Medium Fic Thing: Fringe
I guess I'm still working out my Fringe thing, so when this activity in the-deepbluesea came along...
6 words
Everyone sacrifices. Most redeemed. World saved.
Poem
Gene,
A Cow.
She moos sweetly.
She can be milked.
Watches them eat Chinese food.
She surprises lab visitors
Celebrates Peter's birthday
Finally ambered--
Gene.
Drabble
Lincoln looked up as Olivia strode into the lab. "Beat you here," he said cheerfully. "Bad night," she said shortly. "Is there any coffee?" She headed toward the coffee maker, pulled out the pot, and stared at the brownish crust in the bottom. Her nose wrinkled at the burnt odor.
Suddenly she was hit with a wave of vertigo and a thought rose strong and clear in her mind: "Peter hates burnt coffee." What? Who? She swayed. Lincoln moved to her side, grasping her shoulder. "Liv? You okay?"
Olivia shook her head to clear it. "Uh, sure, just...I need coffee."
As she moved to the sink, she tried to push the unwanted, unfamiliar thought from her mind, but it persisted, like a waking dream.
Ficlet
"Do you know me?" Her eyes were wide, tentative.
He couldn't count the number of times in his many lifetimes that he'd heard those words.
In the elongated pause, as the train swayed, he considered her question. His mind floated back over many past lives: childhood, most happy, but all with a lurking unease, which he now understood to be caused by the wrenching dislocation. His alternate, dead, and himself flashed into another reality. Then, all the other worlds, experiences, but gone by so fast. Never enough time in any timeline.
He was always the constant, no matter which universe, which timeline, which desperate, imploding world he found himself in. And to explore each world--to find it so familiar yet so alien, new mysteries to be uncovered. And in every one, the strange-yet-recognized faces, hopeful, longing to be known by him--that somehow if he, the constant, the Only-One-Of-Him, knew them, then they too were alive beyond this one world--not bounded by this one reality, whether a blasted future with vindictive besuited men, or a metallic police state bounded by encroaching destruction, or a homey but broken world of sadness and loss. It held the promise of being known by God, of being eternal.
But he wasn't God. Just a man who'd only lived one life, and in one reality hadn't existed at all, doomed to disappoint those who looked to him for a sign of their own immortality.
He started to let her down gently.
"I don't know how I could. We were trapped in that amber for twenty years, you couldn't have been more than--" His words faltered, his mind clicked and whirred.
Oh god. Those eyes, the angle of the cheek, the throat, even the voice, so full now, but with a tremor of a little girl, laughing, calling in the sunshine...
"Henrietta?'
"Hi, Dad."
And all at once, he felt he held the power of eternal life.
Three Sentence
Walter gazed around him, at the darkened buildings, shadowy figures, explosions and bursts of fire. Not the best world he'd ever lived in, or left, but it had potential--anyway, after years in a mental institution, even a totalitarian dictatorship had some redeeming features. Ah well, never mind, he thought, as he grasped the boy's hand and stepped forward into the blue light.
Haiku
Asterisk, Astro
Astringent? Athos? Ashram??
Then, at last, Astrid.
6 words
Everyone sacrifices. Most redeemed. World saved.
Poem
Gene,
A Cow.
She moos sweetly.
She can be milked.
Watches them eat Chinese food.
She surprises lab visitors
Celebrates Peter's birthday
Finally ambered--
Gene.
Drabble
Lincoln looked up as Olivia strode into the lab. "Beat you here," he said cheerfully. "Bad night," she said shortly. "Is there any coffee?" She headed toward the coffee maker, pulled out the pot, and stared at the brownish crust in the bottom. Her nose wrinkled at the burnt odor.
Suddenly she was hit with a wave of vertigo and a thought rose strong and clear in her mind: "Peter hates burnt coffee." What? Who? She swayed. Lincoln moved to her side, grasping her shoulder. "Liv? You okay?"
Olivia shook her head to clear it. "Uh, sure, just...I need coffee."
As she moved to the sink, she tried to push the unwanted, unfamiliar thought from her mind, but it persisted, like a waking dream.
Ficlet
"Do you know me?" Her eyes were wide, tentative.
He couldn't count the number of times in his many lifetimes that he'd heard those words.
In the elongated pause, as the train swayed, he considered her question. His mind floated back over many past lives: childhood, most happy, but all with a lurking unease, which he now understood to be caused by the wrenching dislocation. His alternate, dead, and himself flashed into another reality. Then, all the other worlds, experiences, but gone by so fast. Never enough time in any timeline.
He was always the constant, no matter which universe, which timeline, which desperate, imploding world he found himself in. And to explore each world--to find it so familiar yet so alien, new mysteries to be uncovered. And in every one, the strange-yet-recognized faces, hopeful, longing to be known by him--that somehow if he, the constant, the Only-One-Of-Him, knew them, then they too were alive beyond this one world--not bounded by this one reality, whether a blasted future with vindictive besuited men, or a metallic police state bounded by encroaching destruction, or a homey but broken world of sadness and loss. It held the promise of being known by God, of being eternal.
But he wasn't God. Just a man who'd only lived one life, and in one reality hadn't existed at all, doomed to disappoint those who looked to him for a sign of their own immortality.
He started to let her down gently.
"I don't know how I could. We were trapped in that amber for twenty years, you couldn't have been more than--" His words faltered, his mind clicked and whirred.
Oh god. Those eyes, the angle of the cheek, the throat, even the voice, so full now, but with a tremor of a little girl, laughing, calling in the sunshine...
"Henrietta?'
"Hi, Dad."
And all at once, he felt he held the power of eternal life.
Three Sentence
Walter gazed around him, at the darkened buildings, shadowy figures, explosions and bursts of fire. Not the best world he'd ever lived in, or left, but it had potential--anyway, after years in a mental institution, even a totalitarian dictatorship had some redeeming features. Ah well, never mind, he thought, as he grasped the boy's hand and stepped forward into the blue light.
Haiku
Asterisk, Astro
Astringent? Athos? Ashram??
Then, at last, Astrid.