The Machine of Dreams, Circa 1999

This is it, folks. This is the story that made me a writer. It began as an innocuous English project in tenth grade of high school. I loved the hell out of writing it, and it even won a creative writing award. It holds up better than I expected, and it wasn’t complete torture reading it again for the first time in about seven or eight years. I present to you the Machine of Dreams. And yes, I’m embarrassed by the jokes I stole from other media. I was young. It happens.

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Meet Jim. Jim is a moron. He is also the main character of this story; therefore, you’ll have to deal with him. Enjoy. You see, the problem with Jim lies in his complete lack of common sense when it comes to, well, everything. He dropped out of high school and has a very rich daddy that gives him a cushy job at his business, DaddyCorp. Jim is happy with his job. He is regional monitor of sanitation. This, of course, means he is a janitor, but Daddy does not want him to know this fact; the title is meant to have big, important sounding words to make Jim content. It works. He lumbers around the offices all day with his mop and bucket, looking in amazement at all of the flickering fluorescent lights. Flashing lights amuse Jim, but so do food processors; therefore, that isn’t saying much.

DaddyCorp itself has many products. So many that they are impossible to count. You see, they specialize in making everything you’ve ever desired. You call them, place an order with their phone answering specialists, better known as secretaries, and no matter how insane or implausible that wish it, it will arrive at your door within two weeks or your money will be reimbursed. For example, if you want a vintage German World War 1 helmet filled with shaving cream and signed by Abe “The Fish” Vigoda, they can have it whipped right up. If you want a Steve Vai guitar pick dipped in gold and used to kill an old lady, it can be made, lickety-split. In fact, that little item was last year’s best seller. It was a slow year.

By now, you’re probably wondering how this company could possibly create these wondrous requests. It’s quite simple, actually. DaddyCorp has created a special Machine of Dreams (Patent number 00123004) that has a way of conjuring up anything you would ever want. Jim’s daddy is the inventor and sole owner of the only Machine of Dreams ever made, for more than one of such a powerful machine operating at a time would surely rip apart the space time continuum and destroy the world as we know it in exactly 5.3467782291155 seconds. However, there is no danger in this ever happening, for everyone but a moron knows the power of that machine. It’s just common sense.

Now, a problem presents itself (as most problems do around this time of a story). DaddyCorp hits a wall, a very large wall with spikes protruding from it. This is quite a wall. In fact, this particular wall has won Most Valuable Metaphorical Wall for three straight years in “Metaphorical Walls Weekly,” but I digress. Back to the problem. Daddy is dead. It is quite a grisly death, involving a rabid hamster, a tube of super glue, and a wet suit with the bottom cut out. I’ll leave the rest up to you. You may now wonder who did this dastardly deed. Well, Louie the Skunk is the official killer, but he is paid off by another. By whom, you ask? None other than Jim himself. Why would Jim kill his own daddy? Is it for greed? For fame? For the really comfy leather chair that spins in Daddy’s office? Of course not. Jim is too stupid to have an ulterior motive, or even a motive at all. He simply turned to the wrong card in his Rolodex at the time of the “order,” and has Daddy whacked instead of his arch rival, the man that killed his hamster so many years ago. It was first degree hamstercide! Why he would have this man in his Rolodex is another question altogether, but with people like Jim, you learn to stop asking questions.

As Daddy’s only son and heir to the family business, Jim is given way too much power for his own good. First of all, he decided to change the name of DaddyCorp to Multinational Compuglobal Hyper Meganet, or Jim’s Stuff for short. Despire the name, Jim’s business has nothing to do with computers at all. Unlike Daddy, Jim is not a shrewd business man. He did not go to any fancy business colleges, nor did he even finish high school for that matter, and he suddenly has all this power. His opponents know that Jim is not cut out for his new place in life, and they’re ready to exploit him at their earliest convenience. They also know that with patents, Daddy would never have to share his Machine of Dreams without expressed, written consent, signed in triplicate, lost, found, lost again, and passed through the digestive tract of a puma (Daddy had very good lawyers), and everyone knows that will never happen. Even Jim isn’t that dumb. However, he is dumb enough to accidentally burn the patent papers by lighting a cigar with them. In normal progression, Jim is sued for the lucrative gains that having a monopoly on the market of everything in the world you’ve ever desired supplies. The stage is set for a hostile takeover of gastronomic proportions.

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The court date approaches quickly, and Jim decided to call his lawyers for the first time on the morning of the trial. Jim is happy in his blissful ignorance; he thinks everything will be okay. He thinks that if Daddy handled these types of cases with relative ease, he always could. The only problem with this is the fact that Jim forgot to factor in his overwhelming ignorance. Whoops. The lawyers have absolutely no case without patent papers, and they don’t have time to get new papers from the patent offices. Jim’s empire is about to crumble.

The trial is long and tedious, although the only witness throughout the entire proceedings is Jim. Why would one witness take so long to be examined? Yet again, this is Jim we’re talking about here, and ignorance is yet again the key descriptive word. It takes the bailiff 45 minutes to swear Jim in, during which the questions “What is a Bible?” is repeated to the point of futility. During the testimony itself, Jim must be reminded many a time to stay on task and leave out his drinking buddies and that cute girl in the third row of the court gallery. After much, much too long, the trial is over, and Jim is forced to share his Machine of Dreams with two other companies.

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There is now fierce competition in the field of everything you’ve ever desired between three businesses: Multinational Compuglobal Hyper Meganet, Jim’s corporation; SiblingRivalryCorp, which is founded and run by two warring brothers; and ShrewdBusinessMan Inc., owned and operated by the greatest businessman in the world. After a short period of time, SiblingRivalryCorp and ShrewdBusinessMan Inc. begin to lower their prices. Jim does not. In fact, he raises his prices. After a month, Multinational Compuglobal Hyper Meganet is in dead last and getting none of those important lucrative gains the former monopoly he occupied provided. Jim himself even begins to buy from SiblingRivalryCorp. Hell, he ran the business far enough into the ground already, why stop now? Things are looking very grim indeed for our moronic hero.

Jim is not vanquished yet. He is determined to make his dead daddy proud; therefore, he starts selling hamburgers. Jim’s House of Murdered and Processed Cow Carcasses is born. Sadly, the snappy title does not help Jim’s sales figures one bit, and although they seem very popular with the FDA, he soon goes out of business. He is undaunted, and opens a salad shop, for everyone is a health nut these days. He names the new franchise Jim’s House of Murdered Plants, Fruits and Vegetables Thrown into a Rather Large Bowl and Smothered in Fattening Dressing, Which is Made of Even More Dead Stuff. Another snappy title, but even less business, and Jim soon loses that business as well. He tries for one more product. Fried chicken. Everyone loves chicken! It can’t fail! Jim’s House of Murdered Poultry Slaughtered and Deep Fried for Your Enjoyment is another dismal failure, and Jim is fresh out of ideas.

Walking down the street one day, Jim comes across a homeless man. Looking at him, he gets an idea. The idea to end all ideas! He will build another Machine of Dreams and make hot dogs with it! Jim’s House of Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed of Stuffed in Pig Entrails and Burned for Half an Hour will be a surefire success.

With relative ease, Jim locates the blueprints for Daddy’s Machine of Dreams, which ironically have the patent information written on them, and sets to work. It proves to be a daunting task, as Jim takes seventeen days and nights to look up the word blueprint in a dictionary, and another seventeen to decipher the meaning of the prints. Fifteen days are taken locating wood for the project, a step that proves to be futile, as no wood is needed for the project, seventy-five days to find the material actually needed for the project, and another thirty days on top of that to finish building. He takes a step back and looks at his marvelous creation. True, the original prototype wasn’t hot pink with magenta polka dots, but Jim thinks this adds character to an otherwise dull, bright green machine. Anything in the world would soon be at his fingertips with just a few words. And to think of all the hot dogs! Those plump little dogs begin to make Jim salivate in anticipation, although the small bell that begins to ring at the exact same moment from an undisclosed area may have something to do with it, and his stomach begins to rumble. He cannot wait any longer, and he approaches the Day-Glo colored machine. With a pause for dramatic effect, which means nothing since he is the only one in the room, Jim sticks out his finger and presses the ON button…

5.3467722991155

4.3467722991155

3.3467722991155

2.3467722991155

1.3467722991155

0.3467722991155

What a moron.

BOOM

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This post was written to the tune of Peter Gabriel’s Plays Live

The Machine of Dreams 2008 Prologues, The Siblings

Part three of the extended prologues for your viewing pleasure. The next part will probably take a long time to write, as the machine itself is the crux of the entire story, and if I don’t pull it off correctly, the entire thing folds like a house of stock certificates. This entry is about Joe’s siblings.

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It was clear early on that Emily had the same lust for knowledge as her parents. She was reading the newspaper at age two. Mostly the technology section. She liked to challenge herself, and always enjoyed discovering new words and concepts. As she grew up and the family expanded, she often took it upon herself to spread the love of science and school to her younger brothers and sister. Jonathan and Michelle couldn’t have been happier with their first born child. When Emily was four, her brother James was born. A second sister, Jane, followed three years later. Joe completed the family two years after that, when Emily was nine years old. It was a hectic household, and Jonathan and Michelle were proud of their daughter for taking the initiative and helping raise her siblings. The economic strain was heavy, and Jonathan had to take a job at a scientific brain trust in Milwaukee, moving the family to a quaint little house in the suburbs. That was the house in which Joe was born. Well, not literally. He was born in a hospital. But you know what I mean. I must day that there is a high amount of potential strife that can happen when a family not only grows so quickly, but moves to an entirely new state halfway across the country in the middle of the process. Despite this, the Pantaro clan weathered the storm competently. This is one of those times the word “aplomb” gets thrown around, and for good reason. On an average day, Jonathan would spend work hours in the city at the brain trust (a job he liked. It was good mental exercise, and gave him the opportunity to make a difference some day down the line), which paid enough that Michelle could get away with working part time as a curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum once the children had reached school age. She would be home in plenty of time to greet her beloved children, be available for emergencies and parent teacher conferences. Everyone in the family would often have to comfort Joe through his academic struggles; they made sure that even though he could only barely get by, his enthusiasm would be able to continue through the problems, and the Pantaro family loved him all the same. Jonathan would usually be home by six, and he made sure to spend every waking moment with the kids. By the time they had gone to bed, he would go to the drafting table in the basement and throw himself at it, feverishly scribbling down wild ideas and trying to see if they ever could be practical as real world objects. This would often continue late into the night and morning, and it led to Jonathan losing a lot of sleep on a regular basis. He never complained once.

There is a saying that opposites attract, and that the strife of disagreement, argument and clashing ideologies can create the kind of tension that can only be relieved with the aid of a few minutes of fevered groping in a coat closet or bathroom. There is also a saying that 50% of all marriages in America end in divorce. I content that these two bedrock principles are linked. Believe me, if Michelle had not shared Jonathan’s passion for scientific creativity, inquiry and discovery, the family would not have made it to the point that Joe was born, and this story would not exist. Michelle would usually join Jonathan at the table, and he would be grateful for the company and the support and the second brain to point out tiny logical flaws or hasty mathematical errors. As the children grew, they too would sneak downstairs to watch the magic unfold until they inevitably made too much noise and were called over to add some fresh eyes to the mix. You know the old saying: “The family that spends all night trying to invent things together, stays together.” What? This is the proof right here! Joe even joined them on occasion, and while he couldn’t grasp the concepts or follow the logic, his parents and siblings took great care in their attempts to explicate the steps of some crazy idea, and his ignorance never bled over into frustration or anger. Joe was sheltered well by his family, and it’s a shame that the rest of the world, myself sadly included, was not so kind. Children grew, as they often do, and blossomed into adolescents, teenagers and young adults. As Emily reached the point that she had to start applying to universities, the children hatched a plan that each would try and find the most ivy infested school possible, a veritable kudzu of ivy would be best (for Jonathan had told them the story of how he and Michelle met, and they had seen the wedding photos and the ivy dress), and they would go their separate ways, dividing and conquering the academic world. They would take similar classes and compare notes, thus allowing for the best education possible. Soon enough, Joe was the only child left at the drafting table with his parents, and it was out of his imperfect and fractured mind that the invention that changed the world would spring.

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So there we have it. Another prologue section in the books (or on the pages, in this case). As I said, not sure when the next one will appear.

This post was written to the tune of Poe’s Haunted

The Machine of Dreams 2008, The Parents

I’ve been writing this thing in sections. I’m realizing now that I’m not exactly sure how the sections are going to fit together, and in what order, but it’s more important at this moment for me to get this written in some (even disjointed) fashion, so that’s what I’m doing. What follows is a section about Joe’s parents. I’m currently working on passages about his siblings (I hand write everything I do first, and give it a quick revision in the typing process. That’s my method), and I hope for that to be up shortly.

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It would probably be best to begin our tale by explaining the rest of Joe’s wonderful family. His father, Jonathan Pantaro, is an inventor by trade. He was fascinated by incredible renaissance men like Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah, I know. They can’t all be winners. And no, Jonathan is no Scientologist. As I said before, he is an intelligent man, and well, that’s all you need, really. Jonathan always wanted to create things, and this passion extended to his educational life. He studied many things at many prestigious universities within many buildings fabulously covered in ivy. Of course, we all know that the inclusion of ivy on the side of a building automatically makes it respectable and deserving of honor. It’s a good thing then that the ivy that was planned to be grown on the side of the Reichstag prior to Hitler seizing control in Germany didn’t take. That would have really messed things up for Harvard and Yale. I’d posit that the ivy knew Hitler’s true intentions, or possible just didn’t want to be set on fire under mysterious circumstances. I would posit that, that is, if I were criminally insane and thought that plants were capable of intelligent thought. Or if I were a Scientologist. Same difference, really. Regardless, Jonathan became a master of the finer points of mechanical engineering, physics, and philosophy while at these weed infested universities. I can hear you wondering now: why philosophy? What does that have to do with a passion for inventing? Patience, friends. All will be revealed soon.

So what do you do with a double major in engineering and philosophy? Well, one thing’s for sure. You have a pinhole camera on you at all times in social situations to capture people’s response to the “what’s your major?” question that always comes up. And boy howdy, Jonathan had some good ones. Confusion, mild revulsion, blank stares, he had seen them all. And sometimes there would be that little twinkle of intrigue from a kindred spirit. Jonathan would often attempt to date these people (provided that they were of the fairer sex), and the courtship process would usually end right around the time they found the camera. I mean, who could blame them? It’s a bit difficult to explain his actions without being a creep. Clandestine surveillance usually doesn’t go over well as the kind of trait that is seen as gentlemanly. But one woman was different. She understood. She was compassionate, caring, and fiercely intelligent in the way that always craved new knowledge like lichen spreading over a rotting log. When Michelle (as this was her name) discovered Jonathan’s secret camera, she immediately demanded to see the rest of the pictures. They reconvened at his apartment with a bottle of wine and a box of pictures and drank heavily and laughed robustly at some of the more taken aback responses. As the night relentlessly tore past midnight and technically became a very early morning, the heavy drinking turned to heavy cuddling, and the robust laughing turned to robust kissing.

Michelle and Jonathan were married two years after Jonathan had earned his Master’s degree at yet another institution positively overrun with ivy. They tied the knot on a beautifully crisp fall day in New Hampshire. This was the wedding dreams are made of, and while our groom was a staunch and skeptical man of science (and philosophy) with no time or patience for superstition, he acquiesced to his loving fiancee and never once took a peek at her dress. When the blushing bride came down the aisle resplendent in a gorgeous white dress that was fantastically covered from head to toe in ivy, Michelle wished she had borrowed his pinhole camera to forever catch the incredulous and completely taken grin on Jonathan’s face. And when she reached the podium and whispered “Prestigious enough for you?” into his ear, it took every ounce of strength for him to not start the honeymoon right then and there. It was a wonderful service; it was the kind of day that made you believe that love could truly conquer all. I should know. I was there. The reception was a dizzying mess of music and drinking and toasts and more drinking. To a man, everyone knew that this was the kind of bond that would last. The honeymoon was a whirlwind trip through the history of Europe. They toured castles and ruins, and made love in a wide variety of hotel rooms all across the continent. It was on one of these nocturnal excursions that Emily, the first of the Pantaro clan’s four children, was conceived.

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This post was written to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate

The Machine of Dreams 2008, Beginnings

Back in my Sophomore year of High School, I wrote a silly little short story called “The Machine of Dreams.” It was designed to be a thinly veiled satirical piece that would further my attempts at writing humor. It won a minor award, and was generally enjoyed by those that read it. Looking back at it now, it’s a terrible piece of prose. I was young and just starting an amateur career in writing, and it certainly was the work of a very unpolished writer. Still, I liked writing it, and I really think the core concept of the story was more than solid. So I’m revisiting it now, and seeing what I can do with it close to nine years later (has it really been nine years? Yikes). And I’ve decided to revisit this blog to put up the progress of it, in a vain attempt to actually finish something I started. And so, without further ado, here’s a quick opening prologue (that’ll probably be made longer at a later date)

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I would like you to meet Joe. Under normal circumstances, this would be the time that I introduce you to the intrepid hero of our tale, a man of impeccable moral character and ceaseless wisdom. Or perhaps is could be the antihero, flitting through the world by the seat of his pants, his only defense mechanism a roguish charm and devil may care attitude that more than makes up for his spurious moral compass. Sadly, neither archetype fits the bill for poor Joe. This is a man that was not graced with particularly striking looks or charisma. He is not a brute, nor is he particularly thin or reedy. Indeed, not much stands out about Joe at all. He is the man on the street that you pass with barely a glance or a moment’s thought. Other people may catch your attention with the way they dress or their haircut or a certain look in their eye that makes you wonder fleetingly about the events of their lives that led them down the path toward that T-Shirt or that dress or that specifically designed facial hair. It’s a mental game, a quizzical flight of fancy. People just have a tendency to look right through him to something more interesting. The mind simply edits Joe out. Do not automatically chalk this up as a negative trait; I’m sure many folks wish they could live their lives in their one way without eliciting accusatory stares or hushed conversation. Still, it can be a lonely situation, floating about the world like some kind of living ghost, completely cordoned off from immediate human interaction.

There is one notable personality trait that can be attributed to Joe, but it’s only the sort of thing you learn after interacting with him on a personal level. Joe was not gifted with an overwhelming bounty of intelligence. To use a lay person’s term, Joe is a moron. This is not to say that he is mentally retarded or unable to live on a survivalist’s instinctual level. He can function, dress himself, and feed himself like any normal human being. In truth, he looks and acts like any run of the mill resident of Milwaukee. Put simply, he doesn’t have the intellect to retain knowledge. He can remember some things, but nothing that would be considered important on a massive scale. He could probably tell you almost exactly what he ate for breakfast or bought at the grocery store a week ago, but ask him to synthesize information or recite poetry, and all you’ll get is the screwed up brow that is the product of extreme concentration, followed shortly by a bemused look of sad ignorance. He’s also a bit of a klutz, but that is neither here nor there. He’s a good man, but has a tendency to be infuriatingly obtuse to those around him. He is a genetic joke, and as such has lived a heavily insular life. Am I being harsh in my portrait of this mouse of a man? Perhaps. But I do have my reasons, which will become astoundingly clear as my tale unfolds. Fortunately for Joe, the one spot of luck in his life is his family and more specifically his father, one of the most important, successful and rich businessmen in the world. Because of this, Joe has no need for a career to keep himself afloat. He’s a trust fund brat without any sense of what that entails. He is not given true control over his share of the wealth, because the rest of his family does not share his unfortunate genetics. In fact, his parents and three older siblings (one brother and two sisters) are what most people would consider visionaries. They have the kind of mental acumen that makes the opposite sex blush and the less fortunate gristle with admiration and envy. They all love Joe very much, and the feeling is completely mutual, as the power of familial bonds can overcome even the most staggering stupidity.  But this story is not about them. It is about a young man named Joe, a wondrous invention, a tragic accident and the folly of inheritance.

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So there you have it. I would love some feedback if anyone actually reads this here thing.

This post was written far too late at night to the tune of That Handsome Devil’s That Handsome Devil