in cuniculi cavum
Even after half a century living in L.A. I haven’t met a portion of all the SF and F-related circles. So I looked forward to a LiveJournal SFF meet-and-greet dinner party the other day. It turned out to be held at a wonderful old Craftsman house over on the west side, on one of the quieter streets lined with Jacaranda mature enough to shade the square lawns and half the root-rough street besides.
The heat-warped wooden sign hanging over the broad porch gave the house name and address in age-blurred Age of Aquarius lettering.
My first step inside was like coming home. SFF artwork sat or hung on every available space that wasn’t already covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I breathed in that slightly musty library scent, caught the faintest whiff of sandalwood and patchouli.
Traffic having made me late, I found everyone already gathered for the dinner, and apologized my way to the nearest empty seat down near the end. The dining table was actually a series of kitchen and card tables and desks bumped together down the middle of the living room-hall-den. My seat was a footstool.
Everyone introduced themselves, first by LiveJournal handles and then names, as we passed the dishes around and served ourselves. Typical of fans in huge crowds, people spoke far too fast-and the name exchange went round to the left as the food went to the right--so I didn’t catch many names. The food was good--a mix of Southwestern, Thai, with some curry and a sharp-sweet cabbage salad that I associate with my Swedish relatives.
I got the impression that the house was occupied by several people, the oldest of whom sat at the head of the table. She was maybe ten years older than me, small, gray-haired, her glasses winking in the reflected lights, and she wore a fantastic houpelande with such ease that it was clear she’d belonged to the SCA for decades. I mean, her sleeves reached the floor, but did she drag them through the guacamole even once? No.
“Welcome,” she declared, when the serving dishes had settled. She stood up and smiled down the length of the table. “In case you missed it, I’m [J.D.] My housemates and I came up with some questions to get general talk going. Here’s the first: name your favorite book, film, comic, game. Whatever you think others should try.”
People stayed quiet for about the first ten speakers-I’d say there must have been forty people there, easily-then the inevitable whispering started up. J.D. seemed to be paying attention from the head of the table, but I couldn’t hear until the people at my table spoke. I named Ingrid Laws’ Savvy, which I’d just finished reading, and sat back in relief. I didn’t know anybody, and I’m no good in crowds, so I decided to enjoy the meal and then slip out when they got up from the table, when everybody would be paying attention to everybody else.
Then came J.D.’s second question: “If you could go to any world of any story, would you?”
We all looked at each other, then a guy about my age-bald, wearing a Worldcon 2006 T-shirt-called out, “Not unless I could go to the future, where you get a new body and extended life.”
A woman I couldn’t see exclaimed in one of those slightly nervous half-laughs that are meant to signal making a funny here! “Oh yes! Those stories about how terrible extended lifetimes are have to be written by kids. All I can say is, curse me with eternal life and youth.”
People laughed, and several held up plastic cups, hand-thrown mugs, silver goblets (brought by SCAdians used to bringing their own dishware) and shouted, “Hear hear!”
When the reaction died down, J.D. called, “So let’s cut out skiffy worlds-not much fanfiction written about them. I don’t know why. Right now, let’s limit ourselves to worlds that fan writers seem to want to participate in enough to write about them. Who’d go to any of those worlds if they could?”
Two or three people muttered, “Fanfiction?” and one young guy said, “What’s that?”
The man on my left, a short, grizzled guy with glasses even thicker than my own said, “None. Because look at me.” He leaned forward, and everybody did look at him, expressions mostly expectant of amusement, or curious. “Would I have a good time? Guys like me never have a good time. I’d be either a redshirt or a sidekick-do all the work the hero does, but all you get is killed, or stuck with the chores. No girl.”
Laughter gusted up, then J.D. said, “Anyone else?”
A woman at the far end cried out, “No way Jose. Much as I love Middle Earth, I just cannot see asking Barliman Butterburr if he has any Tampax behind the counter.”
More laughter.
Comments flew about then, everyone pretty much talking at once without listening to anyone else, unless they caught someone’s eye and forced them by dint of manners to be an audience for the length of an utterance. When the noise got so loud I couldn’t follow any one speaker, I shifted my attention to the hostess; another woman motioned to her and I read her lips: “No, do it, J.D..”
So J.D. stood up again, held up her silver goblet and tapped her knife against it. At first I could see the motion but hear nothing above the hubbub of voices and laughter. But gradually the persistent ting! caused people to quiet expectantly.
J.D. didn’t seem upset, but it was clear from her waiting posture, the lift to her chin, that she had a purpose.
When everyone but a few covert whisperers had turned her way, she said, “It’s interesting how some go from a question about worlds to a certain kind of story.” She paused just long enough for people to make ah! motions, or exchange looks of I didn’t think of that, then said, “If I ask if you’d like to go to Middle Earth if you could, I don’t mean you should assume you’d be Frodo, or Aragorn, or a Black Rider. Or even a Frodo or Sam figure, or an orc. I just want to know if you’d want to go to Middle Earth, and Shaina down there said she wouldn’t, because they probably wouldn’t have modern feminine hygiene products.”
“We don’t know just how medieval they got about such stuff,” a young woman said after the laughter died down. “Tolkien doesn’t tell us if they have Roman toilets or chamber pots.”
“Nobody pees in Middle Earth,” a teen-age guy said, to snickers from his pals at either side. “I mean, hey, I’m being serious here, can you imagine, like, Aragorn pausing in battle to take a dump?”
That set off another whoop, then a woman said with a sort of minatory grin, “I would love to go to Harry Potter’s England if I could be a wizard.”
“We’re Muggles. Maybe the wizarding world already exists!” someone else called, to which another cracked, “Yeah, since the wizards don’t actually anything but fight one another.” And at a laugh-punctuated shout of protest, “No really. Really. Name me one thing that magic is good for, besides . . .”
J.D. tapped the goblet again. “I want to go around the table. Just for fun. If you wouldn’t go, say so. If you would, say where. As yourself, not a story character. Tanda, you go first.” She nodded to the young woman at her right.
“I guess the Federation.” Tanda wrinkled her nose. “I think there’s a difference between what I like to watch, or read about, and where I’d actually visit. I like to read about Phedre’s world-you know, Jacqueline Carey-but no way would I go there.”
“Steve Erikson’s world!” a guy shouted. “Read but no go!”
“Gor,” somebody at the far end yelled, and we older guests yelped with laughter, someone shouting, “Who even reads that crap?”
More laughs and comments, but J.D. pointed firmly at the man next to Tanda, who said in a SCAdian roar, “Elantris. If I get magic.”
“Bettina?” J.D. called in a SCAdian master-of-ceremonies voice, which brought the noise level down again.
The next woman down was my age, and built on generous lines. “If I have to go as me, I want McCoy’s sick bay. If I can be young and gorgeous with perfect eyesight . . .”
That started off a storm of comments about what age you’d be, what talents you could have, could you get rid of bad eyes, what would you take along? Everybody had qualifiers. Only the youngest seemed okay with just falling through worlds, just as they were. At first I scribbled the above in the notebook I always carry, but they talked too fast. All I remember is a vague (but not sharp) pattern of older books’ worlds preferred by us oldsters, and mostly media worlds preferred by the young-but not all. Several women wanted an urban fantasy now-with magic, vampires, etc. And there were a couple of manga/anime universes thrown in as well.
By the time it was nearly my turn, J.D.’s original question had been totally forgotten. J.D. was listening (which couldn’t be said for many of those who’d already spoken, but at least their whispers were quiet) but I couldn’t tell if her attitude was disappointment or patience or politeness.
When the man to my left said, “Discworld, where I’d fit right in,” the few still listening laughed, and turned my way. My face burned-which triggered the spiky tingle of a hot flash-and as sweat burst out all over me I said, “If we’re going to places that fan fiction has been written about, I’d pick Patrick O’Brian’s eternal Regency.”
J.D.’s chin had lifted as soon as I said ‘fanfiction.’ From the others there was no response, or rustle of interest, other than a whispered “Patrick O’Brian!” from farther down the table, and the woman to my right said to me, “Omighod Temeraire! I didn’t think, but when you said Patrick O’Brian, Temeraire, and dragons!”
She got a short spurt of enthusiasm, then she and I exchanged furtive whispers about how much we liked both sets of stories, as the last of the table called out their choices.
After that, there was no stopping the conversations going on like a happy food fight back and forth across the table, shouts from either end, amid fairly continuous laughter.
When the food had been reduced to crumbs, with fannish practicality the household got everyone organized to bus their own dishes. Fifteen minutes of plate-stacking and chair-folding got the place more or less clear, after which people clustered in groups, some sitting on the floor, some in the ancient couches. The few teenage boys, probably second-generation fans, vanished upstairs to a game, and someone else started up filk singing in the den.
I was reaching in my bag for my keys when a touch on my shoulder brought me face to face with J.D. She said, “Do you read fanfiction?”
“Some.”
“Want to join a few of us?” she asked, with a vague wave toward the porch. “To talk about it?”
The words were simple, but her manner was so indicative of intent I took my hand out of my purse, my Thanks for the lovely time dying unspoken, and I began to follow her across the creaking hardwood floor, around islands of conversation.
“What fic do you read?” J.D. asked over her shoulder.
“I’m a Trek zine reader from way back in the day. Started with T-Negative.”
Craftsman houses were designed for California heat, long before the days of air conditioning. The porches are heavily shaded to ward the sun, and many of the older places are further shaded by enormous trees-Black Oak, Eucalyptus, pepper. Several others had gathered on the secluded porch, all females except for one guy. I settled in the unoccupied chair between a couple of women more or less my age, one with a long black braid, the other really stylish, sporting designer glasses.
J.D. turned to me. “So you used to read T-Negative? What do you read now?”
I admitted that I don’t like to read to fiction on the computer, as a rule, but I’d been a zine fan-and when I said that I far preferred Maggie Nowakoska’s Thousand Suns version of the Star Wars universe to what Lucas has done with it since the original trilogy, J.D. and the braid woman exclaimed with surprise and enthusiasm.
After everybody had thoroughly trashed the recent Star Wars pix to our mutual satisfaction, J.D. continued the question around the circle, with fairly predictable results: Trek, Buffy, Buffy, media viding, and the youngest pair of girls, obviously friends, were into Potter fic.
At the mention of Potter, something odd happened between J.D. and the guy. A subtle quick meeting of eyes, twitches of shoulder, hand, chin of mutual encouragement, and the girl protested, “What? What? You’re not going to start in with the oh what crap-”
“Look,” the guy said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of liminal space.”
“I know about the Liminal Library,” the glasses woman said, with one of those uncertain laughs that signal, we’re not serious, are we?
“I’ve read about it,” I said. “I love the idea.”
J.D. leaned forward, crushing the houpelande; her forearms together on her lap, her hands gripped. “We read about all kinds of worlds and times, we think ourselves so open, but how open are we, really?”
Everybody made I’m open noises. I fingered my purse-I hate these conversations, I wanted to get out of there before I said something typically stupid.
J.D. flicked another eye-contact with the guy, then said to me, “Have you read any Dorothy Dunnett fic?”
“Just a few Yuletide stories,” I said, tensing for the rise and polite departure.
J.D. made a self-deprecating gesture and said somewhat wryly, “I write Dunnett fanfiction. Have for thirty years.”
I sat back. Now it would be rude to bail when someone is talking about her creative life.
Another look exchanged with the guy, and she said, “While my stuff isn’t nearly as popular as Buffy fic, or Harry Potter fic, it’s got a following.” A couple of us made moves to speak and she said quickly, “No, I don’t expect you to have heard of my stuff. No reason you should-we would have known one another already. This conversation is not about Dunnett fic. Or, not directly.”
The party noise made a cheerful, unheeding backdrop; we all leaned into a book-geek huddle as she said, “At some point. Almost twenty years ago-about the time we made the shift from the zine to computers. I started dreaming from Jerott’s point of view. My main character,” she said quickly, and I nodded, showing my familiarity. In truth, if I were ever to write Dunnett fanfic, it would have been about the further adventures of Jerott Blyth, who (imo) totally got shafted at the end of the cycle. “I wrote the stories I dreamed.” Another wry smile, a wave of the hand. “I don’t know if it was those, or just the new edition of Dunnett getting published and the rise of the internet but the fandom really spread. And my story-dreaming got really . . . intense.”
About now some of the listeners did the eye-shifts and body-wriggles of Okay, and your point is?
J.D. said, “I thought I made it all up. You know, the dreams. Subconscious creation. When the creative flow is good, your subconscious does the work, all you have to do is write it down.”
Hoo yes. I rocked back and forth in total agreement.
“Then last summer I got an email that seemed to prove that some of those details were true. I mean, facts that correlate to traceable sources.” She made a face. “I don’t even have the vocabulary any more for what’s going on. Or we think is going on. Which is why I asked you to join us, [Trinh], since you were in L.A. anyway.” She indicated one of the women as she said to the rest of us, “Her grad work is in quantum physics. She does game design. At such a level you may as well call it A.I.”
Trinh was a round-faced, cheery young woman with intelligent dark eyes. She could have been any age from sixteen to thirty-six. “And when I use design vocabulary no one understands me. But one thing I don’t define any more is reality, that is, phenomenological reality. The basic definition of reality being--”
“The state of things as they actually exist,” the woman with the glasses murmured.
“-which is so broad-and so narrow--it’s not very useful.” Trinh chuckled. “Except to guys like Richard Dawkins.”
The guy laughed. “As opposed to, say, Amit Goswami-”
“Who says there is no reality,” the glasses woman put in, still low-voiced. “Beyond our own perceptions.”
“What’s really going on here?” one of the girls asked, giving everyone the hairy eyeball. “Did somebody say you stole something, is that it? Plagiarized?” She said the word with that faint emphasis of trumping the adults, like I know all about that subject, we get hammered at school.
“Just wait.” The guy held up a hand.
“They thought I did,” J.D. admitted. “’They’ being some Russian academics. Except I’ve never been to Russia, and the stuff they were talking about has never been uploaded. Somebody had Googled on a specific name in the context of an event. Found my fic. Their English wasn’t as good as they thought, and they assumed I was publishing a memoir. Not a story, which was based on one of these dream episodes. We hashed it all out, things were fine. Then it happened again, around the time of the first fires.” She pointed to the guy. “[Thomas], you want to tell them who you are?”
“I work at JPL,” Thomas said. “J.D. and I met at Rand in Santa Monica years ago. We had a lunchtime science fiction book group, and she knew I did some debunking of so-called paranormal phenomena for the Skeptical Inquirer. As a hobby. I went to LosCon at Thanksgiving.”
“Where I ran into him outside a panel,” J.D. said, “and asked if he’d ever heard of anything like that happening to anyone. This was before the . . . black hole appeared in my wall. So I emailed Thomas, because he’d at least listened to me--”
The quietest woman, half-hidden behind J.D. from my perspective, had spiked into sharp angles of disbelief. She leaped up. “Okay, this is too freaky.” Her voice trembled, halfway between angry and upset. “I mean, I hate being set up. It’s just not funny. Thanks for the dinner. Come on, Shel.”
One of the high school girls sighed and got up more slowly. As her mother stalked down the stairs and away toward the row of parked cars, she mouthed the words text me to the other girl, then followed her mother. They immediately started arguing, the words blurred by party noise.
“Look, this isn’t a joke.” J.D. rubbed her hands over her knees, her dagged sleeves sawing up and down like giant teeth. “But if anyone else wants to take off, I understand.”
Nobody moved.
Thomas blew out his breath, and rammed his fingers through his graying, thinning hair. His sloping forehead gleamed in the reflected light of all the candles someone had lit inside.
“Here’s my theory. When fanfiction publication hit what we can call critical mass, a term I’m borrowing to indicate that moment when subsistence became existence . . .” He paused for objections, and Trinh waved a hand in a vague, okay, I’ll buy that for now, go on circle. “Weird stuff happened.”
“What stuff? What black hole?” the remaining girl asked, cracking her gum. “Fanfiction-if you’re about to say Voldemort popped out of some closet, or something, I’m gonna laugh.”
Thomas raised his hands, fingers together. “I came over to see what J.D. was talking about. Fannish woo not being scientifically reliable.” He flashed a quick grin. “So it’s early December, right, when it’s still hotter than hell outside. I’m trying to park, but I can’t even get within three blocks, and I discover some film crew is setting up for a night-for-night. What with their traffic and roughly half the population of L.A. settling in for some free entertainment, I had to park clear up on Fountain and hike down. But when J.D. showed me the wall-not a closet, but a wall, in her bedroom on the top floor-it was worth it.”
“The wall had cracked in the last big quake,” J.D. said. “I don’t know if that matters.”
“Nobody know what matters, but I was able to establish two things.” Thomas spread his hands wide. “One, the wall had this black doorway in it. And two, not all J.D.’s housemates could see it.”
I was waiting for the punch-line-and so were the others, I could see it in their posture.
Thomas flicked a look around at us as he said, “Just as my BS-Detector was queeping at me, this guy comes barreling out of the black hole. Tall, black hair, sixteenth century war gear. Sword, main-gauche blade, muddy boots.”
“I will swear in any court it was Jerott Blyth,” J.D. said in a flat voice.
We listeners made motions of disbelief, but Thomas held his hands up again. “You can see one of his footprints up there-yeah, I know anybody could make those-I’m just sayin’. So he dashes past us-whew, they did not know anything about deodorant wherever he comes from.”
J.D. took over. “We chased after him once we got our jaws off the floor, but we couldn’t catch up. He was fast. He headed toward the Kliegs-drawn by the lights, I guess--and we ran after, yelling for him to stop.”
Thomas grimaced. “So there we were, chasing a guy in armor right through the middle of a shoot. Talk about the fewmets hitting the oscillator. The film guys are screaming, the guy is yelling and waving his sword-there was this big gun battle going on-the audience is yelling because they think he’s part of the scene.”
Trinh laughed. “Wait a sec. Wait. So this guy-whoever he was-thought the gun battle was real?”
“Yes.” J.D. held up her hand and counted fingers. “He thought the film was real, the audience thought he was part of the film, the actors seemed to think he was maybe part of the story and maybe not.” Her hands dropped to her lap. “Some A.D. was screaming for security so Thomas and I got out of there. Jerott-or whoever he was-had totally vanished by then.”
I didn’t believe any of this, but hey, storytelling is storytelling, and it had been decades since I’d been a part of street theatre.
The woman with the long braid said, “But you knew what was real and what wasn’t.”
“Sure. I could explain.” Thomas shrugged. “But what’s my starting point? A guy in 400 year old battle gear ran out of a hole in a friend’s wall? We beat feet.”
Trinh said, “And you didn’t call someone at Cal Tech because why?”
“I did,” J.D. said. “Called several people. A couple of them even came over, during the holidays. What they saw was my wall.”
Trinh rubbed her jaw. “Which is still there?”
“Which is still there.” J.D. pointed upward.
“You didn’t, like, call the cops or anything?” the youngest girl asked slowly.
“Would you?” Thomas asked.
A roar of laughter from inside reminded us of the real world; someone began playing “The Soldier and the Queen” on a recorder as we looked at one another.
“No,” we all said, or variations thereof.
J.D. said, “Exactly. So we thought, try fandom. We planned this shindig tonight, and you’re the only ones-well, except for Catha, who left, and I don’t blame her -who read fics. I never bought into the notion of subsistence, but maybe there is something about many minds all concentrating creatively on a specific thing . . .” She dropped her head forward as though embarrassed, then looked up, and sighed sharply. “Everything we say sounds stupid. And we’ve been hammering at this for weeks. So if you want, come upstairs, and see for yourself.”
So we did. Straight upstairs, past Star Wars memorabilia, and a framed 1963 Beatles poster that had to be worth a fortune. J.D.’s rooms were across the back of the house, and there, against an inner wall, was . . . a black hole shaped like a doorway. No light whatsoever.
As soon as I saw it I took a step backward, as if that utterly lightless void would suck me in.
Trinh turned around slowly, then said in a slow, goaded voice, “Ooohkay, where’s the joke?”
“You don’t see it?” Thomas asked, and picked up a waiting yardstick. As I watched, he outlined the door, rapping it against the edges-then he slowly stuck the yardstick into the hole, until it was all swallowed up, his fingers within a foot of the void. “You see that?”
“You rubbing a yardstick around a wall?” Trinh asked. “Well, that was fun. I guess.”
The other two women stood uncertainly, looking from the wall to us and back; one shrugged, the other stared, mouth open.
Thomas said with a sharp, really fake laugh, “Well, it was a cool story, wasn’t it?” as he walked back downstairs with Trinh and the braid woman. The last I heard was Trinh’s, “ . . . you definitely need a better ending. Why not use a closet next time? Make it a Narnia thing, get somebody to jump out . . .”
I was alone with J.D. and the glasses woman, purse clutched against her as she stared into the void.
I cleared my dry throat. “What’s on the other side of the wall?” I asked. My heartbeat was doing double time.
“My bathroom.” J.D. pointed to the door at the other end of the wall, which I hadn’t noticed. “There’s the footprint. I cleaned up the rest.” She pointed to a muddy blotch on her hardwood floor, bounded by a footstool and some piles of magazines. She made an attempt at a smile, but the humor was brief and bleak. “Even though the wall in the shower stall has never changed, I’ve been showering in my roomie’s bathroom. And I sleep in my study.” She gave a long, stress-raspy sigh, then tightened up the way many do when they’re approaching a subject they don’t like. That they know no one will like.
“Is that why we’re here? You want volunteers to go into it?” I asked, and edged back, my shoulder-blades tight, as if I felt hands shoving me into that void.
“That’s already happened.” J.D. looked up at the ceiling. “We tried to keep it a secret, but somebody was bound to be listening . . .”
My body temp dropped about fifty degrees-along with my heart. Because I-a twenty-year veteran teacher-knew what had happened. “A kid, right? Someone’s kid?”
“Who else has that total, instant belief in the impossible?” J.D. gave another whooshing sigh. “One of my roommies is a single mom. Aisling must have overheard one of us. Sneaked in just last weekend. We found her Hufflepuff costume missing. And her Harry Potter books.” J.D. sighed. “So Andrea ran right in after her kid, she figured anything was better than not knowing.”
“And they haven’t come back?”
“They haven’t come back.”
I felt a surge of longing so strong it triggered another spiky heat flash. If only I could be sure . . . “If there was only a tiny glimmer of light . . .”
“Yeah. I’d believe it if this. If that. If, if, if.” J.D. wiped her eyes with one big sleeve. “Tom and I have pretty much talked ourselves into that guy being a shared delusion. That or some weirdo. Followed a roommate home from an event. Hid in my bathroom, or something.”
“We talk about reality being what we personally experience, but how much do we really see?” the braid woman said at last, gazing over her shoulder at the mystery door. Then she gave us a wry look. “I can stare at that for an hour, but I know as soon as I get to the other side of Sepulveda I’ll be totally convinced I dreamed this.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The heat-warped wooden sign hanging over the broad porch gave the house name and address in age-blurred Age of Aquarius lettering.
My first step inside was like coming home. SFF artwork sat or hung on every available space that wasn’t already covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I breathed in that slightly musty library scent, caught the faintest whiff of sandalwood and patchouli.
Traffic having made me late, I found everyone already gathered for the dinner, and apologized my way to the nearest empty seat down near the end. The dining table was actually a series of kitchen and card tables and desks bumped together down the middle of the living room-hall-den. My seat was a footstool.
Everyone introduced themselves, first by LiveJournal handles and then names, as we passed the dishes around and served ourselves. Typical of fans in huge crowds, people spoke far too fast-and the name exchange went round to the left as the food went to the right--so I didn’t catch many names. The food was good--a mix of Southwestern, Thai, with some curry and a sharp-sweet cabbage salad that I associate with my Swedish relatives.
I got the impression that the house was occupied by several people, the oldest of whom sat at the head of the table. She was maybe ten years older than me, small, gray-haired, her glasses winking in the reflected lights, and she wore a fantastic houpelande with such ease that it was clear she’d belonged to the SCA for decades. I mean, her sleeves reached the floor, but did she drag them through the guacamole even once? No.
“Welcome,” she declared, when the serving dishes had settled. She stood up and smiled down the length of the table. “In case you missed it, I’m [J.D.] My housemates and I came up with some questions to get general talk going. Here’s the first: name your favorite book, film, comic, game. Whatever you think others should try.”
People stayed quiet for about the first ten speakers-I’d say there must have been forty people there, easily-then the inevitable whispering started up. J.D. seemed to be paying attention from the head of the table, but I couldn’t hear until the people at my table spoke. I named Ingrid Laws’ Savvy, which I’d just finished reading, and sat back in relief. I didn’t know anybody, and I’m no good in crowds, so I decided to enjoy the meal and then slip out when they got up from the table, when everybody would be paying attention to everybody else.
Then came J.D.’s second question: “If you could go to any world of any story, would you?”
We all looked at each other, then a guy about my age-bald, wearing a Worldcon 2006 T-shirt-called out, “Not unless I could go to the future, where you get a new body and extended life.”
A woman I couldn’t see exclaimed in one of those slightly nervous half-laughs that are meant to signal making a funny here! “Oh yes! Those stories about how terrible extended lifetimes are have to be written by kids. All I can say is, curse me with eternal life and youth.”
People laughed, and several held up plastic cups, hand-thrown mugs, silver goblets (brought by SCAdians used to bringing their own dishware) and shouted, “Hear hear!”
When the reaction died down, J.D. called, “So let’s cut out skiffy worlds-not much fanfiction written about them. I don’t know why. Right now, let’s limit ourselves to worlds that fan writers seem to want to participate in enough to write about them. Who’d go to any of those worlds if they could?”
Two or three people muttered, “Fanfiction?” and one young guy said, “What’s that?”
The man on my left, a short, grizzled guy with glasses even thicker than my own said, “None. Because look at me.” He leaned forward, and everybody did look at him, expressions mostly expectant of amusement, or curious. “Would I have a good time? Guys like me never have a good time. I’d be either a redshirt or a sidekick-do all the work the hero does, but all you get is killed, or stuck with the chores. No girl.”
Laughter gusted up, then J.D. said, “Anyone else?”
A woman at the far end cried out, “No way Jose. Much as I love Middle Earth, I just cannot see asking Barliman Butterburr if he has any Tampax behind the counter.”
More laughter.
Comments flew about then, everyone pretty much talking at once without listening to anyone else, unless they caught someone’s eye and forced them by dint of manners to be an audience for the length of an utterance. When the noise got so loud I couldn’t follow any one speaker, I shifted my attention to the hostess; another woman motioned to her and I read her lips: “No, do it, J.D..”
So J.D. stood up again, held up her silver goblet and tapped her knife against it. At first I could see the motion but hear nothing above the hubbub of voices and laughter. But gradually the persistent ting! caused people to quiet expectantly.
J.D. didn’t seem upset, but it was clear from her waiting posture, the lift to her chin, that she had a purpose.
When everyone but a few covert whisperers had turned her way, she said, “It’s interesting how some go from a question about worlds to a certain kind of story.” She paused just long enough for people to make ah! motions, or exchange looks of I didn’t think of that, then said, “If I ask if you’d like to go to Middle Earth if you could, I don’t mean you should assume you’d be Frodo, or Aragorn, or a Black Rider. Or even a Frodo or Sam figure, or an orc. I just want to know if you’d want to go to Middle Earth, and Shaina down there said she wouldn’t, because they probably wouldn’t have modern feminine hygiene products.”
“We don’t know just how medieval they got about such stuff,” a young woman said after the laughter died down. “Tolkien doesn’t tell us if they have Roman toilets or chamber pots.”
“Nobody pees in Middle Earth,” a teen-age guy said, to snickers from his pals at either side. “I mean, hey, I’m being serious here, can you imagine, like, Aragorn pausing in battle to take a dump?”
That set off another whoop, then a woman said with a sort of minatory grin, “I would love to go to Harry Potter’s England if I could be a wizard.”
“We’re Muggles. Maybe the wizarding world already exists!” someone else called, to which another cracked, “Yeah, since the wizards don’t actually anything but fight one another.” And at a laugh-punctuated shout of protest, “No really. Really. Name me one thing that magic is good for, besides . . .”
J.D. tapped the goblet again. “I want to go around the table. Just for fun. If you wouldn’t go, say so. If you would, say where. As yourself, not a story character. Tanda, you go first.” She nodded to the young woman at her right.
“I guess the Federation.” Tanda wrinkled her nose. “I think there’s a difference between what I like to watch, or read about, and where I’d actually visit. I like to read about Phedre’s world-you know, Jacqueline Carey-but no way would I go there.”
“Steve Erikson’s world!” a guy shouted. “Read but no go!”
“Gor,” somebody at the far end yelled, and we older guests yelped with laughter, someone shouting, “Who even reads that crap?”
More laughs and comments, but J.D. pointed firmly at the man next to Tanda, who said in a SCAdian roar, “Elantris. If I get magic.”
“Bettina?” J.D. called in a SCAdian master-of-ceremonies voice, which brought the noise level down again.
The next woman down was my age, and built on generous lines. “If I have to go as me, I want McCoy’s sick bay. If I can be young and gorgeous with perfect eyesight . . .”
That started off a storm of comments about what age you’d be, what talents you could have, could you get rid of bad eyes, what would you take along? Everybody had qualifiers. Only the youngest seemed okay with just falling through worlds, just as they were. At first I scribbled the above in the notebook I always carry, but they talked too fast. All I remember is a vague (but not sharp) pattern of older books’ worlds preferred by us oldsters, and mostly media worlds preferred by the young-but not all. Several women wanted an urban fantasy now-with magic, vampires, etc. And there were a couple of manga/anime universes thrown in as well.
By the time it was nearly my turn, J.D.’s original question had been totally forgotten. J.D. was listening (which couldn’t be said for many of those who’d already spoken, but at least their whispers were quiet) but I couldn’t tell if her attitude was disappointment or patience or politeness.
When the man to my left said, “Discworld, where I’d fit right in,” the few still listening laughed, and turned my way. My face burned-which triggered the spiky tingle of a hot flash-and as sweat burst out all over me I said, “If we’re going to places that fan fiction has been written about, I’d pick Patrick O’Brian’s eternal Regency.”
J.D.’s chin had lifted as soon as I said ‘fanfiction.’ From the others there was no response, or rustle of interest, other than a whispered “Patrick O’Brian!” from farther down the table, and the woman to my right said to me, “Omighod Temeraire! I didn’t think, but when you said Patrick O’Brian, Temeraire, and dragons!”
She got a short spurt of enthusiasm, then she and I exchanged furtive whispers about how much we liked both sets of stories, as the last of the table called out their choices.
After that, there was no stopping the conversations going on like a happy food fight back and forth across the table, shouts from either end, amid fairly continuous laughter.
When the food had been reduced to crumbs, with fannish practicality the household got everyone organized to bus their own dishes. Fifteen minutes of plate-stacking and chair-folding got the place more or less clear, after which people clustered in groups, some sitting on the floor, some in the ancient couches. The few teenage boys, probably second-generation fans, vanished upstairs to a game, and someone else started up filk singing in the den.
I was reaching in my bag for my keys when a touch on my shoulder brought me face to face with J.D. She said, “Do you read fanfiction?”
“Some.”
“Want to join a few of us?” she asked, with a vague wave toward the porch. “To talk about it?”
The words were simple, but her manner was so indicative of intent I took my hand out of my purse, my Thanks for the lovely time dying unspoken, and I began to follow her across the creaking hardwood floor, around islands of conversation.
“What fic do you read?” J.D. asked over her shoulder.
“I’m a Trek zine reader from way back in the day. Started with T-Negative.”
Craftsman houses were designed for California heat, long before the days of air conditioning. The porches are heavily shaded to ward the sun, and many of the older places are further shaded by enormous trees-Black Oak, Eucalyptus, pepper. Several others had gathered on the secluded porch, all females except for one guy. I settled in the unoccupied chair between a couple of women more or less my age, one with a long black braid, the other really stylish, sporting designer glasses.
J.D. turned to me. “So you used to read T-Negative? What do you read now?”
I admitted that I don’t like to read to fiction on the computer, as a rule, but I’d been a zine fan-and when I said that I far preferred Maggie Nowakoska’s Thousand Suns version of the Star Wars universe to what Lucas has done with it since the original trilogy, J.D. and the braid woman exclaimed with surprise and enthusiasm.
After everybody had thoroughly trashed the recent Star Wars pix to our mutual satisfaction, J.D. continued the question around the circle, with fairly predictable results: Trek, Buffy, Buffy, media viding, and the youngest pair of girls, obviously friends, were into Potter fic.
At the mention of Potter, something odd happened between J.D. and the guy. A subtle quick meeting of eyes, twitches of shoulder, hand, chin of mutual encouragement, and the girl protested, “What? What? You’re not going to start in with the oh what crap-”
“Look,” the guy said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of liminal space.”
“I know about the Liminal Library,” the glasses woman said, with one of those uncertain laughs that signal, we’re not serious, are we?
“I’ve read about it,” I said. “I love the idea.”
J.D. leaned forward, crushing the houpelande; her forearms together on her lap, her hands gripped. “We read about all kinds of worlds and times, we think ourselves so open, but how open are we, really?”
Everybody made I’m open noises. I fingered my purse-I hate these conversations, I wanted to get out of there before I said something typically stupid.
J.D. flicked another eye-contact with the guy, then said to me, “Have you read any Dorothy Dunnett fic?”
“Just a few Yuletide stories,” I said, tensing for the rise and polite departure.
J.D. made a self-deprecating gesture and said somewhat wryly, “I write Dunnett fanfiction. Have for thirty years.”
I sat back. Now it would be rude to bail when someone is talking about her creative life.
Another look exchanged with the guy, and she said, “While my stuff isn’t nearly as popular as Buffy fic, or Harry Potter fic, it’s got a following.” A couple of us made moves to speak and she said quickly, “No, I don’t expect you to have heard of my stuff. No reason you should-we would have known one another already. This conversation is not about Dunnett fic. Or, not directly.”
The party noise made a cheerful, unheeding backdrop; we all leaned into a book-geek huddle as she said, “At some point. Almost twenty years ago-about the time we made the shift from the zine to computers. I started dreaming from Jerott’s point of view. My main character,” she said quickly, and I nodded, showing my familiarity. In truth, if I were ever to write Dunnett fanfic, it would have been about the further adventures of Jerott Blyth, who (imo) totally got shafted at the end of the cycle. “I wrote the stories I dreamed.” Another wry smile, a wave of the hand. “I don’t know if it was those, or just the new edition of Dunnett getting published and the rise of the internet but the fandom really spread. And my story-dreaming got really . . . intense.”
About now some of the listeners did the eye-shifts and body-wriggles of Okay, and your point is?
J.D. said, “I thought I made it all up. You know, the dreams. Subconscious creation. When the creative flow is good, your subconscious does the work, all you have to do is write it down.”
Hoo yes. I rocked back and forth in total agreement.
“Then last summer I got an email that seemed to prove that some of those details were true. I mean, facts that correlate to traceable sources.” She made a face. “I don’t even have the vocabulary any more for what’s going on. Or we think is going on. Which is why I asked you to join us, [Trinh], since you were in L.A. anyway.” She indicated one of the women as she said to the rest of us, “Her grad work is in quantum physics. She does game design. At such a level you may as well call it A.I.”
Trinh was a round-faced, cheery young woman with intelligent dark eyes. She could have been any age from sixteen to thirty-six. “And when I use design vocabulary no one understands me. But one thing I don’t define any more is reality, that is, phenomenological reality. The basic definition of reality being--”
“The state of things as they actually exist,” the woman with the glasses murmured.
“-which is so broad-and so narrow--it’s not very useful.” Trinh chuckled. “Except to guys like Richard Dawkins.”
The guy laughed. “As opposed to, say, Amit Goswami-”
“Who says there is no reality,” the glasses woman put in, still low-voiced. “Beyond our own perceptions.”
“What’s really going on here?” one of the girls asked, giving everyone the hairy eyeball. “Did somebody say you stole something, is that it? Plagiarized?” She said the word with that faint emphasis of trumping the adults, like I know all about that subject, we get hammered at school.
“Just wait.” The guy held up a hand.
“They thought I did,” J.D. admitted. “’They’ being some Russian academics. Except I’ve never been to Russia, and the stuff they were talking about has never been uploaded. Somebody had Googled on a specific name in the context of an event. Found my fic. Their English wasn’t as good as they thought, and they assumed I was publishing a memoir. Not a story, which was based on one of these dream episodes. We hashed it all out, things were fine. Then it happened again, around the time of the first fires.” She pointed to the guy. “[Thomas], you want to tell them who you are?”
“I work at JPL,” Thomas said. “J.D. and I met at Rand in Santa Monica years ago. We had a lunchtime science fiction book group, and she knew I did some debunking of so-called paranormal phenomena for the Skeptical Inquirer. As a hobby. I went to LosCon at Thanksgiving.”
“Where I ran into him outside a panel,” J.D. said, “and asked if he’d ever heard of anything like that happening to anyone. This was before the . . . black hole appeared in my wall. So I emailed Thomas, because he’d at least listened to me--”
The quietest woman, half-hidden behind J.D. from my perspective, had spiked into sharp angles of disbelief. She leaped up. “Okay, this is too freaky.” Her voice trembled, halfway between angry and upset. “I mean, I hate being set up. It’s just not funny. Thanks for the dinner. Come on, Shel.”
One of the high school girls sighed and got up more slowly. As her mother stalked down the stairs and away toward the row of parked cars, she mouthed the words text me to the other girl, then followed her mother. They immediately started arguing, the words blurred by party noise.
“Look, this isn’t a joke.” J.D. rubbed her hands over her knees, her dagged sleeves sawing up and down like giant teeth. “But if anyone else wants to take off, I understand.”
Nobody moved.
Thomas blew out his breath, and rammed his fingers through his graying, thinning hair. His sloping forehead gleamed in the reflected light of all the candles someone had lit inside.
“Here’s my theory. When fanfiction publication hit what we can call critical mass, a term I’m borrowing to indicate that moment when subsistence became existence . . .” He paused for objections, and Trinh waved a hand in a vague, okay, I’ll buy that for now, go on circle. “Weird stuff happened.”
“What stuff? What black hole?” the remaining girl asked, cracking her gum. “Fanfiction-if you’re about to say Voldemort popped out of some closet, or something, I’m gonna laugh.”
Thomas raised his hands, fingers together. “I came over to see what J.D. was talking about. Fannish woo not being scientifically reliable.” He flashed a quick grin. “So it’s early December, right, when it’s still hotter than hell outside. I’m trying to park, but I can’t even get within three blocks, and I discover some film crew is setting up for a night-for-night. What with their traffic and roughly half the population of L.A. settling in for some free entertainment, I had to park clear up on Fountain and hike down. But when J.D. showed me the wall-not a closet, but a wall, in her bedroom on the top floor-it was worth it.”
“The wall had cracked in the last big quake,” J.D. said. “I don’t know if that matters.”
“Nobody know what matters, but I was able to establish two things.” Thomas spread his hands wide. “One, the wall had this black doorway in it. And two, not all J.D.’s housemates could see it.”
I was waiting for the punch-line-and so were the others, I could see it in their posture.
Thomas flicked a look around at us as he said, “Just as my BS-Detector was queeping at me, this guy comes barreling out of the black hole. Tall, black hair, sixteenth century war gear. Sword, main-gauche blade, muddy boots.”
“I will swear in any court it was Jerott Blyth,” J.D. said in a flat voice.
We listeners made motions of disbelief, but Thomas held his hands up again. “You can see one of his footprints up there-yeah, I know anybody could make those-I’m just sayin’. So he dashes past us-whew, they did not know anything about deodorant wherever he comes from.”
J.D. took over. “We chased after him once we got our jaws off the floor, but we couldn’t catch up. He was fast. He headed toward the Kliegs-drawn by the lights, I guess--and we ran after, yelling for him to stop.”
Thomas grimaced. “So there we were, chasing a guy in armor right through the middle of a shoot. Talk about the fewmets hitting the oscillator. The film guys are screaming, the guy is yelling and waving his sword-there was this big gun battle going on-the audience is yelling because they think he’s part of the scene.”
Trinh laughed. “Wait a sec. Wait. So this guy-whoever he was-thought the gun battle was real?”
“Yes.” J.D. held up her hand and counted fingers. “He thought the film was real, the audience thought he was part of the film, the actors seemed to think he was maybe part of the story and maybe not.” Her hands dropped to her lap. “Some A.D. was screaming for security so Thomas and I got out of there. Jerott-or whoever he was-had totally vanished by then.”
I didn’t believe any of this, but hey, storytelling is storytelling, and it had been decades since I’d been a part of street theatre.
The woman with the long braid said, “But you knew what was real and what wasn’t.”
“Sure. I could explain.” Thomas shrugged. “But what’s my starting point? A guy in 400 year old battle gear ran out of a hole in a friend’s wall? We beat feet.”
Trinh said, “And you didn’t call someone at Cal Tech because why?”
“I did,” J.D. said. “Called several people. A couple of them even came over, during the holidays. What they saw was my wall.”
Trinh rubbed her jaw. “Which is still there?”
“Which is still there.” J.D. pointed upward.
“You didn’t, like, call the cops or anything?” the youngest girl asked slowly.
“Would you?” Thomas asked.
A roar of laughter from inside reminded us of the real world; someone began playing “The Soldier and the Queen” on a recorder as we looked at one another.
“No,” we all said, or variations thereof.
J.D. said, “Exactly. So we thought, try fandom. We planned this shindig tonight, and you’re the only ones-well, except for Catha, who left, and I don’t blame her -who read fics. I never bought into the notion of subsistence, but maybe there is something about many minds all concentrating creatively on a specific thing . . .” She dropped her head forward as though embarrassed, then looked up, and sighed sharply. “Everything we say sounds stupid. And we’ve been hammering at this for weeks. So if you want, come upstairs, and see for yourself.”
So we did. Straight upstairs, past Star Wars memorabilia, and a framed 1963 Beatles poster that had to be worth a fortune. J.D.’s rooms were across the back of the house, and there, against an inner wall, was . . . a black hole shaped like a doorway. No light whatsoever.
As soon as I saw it I took a step backward, as if that utterly lightless void would suck me in.
Trinh turned around slowly, then said in a slow, goaded voice, “Ooohkay, where’s the joke?”
“You don’t see it?” Thomas asked, and picked up a waiting yardstick. As I watched, he outlined the door, rapping it against the edges-then he slowly stuck the yardstick into the hole, until it was all swallowed up, his fingers within a foot of the void. “You see that?”
“You rubbing a yardstick around a wall?” Trinh asked. “Well, that was fun. I guess.”
The other two women stood uncertainly, looking from the wall to us and back; one shrugged, the other stared, mouth open.
Thomas said with a sharp, really fake laugh, “Well, it was a cool story, wasn’t it?” as he walked back downstairs with Trinh and the braid woman. The last I heard was Trinh’s, “ . . . you definitely need a better ending. Why not use a closet next time? Make it a Narnia thing, get somebody to jump out . . .”
I was alone with J.D. and the glasses woman, purse clutched against her as she stared into the void.
I cleared my dry throat. “What’s on the other side of the wall?” I asked. My heartbeat was doing double time.
“My bathroom.” J.D. pointed to the door at the other end of the wall, which I hadn’t noticed. “There’s the footprint. I cleaned up the rest.” She pointed to a muddy blotch on her hardwood floor, bounded by a footstool and some piles of magazines. She made an attempt at a smile, but the humor was brief and bleak. “Even though the wall in the shower stall has never changed, I’ve been showering in my roomie’s bathroom. And I sleep in my study.” She gave a long, stress-raspy sigh, then tightened up the way many do when they’re approaching a subject they don’t like. That they know no one will like.
“Is that why we’re here? You want volunteers to go into it?” I asked, and edged back, my shoulder-blades tight, as if I felt hands shoving me into that void.
“That’s already happened.” J.D. looked up at the ceiling. “We tried to keep it a secret, but somebody was bound to be listening . . .”
My body temp dropped about fifty degrees-along with my heart. Because I-a twenty-year veteran teacher-knew what had happened. “A kid, right? Someone’s kid?”
“Who else has that total, instant belief in the impossible?” J.D. gave another whooshing sigh. “One of my roommies is a single mom. Aisling must have overheard one of us. Sneaked in just last weekend. We found her Hufflepuff costume missing. And her Harry Potter books.” J.D. sighed. “So Andrea ran right in after her kid, she figured anything was better than not knowing.”
“And they haven’t come back?”
“They haven’t come back.”
I felt a surge of longing so strong it triggered another spiky heat flash. If only I could be sure . . . “If there was only a tiny glimmer of light . . .”
“Yeah. I’d believe it if this. If that. If, if, if.” J.D. wiped her eyes with one big sleeve. “Tom and I have pretty much talked ourselves into that guy being a shared delusion. That or some weirdo. Followed a roommate home from an event. Hid in my bathroom, or something.”
“We talk about reality being what we personally experience, but how much do we really see?” the braid woman said at last, gazing over her shoulder at the mystery door. Then she gave us a wry look. “I can stare at that for an hour, but I know as soon as I get to the other side of Sepulveda I’ll be totally convinced I dreamed this.”
“Yeah,” I said.