milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

You're probably wondering where I've been. The answer is pretty simple, though.

Reading.

Yeah, nothing as dramatic as you were probably thinking. I haven't been brooding on my situation or planning some elaborate escape plot or anything. The way I figure it, nothing's happening at home and this place isn't going to let me out 'till it feels like it, so I'm going to enjoy the vacation while it lasts.

Besides, I'm behind on my Shadow pulps. How Grant puts them out so fast is a mystery to me, but if I'm here much longer I might see if there's an available typewriter and give my own writing a go as well. It's not like there isn't enough inspiration for stories here.

If you feel like chatting, feel free to stop by. I'm reading through one of my favorite Doc Savage stories, but I've read it before so a little conversation wouldn't do me wrong.

[ooc: mun is heading home from work. much love to all and I'll be back in an hour or so]

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I shrug and tap the top of my current story of choice.

"Catching up on my reading. Grant writes them faster than I can read them most days, so I figured I'd take the opportunity while I was here to relax a bit. You?"

"Just got back from a trip to a New York that wasn't mine," Ray says. "Spent a good month there just to make sure everything was in order before I left. My buddy Pete back in my own New York thinks I should write up the stuff that happens to me on these involuntary jaunts and sell it to Weird Tales, since they'll never be able to find out that it's not actually fiction anyway."

I grin.

"I wish you good luck with it. I've been trying to get into fiction since I left the Army. No luck yet, though. Keep getting stuck."

I liked to call myself a writer, because I'd read somewhere that anyone who put pen to paper could call themselves as such. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to put in the effort; though no one would ever see me struggling in front of the typewriter, I did it often enough that it was almost as draining as work.

"Thanks," Ray says. "I considered the prospect briefly in college, but that only lasted until I got my grades in engineering and advanced calculus back up to snuff. I know it's harder than it looks. At least I don't have to worry about making a living by it if I try it."

"I was a journalist up in New York for a bit. Did whatever they needed me for, sort of freelance, but I got by. It's not so bad, but I always wanted to do this sort of thing."

I tap the magazine again.

"Hasn't worked so far, though."

Ray nods. "Good luck with trying," he says. "And if you ever get a really good literary agent that you think might survive until, oh, 2004 or so, let me know. Even an old agent would be better than nothing."

I laugh and nod.

"He'd probably have to be someone like me, but I'll look into it."

"I've got no problem with that," Ray says. "The New York City I just left currently has a practicing CPA who's a zombie. Got reanimated about three minutes after his neck was broken, so he's still as whiz-bang with math as he was when he was alive. Gray, and his head tends to loll if he's not paying attention, but he's a hell of an accountant. After that?" Ray shrugs. "No problem at all."

I blink.

"Zombie?"

I thought that sort of thing was only the pulps, but I guess if folks like me are running around, I should get used to finding out about some truth that's stranger than fiction.

"Well, yeah. Not in the classical sense of a corpse resurrected by necromantic Voudoun rituals and poisons, but he hasn't got a pulse and he isn't a vampire, and the only reason he's still moving around is because a class nine summoned supernatural entity manifested and unleashed all of New York City's dead on the world of the living. For lack of a better vocabulary term, he's calling himself a zombie. It's not a category that U. S. law is currently equipped to handle so there's probably gonna be a few court cases until his status is cleared up, but he seems happy with it." Ray shrugs. "It's not all that often that I run into Earths that're stranger than my native New York, but this was one of them."

"New York serves up weird pretty well." I agree with him.

"Don't I know it," Ray says fervently. "I kind of feel sorry for people from nice ordinary places like Boston or Paris sometimes. They go through their lives thinking everything is normal and perfectly ordinary, and then something unexplainable pops up right in front of them and they're just not equipped to deal with it..."

Not that Ray is exactly a paragon of judging what's normal and what's not, but hey.

I grin.

"From Cincinnati, if you don't remember. I'm just well traveled."

"True," Ray says. "And the people of Boston have all those college students to contend with. Still, I think you take my point."

I nod, still grinning.

"Yeah. Then again, the only thing a college student is afraid of is a deadline."

True of a lot of journalists too.

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