The Confabulator Cafe

Author: nsiemers

  • Tourtime Terms and Conditions, Page 6

    will not be held liable for any incidents, physical or otherwise, which arises or results due to one or more of the following temporal anomalies: inserting yourself into earlier or later branches of your family genealogy; transporting, removing or otherwise redistributing such items defined as illegal contraband in Section III.B.2.ii; directly or indirectly acting as, or claiming to be, the past or future savior of one or more indigenous peoples; deliberately affecting one or more forces of nature (including but not limited to: slight gusts of wind, butterflies, or small acts of kindness) with the intent to influence, change, or otherwise alter the future. This list is not intended to be all-inclusive, and is subject to change.

    Final determination of qualifying temporal anomaly events is determined by trained temporal anomaly adjudicators. Written appeals may be sent to the Office of Temporal Research. Applications will be reviewed in the order they are received, and may take up to one to three business decades for processing. All verdicts will be delivered no more than five minutes after submission, and are considered absolute.

    Section IV. Package Options and Limitations

    A. Tourist Destination Packages

    With the partnership from Activision, we are proud to announce that certain historical events previously deemed to crowded for additional spectatorship have been reauthorized for personal travel. By utilizing recent developments in incorporeal and invisibility technology, an unlimited number of people are able to coexist inside of the same spacetime coordinates, undetectable to local spacetime natives. The Activision Incorporeal Cloaking Unisuit (ICU) Technology is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Usage of the ICU for purposes other than spectation the intended event will be punished to the full extent of the law. Package pricing and availability may vary on location, and is subject to change. Please see your local Tourtime Agency for a full list of current destination packages.

    1. The National Period Act of 2731 enabled Congress to declare periods of time, designated to be tourist destinations, locations of interest, or otherwise determined to be of significant importance, to be Federally protected in order to maintain the integrity of existence. As such, Tourtime is legally required to restrict the number of travelers per year to the following periods, designated as high traffic periods:

    • The Pepsi Cola World War II National Period (Europe, select parts of North America and Africa)
    • The General Motor Renaissance National Period (Europe only)
    • The IBM Prehistoric National Period (select parts of Pangaea)

    This is not an all-inclusive list of all federally protected national periods, but does represent a comprehensive list of all such national periods which Tourtime is authorized to service. There can be no exceptions made for travel to any unlisted national period, which includes travel for the purpose of familial genealogy tourism, as defined in Section VI.A.3. Any customer found to

  • Plausible Coincidences

    It wasn’t surprising that I could hear Ben’s phone echoing throughout the bar.  It was a Tuesday night, and there were only other two groups of people in the room.  It wasn’t surprising that the ringtone was some sort of digital screeching sound, either.  Ben’s idea of a good ringtone usually involved whatever stupid joke he had recently found on the Internet.  No, the surprising part was the fact that it was ringing at all.  The battery had died half an hour ago, in the middle of one of Ben’s Snapchat filter selfie binges.

    “Are you… going to answer that?” I asked, staring at the phone with one eyebrow raised.

    “No point,” Ben said.  He grabbed his mug in both hands.  “I mean, you can answer it if you want,” he added, “but I already know what it’s going to say.  Lemme finish my beer, and then we can go.  I’m gonna need your help with a few errands.”

    I cautiously picked up Ben’s phone.  I didn’t even have to answer the call—it picked up once I held the phone next to my ear.  “We need you again,” said the raspy voice.  There was a loud click, and then nothing.  I paused, examining the phone closely.  There was no caller ID, no incoming number… just a black, dead screen.

    “Dude, what is going on?”

    Ben shook his head.  “Don’t worry about it.  Just… we need to go to WalMart.  I need to buy a 4-pack of light bulbs.  The really bright, high wattage kind.”

    I folded my arms, and stared at him.

    “Okay… look, just… I need to do this.  So either you drive me there, or I walk home and try and drive over there myself.  So if you don’t want me to drive drunk, then let’s go.”  He slammed down his beer mug for emphasis.  Whatever was going on, I was going to have a better chance of getting an explanation if I went along with his plans.  I shrugged, and put on my coat.  It wasn’t like I had anything better to do tonight.

    (more…)

  • Last Rites

    The sound of the creaking study door jolted him back to reality.  He looked up to see his wife standing next to him, carrying his dinner on a tray.  A quick glance outside confirmed his fears—the sun had already set.  He’d gotten distracted and missed breakfast.  Again.

    “Do you think it will work?” she asked, setting the bottle down onto the desk next to him.  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, of course, but…”

    “No, it’s fine, I understand.  It’s hard to believe that something like this would exist, I get it.  I don’t blame you for being skeptical.  But every other spell I’ve found in that manuscript has worked.  So it’s got to work.  It just… it has to, you know?”

    She smiled, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.  “I’m just worried about you.  Ever since… well, you know… you’ve been so depressed.  I can’t blame you.  Lord only knows how I’d do if I were suddenly transformed like that.  But as much as I love seeing you happy like this, I just worry that it’s for the wrong reason, you know?  Two weeks after the attack, and you just happen to find something that will reverse all your troubles?  Dearest, it just sounds too good to be true.  You’ve spent so much time and effort into translating that grimoire, but what if it’s just snake oil?  What happens then?”

    He reached up, wrapped his fingers around hers, and smiled.  “Well… I guess if that happened, I’d just… try and figure out what went wrong, and do whatever I can to fix it.  I’m sure it’s possible.  Yeah, okay, no one around here thinks it’s possible, but… that… that doesn’t mean anything!”  He spun around on his work stool, and stared into her eyes.  “This is going to work.  I know it.  If I had stopped working just because I didn’t think something was possible…”

    He paused.  “Is that a new blouse?  It looks nice.  I like the collar.”  She clutched her neck, her face growing pale, but he was too distracted to notice. (more…)

  • The Sands of Time

    The sunlight streams in through the open window, waking me up three minutes before the alarm went off.  I look over at my sleeping husband, and can’t help but to bask in the warmth of the happy feeling residing in my chest.  We’ve been married for little over a month, but waking up next to him has yet to get old.  Part of me hopes that it never will.  The alarm goes off, causing Clark’s arm to fly out and slam into the offending clock radio until the beeping ends.  “No, dear heart, it’s time to get up,” I say, shaking his shoulder.  Another beautiful Thursday morning.

    Once I am sure that he is awake, I slip off into the bathroom.  Partially because I take longer, but mostly because Clark simply isn’t a morning person.  It will be at least fifteen minutes before he is dressed, and another twenty minutes before he needs anything in here.  I beat him to the kitchen, as always, and start a fresh pot of coffee.  I can always guess how bad the night before had been based on how much of the paper I can read before he joins me in the kitchen.  It must have been pretty bad—I make it through all of the local and world news, and half of the sports.

    “New case?” I ask, offering him a mug.

    “Lord, yes,” he replies, with a weary nod.  He pours a dry bowl of cereal, and pulls the comics page out of the paper.  “Three different missing person cases.  One of the servers in the industrial district went down, and it was utter chaos.  Honestly, we’re lucky to only have three cases.”

    “Why would a server crash create a missing person situation?” I ask. (more…)

  • Working For A Living

    Ethan glanced over to one of the master inbox piles, but it was still empty.  “I can’t believe business is so slow right now,” he said, tapping his pen against his desk in frustration.

    “Well, but isn’t that a good thing?” Benny asked.  “I mean, if we’re not processing any new clients, it means no one is dying… so… if we’re slow, it means people are still alive.”

    Morris rolled his eyes.  “No, Benny, it’s not a good thing.  It means we’re just going to get swamped later.  All people die.  It’s inevitable.  You should know,” he added, as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his desk drawer.

    “Hey, low blow!” Ethan said, stepping between his two cubicle mates.  “C’mon, Morris, the guy’s only been here for, like, a week.  Surely it took you some time to adjust to being dead?” (more…)

  • The Lackluster Finish

    I was really hoping to be able to make a sizeable dent in the bonus round this year.  That’s what I call any amount of words over 50,000.  I’ve never been able to write more than a few hundred words in the bonus round, which is a bit disappointing to me.  Heck, I even looked at a calendar, and picked my “from the trenches” day specifically so I could nab the 30th and talk about the bonus round.

    Come the end of the month, and it turns out I had to “cheat” and go rebel just to get anywhere close to finishing the 50k, let alone writing inside of the bonus round.

    Life.  What can you do?

    Maybe next year.

  • NaNo Rebellion

    I didn’t mean to end up as a rebel this year.  It just kinda… happened.  My first novel concept completely fell through, none of my backup ideas had enough substance to become a novel, and even my idea to write a mini-anthology of related short stories fell through.  I had to do something.

    So I ended up going back to one of my old NaNo projects.  The 2013 one, specifically.  Not a great year for my health, but it was my first year as ML, and the theme was that fantastic 8-bit setup.  I digress.  I’ve long felt it’s my most salvageable out of all of my manuscripts, and I’ve always meant to come back to it.  With nothing else to lose… here I am.

    (more…)

  • And Life Goes On

    This has not been a good month for me.  Which is very frustrating, because normally this is my favorite time of year.  I want to start over, but I can’t.  Neither life nor the universe work that way.  I’m going to have to wait an entire year to get another shot at it.  It’s frustrating, to say the least.

    The original concept for my novel involved my MC being forced to learn about the world of magic upon the sudden death/murder(?) of his uncle.  This lasted for about 18 hours.  That night, I received news that my aunt had passed away suddenly.  She went from flu-like symptoms, to hospitalization, to terminal, all within the span of about 48 hours.  It’s very hard to write a novel with death as a major plot point when you suddenly find yourself in a similar situation.

    It had been over 15 years since the last time a member of my immediate family passed away.  I knew it was going to happen eventually, of course, but… well, none of us expected Death to skip over my remaining grandparent or my constantly frail uncle when it did.  Life is funny that way, I suppose.  And while I did not lose a grandma, or a mother, or a wife, as did others in the family… well, it doesn’t really hurt any less.  I have to remind myself of that.

    Factor in my already precarious mental health, an abnormal sleep schedule, and the myriad physical illnesses from which I have not been able to fully recover, and… well, it seems the common theme of these past few weeks has been dropping the ball.  Granted, I am undoubtedly the harshest critic of myself right now– I’ve spent the past few weeks either vaguebooking or outright denying what has happened, and you all have still been nothing but supportive.  However, no acts of kindness or displays of empathy can change the undeniable fact that the ball is on the ground.  The word count ball, the social activity ball, the responsible adult ball, the simple chores ball, and countless others… dropped or falling.

    I am not okay.  But… I will be.  With luck, sometime within the next two weeks.  But if not… well, so be it.

    Life goes on.

    So will I.

  • Something Something NaNo Season

    It never fails.  No matter how much I try to prepare for my NaNo novel, I always find myself making up a ton of stuff at the last minute.  I always forget something.  Yesterday was no exception.

    Now, part of the problem is that I’m a pantser for life.  If I start outlining my novel, it loses all of its magic and mystery, causing me to lose all interest in writing it.  So it’s not like I’m surprised by my need to make stuff up as I go.  But I like to at least start with an opening scene in mind, and maybe a few followup scenes to serve as guideposts on this crazy journey.

    And you’d think that would have been simple, given that the introduction to this novel is based on a short story I wrote ages ago.  The uncle of the main character dies, making him the last male heir in the family, and all of the ancient responsibilities fall to him– and also the ownership of the family familiar.  The catch is that after his father’s death, his mother swore to hide the existence of magic from her children.  But none of the main character’s cousins are old enough and/or male enough, so… the main character will have to learn about magic whether she likes it or not.  Shenanigans ensue.

    Did you notice the  problem with the above opening summary?  If you noticed that I kept referring to all of my characters by using unwieldy noun phrases and relationship titles instead of names, you figured out the problem I didn’t realize I had until… ohh, 11:30 pm on October 31st.

    It’s all good now, though.  Most of the important characters have names, and… despite some bad news on the extended family front, I should be ready to rock and roll!

  • The Sleeping Strategy

    “Well, the sign confirms it,” Bolero said, walking back over to where Nerek was standing. “It’s the old puzzle where one door is certain death, and one door is the treasure. One guard only lies, and one guard only tells the truth. You only get one question.”

    Nerek let out a deep sigh. When he’d accepted the quest to save the fair maiden from eternal slumber, he hadn’t expected it to be so complicated. Find the highest tower, kiss her, and go home. No one mentioned how ruddy difficult it would be to find the place, however. And instead of the plant barrier he’d been promised, he’d been forced to smash open several locked doors like a common thug, slay a fierce dragon without proper equipment… and now this. “Ugh. You’re a bard. Do you remember how this one goes?”

    “You hired me to record your adventures for posterity,” Bolero said, shaking his head. “I can’t get involved. Besides, I don’t remember quite how it goes. Something about asking one what the other would say?”

    “Yeah, that’s all I remember, too,” Nerek admitted, placing his hand on his chin. The two guards stared intently at him, making him feel ill at ease. “You know, it was bad enough that a full-sized adult dragon was able to live here for countless years… how in the heck are these two still alive? What do they eat? When do they sleep?”

    Bolero shrugged. “It’s magic.”

    (more…)