h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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“You did it again,” she said. “Maybe you just thrive on building all these excuses and that’s why you don’t get things done. Maybe you ought to use the time to actually do what you set out to do.”
“Maybe I should pay you for services rendered. You know, I wasn’t expecting to be on Freud’s couch during this visit. As a matter of fact, the whole reason I’m here is to finish something you started when we were dating. I did mention this earlier, didn’t I?”
“Mm-hmm. So go ahead. Spill it. What did I do then that brought you here now?”
“It was the pictures of the dragons…do you remember? You drew them for me. They were pencil sketches; two separate pictures. The first panel depicted two figures; a young girl wearing flowing robes and a veil, facing a crouching dragon…or maybe it was reclining with its reptilian jowls propped in its hands. She seemed unsure of its motives. Perhaps it would kill her and eat her; perhaps it would let her go peaceably. The second panel showed two figures, also. Two dragons—one wearing a veil—and they were in a stance suggesting they were about to spring into flight together. Do you remember it?”
“I do.” She sat back in her chair, one leg tucked under her, and she got a far-away look in her eyes. Her gaze rose to look past me, over my shoulder, out the bay window, over the expanse of lawn, across the dark waters of the bayou, and into the distant past. Her mouth moved imperceptibly, attempting to articulate an idea that would not pass her lips. Her dexterous hand fluttered as a caged bird might, then curled inward as if holding a stylus, or pencil, or paintbrush. In the hollow confines of the kitchen, the scratching sound of her hand moving over the surface of the table of its own accord echoed in sweeping staccato fits. I had thought the previous dearth in our conversation was embarrassing, but this not-quite-silent pantomime verged on creepy. Slowly, her expression changed back to something more lucid, her hand ceased its unbidden tracings, and she connected with my stare of wonderment.
“I still have them,” she said in a soft whisper. I shook my head, because her words didn’t register with me at first, she’d spoken so quietly.
“What?” It was a weak croak of a sound forced from lungs bereft of air.
“I still have them…here…in my collection. I’ve painted and drawn…and sculpted a bit through the years. But the drawings…they’re the main things I’ve done.” I looked deep into her hazel eyes, searching for what else might lie there; what other things might be unearthed with the right question. There was an immediate nagging query I had to vocalize.
“How did you wind up with them? I thought I’d lost them in transit, during all my shuffling around the planet. When did you get possession of them?”
“You don’t remember, do you? That’s because they meant more to me at the time than they did to you. Or so I thought, until today. There was a time I had an art project due at school, and I was behind in my work. I needed a quick fill-in…something I’d already drawn. I asked to come over and get them from you, and told you I’d give them back once I got the grade. I guess I never returned them. I didn’t think you missed them, since you didn’t ask about them.”
“I suppose I didn’t miss them,” was my honest reply, “yet, I know I’ve carried those images around in my head since the first moment you showed them to me.”
“I’m flattered, Sam, but what do those drawings have to do with all this?” She swept her arm across the table—palm up, fingers splayed open—in an arc that cleared away the invisible sketches she’d made.
“Elaine, the ideas you imbued the illustrations with fermented and brewed and percolated over the next fifteen years and finally drove me to write the story!”
“What story?” she asked, doggedly determined to get a straight answer.
“The story about the drawings! Don’t you remember I told you it would make a good story, if I could just add enough detail around the main idea?”
“Did you?” Her eyes got a faraway look again as she searched for a memory more mine than hers. “I…vaguely recall…yes, now that you’ve said it, I think I do. You were…intense…about the literature and writing class that year.”
“Yes, because Ms. Davies let us have more free rein with our topics and story lines. I scribbled a few notes to myself on a piece of paper to encapsulate the idea for the story, but I didn’t come up with a good narrative to hold it together. Well, it took fifteen years for the details to germinate. One day I stumbled upon the scrap with the notes and it jogged my memory. I decided to put my Commodore computer to some constructive use and started an outline of the main points of the story. I formed it around some rough chapter headings, and the outline flowed together in the course of several days. I labored with it for a few months, off and on, whenever real life and my military career didn’t get in the way. I even spent a few sleepless nights working into the early morning hours, drafting a section of text, then polishing the flow of the words, sentences, paragraphs. I had written three chapters at the front end, had them honed to perfection, and had paragraphs of notes for almost all the other sections of the outline…when the unthinkable happened.” I had to pause, since I rarely soliloquize for such a long stretch. She filled the gap.
“What happened?” She slid her hands forward across the wooden table to hold my wrists; I suppose to deter me from gesticulating quite as much as I had. Her fingers were cool to the touch. No, rather, cold. Her face had become ashen, her skin almost translucent.
“Are you alright?” I asked earnestly. “You look pale, not quite well.”
“What? Oh. No, I’m alright. I don’t get out as much as I used to…”
The excuse hung there between us for several seconds. After a moment more, she picked up her mug and took a long swallow of tea. She nodded at me to continue as she sipped again.
“Look, Elaine, I seldom have this kind of effect on people when expounding about my personal life. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, Sam. Go on. Tell me what happened.”
“Well, one of my daughters was using the Commodore and reached up to wipe the monitor screen, to clean off some dust. Then she started typing again. Do you know anything about electrostatic discharge?”
“I know how to discharge a firearm, if you don’t get to the point soon.” She said it wanly, but it spurred me on, nonetheless.
“The odd thing about Commodores is the keyboard houses the computer, the processor, the electronic machinery that makes it work. When my girl wiped the screen, she picked up one heckuva negative charge. Static electricity. When she touched the keyboard, it discharged from her into the guts of the machine. It zapped a whole bank of circuits controlling the keys on the right, and one or two on the left. It effectively disabled the thing because we could no longer type in the commands to make it work.”
“That was a problem?”
“Well, yes. I couldn’t access any of the files I’d generated with the word processing software. Heck, I couldn’t even load the program to run the word processor because you have to type a few simple command words to do it. No keys, no access to the files. Literally.” I hung my head in the same exasperation I’d felt the day it happened.
“Why didn’t you just go to someone else who had the same kind of computer?”
“Do you know how frugal I’ve been throughout my life?”
“I remember some of the gifts you gave me…”
“Yeah, that would give you some idea.”
“What does that have to do wi—?”
“Hang on! I’ll tell you.”
“You’d better!”
“So, anyway, I’d kept the Commodore long past its heyday. IBMs and PCs took over the market and edged out some of the simpler, proprietary computer systems. I was still proud of my C128, because it rivaled the software Microsoft had generated up until then. Since I’d hung onto it so long, though, other sources I could have used to retrieve my files had vanished. And PCs don’t read the format of floppy disks written in Commodore code. Not too many months after the ‘degaussing’ incident, we prepared to move to Iceland, and the computer and all the peripherals went into a Salvation Army bin. There was no sense in hanging onto the hardware, since it didn’t work. The only things I kept were the diskettes with the story files on them.”
“There’s a moral to this story, right?”
“Gettin’ there… The story stayed on the diskettes, in a little white box, for another ten years. Each time we moved to a new home, I packed them without another thought of when I might try to recover the files. A couple of years ago I purchased a top-of-the-line PC with fast internet access, so I did some shopping around on the net. You know, there are still pockets of die-hard Commodore fans out there who treasure those machines. Anyway, I bought a few pieces at a time, as they came available. Last year I finally had all the parts I needed to access the files and reconstruct the story. I’ve saved it several different ways in today’s PC format, and printed out multiple copies, some for safe-keeping, some for book publishers to read.”
“You’ve written an entire book?” A look of amazement washed over her face.
“Yes. Based on your illustrations. Embellished to beat the band. But it’s nearly ready to take to print, if my agent corrals Random House with the contract like he expects.”
“You mean you’ll be a published author?”
“Yup.”
She sat chewing on her lower lip for a few moments. A clock ticked away the time. I looked to where it hung on a wall by a door and noticed it was late. So much later than I’d expected. It was a new moon phase and it was pitch black outside. The trees effectively blotted out the stars and I hadn’t even seen any fireflies flitting past the windows.
“And you came all the way out here to tell me this?” There was stern disbelief in her voice, and in her eyes. She had them squinted down, forming lines along her temples, wrinkling her typically plain expanse of brow. Yet, there was inquisitiveness in her tone.
“I came to ask you to redraw those pictures for inclusion in the story. Maybe to add some other little filigree touches to the book, if the publisher allows it. If you’re up to it, I’d like to ask you to do the cover art. I’m sure I could get you a byline for the idea or at least a mention in the credits. It’s what my agent said I could reasonably offer. Publishers like this kind of background and drama to put on the cover jacket or in an ‘Afterword’ section. What do you think? Up to you. But then…if you’ve got them here, we could just copy them and have them restored.”
“Um… I said I’ve got them, but…” she stammered, almost as if bewildered.
“They are here, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but I can’t get my hands on them right this instant…”
“Don’t worry about it tonight. I didn’t mean for you to rummage through your collection of old drawings right now. ‘The night’s far spent and I’ve miles to go before I get home.’ Isn’t that a quote from some famous book or poem?”
“I’m not sure, but I feel that way a lot.”
“Don’t we all when we’ve burned the midnight oil for too many days in a row?”
“Yeah.” There was finality to her statement.
“Look, I’ve kept you hostage in your own home for too many hours today. How about if you think on this for a bit and let me know what you decide. I’d be honored if you would consider it, but don’t feel like it’s an obligation. Either way, we’re both off the hook once it’s published. Then it’s a done deal and we can all go to bed, so to speak.”
“Alright, Sam, I’ll mull it over. I’m glad you came to see me about it. You don’t know how it did my heart good to learn about this, even though I sparred with you a bit.”
“No different than what we used to do back then.” I hiked my thumb over my shoulder to indicate our past. “Come to think of it, we were more like a brother and a sister than like a boyfriend/girlfriend couple, huh?”
“That’s kind of how it panned out, isn’t it?” she said with a trace of regret. Or, perhaps, I only wanted to hear her say it that way. I stood up from the table with the mug of tea in my left hand, still unfinished. After a moment’s introspection, I drained the last few swallows of the drink and decided to bring the conversation back to an easier topic.
“Hey. Let me bring by the manuscript for you to read,” I suggested. “I didn’t bother toting it along today because I wasn’t sure you still lived here. Since you are here, my second consideration is whether you would be interested in helping out. I think you’d enjoy seeing what I’ve done with the idea you gave me all those years ago. It’s not a book by Tolstoy, so it wouldn’t take too long to digest it. Now, if you think it’s really good, it may only take you a few hours to peruse it. What time would you be available tomorrow?”
“Oh, I keep odd hours. You’re lucky you caught me when you did. I’m not always here at that time of day.”
“But if I come by around noon, you might be here then? I really want you to read through it and see what you think. You can feel free to make comments and corrections. Really! Better to get as many of the bugs worked out before the editors and staff start marking it up in red.”
“Okay. Sure, Sam. You come by at noon and I’ll make it a point to be here.”
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B4iactuallygetthewholethingpublished