Day 292 Writing Short Stories

Conscious

He felt like Dr. Frankenstein from Mary Shelley’s book. The android lay on his workbench, ready to be turned on. It was a thing of beauty, unlike the monster from the book. The android’s skin was flawless. She looked like a sleeping beauty rather than a corpse to be animated by electricity.

He ran the last diagnostic. Everything was as it should be. Module 9.8 had all the previous issues fixed; the new program should make it conscious, unlike the 8.0, which used a pattern recognition program. The android would have a flexible mind. It would learn everything like a baby would in an adult woman’s body. A body that wouldn’t age or die, having a mind that had no restrictions as a human mind did.

He pushed a needle into the android’s skull, jump-starting the activation, giving the last surge needed to wake the android.

Diary

She was snuggled under the stairs, having found her mother’s diary. She had been reading it for a better part of an hour already. When she had been rummaging through her mother’s clothes, she hadn’t planned to read her diary, but it had dropped open at her feet, and suddenly she was hooked by the first words.

The woman in the diary was not her mother. She was ferocious. She was bold. She was magical. There were so many names that she hadn’t heard her mother mention. There were parties. There were late nights at the lake, now host their family nights. There was heartache, and there were so many fights with her parents.

Now her mother was all about rules. She couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to this woman in the diary.

She crawled out from under the stairs and tiptoed into the kitchen. Her mother was making her famous batch of cookies. Her cheeks were colored with flour. She had that sparkle in her eyes, which she always had when she was in the kitchen. Her eyes seemed to spell that she was creating universes with her spatula.

Her mother smiled at her. She hid the diary behind her back.

Her mother lifted her hand and motioned her to join in the cookie-making. Her mother turned the music to its fullest and wiggled her hips.

She smiled at her mother. The last days had been awful. They had been fighting constantly, yet now she found herself looking at her mother with new eyes. She made her hips move to the rhythm of the song, and a warm smile spread on her mother’s lips. She pushed the diary into the slot under the middle islet and took the spatula from her mother.

Owl

The little creature hooted, filling the aviary with its screeches for food. He let the owl hop from his hand to his shoulder, where it liked to snuggle against his cheek. This time, the owl gave him a little nipple to remind him it was time to get a reward for its good behavior.

He handed a baby mouse to the owl, and with a blink, it was gone. The owl relaxed on his shoulder. He walked to his desk and wrote his letter. The owl would deliver it to his neighbor.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

I slept only four hours last night. I was sure that nothing would come out of my morning, but somehow I managed to write both my book and the prompts, get my exercises done, and even moderate Amazon ads. Last night was the first-ever Pro Climbing League. I stayed up late watching the competition. It’s wonderful to see what human bodies can do. It was an exciting concept, thrilling to watch, but I’m not sure what to think. One mistake is costly. Not a very forgiving concept. But let’s see if it takes off and attracts professional climbers.

I especially liked Diary prompt today. It feels like forgiveness, like understanding. It has nothing to do with my mother and how she is and was, yet it reminded me of my mother and our relationship. When I opened my mind, I could better accept her without my demands. It’s one thing to know someone’s past, behavior, and present than to accept it as it is, without resentment or a wish to alter anything. It makes things so much easier. It’s the same with all the other relationships. Once the judgment is gone, once you view the situation from their perspective, you notice that there’s a lot more compassion, a lot more dialogue. I don’t mean you have to approve of and like everything they do, but accepting releases a lot more tension from the relationship than I ever could have noticed before.

Anyway, now I’m off to prep my lunch.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have an insightful day!

P.S. I would love to finish the Android story and tune it to where I want it to go. Make it a modern Frankenstein. Such a story would have high potential to discuss human limits, nature versus nurture, alienation, and so on.