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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Macbeth" data-source="post: 1858502" data-attributes="member: 11259">Round 2, Match 1: Orchid Blossom vs. MacbethWriter's BlockBy Sage LaTorraI'm drawing a blank.The pictures went up at 12:52 A.M. My time. That's the downside of living in Cape Town. Everything important happens somewhere else, at odd hours of the night in South Africa. I'll bet my competitor has a story already written by now. I always make myself wait at least 24 hours from the pictures getting posted to start writing. It lets me get all the bad ideas out. Lets me get all the impulsive, stupid ideas out. This time I didn't even have any bad ideas. I don't just have writer's block, I have a writer's road block manned by police wearing bullet-proof vests who blow out my tires every time I make a break for an idea.I'm getting desperate. I keep telling myself it's just a story, just some stupid competition, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't find an original idea anywhere in my head. I keep telling myself sleep will help, but I still can't get to sleep. The pictures have now been posted for exactly 24 hours, and I have no ideas, and no sleep.“Turn the light off honey, you've got to go to work tomorrow.” Helen's voice comes from the bedroom with the slurred tones that tell me she's already sleep. She doesn't know how hard this is.“That computer screen is going to mutate your eyes Ted, come to bed.”“In a minute honey.” I hope she falls asleep again so I can go back to writing, or not writing, as the case may be.The pictures stare out of the screen at me. Hands. Stones. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17259" target="_blank">A river that reminds me of the forests inland from Cape Town.</a> A monkey in a kimono with a cream pie. What the hell am I going to be able to do with these?I make myself throw out an idea: it's a story of a shaman who uses the stones to summon the monkey spirit, and it all happens at the African river. The bad news is, that's the best idea I've had yet. It's not even a story. No conflict.I push the idea back out of my head, and pray to my DSL connection, asking it to bring me an idea. A blessing of ones and zeros. Some little web page that will give me an idea. I google random things, trying to find something that will give me a theme, a story, anything. Instead I find pictures of strange fetishes and pages giving away 'enhancement' pills.Finally google brings me results, a story. Only problem is, it's somebody else's story, and its ten times better then I could ever write. Nothing like a reaffirmation of how much your ideas suck to give you confidence.So... it's a story of a monkey movie start who uses a movie prop hand to take revenge on the man who polluted his river.That's not much better. The plot is good, but it doesn't fit the pictures. So much for that.I've got to move on. I've got to find an idea. The picture of a river still reminds me of someplace I've been.That's it! I'll go to the river, the real one that is. The picture is so close to it, it must be able to give me ideas. I send an email to my boss, claiming that I have the flu. Work's taken care of, now I just have to go for a hike. It will have to give me ideas.My excuse worked. There's advantages to being one of the few college graduate programmers in Cape Town. Your boss is a little lenient when you ask for time off.I decided to take Pooch with me. Just as a little security. Pooch will at least help scare away the snakes and such. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17260" target="_blank">He nips at my hand as I close him into the back of the jeep.</a>The river is exactly as I remember it. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17259" target="_blank">Close enough to the picture to pass. It might even be the same river, for all I know.</a>I sit down on the bank, tie Pooch's leash to a tree, and try to have an idea.Maybe my story is about a monkey out for revenge on the corporation that controls the rain, to save the river from drying up. And he gets stone sphere weapons from the Earth mother as weapons.Good story, bad monkey. That one would get laughed off the boards. I like the idea, but not with these pictures.Another bad idea. At least the heat of the sun is helping put me to sleep. Sleep has to help, maybe I'll get an idea in a dream.This has to be the strangest dream I've ever had. It's not even my dream. I can see other people's memory. I don't know what the hell is going on, but this isn't my dream. This is somebody else's memory. Or everybody else's memory. It's like floating through an odd mixture of a pop-culture museum and a memory of my own life. The scene jumps from common memories, things everyone experiences, to mass media that is recognizable to everyone. I jump from vague memories of first love and mothers to Coke logos and movie catchphrases.I wake up with everybody else's ideas. I struggle to hang onto them, to hold onto the ideas, but before I can write them down, they fade. All I know is I have to go back. I have to have that dream again. That was my inspiration. I know my story is in there.When I get home I put Pooch in the back yard and start researching. Helen won't be home for a few hours yet, and I have time to look into this and leave again before she can get home.A little bit of creative Googling brings in results. Shared memory. Archetypes. Jung.The idea goes something like this: if enough monkeys learn something, they all know it. That's the short version.The longer version goes something like this: there's been some studies, most of them small, nothing conclusive, but they all point to the idea that if enough monkeys learn something: Some tool, some danger to avoid, whatever, they all know it. Geographically removed populations will all seem to know whatever enough learn. The monkey with the cream pie from my picture could pick up how to use a stick as a tool if enough of his little monkey buddies learned it. And the same thing applies to humans.Anything that enough of us experience, we all know. Jealousy, first love, even abstract concepts like the notion of a hero, or the idea of a greater meaning to life. It all enters into the racial memory. And it goes further. When enough people internalize a slogan or an image or a sound, we all know something of it on some level. Maybe not consciously, but we all get a feel for what enough of us know.I think that's what I taped into. Jung's Archetypes given form. It must have been something about the river, something about that place. I know I can get an idea now, I just have to figure out how to access it while I'm awake. How to connect to it.That's it! Connect to it. I don't know how, but I think I can connect my computer to it. I can dial into the racial memory like the internet.I run around gathering things that seem like they might help. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17282" target="_blank">Cables, shielding, wire cutters, gloves, scissors, and the one strongest archetype I can still remember: the human form. I sketch out half a man on some old paper, and throw it into my briefcase along with the other stuff. With all of it together, it looks like some mixture of a medical kit and a cable guy's repair kit.</a> Since I don't know what I'll even need, I grab a tarp and my laptop, just in case. I don't know how exactly I'm going to do it, but I know I'm going to connect to it.With my briefcase in hand I rush out, grab Pooch, and drive off again.The river looks even more like the picture then before. I drag Pooch along as I try to find the same spot. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17259" target="_blank">When we finally come to what is, as best I can tell, the same place, I tie Pooch to the same tree and set to work. Villagers glide by in their boats, returning home on the river from the day's hunt.</a>The only problem is, I have no idea how to do this. But maybe someone else does.I lie down in the same spot, with the briefcase open at my side, and Pooch standing guard. I close my eyes,a nd it's the same dream.This time I try to focus. I try to find specific knowledge. Theoretically, anything anyone knows could be here, but the fewer people know it, the harder it would be to find.The images stream by. People's memories, the memories left by groups, history, ideals,a ll of it. And then I wake up.And it's done.It must have been something in the racial memory. Something someone else knew. I don't even remember moving, but all the conduits, the cable, all of it is in place, buried in the ground, running to who knows where, with a nice RJ-45 jack on the end that's out of the ground.It's late now. I want to make sure it works, to give it time to work, so I leave my laptop plugged into it on battery save mode. I conceal the interface and my laptop with a tarp to keep it all try, and start to leave. Helen will be wondering where I am. I untie Pooch and head home.I still don't have a story. My competition posted about how she was looking forward to a tough round. She thought our stories might be even. At this point, she's dead wrong. I know she knows how to write. I've seen what she can do without tapping into some kind of group memory. I know she would beat me, but now I have a secret weapon. Everybody's memory is on my side.I can't wait to go back tomorrow. To access everybody else's imagination to fuel my own. Somebody has an idea that I can use. 24 hours to go.I had to take the long way back to the river. The Forest Service had blocked off the parking area, so I had to go over the bridge and move in from the other side. I hope I can find some villagers to take me across the water. I've seen them go by often enough, I should be able to find a boat to take me across. As I approach the river, the scene is an <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17259" target="_blank">exact match of the picture. It takes me a minute to realize why, but then it hits me: right where I set up my connection, there's a glow. I don't know what it is, but its right where I made my connection. I see villagers coasting by one the river, and get a ride.</a> They're happy to give me a ride, but the won't take me directly across. I have to go to their village, which is no problem, it should be close enough to my connection.When I reach the village, it's worse then I could have imagined. The village is about half a mile from my connection, and the dome ends just at the the first hut. I ask the villagers what happened, but none of them give me a straight answer. They all point me to the hut at the edge of the dome, and telling me “Meme keeper is there.” I don't know what the meme keeper is, but I'm not sure I want to find out.With nothing better to do, I go to the hut, to meet the Meme Keeper. It's not as bad as I thought. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17258" target="_blank">The glow from the dome shows through the badly jointed wood and back lights the man who I can only guess is the Meme Keeper. Other people, maybe his family, huddle in the back of the hut.</a> They're afraid of something. With a regal voice I hadn't expected, he begins to speak.“So, you know something of this?”Straight to the point, isn't he?“What do you mean by 'this'?”“You know, the Meme, the racial memory. You entered it didn't you?”I have a feeling he already knows, so I might as well admit it. It's not like I did anything wrong (or did I?). “Yes. In a dream. It just happened.”“And after that?”“I wanted to access it again. So I created I connection I think my computer can use.”“Damn.” He says the word like he wants to say something else in it's place, but he wants me to understand what he's saying. “Here, let me show you something.” He starts to walk outside, and I follow him, with Pooch at my side.“You see this?” He takes a pendant of some sort out of his pocket and hands it to me. Its not much to look at, just a dime set in some kind of square, with a little ornamentation around it. I hand it back to him. “My great grandfather was given this by colonists as payment for more land then they could ever use.” His face contorts with displeasure at the mention of colonists. “Now watch.”He walks over to the dome around my connection, and swings the dime through it, holding onto the chain so it swings back out again. “Look again.” he says as he hands it back to me.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17261" target="_blank">It's blank. The face still sits there, but all the identity. The mint year. The mint place letter. The words. All that's left is the face.</a>”This is what you've done. You opened the Meme. You you brought it into a physical form.”“You mean my computer is the Meme now?”“Not really. Your computer gives it form. And lets it into the world. You see, only thoughts are supposed to enter the Meme, only thoughts should be absorbed by it. But now it's open, now it's eating the world. Everything is becoming memory. This coin: it's identity has been absorbed, it's now only in the Meme. And the same thing is going to happen to all of us. The Meme is meant to absorb everything it touches, all the thoughts that enter it. But now that it's here, it's eating everything. Absorbing the meaning, leaving the physical forms.”“Crap”“That's right.”In the shock of the moment, I let go of Pooch's leash, and he runs in to dome. While I stand dumbfounded, The Meme Keeper steps on Pooch's leash before it all goes into the dome. He pulls the leash back out, and the dog that comes out isn't Pooch.I kneel in front of the dog, and try to find some glimmer of recognition in it's eyes. “Pooch?”No response.“Sit.”Nothing.“Stay”No.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17260" target="_blank">This isn't my dog. He sits there with a blank look, a vacancy that I've never seen before. My dog is gone.</a>The Keeper speaks. “Now do you see? He is nothing now, but all his memories are part of the Meme now.”This is my fault. “So, how do we stop it?” This is all my fault, so I should be the one who stops it.“You disconnect the Meme, return it back to being something insubstantial. But once you are inside, your memories are gone. There will be none of you left to remember what you were doing.”“How long will I remain me? How long would I have if I went in?”“ In don't know. Your dog was absorbed in a few seconds, but he is simple. You may stand a chance, but not for long. I can't let you in.”“Too late.”Before the Meme Keeper can keep me out, I run into the dome.As I run back to the connection, I think about my wife. I try to hang onto her name. I try to think about the story I could write if I make it out. I try to find a way to be me.I make it to the connection in a matter of minutes, and all I am is a force to destroy what I have made. I don't remember my name. I don't remember my life, all I know is why I'm here.The wire pulls out of the laptop easily.And now I'm nothing. My body is nothing but a shell. All I had left was the urge to end the connection, and now even that is gone. This story is all remains of my life. The last trace of the Meme, the last trace of me, left on the computer. If you find this, please post it for me. I need people to know I had a story, that I tried to find an idea, that I was going to write.Found on a Laptop in the middle of the River Basin Disturbance, November 16th, 2004. Posted here by the deceased's request</blockquote>

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