Behind the Green Door

…

It’s almost done, and another story has made it to fruition.

I have to say, this one started as a short story. I was in the process of writing 26 new stories for next year’s April A to Z Blog. That notion of being able to write a short story every day, particularly the length mine seem to get to, has become quite daunting.

This one was called Behind the Green Door, and the little note I made for myself to prompt an idea, a game show with a difference.

I’m not quite sure what I had in mind as I was writing those titles.

Another example title: Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining – a romance ala Hallmark. As if I could stick to the brief! Every romance I’ve written has veered off into adventure territory.

Enough Already…

I have had a lot of ideas doe Miranda over the month. Making her a robot was fine at the start, but then it evolved into a robot that was very hard to tell from the real thing.

Originally I wasn’t going to give her Elsie’s persona. She was just going to be loaded up with memories of her, so Elsie wouldn’t be forgotten.

I had no intention of making Elsie the creator of the life-like robots. But, then, when I thought about men being involved, it veered off into weird territory, because men don’t quite think the same as women, and have other ideas for female robots, and super soldier is not one of them.

I liked the idea of making her a guidance counsellor, to see those who were going to meet their end a little easier, and it seemed like I had gone exactly where I did;t want to go. Making her the robotic equivalent to Michael’s wife of many years might seem cruel, but it salved my conscience for about ten minutes.

But this is a different society borne out of disaster and forced to find a new way to live over a very long time in difficult circumstances. One thing I can say, in my imaginary world, men might be in charge, but women are the people who make it work.

When I discussed the story with my three granddaughters, as I do quite often with all of my stories, they were surprised. They, like me, could not begin to imagine what the world would be like in 200 years, except it would be without mobile phones and computers, cars, except for the odd electric vehicle, that men and women would be on equal footing, and that everyone would get along, after a fashion, because there was always an oddball or two.

But the warning was that we were always just a short distance away from there being classes of people (like in India where they are labelled castes), such as the university types, the professionals, not self-entitled but a little above everyone else, the working class, the tradesmen, the people who keep everything working, and the nerdy types, university educated, but they live on their own planet. They were unanimous in believing that over time in such a confinement, crime would become non-existent.

After all, where can you hide?

But just the same, because of human nature being what it is, there would always be the odd person who would steal, be envious of his or her neighbour, have affairs and illicit relationships, kill, irrationally or not, and want to wage war on others because sadly that’s who we are.

Oddly enough they never considered 200 years in confinement a cause to go stir-crazy!

…

Word written today 1,389, making a total of 53,067 words