This news article came to me as background for my new story This news story is fictional of course..
BBC News reporting from London. Reports have been coming out from several London hospitals about the births of several strange looking babies that have been born in the last several days. Strange features have been noticed in several of these babies which has alarmed hospital personnel. Investigators from the National Health Service has been dispatched to investigate these reports. A spokesman from the National Health Service will be holding a press conference in an hour, which we will broadcast live. A BBC reporter was sent to investigate and here is his report.
Liam Robb reporting from the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. Local hospital staff have been alarmed by the birth of two babies in the last two days who have exhibited strange features. When you first look at the baby, it looks perfectly normal, perfectly human. But on close inspection, one starts to notice things are a little different. The first baby was born with pointed ears, like the Mr Spock character in Star Trek. The second baby was born with what looked like two bumps on his back, which has been examined and has been found to resemble the beginning of wings like on birds. And these babies are not alone. Similar types of babies have been born in other London hospitals, which has alarmed the National Health Service.
“I noticed it when I was cleaning the baby. The ears were so strange looking. I’ve been a delivery nurse and I’ve helped to deliver over 1,000 babies, and this is the first baby that I’ve seen with pointed ears.” Nurse Jackie Reacher speaking.
“And the second baby made me almost faint. The baby is absolutely perfect expect for the bumps on his back. Naturally, the doctor was alarmed but when the bumps were examined and they took a biopsy, the found the beginning of wings. The baby is so beautiful and so angelic looking, one would like to think maybe this maybe is an angel but that doesn’t make sense. Why would an angel be born here? And other than the wings, the baby is as human as you or me.”
The parents are being examined as well as the babies to look for any similarities. And London is not alone. Reports of these babies have been reported in Scotland and Ireland as well as in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control has sent an investigative team to London to see if there is a connection between the American and UK births.
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Sunday, October 23, 2016
I wrote a short story related to the new idea I have for my novel. I haven't written a short story in a really long time.
Title: Strange Birth
I didn’t notice anything strange in the delivery that day. The mother who had been trying to give birth for a number of years had finally gotten pregnant. She had been a patient of mine for several years, and I knew how long she and her husband had struggled to conceive. When she told me she was going to have a child, I was elated.
I knew how much this child meant to her, so we had followed all the rules, had taken all the tests, and her pregnancy progressed without any problems. When the day came and I got the call that morning she was coming to the hospital, I was relieved. The big event had come and all the parents’ anguish was going to be over. My patient was going to deliver by all signs a healthy child. This was why I had become a doctor and specialized in deliveries, and I remember feeling proud that day.
The mother had decided to give birth naturally, as was the preference of most women these days since it was healthier for the baby and mother. I ate a large breakfast knowing that I might be at the hospital for the rest of the day and night, since first time mothers often took a long time to give birth.But as soon as I arrived at the hospital, the nurse told me that my patient had already gone into labor and her contractions indicated that the birth could happen in an hour. I was a little surprised at the time, but there nothing that would have set off any alarms. It was hard to tell with first time time mothers. Some took a long time and some delivered really quickly. You don’t have anything to base the experience on because it is their first delivery.
So I prepared myself and entered the birthing room. The mother was there and when she saw me she smiled weakly at me. I saw weariness in her eyes, and I knew that although the delivery was going quickly my patient was already exhausted. “It won’t be long now.” I told her as I came over and patted her hand. I looked at my patient’s husband who was holding her hand. He nodded at me, but like most first time dads I could see in his eyes that he was overwhelmed. No matter how much they try to prepare you for the birth, nothing compares to watching it in person. “Is she going to be alright doctor?”, he whispered to me. People always want to whisper when they are in the birthing room, which is odd to me.
In a normal voice I tell him “She’ll be fine and we are lucky since by all signs it shouldn’t take more than an hour. Both mother and father smiled at me in a mixture of relief and skepticism. Like most first time parents they were warned that the birth could often take hours.But the signs are never wrong, and within an hour, I was delivering the long awaited for child. All in all the birth had gone as we had planned, and my patient had done well. But this is where I remember that there certain that happened that was unusual, but not so unusual as to cause any alarm in my medically trained mind. Every human body is different, so one is taught to expect all manner of variations but in this case there was lot anomalies.
Let’s start at the beginning. The baby came out and as was normal, she cried but then she stopped. I remember the nurse looking at me because usually newborn babies cry for a good long time until we are able to wrap the up, by this child stopped. As we cleaned the child up, I inspected her and she seemed to have all her parts, and it was until I looked at her ears did I notice that they were rather pointed, and I mean really pointed.
Now that child was probably the 300th delivery in my long career so I can say that I have seen quite a few babies. And in all that time, I had never seen a baby with ears that were shaped like that. But even though my mind catalogued the strangeness, the doctor in me decided that it was odd but nothing to be medically concerned about so I let it go and asked the nurse to wrap up the child so she could be presented to her parents. When I looked into my patient’s eyes and saw the tears streaming down her face as the nurse handed her the wrapped baby, I was happy. My patient had the child she had wanted for so many years.
Now here’s the second anomaly. The mother looked at the child and I saw the baby reach out her hand and touch the tears on her mother’s face. Seeing that was a bit of a shock because babies at that point are so unaware of their surroundings. I even thought to myself that maybe the baby reached her hand and didn’t even know her mother was crying. But the child left her hand on her mother’s face for longer than what would have been normal. But the mother didn’t even notice and hugged the baby. And the third anomaly happened when the baby was handed to to the father, and the baby again reached a hand out and touched the father’s face. And I am watching this and thinking to myself, is this normal?
And the last anomaly and which had haunted me ever since, is when the baby is back in her mother’s arms and I can see the baby staring at me and I see the baby open her eyes and smiling at me. Babies don’t open their eyes and smile at me 15 minutes after having left their mother’s womb, at least not any baby I had seen up until this point. I remember staring back at the baby, too stunned to smile, and watched as the baby closed its eyes and went to sleep. I looked at my nurse and she had a strange look at her face. I know she had seen everything I had seen, but neither of us said anything. How could we? We could hear the happy parents thanking us both for the miracle of their new child. It seemed rude to me at least to mention the things we had seen. And my nurse agreed with me because she didn’t say anything either.
And I forgot about that strange birth until I started hearing it our staff meetings a few months later about the strange births that others had seen. All the strange births were so much like my own experience where the babies had other little things different about their bodies, and displayed the same actions that the new baby had shown to me. And then I started reading about it on the internet and on the chat boards I participated with other doctors around the world. They had seen the same or similar things; strange looking children who smiled at their doctors.
And when the phenomena was documented, they told me I was the first one who experienced it. And when I was questioned about it and asked if I noticed anything strange in the birth, I told them what I had seen but I also told me that I also a mother and father who were crying because they finally had the child they had been wanting for so many years, and in the face of that miracle every thing about a birth is a little strange.
Title: Strange Birth
I didn’t notice anything strange in the delivery that day. The mother who had been trying to give birth for a number of years had finally gotten pregnant. She had been a patient of mine for several years, and I knew how long she and her husband had struggled to conceive. When she told me she was going to have a child, I was elated.
I knew how much this child meant to her, so we had followed all the rules, had taken all the tests, and her pregnancy progressed without any problems. When the day came and I got the call that morning she was coming to the hospital, I was relieved. The big event had come and all the parents’ anguish was going to be over. My patient was going to deliver by all signs a healthy child. This was why I had become a doctor and specialized in deliveries, and I remember feeling proud that day.
The mother had decided to give birth naturally, as was the preference of most women these days since it was healthier for the baby and mother. I ate a large breakfast knowing that I might be at the hospital for the rest of the day and night, since first time mothers often took a long time to give birth.But as soon as I arrived at the hospital, the nurse told me that my patient had already gone into labor and her contractions indicated that the birth could happen in an hour. I was a little surprised at the time, but there nothing that would have set off any alarms. It was hard to tell with first time time mothers. Some took a long time and some delivered really quickly. You don’t have anything to base the experience on because it is their first delivery.
So I prepared myself and entered the birthing room. The mother was there and when she saw me she smiled weakly at me. I saw weariness in her eyes, and I knew that although the delivery was going quickly my patient was already exhausted. “It won’t be long now.” I told her as I came over and patted her hand. I looked at my patient’s husband who was holding her hand. He nodded at me, but like most first time dads I could see in his eyes that he was overwhelmed. No matter how much they try to prepare you for the birth, nothing compares to watching it in person. “Is she going to be alright doctor?”, he whispered to me. People always want to whisper when they are in the birthing room, which is odd to me.
In a normal voice I tell him “She’ll be fine and we are lucky since by all signs it shouldn’t take more than an hour. Both mother and father smiled at me in a mixture of relief and skepticism. Like most first time parents they were warned that the birth could often take hours.But the signs are never wrong, and within an hour, I was delivering the long awaited for child. All in all the birth had gone as we had planned, and my patient had done well. But this is where I remember that there certain that happened that was unusual, but not so unusual as to cause any alarm in my medically trained mind. Every human body is different, so one is taught to expect all manner of variations but in this case there was lot anomalies.
Let’s start at the beginning. The baby came out and as was normal, she cried but then she stopped. I remember the nurse looking at me because usually newborn babies cry for a good long time until we are able to wrap the up, by this child stopped. As we cleaned the child up, I inspected her and she seemed to have all her parts, and it was until I looked at her ears did I notice that they were rather pointed, and I mean really pointed.
Now that child was probably the 300th delivery in my long career so I can say that I have seen quite a few babies. And in all that time, I had never seen a baby with ears that were shaped like that. But even though my mind catalogued the strangeness, the doctor in me decided that it was odd but nothing to be medically concerned about so I let it go and asked the nurse to wrap up the child so she could be presented to her parents. When I looked into my patient’s eyes and saw the tears streaming down her face as the nurse handed her the wrapped baby, I was happy. My patient had the child she had wanted for so many years.
Now here’s the second anomaly. The mother looked at the child and I saw the baby reach out her hand and touch the tears on her mother’s face. Seeing that was a bit of a shock because babies at that point are so unaware of their surroundings. I even thought to myself that maybe the baby reached her hand and didn’t even know her mother was crying. But the child left her hand on her mother’s face for longer than what would have been normal. But the mother didn’t even notice and hugged the baby. And the third anomaly happened when the baby was handed to to the father, and the baby again reached a hand out and touched the father’s face. And I am watching this and thinking to myself, is this normal?
And the last anomaly and which had haunted me ever since, is when the baby is back in her mother’s arms and I can see the baby staring at me and I see the baby open her eyes and smiling at me. Babies don’t open their eyes and smile at me 15 minutes after having left their mother’s womb, at least not any baby I had seen up until this point. I remember staring back at the baby, too stunned to smile, and watched as the baby closed its eyes and went to sleep. I looked at my nurse and she had a strange look at her face. I know she had seen everything I had seen, but neither of us said anything. How could we? We could hear the happy parents thanking us both for the miracle of their new child. It seemed rude to me at least to mention the things we had seen. And my nurse agreed with me because she didn’t say anything either.
And I forgot about that strange birth until I started hearing it our staff meetings a few months later about the strange births that others had seen. All the strange births were so much like my own experience where the babies had other little things different about their bodies, and displayed the same actions that the new baby had shown to me. And then I started reading about it on the internet and on the chat boards I participated with other doctors around the world. They had seen the same or similar things; strange looking children who smiled at their doctors.
And when the phenomena was documented, they told me I was the first one who experienced it. And when I was questioned about it and asked if I noticed anything strange in the birth, I told them what I had seen but I also told me that I also a mother and father who were crying because they finally had the child they had been wanting for so many years, and in the face of that miracle every thing about a birth is a little strange.
I came up with a new story yesterday and a new main character. The first thing I heard out of my character's mouth is "I am not an evil person". You have to love a character who says things like that. So I wrote in my new character's voice and this is what he had to say. His name is Cyrus Henry Goodlight.
I am not an evil man. Oh, I know what people have written about me but despite what they say, I am not evil, notorious maybe but not evil. My detractors and there seem to be many of them have written ad nauseam about me, and as an avid reader I read their diatribes, their comments, their hit pieces, their exposes, everything that been been written good or bad about me. I made my fortune by being able to research theories, discovering their truth, and then turning that truth into something that someone would find useful and want to pay money to obtain it. I am a carpe diem type of man and ex nihilo nihil fit. It’s my gift as one kind reporter wrote. And if I turn my gift to find out the truth about myself, I can honestly say from what I’ve been able to research is that it is all false.
No, to be fair, and I do want to be absolutely fair, is that some of it is true but most of it is false. What’s true is that I have amassed a fortune that makes me the richest man in the world. My father, who was a scientist and researcher himself, repeated to me as a child when I wanted to wanted something to think to myself veni vedi vici, and I took that to heart. What is also true is that I have made my fortune by providing items to the planet that people, businesses want to purchase. I have provided the technology to find cures for most diseases. My research companies are world renown for their contribution to medical cures through genetics. My environmental companies have come up with the technology to rid our planet of almost all of the pollution in our environment and in our food. My new foundation is starting to collect people’s stories, which is offered in a database that can be researched for free by anyone. I have a nobel prize for my foundation for preserving the stories and literature of disappearing cultures.
So a large part of what is written about me is in praise of everything that I have done for this planet. It’s the other things that people written about me that I find to be false. Most of it I believe is because people just assume that someone with money is up to no good, and that person wants world domination. What a load of crock. I am not hosti humani generis. If I wanted world domination, I could have gotten that a long time ago. Do I have governments and world leaders that I can call on for favors? Yes, of course I do. I’ve done good things for this world and those leaders respect me.
I think people are mesmerized me, so they make up stories about me. Sometimes I think maybe money is a liability. If I had been a researcher who just discovered good things and eschewed money, people would worship me. What nonsense; faber est suae quisque fortunae.
My money allows me to be able to follow up on my obsession, and that is its reward to me. And what is thing that I want more than anything that even money cannot buy me? Time, tempus fugit. I want to live forever. I have much to do and much to discover. There are legends, stories in the bible about people who have lived for a very long time. And for all all our progress in cleaning up our environment and curing diseases, we have made absolutely zero progress on life extension.
The world deserves my genius, the world needs someone like me to live forever so I can make a make the world a better place. And who better than me to live a long and glorious life with all my knowledge and all my wealth. So to all critics, I will find a way to outlive you all and since I am a kind person, your vitriol will not be remembered in the future. I will see to that personally.
I am not an evil man. Oh, I know what people have written about me but despite what they say, I am not evil, notorious maybe but not evil. My detractors and there seem to be many of them have written ad nauseam about me, and as an avid reader I read their diatribes, their comments, their hit pieces, their exposes, everything that been been written good or bad about me. I made my fortune by being able to research theories, discovering their truth, and then turning that truth into something that someone would find useful and want to pay money to obtain it. I am a carpe diem type of man and ex nihilo nihil fit. It’s my gift as one kind reporter wrote. And if I turn my gift to find out the truth about myself, I can honestly say from what I’ve been able to research is that it is all false.
No, to be fair, and I do want to be absolutely fair, is that some of it is true but most of it is false. What’s true is that I have amassed a fortune that makes me the richest man in the world. My father, who was a scientist and researcher himself, repeated to me as a child when I wanted to wanted something to think to myself veni vedi vici, and I took that to heart. What is also true is that I have made my fortune by providing items to the planet that people, businesses want to purchase. I have provided the technology to find cures for most diseases. My research companies are world renown for their contribution to medical cures through genetics. My environmental companies have come up with the technology to rid our planet of almost all of the pollution in our environment and in our food. My new foundation is starting to collect people’s stories, which is offered in a database that can be researched for free by anyone. I have a nobel prize for my foundation for preserving the stories and literature of disappearing cultures.
So a large part of what is written about me is in praise of everything that I have done for this planet. It’s the other things that people written about me that I find to be false. Most of it I believe is because people just assume that someone with money is up to no good, and that person wants world domination. What a load of crock. I am not hosti humani generis. If I wanted world domination, I could have gotten that a long time ago. Do I have governments and world leaders that I can call on for favors? Yes, of course I do. I’ve done good things for this world and those leaders respect me.
I think people are mesmerized me, so they make up stories about me. Sometimes I think maybe money is a liability. If I had been a researcher who just discovered good things and eschewed money, people would worship me. What nonsense; faber est suae quisque fortunae.
My money allows me to be able to follow up on my obsession, and that is its reward to me. And what is thing that I want more than anything that even money cannot buy me? Time, tempus fugit. I want to live forever. I have much to do and much to discover. There are legends, stories in the bible about people who have lived for a very long time. And for all all our progress in cleaning up our environment and curing diseases, we have made absolutely zero progress on life extension.
The world deserves my genius, the world needs someone like me to live forever so I can make a make the world a better place. And who better than me to live a long and glorious life with all my knowledge and all my wealth. So to all critics, I will find a way to outlive you all and since I am a kind person, your vitriol will not be remembered in the future. I will see to that personally.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Another odd piece of writing from my writing box. This piece was written on February 1, 1999. I think I was trying my hand at stream of conscious writing because the piece is full of fragments, like I was riffing on a musical phrase.
Writing in a box - all angular - black and white - parralel stories - endings have to end - no ambiguities - has to make sense - sense to me - not to any one else - writing flows like a stream of light - a single light - a bright light - with an equational light - not a pastel light - but a bright in your face color - no subtlety - it hits right between the eyes - and rocking - like driving along a brightly lit country road and BOOM, a summer thunder storm - unexpected and frightening - dark mood and dark light - to hit your sunny day - bright square of color like a modern American painting - it makes no sense but if you stare at it long enough - it starts to make sense - only because your mind has to have it make sense - uncertainty is like death - the mind can only handle uncertainty for so long - before it cracks - stories must make sense - somebody's sense - from a point of view - whose point of view? - my point of view - a character's point of view - but all characters are me - in one way or another - different facets unexplored - dark valleys - dark visions - never plundered - never dared to go - characters speak words I can never say, never want to say - whose world do they inhabit? - harsh landscapes with harsh lightning - no pink light to hide the wires, the cracks, the wrinkles - no rose colored lighting to smooth out the way - but harsh, harsh light - studio lights - light so hot your makeup melts - melting slowly off revealing someting yet unknown - magic, my story - more light and less light - inherent darkness - valleys of no return - signs that say no trespassing, dark and windy twisted roads - roads that go nowhere, everywhere, round and round, never ending - roads that you to home, from home - roads that take you away, away from harsh, harsh light and even the sense of scrutinity - roads that comfort and soothe you on your journey.
In the midst of all this creation, you need to find a place to live. You have to inhabit that which you create.
Writing in a box - all angular - black and white - parralel stories - endings have to end - no ambiguities - has to make sense - sense to me - not to any one else - writing flows like a stream of light - a single light - a bright light - with an equational light - not a pastel light - but a bright in your face color - no subtlety - it hits right between the eyes - and rocking - like driving along a brightly lit country road and BOOM, a summer thunder storm - unexpected and frightening - dark mood and dark light - to hit your sunny day - bright square of color like a modern American painting - it makes no sense but if you stare at it long enough - it starts to make sense - only because your mind has to have it make sense - uncertainty is like death - the mind can only handle uncertainty for so long - before it cracks - stories must make sense - somebody's sense - from a point of view - whose point of view? - my point of view - a character's point of view - but all characters are me - in one way or another - different facets unexplored - dark valleys - dark visions - never plundered - never dared to go - characters speak words I can never say, never want to say - whose world do they inhabit? - harsh landscapes with harsh lightning - no pink light to hide the wires, the cracks, the wrinkles - no rose colored lighting to smooth out the way - but harsh, harsh light - studio lights - light so hot your makeup melts - melting slowly off revealing someting yet unknown - magic, my story - more light and less light - inherent darkness - valleys of no return - signs that say no trespassing, dark and windy twisted roads - roads that go nowhere, everywhere, round and round, never ending - roads that you to home, from home - roads that take you away, away from harsh, harsh light and even the sense of scrutinity - roads that comfort and soothe you on your journey.
In the midst of all this creation, you need to find a place to live. You have to inhabit that which you create.
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