First I should warn you that this little essay contains
spoilers.
Per word, I’ve spent more time on “Not the Wrong Planet”
(NtWP) than any other story I’ve ever written.
Time spent includes several prior submissions, many miscellaneous
communications, and countless revisions.
If I recall correctly, before I wrote anything, I just thought about the
concept for a whole week. Next I wrote
out a detailed sketch. Originally I had
in mind a full length short story, or even a novelette, but then I realized not
only how hard this would be, but in reality it might not even be
necessary. The story is strong as is.
Okay. Spoilers.
The idea of time reversal was mind bending. Not things working backward so much, but how
events moving backwards intersected with events simultaneously working
forwards, like for example when Johnten writes his love message on his field
notebook, I depicted his wife’s reaction before she even saw the note from his
perspective. Confusing? Yes. I
made diagrams with the specific happenings of the story, which helped.
Only in a few moments of imagination did I conceive of how
they made a baby. Really, I didn’t even
try too hard. For their wedding, Johnten
would need to arrive after or at the end, or he’d be late. I pictured him walking across a playfield and
a ball leaping from the ground and hitting him in the head as he passed between
it and the thrower. If you thought the
films Inception and Memento were disorienting…
So, my time theory.
Time isn’t real, it’s only a human construct that measures relative
rates of change. It relates to the speed
of light because we can only perceive events by means of light, or of things
slower. OK, then, if so, time is a mere
function of physics. For the story I
pictured a region of space where physics works in reverse. The spins of electrons just spin opposite of
how they do for us. I’m not a physicist,
but this might be called antimatter.
Ordinarily when anti-matter and matter interact, both are destroyed, or
so I believe.
Dark matter. Dark
star. In the story they really aren’t
dark, it’s just that all the light is moving toward the dark matter and dark stars instead of away. If things appear to be luminescent, they do
because light appears to emanate, but
really is moving, from Johnten’s perspective, from a person or object back to the source. Now that I think about it, even people from Earth would be luminous.
I really wanted the events to be unfolding only in “the
present” of the story, but then there wouldn’t be a baby, so I fudged and for
that aspect abandoned my “time is not real” idea. Maybe you noticed. I left the question
(of it being time having a substance or of physics moving backwards) up in the
air. Could be just physics or not. Johnten doesn’t know yet.
A poignant part of the story is that as Johnten lives with his
wife and integrates somehow into this impossible world, their child will grow
younger and younger, eventually be born in reverse and enter the womb, and then
undevelop until for all intents and purposes, she ceases to exist except in his
memory. At some point Johnten’s wife
will not recognize him like he did not recognize her at first. Does he eventually leave Lumen? I don’t know.
Memories.
Once an event has happened in the ongoing present, it creates a memory that did not exist prior to the event. I showed only a couple instances, one being about the lei, but I leave you to work through any others, if you wish. Think of how an event happening in the present stirs up ripples that move ahead in time. Well, in this world, with Johnten and his un-named wife, events stir up ripples that move backward in time, at least for the other observer.
The title.
From the beginning I had the idea that the main character
would be awkward, but in world like Lumen, it might even be an advantage. Maybe Johnten’s awkwardness was just made to
order for this reverse world, that he of all the people from normal time/physics
had the right genes that enabled him to adjust.
Then I wondered exactly what condition he might have. I looked into Asperger’s and found a support
website called Wrong Planet. The
perspective there is that Asperger’s people just happen to be on the wrong
planet. It’s not they that have problems, it's everything else. I like
that. The rest of the story of the title
is obvious: for Johnten, Lumen is the Right Planet.
Lastly, a thought moving through my mind during much of the
early composition of the “Not the Wrong Planet” was how these two lovers,
Johnten and the girl of Lumen, only could have a brief time together before the
universe swept them past each other.
Like two ships. Then I
remembered the line, just one line:
“Ships that pass in the night.”
I looked up the line in context and found, to my utter
amazement, that the line is from a
collection of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “Tales of a
Wayside Inn” and the specific poem of the whole is “The Theologian’s Tale:
Elizabeth”
The words of the immediate context of the line might seem
sad and forlorn, and they are.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in
passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a
silence.
Except
for the even greater context. Because
after a long voyage, the story finally brings the lover John home to his
beloved.
Then John Estaugh came back o'er the sea for the offered gift,
Better than houses and lands, the gift of a woman's
affection.
And on the First-Day that followed, he rose in the Silent
Assembly,
Holding in his strong hand a hand that trembled a little,
Promising to be kind and true and faithful in all things.
Such were the marriage-rites of John and Elizabeth
Estaugh.
And
such were the rites of Johnten and the girl of Lumen.
This
essay above was written for the Penumbra blog, but seeing how they may not want
it, I’m adding a note that I did not intend to include for them.
NtWP had a rough time with a particular flash
fiction publication. The editor said he
loved it, comparing it to a H.P. Lovecraft cosmic horror story, and said he wanted to
publish it. Excellent, I thought. But in the process of copy editing we kept
hitting inexplicable snags. He wanted me
to make changes in the story that made no sense at all. We argued back and forth for a week, and then
I finally understood what the problem was.
He had misinterpreted the story.
In short, he thought it was about a Mirror Earth instead of Reverse
Time. When I explained the true nature
of the story in plain terms, he wrote back saying that unless I changed it to
meet his expectation, he would reject it.
Frankly that made me angry.
I
wrote back saying that, while a couple little things needed fixing to prevent
readers from traipsing down the Mirror Earth path, the story obviously was Reverse
Time and that he hadn’t given the story a fair chance to be itself. I asked him if he would give it to another
editor for a fresh beginning. He said it was a gutsy request, but agreed and
the new editor and I polished the story to his satisfaction and it went into
Hold status. However, just at that time
the publication adopted a theme approach and NtWP didn’t fit any of their
upcoming themes, so that Hold dragged on and on for months. Since we hadn’t signed a contract, I
submitted it to Penumbra in a
slightly longer than flash form. Purist
flash fiction publications set a firm limit of 1000 words. NtWP is about
1080. Like "Genius", which should come out soon at Stupefying Stories, NtWP really needed those
additional words.
Interestingly,
before they had given me an acceptance, I had explored withdrawing it from Penumbra and submitting it to the
Writers of the Future Contest instead.
Good thing I didn’t.
But
back to the publication with which I had the difficulty. For fun, I did that rewrite, making NtWP into a Mirror Earth story. I call it A Cosmic Mirror, and once Penumbra’s
exclusive rights expire, I might post it here or send it on to that
publication. It really does contain a
cool idea.
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