knew it killed her. Just when I knew she was about to burst from the fidget of her hands, I asked her about someone or other that she’d been gossiping about before the silence, and she picked it up just as if she’d never stopped, smiling gratefully at the chance to talk.

We were making the trip because we hadn’t in a while. That was it, really. My father and mother were still in good health, and the farm was still doing okay though they had a lot more farmhands than they used to, to make up for the creaking of bones. The reason for our visit was simply the fact that it had been almost a year since we had; our family, while small, wasn’t particularly close knit. Thanks to my sister’s water-cooler tirade, I now knew more about her co-workers than I did about her.

This fact brought me up short. I took my hand from where it guarded the gear stick and rested it on her shoulder. She quieted. “Sis, that’s great and all, but how are you?”

I learned more about my sister on the rest of that trip than I ever knew before.

photo credit: freefotouk

falling man/closed room/two-heads

from Amber’s prompt

“This,” the detective-inspector said, with as much gravity as he could muster, “is what’s called a `closed room’ mystery.” He paced the perimeter of the crime scene, a basement in the suburbs. “A door that can only be locked, and formidably so, from the inside. A head like a punctured melon, decapitated from a body like a piece of beef jerky.”

“It certainly looks grim, sir,” offered one of the constables.

“Of course it looks bloody grim! No way in or out, no murder weapon. I mean, just look at his face; except you can’t because he doesn’t have one any more!” The D-I spun on his heel and approached the body. “Yes, definitely signs of a struggle, though I dare say he was surprised by the attacker. Just look, there’s barely any evidence of defensive tactics. No knife wounds on the forearms, only the body. How much would you say the victim weighs, constable?”

“Oh, I don’t know. One-ten, one-twenty kilograms, sir?”

“I’d say closer to one-forty, but right you are. He’s a big lad, and built too, not just flabby. Yes, you’d expect he’d have had a good go at any unknown assailant. Which means this must have been someone he knew, or at least trusted enough not to suspect an attack.”

“What are you think, sir?”

“I’m thinking…” the D-I sat down on his haunches behind the constables turned back and took out a small metal object. “I’m thinking that the victim’s future-nemesis came through a time portal around about here, stabbed him to death with an electrical whip dagger of some kind, then used a remote wormhole generator to escape.”

The constable blinked and turned around. “Sorry, just what did you say your division–?”

But the D-I had disappeared.

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photo credit: Pro-Zak

potential/consider/light

from Jaime’s prompt

The day was so sunny and warm that Carl had decided to sit outside to eat his ham and salad sandwich. As he relaxed his buttocks into the grooves in the park bench and took great, cheek-stuffing bites of his sandwich, he closed his eyes and considered himself completely at peace. That peace was interrupted some seconds later as a short, sharp crack to the side of his head rammed his eyelids open and caused him to swear bits of lettuce onto the path.

Carl looked down and saw that a tiny chunk of light had landed in his lap. It squirmed there, alternating between its wave and particle natures, before settling into a half-state akin to that of a glow worm. Carl set his sandwich aside and picked up the light delicately between thumb and forefinger and placing it on his palm. `Poor little guy,’ he murmured. `Can’t decide what you want to be, eh? Never mind, we’ve all been there.’ The chunk of light continued to roll around miserably. Carl sighed. `Listen, you just need to take stock of your options and make your decision to the best of your knowledge. And keep in mind that making these decisions doesn’t necessarily close the door on anything you might want to do in the future.’ The light paused mid-wriggle. `In fact,’ continued Carl, `quite often you’ll open doors to places you might never have considered. Probably the worst thing you can do is not make a decision.’

The light stayed stationary for a moment, and then rolled onto its side and thinned out, becoming a two-dimensional wavelet and scooting off into the air. Carl waved and sat back on the bench to continue his moment of sandwich. It really was about time he handed in his notice.

photo credit: SpirosK

Byzantine/refrigerator/alley*

from Matt’s prompt

The lights of Vegas dribbled across the alley, reflected as they were in the oily juice that seeped out of garbage bins and assorted boxes lining the walls. Sifting through this detritus were two men engaged in a constant chatter as they wrecked fingernails prying open tin cans in search for items of some vague value.

“Do you think perhaps we will uncover the famed secret gold of Lord Ganasse tonight, Roger?” said one, his words slurring together even as his eyes drifted apart.

“I deem it most likely, Damien. Most likely,” the other replied, listing in his stride until he ended up falling sideways into a stack of mouldy newspapers. From his newsworthy recliner, Roger pointed at a rusted refrigerator with its door lolling open. “There, Damien, a cold case for you to open.”

“Right away, sir,” replied Damien, and stumbled towards the fridge. Upon reaching it and yanking it sdoor open, he stood stock still and, in a voice that sounded slightly less like his words were cars in a highway pile-up, said “Roger, my dear fellow, I think you’d better come here.”

After a few failed attempts, Roger gained his feet and wandered over to where Roger stood transfixed. He gasped as he saw what was contained within the whitegoods. A man, dressed in Roman garb, bloodied and broken in as many places as was presumably necessary to fit a six-foot-tall human into a space much less than that.

“Good Lord, I think you’ve stumbled onto something here, Damien. A Byzantinian Emperor, preserved in a freezing box in order to preserve his life until he could reanimate and resurrect his legions of power!” Roger’s voice rose to a shout and he slammed the door shut, grabbed his friend by the hand and fled the imagined wrath of a murdered ex-employee of the Caesar’s Palace casino.

—

*Characters shamelessly based on That Mitchell And Webb Look‘s Sir Digby Chicken Caesar and co.

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photo credit: BUR?BLUE

water/comets/Cambridge

from Dino’s prompt

It was Summer, and my cousins and I were swimming in Lake Karapiro on the North island, a perennial family gathering favourite. There was Marcel, the oldest cousin, Thomas a year or two older than I, and Julianne, whom I shared a birthday with. Thomas, Julianne and I had been splashing at the edge of the lake while our parents cooked the barbeque. Marcel sat on the sand, digging up the ground with a stick and watching us mess about. I had just been dunked by Thomas and when I resurfaced, spluttering and giggling, Marcel was standing and pointing his stick behind our heads.

`A comet, a comet just landed in the lake!’ he said.

Thomas, ever the pragmatist even at this young age, sighed dramatically and said, `No, it’s not a comet. It’s a meteor. Comets are in space.’

I immediately jumped in line behind him, always eager to get one back on Marcel. `Yeah, it’s a meteor, dummy.’ I said.

`Fine,’ said Marcel, throwing the stick out to where the celestial streak had supposedly landed. `But it’s still cool and I bet none of you can get it.’

For the next hour or so, Thomas and I took turns scrabbling our bodies further and further down into the silt-ridden dark. Even little Julianne, whose delicate lungs were nowhere near up to the task of reaching the bottom, tried her best. I didn’t even know what a meteor looked like, but I imagined it might glow a warm orange. Marcel wandered away, bored by our ignorance and unsatisfied with the lacklustre results of his joke. Eventually our parents called us in to lunch and we forgot all about the meteor in the rush of sausages and soft drink.

photo credit: SixRevisions

insane/lapel/augury

from Aditi’s prompt

Chris was on his way to a meeting with his financier, striding briskly through the plaza. His face was dug into a deep furrow, the cause of which could be seen spreading across the front of his suit jacket; a coffee stain, milky brown. It had resulted from the driver’s foot slipping off the brake as Chris had exited the taxi. No doubt a rebuttal to the tip he felt he was entitled to, but which Chris had not given.

As he crossed the plaza, a shadow detached from a distant pillar. Chris checked his stride to avoid crossing paths with what was obviously a filthy bum, but the bum adjusted his course correspondingly. Within a few steps, Chris found himself face-to-face with the foul-smelling creature. He was already reaching inside his trouser pocket to retrieve the few coins jingling there when the bum surged forward, gripping Chris by his jacket front.

Chris was too shocked to do anything but gasp and mutter as the bum stared intently at the coffee stain that marred his lapel. After a few seconds, Chris regained enough of his composure to wrestle the bum’s hands off. The bum cried out and pointed a finger—blank, bloodied flesh replacing nail—at Chris. `Plaguebearer! Plaguebearer!’ he shouted, before loping away. Chris, shocked at the obviously disturbed man’s display, adjusted himself and, when nothing else jumped at him, continued on to his appointment.

Days later he would cough in the middle of an important presentation. The long silence following it would puzzle the investors, and worry his managers.

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photo credit: Dawn Endico

You may have

read about the 17-year-old German author who recently admitted to pulling large chunks of unedited text from another author’s book. Helenne Hegemann’s book, entitled Axolotl Roadkill, in addition to being a bestseller, has also been nominated for a distinguished prize (Google Translated from German to English). This wouldn’t be such a big deal but, in addition to apologising for her lack of transparency, Hegemann has offered a sting in her statement that “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Her feeling is that in growing up in an Internet culture, her generation is one that considers information a free and labile thing. Attribution is rarely considered for, say, a meme or a humorous office email.

Obviously her publisher is pleading ignorance and will be looking to settle with the unnamed blogger, but this case establishes some interesting boundaries. If we look at the scientific paper publishing sector, attribution must be given for a piece of data. A citation is inserted, the author is notified, and everyone is happy. But if Hegemann had gone down this path, would a publishing house have allowed her to pull “about a page” of material from another author, even if permission was given and a citation inserted?  What if it were a paragraph? What if it were an entire chapter? To whom go the spoils of prizes? Are readers informed right there on the page the following section is pulled from another author? Or are there just thanks in the ‘liner-notes’?

To try and clean up some of these questions by analogy, I tried to do some research into what I imagined was the relatively well-regulated practise of sampling and remixing in the music industry (and by research, I mean hitting up the wiki article on sampling and going through all the external links). My hazy recollection of talking with a muso a while back was that it was generally a time-limited thing; anything shorter than ten seconds or so was fair game. Turns out that my memory was (as always) completely wrong, with the recent court ruling of Bridgeport Music Inc. vs. Dimension Films stating that any unlicensed sampling would be considered copyright infringement. In fact, as recently as 2008, Kraftwerk successfully brought to court the case that sampling even one single drumbeat was enough for an infringement to occur. Sheesh! I would have thought those guys were old cool enough to think someone sampling their work was a good thing?

So if the music world is closing its doors on sampling even the tiniest note without permission, where does that leave us with literature? Will future Internet-generation authors embrace the idea of remixing the words they find in their endless travels through the tubes, or will the litigation of big names scare them off? If an author finds a random blog, decides to yoink some words, and no-one ever finds out, has she committed a crime? For me it seems to come down to the near-impossible to discern line between cryptomnesia (a practise that even Nabokov was famously accused of suffering from) and the wilful plagiarism of another writer’s words. While Hegemann’s case is definitely that of the latter, with the developing information overload of the newer generations becoming greater and greater I don’t think it’s unreasonable to predict that there will be some sticky cases of overlap between the two. In the meantime, I think it’s safe to assume that plagiarism of any kind will continue to be something frowned upon by readers and publishers alike.

A great tool for people who do want their work to be used by all is the creative commons license. And thankfully for young Aussie writers that are looking for a safe place to experiment in remixing words, there is the Remix My Lit project and their production of Through the Clock’s Workings. TtCW is a fully remixable anthology of short stories where readers are encouraged to send in their attempts at producing new angles on the stories contained therein. Check it out if you want to see what good can come of creative commons licensing.

Comments, thoughts? Leave ‘em below!

Further reading:

Slate–The shady one-man corporation that’s destroying hip-hop

NYTimes–Author, 17, Say’s It’s ‘Mixing’, Not Plagiarism

thelocal.de–Young literary star Hegemann counters plagiarism claim

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story compares to the ones your Dad read you when you were a kid. (:

Cian And Teddy Go To The Custard Factory

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

(Note: Turns out you can’t upload videos longer than 10 minutes to YouTube, so I spent a good couple of hours dicking around with video convertors and podcasting plugins getting this thing to work. But work it does, at least on my computer.)

(Additional note: This won’t work in RSS feeds, so click the ‘video’ link to get to the post)

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