Susan
The Amazing Adventures
of Sara Corel
A novel by Toomey
The Witches' Home
The
trip back to Ed's house includes a stop at Denny's. We need the extra time
to talk, old friends from the Internet that we have become, sight unseen
'till
now. We have other things in common besides Our Favorite Flying
Blond, as it turns out, though we come from different perspectives. We're
both aging vets of a war that made victims of its heroes. There has always
been a great deal of violence and danger in Ed's life and I think he
embraces it. I long ago renounced my warrior upbringing for fear of embracing
it, not trusting my self-control. But we're both Protectors,
instinctively. And impatient with fools.
And we both have visions. What
we write comes from a need to express something wonderful in our dreams.
There is a future for our species that is full of hope and beauty and we
have had an imperfect glimpse of it. We know that there are people alive
on our planet today who will greet another millennium. They will
be genetically enhanced and have powers and abilities that we can't yet
understand. We are even now building our own Susan, the world-computer that
will interpenetrate every facet of our existence. These are some of the
things we talk about, almost feverishly, over the next two days, sitting
up late in Ed's computer cubicle, strolling his neighborhood in the dark,
swinging our dog sticks and walking off too much steak.
Things are busy at Wicca Works,
Ed's home. I know what it's like to work out of your house — clutter and
chaos. Their old but essential air compressor goes to machine Valhalla,
provoking a crisis. The vital adaptor can't be found, provoking a tempest
until Ed finally straightens things out. Just like home.
For those who read this and
don't know, Wicca is the modern way of the witch, which I am not competent
to explain very well. It's a contemporary incarnation of an ancient,
earth-bound natural religion, and a way of life. I was astonished to find
out how many there are, even in (especially in) Texas. Magic is central to
their practice, and symbols and tokens figure prominently, hence the need
for the items Wicca Works manufactures.
Naturally, there are
cats. A big, midnight black one, of course, and one shy one and one
ancient one who owns Ed's office. I love cats, but have a ferocious
allergy to their furriness. They domicile me in a cat-free zone, but it's
a problem. Two days will be my limit, so we make the most of it.
I share Ed's enthusiasm for a
compendium of Aurora Universe Writers' Group fiction on CD-ROM. Everybody
but me has completed works, and I'm working on it . It won't be much of an investment, shared equally. I know of
several places to get a limited run of disks pressed and probably any of
us can assemble the thing. As for distribution, there's a lot of traffic
on our various websites from an established fan base, and then there's
conventions. Could be that some of the ubiquitous Witch booths might carry
a few here or there.
Where are we going with our
characters? That was the main topic, but I don't want to spoil anything,
especially on Ed's behalf. Everything's subject to change without notice,
of course, but our talks made much of the whole transhumanist theme.
Essentially, that's what our characters represent. I decided I had to
expand my plans for my Susan book to accommodate some of the things we
discussed — a planned Interlude Two (Sara goes to Hell
and visits Heaven) and Part Three (Sara fulfills her destiny and changes the
world).
Next: The Mermaid's Tail
© Patrick Hill, 2000 |