Re: Brain or mind, let them shine: a challenge of creativity
I admit, this was rather good fun, particularly as my idea took off, became a bit longer than expected and sort of turned into a short horror type story.
Hope people like, I haven't read anyone else's submissions on the topic because I wanted be fair with mine and not risk any unconscious ideas from other people.
I might well revise this later, but I thought it was only fair to post my first draught, as I read this topic just this morning, and have spent about an hour and a half putting this together, and having incredible fun doing it too, (nothing like a good old fashioned bit of horror):
Drawing became something very deep for him, and his last wish was to draw something out of his own memory.
“The results have been so good, I think you’ll agree.”
Director Kelso looked distastefully on the little man’s irritatingly earnest _expression_. He wasn’t a little man of course, the head of R&D was actually quite tall, at least physically speaking. That didn’t matter though, the nervous hands, the eager eyes, and above all the fact that her last yearly bonus could’ve bought his entire home town made him a little man to her.
“don’t tell me what to do.”
“No of course not sir, ---- I mean ma’am, I mean.”
Kelso ignored the man’s confusion over gender pronouns and swept past him into the small, one seat auditorium, sinking her long gym sculpted body into the ergonomically perfect chair, reaching unseeingly for the cup of Jamaican blue mountain she knew would be resting on the chair’s arm. There were still stories about the unfortunate secretary who’d dared to offer her an inferior brew, a secretary who was no longer working for the company and, or so rumour had it, no longer in fit health either.
With more profuse apologies, the little man dimmed the lights and Kelso sat, tapping one nail loudly against the side of her coffee cup. She waited impatiently as the usual promises and projections scrolled across the screen, the bright happy corporate backchat, blue sky thinking and outside the box paradigms that were all part of accepted management language. Such things were important of course, naturally the business world was not one for backsliders or mundane thinking, but she was a very busy woman.
Then the true presentation began. First was outlined the plot for a new comic, a new film series, a new line of action figures. Something which frolicked; vivacious and vibrant, ideas flowing as gold and gorgeous as treasure. There was action, excitement, romance, characters that grew and danced and breathed, something which passed beyond mere image, mere word, mere sound and into the very essence of imagination, touching something deep and profound and infinitely wise.
In the light of the glowing screen Kelso could see the little man smiling, a truly lovely smile and she suddenly understood his earnest _expression_ perfectly, she knew that all of this, the charm and the magic and wonder meant one thing, and one thing only.
“It is an original idea.?”
The little man ran quickly to stop the film and bring up the lights.
“that’s the truly amazing thing about our new process.”
Kelso didn’t’ take the proffered bate, asking was a way to show ignorance, instead she simply gave the little man her best stone faced board room glower.
“well you see Ma’am.”
The man paused, once again lost in the swamp of respectful gender appellations. Kelso simply waited.
“The idea for the new franchise is actually just a side line, though of course if you like the franchise suggestion.”
The franchise looks promising, we’ll have to put it to the demographics market research board, but the research and development department is not paid to come up with new franchise ideas is it.”
“No ma’am. I mean Yes Ma’am.”
The little man suddenly straightened, obviously summoning whatever degree of backbone he possessed.
“You will remember Ma’am, how the R&D department was tasked with developing direct brain access? That we could output truly hands free devices?”
“I am well aware what your original goal in R&D was supposed to be. Don’t tell me your department has been developing franchise ideas in your spare time. Creative development is not what your paid for.”
“No ma’am”
The little man looked honestly shocked.
“We are well aware of our responsibilities. Perhaps Ma’am if you would accompany me, it would be easier to show you.”
Maintaining her studded calm Kelso allowed the little man to precede her across the auditorium, down several sparse hallways to a set of solid doors which he opened with a combination lock. As the door swung open, the smell was the first thing that hit Kelso, that nasal accretion of antiseptic masking disease and faeces which she remembered so unpleasantly from her father’s decline. Then of course it had been doubly shocking, seeing the assured and powerful figure of her childhood, the year round Santa clause of presents and parties reduced to a quavering sack of old bones and flabby skin. Here however, it was simply unpleasant.
She allowed her nose to wrinkle slightly, wishing that the ultra-modern suit she wore had space for scented handkerchiefs like those carried by ladies of the past.
Behind the door, an old man lay suffering. Not the vast presence Kelso’s father had been, this old man was thin and wasted, claw like hands, their tanned skin faded to a sickly yellow beneath the room’s clinical fluorescence clutching at a clean hospital blanket. A couple of starched nurses stood to one side of the bed along with all the paraphernalia of sickness, IV stands, bottles of pills and a number of paper bowls whose uses were no part of Kelso’s experience. Her attention was drawn solely to the old man’s shaved skull, where a turban of fine white bandage held several thin black wires in place. The wires snaked over head of the hospital bed to a very different set of clutter, microchip encrusted circuit boards held in place with a forest of flashing crocodile clips, heavy boxlike things that Kelso vaguely recognised as transistors of some sort, even a thing that looked almost like a radar dish standing directly above the head of the bed.
Striding straight passed the nurses as though they were part of the furniture (which of course they were), Kelso gestured to the conglomeration of electronics.
“So this is?”
“His name is Philip Stockton.”
“No not him. This.”
“Oh.”
The little man bobbed a half bow like a page delivering a message.
“this is reading his mind. Well I say reading, its more, ----- mmmmm moving. See these?”
He walked to one corner of the room where a number of printers were steadily clanking away spewing out paper sheets of different sizes into neatly laid out in trays.
Kelso plucked a couple of sheets from the nearest tray. There on the papers was what she’d seen in the presentation film, drawings of creatures beyond imagination against backgrounds bright and blazing. On one page silvered ships flew across the starlet void, whilst dragons raced between them spouting tongues of azure fire. On another, a woman with hair like molten autumn; a glowing torch in one hand, a black unicorn cowering from its terrible light. On yet another, a crumbling city spread like an ash flower, with lovers holding hands through a fence of twisted barbed wire. For a second Kelso could not just see but feel, hear the scrape of draconic claws on star steel hulls, feel her fingers cupped around a glowing fount of magic, for a second she even looked into the eyes of someone she loved, feeling the rusty jags of wire pricking into her skin. For that moment, that one instant something moved inside her, something which had long been buried in floods of zeroes and dollar signs and stock reports.
Then she laid the page down and the moment was gone.
“So this is reproducing his thoughts?”
“not reproducing. That was the one problem with the process. It turns out the brain is right protected. You can’t copy information out of it, just move it somewhere else.”
Kelso glanced at the paper again. The little man, obviously trying to press an advantage hurried to explain.
“we’d worked out how to decode neurological information, but the problem was reproducing it afterwards. Then one of our researchers, well she’d been writing stories in her spare time, and wondered if she could word process what she was doing?”
Kelso frowned, she didn’t approve of people changing specialisation.
“she hooked the neurological reader up to a printer, and tried to write her story that way. The story was good, I mean really good.”
He waved his hands expressively.
“We’ve got a psychologist on staff, and he thinks that directly accessing the brain without need to translate physically into words or drawings means that the impulses are somehow ---- well, purer, Because we’re going directly from the source.”
Kelso’s frown intensified and the little man hurried on.
“Anyway, this researcher, . when she’d finished printing her story through the neuro reader, she couldn’t remember it at all. She read it, and didn’t believe it was her who wrote it, it was like something new to her.”
Kelso’s _expression_ remained carefully neutral, but inside she felt her horizons expanding. From time immemorial the endless war between artist and patron, writer and publisher, painter and exhibitor. She didn’t like creative types. Oh they were necessary of course, after all there were only so many viable franchising or merchandising options in the world, and occasionally the public needed novelty, but the artists themselves. Greedy, feckless types who simply demanded more and more, more royalties, more recognition, more names on credits. And who was it did the real work, who was it made the public aware of the artist’ in the first place? Who was it worked out deals with toy manufacturers and clothing stores and logo painters. And what was worse, then the artists would complain when hard working executives like her, people who knew the market, new about the fickle trends of public taste would suggest changes to appeal to different demographics or social groups, to ultimately help the artist make more money. And yet, they were always the bad guys, always the ones the public hated. Jealousy she knew, her father had told her so, jealousy that the public, especially those long haired libertarian types couldn’t be as successful.
She remembered her father’s increasing frustration with the fake news media, of how he’d been slagged off again by this or that pundit or artist or arm chair critic, someone with no business sense, no idea how hard her father had worked, no idea what it was like to have nothing in the world but a million dollars and a stock port folio. She’d like to see one of them build a company from nothing, making the hard decisions, playing factions against one another, doing the real work, earning the real success rather than writing fairy stories and lies.
But now there would be no need for artists at all. Just a short session with the machine and all the problems would be solved, all of the franchising in responsible corporate hands.
She didn’t let any of her thoughts show on her face, but instead flicked a glance towards the sick old man in the bed.
“who’s he?”
“Our first test subject. Philip Stockton.”
Kelso paused, she knew that name.
“He developed the Thorn raven chronicles.”
Kelso cast her mind back. She remembered something about the thorn raven chronicles, one of those wrangles any large enough company had from time to time.
“there was a court case.”
“Yes Ma’am. We acquired the distribution rights to Thorn raven when we merged with the Eso publishing group. Stockton attempted to claim that he hadn’t actually sold us the film rights or creative control of the franchise, since we acquired the rights after the merger.”
Kelso remembered that particular mess. Stockton, a typical wining artist, had argued their acquisition of the film rights was illegitimate, and had even created quite a stink among Thorn raven fans, trying to develop negative press against the films. It’d been a clever settlement she remembered. Stockton had been offered a lump sum payment, a few hundred thousand or so out of court, then when he’d released the next Thorn wood book the company had counter sued him for using characters from the now independent Thorn wood film franchise. They’d taken back the settlement plus a tidy some besides, as well as insuring that Stockton wouldn’t be picked up by a main line publisher again.
“And of course, since he is neither writing nor drawing this work himself, we own all the distribution rights to this new material?”
The little man nodded eagerly, a puppy with a favourite toy.
“certainly Ma’am.”
“and Stockton himself. How did he come to volunteer to test this project.”
The little man shrugged.
“One of our subsidiaries owns his medical insurer. When we realised we needed someone to test this on, we made this a condition of his continual medical care.”
Kelso walked back towards the bed, ignoring the fetid wreak that hung around the old man. She stared down at the wasted face under the skull cap of bandage, the hollow cheeks sparsely covered with uneven white stubble, the rolling eyes beneath their thinly veined lids. It was satisfying to think beneath that face was a brain, a brain which had now become what it always should’ve been, a true resource for the company to tap.
She glanced over at the clanking printers and allowed herself a smile, a stunning, even smile which showed all of her expensive dental work.
It was as she looked back down at the old man that she noticed something had changed. The eyelids were open. The eyes that gazed up at her were the thin, faded eyes of an old man, but eyes which blazed and burned and seethed with pure hatred. Kelso simply went on smiling, visions of expense accounts dancing in her head.
Her attention was suddenly drawn by an extra loud clank. Turning, she saw one of the printers that hadn’t moved before, this one a huge looming truck of a machine, the type of printer which was used for giant advertisement boards or banners, the kind which printed on rolls of paper four feet across.
Out of the printer, a sheaf of paper began to thrust like a jerkily unrolling carpet. For a second Kelso didn’t realise what it was doing, then she looked on with interest as a picture began to spread itself down across the table and onto the floor.
This was not a dragon, spaceship or dystopic romance, this picture was one single creature. A beast, midnight black from head to toe. It stood upright like a man, but two huge bat wings projected from its shoulders, great pointed air flails their edges sharp even through the picture. Its hands extended into long grasping fingers, each ending in a hooked silver claw, barbed and vicious as a scorpion’s tale. It was the eyes though that made the creature truly frightening. For another second, Kelso felt the thick coating of plush corporate polish sluff from her. For one moment she remembered a scared little girl, night transforming her room from richly open space to a vast dark unknown continent. Glinting five hundred dollar ice skates tossed carelessly by the door becoming a flashing dark spider, the huge television which took up almost all of one wall, now a sable portal, a blackly shining gate to a nightmare world. The wardrobe where her dresses and designer clothes hung half open to reveal a long slip of shadow, the folds of one skirt forming the hem of a hooded snatcher’s terrible black cloak.
Kelso took a step backwards, feeling slightly disturbed. Then again what did it matter, the public loved horror, provided of course it was properly marketed and the horror only occurred to the correct sorts of people, a beast like this could become as iconic a brand as ridley Scott’s alien given time.
But then she noticed that the creature’s huge hard foot was not on the paper, but on the cool white floor, that it was no longer a flat image, but towering and terrible above her, its ever dark skin drinking in the cold fluorescent light, its silver claws gleaming like daggers. Kelso made one last effort, one last attempt to grasp familiar.
“It ---- even produces ----a -----aan animatronic effects?”
But her voice was unsteady, the stutter obvious as a wound. Then the creature took one bounding step towards her, and everything Kelso knew, all the prophet and politics and resentful scheming, was swept away in a raw red torrent of searing, clawing pain. It was not her worst nightmare, any nightmares Kelso had ever had had long since been polished and balanced and hammered away, but it was a worst nightmare, Philip Stockton’s worst nightmare, and that was bad enough.
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