I know I have not posted in several days, but it’s because :

That’s right!  I finished my version of The Collective NaNovel this weekend!  I have decided that it’s full title = It Was All Because of the Zombies: The Collective NaNovel.  That’s because, if it had not been for the zombies that inexplicably entered the novel about halfway through, most of my plot could never have happened.

Whitney also completed her version of The Collective NaNovel, you can read about it here.

I will update about the specifics of the novel soon, but right now I have to go rest my computer-glazed eyes!

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

The last time I updated you all on my NaNoWriMo progress, Stan was dead in the bar, Moe had fled to sunny Mexico, and Angel Bell was beside herself with grief, eating Bon Bons in the dark in her trailer.

That meant I had less than half my 50,000 words, and no main character left to write about!  I had no idea what would happen next.

Well, it took 2 days out of my precious 30 for NaNoWriMo, but I finally came up with a solution to the problem: Angel Bell would have to become my main character.  There was simply no other way.  She would also have to get out of the trailer park and move to New York City.

You might be thinking that NYC = cliche, and you might be right about that, so I won’t dispute it.  However, New York is the only big city locale I have knowledge of… so off to “The Big Apple” it was!

I think posting an excerpt at this point would be boring – you can all feel free to correct me if I am wrong – so I’m just going to list out for you what’s gone down so far:

• Angel Bell has decided that her name can no longer be Angel Bell.  It can’t even be Darlene anymore, if she’s serious about leaving her past behind her.  So now she goes by Maddie, which is short for her middle name, Madeleine.
• Maddie has landed an awesome apartment by rooming with Jenna, a fellow twenty-something in need of a roommate after being demoted due to the financial crisis, who she found on craigslist.
• Jenna is a bit… loose.  She keeps trying to get Maddie to join her in her escapades, but Maddie is anti-relations of any kind with men.  She feels they always end badly – and quite often with fire.
• Maddie is about to take a job as a makeup consultant at a salon.

I’m not sure what else is in store for Maddie’s new life.  It’s possible that Ernie is going to show up in an Elvis suit and profess his undying love for her – he was pretty torn up when she moved away, you see.  Or, she might become famous after Oprah gets wind of her sad backstory.  She also might just be a regular girl from now on… who knows?!  My word count is 31,617 – that means I’ve got 18,383 words left to make it interesting!

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Well, he did!  He was a bad, bad character!

In case you don’t know what I’m referring to, I’m taking about The Collective NaNovel I am writing for this year’s NaNoWriMo.  Stan is (was) my main character.  And I just killed him off.

Yup… 17,803 words into the 50,000 word-count goal to win NaNoWriMo, and I have given my main character the proverbial axe.  To be honest, I’m not that surprised.  I had a sneaking suspicion Stan was going to be gone by the end of the novel.  I just didn’t realize he would go in the manner he went… or that he’d go so soon.

I’m not going to bore you with the details (and by details, I mean the rough prose that is the first draft of Stan’s final scene).  Here is a brief synopsis of what transpired:

• Stan has been slowly… painfully slowly… telling Moe the story of him and Angel Bell and how he has come to be sitting in Moe’s bar (The Toothless Grin), drunk and waiting for the cops.
• Moe has been growing progressively more and more annoyed with Stan the longer he talks.
• Moe keeps a shotgun under his bar “just in case.”
• Stan has become so drunk that he has momentarily forgotten that the terms of his parole expressly forbid him from disclosing the zombie incident that occurred at the state penitentiary where he was incarcerated after accidentally burning down Angel Bell’s trailer a few years back.
• The zombie story is the last straw for Moe.  He thinks Stan is full of crap, and trying to get sympathy from him so that when the cops come, someone will be on his side.
• Stan offers Moe a chocolate cookie from his backpack.
• Moe is deathly, deathly allergic to chocolate and takes the cookie offer as an assassination attempt by Stan to provide a distraction so he can sneak away and avoid being arrested.  So he shoots Stan in the heart with his shot gun.  Then he flees to Mexico.
• Angel Bell and the police arrive just in time for Stan to bleed out in Angel Bell’s arms.

Poor Stan.  I’m pretty sure there is no hope of resuscitating him.  He was a bad character and I hated writing about him and I’m not too sorry he is gone.  Of course, the problem remains: I am behind in my word count, and now I have no main character.

I’m not sure what is going to happen now – if you have an idea, I’m all ears!!!

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

NaNoWriMo is still not going great for me.  I’ve yet to fully embrace the plot, or the characters of my novel.  Don’t worry, I’m powering through the trouble!  My word count is not too terribly far behind (it’s at 15,382 words as I write this post),  and I feel ready to share part of a key scene from The Collective NaNovel.

As I said when I posted my first excerpt, please keep in mind that this is a rough draft!  Also, if you are interested in how Whitney is doing with her version of The Collective NaNovel, you can visit her blog to check in on her progress.

Here is what you need to know about this excerpt:

• Stan went to jail not too long ago.  He got “caught” driving the “getaway car” for his brother Ernie, who was attempting to break into a government facility to get a guitar pick that used to belong to Elvis Presley tested for DNA.  The DNA was supposed to prove his claims that he is the firstborn son of “The King.”
• Said “getaway car” was Darlene’s, aka Angel Bell, Nova.
• Darlene promised to wait for Stan, swearing off all men until Stan got out of jail.
• Stan has just found a pair of men’s boxer shorts wedged behind their bed.
• Stan does not wear boxer shorts.

Excerpt from The Collective NaNovel

Angel Bell stopped in her tracks.  She reached up slowly to pull off whatever it was that was over her eyes and nose, and part of her hair.  Whatever it was, it had an odd, but slightly familiar smell.  It smelled like… but, no, that made no sense.  Because it smelled like Carl.  She pulled the object off her face and looked at what she had in her hand.  Her puzzlement turned to horror as she realized she was indeed holding a pair of Carl’s boxer shorts in her hand.  Her head snapped up, and she fixed her eyes on Stan, who was now standing up and glaring at her, betrayal obvious in his eyes.  Angel Bell decided to try and play dumb.

“What are these, Stan? Are they yours?  What’s your issue, why would you throw these at me?”

Stan laughed, an evil, serial killer kind of laugh.  Angel Bell took an involuntary step backwards.

“You know those aren’t mine, DARLENE,” said Stan.  “Because you know I have never in my life worn boxer shorts because I think… things… are too exposed in those things.”

Rats, thought Angel Bell.  That was true.

“Well, I don’t know whose they are if they aren’t yours, Stan,” said Angel Bell, moving away from him and towards the refrigerator.

“Of course you do,” retorted Stan, picking up the remote control and throwing it at a wall, where it smashed open and scattered double A batteries across the floor.  “It was written all over your face when you looked at them just now.”

Angel Bell stared at Stan.  She had heard stories about how he got when he was really mad, but she had never seen it firsthand.  She wondered if she should be worried about her safety.  There was no way Stan would ever hurt her, though, of this she was certain.

“What if I do know whose they are?  Huh, Stan?  You want me to turn back the clock and change it?”

“Just tell me who, and when, OK, Darlene?” Stan felt like he could no longer call Angel Bell by her stripper name.  That was a name for when they were happy.  And there was no way they were going to be happy again anytime soon that Stan could see.

Angel Bell considered her options.  On the one hand, she could insist Stan was crazy, and that she did not have an explanation for the boxer shorts.  On the other hand, she was pretty sure he was already convinced of her guilt, and maybe it was just time for the truth to come out.  They could deal with it and move on, she thought.

“Fine, Stan, I will tell you, but you have to remember that we had not been dating very long when you went to jail, and a month is a long time.”

“It was twenty-seven days, not a month” said Stan through clenched teeth.  He was standing across from her now, his whole body tense.

“I had a… a thing… with a guy named Carl.  Those are his boxer shorts.  But it has been over since I found out you were getting out of jail!  I never really wanted to be with him, he was just your substitute, Stan!” Angel Bell was desperate for Stan to understand that last part.

Stan crumpled upon hearing the admission out loud.  He had hoped he was wrong, or that she would at least have a fantastic excuse or explanation.  Not that Angel Bell was any good at lying, but he hoped she would at least try.  He looked at her and saw the desperation in her eyes.  She did not want him to leave.  And maybe he wouldn’t.  He needed to get some air and clear his head.

“I’m going to have a cigarette,” Stan told Angel Bell.  “Don’t you follow me.”

He marched out the door, slamming it shut behind him for effect.  Angel Bell wanted to follow him and reassure him that the person she loved was him, but she decided it was best for the time being to leave Stan alone.

Outside, Stan lit up a cigarette with the only match he could find in his stash under a rock by the trailer steps.  He took a couple of quick drags, and then slowly blew it out.  He savored the cigarette.  He did not know how long he should stay out there, or if he should maybe leave and come back, just to scare her.  Obviously, he thought to himself, it would be better to forgive Angel Bell than it would be to leave her.  Even though he was mad, it was as if his softer side was growing since he was with Angel Bell.

As he stood there, Stan’s nose became aware of a smell that had not been there when he first walked outside.  It was the smell of burning leaves, or paper, or grass, or something else outside become slowly singed.  It reminded him of the month of October, and camping and ‘smores.  Stan found himself smiling in spite of himself.

But then Stan started to feel hot.  The kind of hot like when you get close to the stove when someone’s cooking, or when you get too close to the campfire you’re making those ‘smores at.

That’s when Stan saw the fire.  It was eating the dry grass next to the trailer, and was starting to lick at the side of the trailer itself.  Just as Stan was noticing this, the fire exploded, spreading up the entire side  of the trailer to the roof.  The roof was definitely on fire now.  The fire was also spreading from the grass towards the road rather quickly, fed by the wind that was still blowing at gale force.

Stan felt more than a little confused.  Why was there a fire?  Then he saw the remains of his cigarette match engulfed in the flames.  Oh crap, he thought.  This is my fault.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

It is four days into NaNoWriMo, and I’ll be honest – it’s not going well.  I’ve already contemplated quitting several times.  My word count is OK – 6,041 words so far.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is, I’ve already decided I hate my novel, and I hate my characters even more.  I don’t identify with any of them, and for me, identifying with my characters is pretty much the only way I can write about them.

So, I’m a bit depressed.  NaNoWriMo has never been this way before.  It’s always been loads of fun, with this great sense of “we’re-in-this-together” between all the people I know who are participating.  But something is just off this year – and it was not supposed to be this way!  This is The Collective NaNovel year (which you can read about in Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3 of the Collective NaNovel Reveal series), it’s supposed to be awesome… and FUN.

It has not been fun at all.

I am trying to push through all the angst, hoping that in a week or so I will decide I love my novel and my characters and the whole concept of NaNoWriMo again.  In that spirit, I present you with the first excerpt from The Collective NaNovel.  It’s rough – and by rough, I mean not in any way something I would normally present for public viewing, or that I would ever consider representative of my skill as a writer.  I’m sharing it anyway… try to be kind!

Excerpt From The Collective NaNovel 2009

Stan was drunk; he was not going to deny that.  But even in his drunken state, he was pretty sure his life would be a hell of a lot different if he had never laid eyes on Darlene Hinkley.

The day Stan Knutt first met Darlene Hinkley was burned on his brain more permanently than any tattoo was burned on Moe’s skin.  It was the first day of eighth grade, and it was recess time.  The whole middle school was outside.  Most of the boys were running around, engaged in one sport or another, while most of the girls were clustered into large circles, whispering to each other about who was wearing what and who had developed the most cleavage over the summer.

Stan was at the far end of the school yard with four of his best friends, planning how they would sneak out of their respective houses that night for the start of their first annual fight club tournament.  Just as Benny Bonkman was explaining his grand scheme to climb down the drain pipe between his parents’ condo and the trailer next door, she walked by.  She was new to the town – her parents had bought a trailer towards the south end of town sometime during the middle of July.  No one had gotten a good look at her over the summer, though, she was always inside tending to her sick mother from what various snooping kids could tell by peering through the trailer windows.  They had finally learned her name that morning during roll call, when the teacher called out Darlene Hinkley and the tall girl with the mousy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and unusually large breasts for a thirteen year old raised her hand.

Darlene had smiled tentatively at Stan as she walked by the fight club gathering.  He seemed out of place – the only skinny kid in the group.  It seemed to her that he was trying hard to fit in, but was not quite accomplishing his goal.  She thought they might be able to be friends, which was comforting because not a single girl in the class seemed interested in talking to her.  Darlene was attempting to screw up the courage to walk over to Stan when the school bell rang, signaling the end of recess.  As everyone headed for the door to return to classes, Stan caught up with Darlene.  She started to smile at him, but before he could see her face he had reached up and yanked out her red hair scrunchie, running off to the front of the line of kids, holding her hair tie over his head as his friends pounded him on the back for his great move.

Darlene was crushed.  She bit her lip to keep from crying and kept walking, determined not to be the new girl who cried at the drop of a hat.  Stan glanced back at her and felt a twinge of guilt when he saw her blue eyes blinking back tears.

That was the first time Stan knew he really liked Darlene Hinkley.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

For several months now, my faithful blog readers have been reading the following tag before many of my entries:

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

For several months now, my faithful blog readers have been reading the following tag before many of my entries:

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

You may have even come across this post, where Whitney and I tried our hands at writing a short story about the same characters, but without communicating about the plot beyond its very basic structure.

Well, I am pleased to announce that we are ready to reveal the culmination of all our collective blogging and collective story writing! This year for NaNoWriMo 2009, Whitney and I will be writing novels based on the lyrics to the Rehab song “Bartender Song.”  A little over a week ago, we introduced our first in a series of 3 posts, where we will gradually reveal our idea for our collective NaNovel.  If you missed them you can read mine here and Whitney’s here.

In this, our second NaNoWriMo reveal post, we will explain the characters we have identified as playing major roles in our novel’s plot.  To read Whitney’s take on these characters you can visit her blog here.

In case you’ve never followed a writer’s adventure through NaNoWriMo, there is something very important you ought to know about fictional character writing: they grow minds of their own.  You might have told your main character in no uncertain terms that she is NOT to fall in love with that dirt-bag other-character running around, wreaking havoc on your plot line.  You might have told her that 25 times.  And yet around Chapter 10 you have her making out with him anyway, no matter how much you yell at the keyboard that this was not what you intended to have happen.  So the fact that Whitney and I have thought about these characters and their back stories really doesn’t mean a whole lot.  We will call these character descriptions “loose guidelines” for what you can expect to read in November.

And here they are…

Stan Knutt

Our main character.  He’s the poor schmuck singing “The Bartender Song.”  The general idea for Stan is:

• He’s drunk.  A lot.
• He gets thrown out of his trailer by his girlfriend.
• He steals and crashes a Nova.
• By crashing said Nova, he can fully expect the cops to come looking for him at any time, landing himself back in jail… you see, this is not Stan’s first unlawful act in his life.
• Dude has anger issues.
• He is tall and skinny, with dark hair and green eyes.
• He has a thin, pedophile-like mustache.
• He grew up without a lot of money.
• He may have participated in a fight club at some point in his youth.
• When he’s not in jail, he works at his brother’s Pawn Shop.

Darlene Hinkley, AKA Angel Bell

She’s Stan’s girlfriend, the owner of the crashed Nova.  Here are some things we know about her:

• She is a bank teller by day, but a stripper by night.
• She denies her stripper identity to everyone she knows.
• She’s kind-of white trash, but she doesn’t really want to be.
• She is a bleach-blond, with a home perm, and she has blue eyes.

Moe

He’s the bartender.  He also:

• Is MASSIVE.
• Is bald.
• Is tatooed, ex-military, and possibly suffering from Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder.
• In his mid-to-late forties.
• Is a man of few words.

Ernie Knutt

Ernie is Stan’s older brother.  He has his own set of issues, which we hope will not overshadow Stan’s problems.  Here is Ernie’s deal:

• He believes he is Elvis Presley’s rightful heir and first-born.
• His friends call him “Prince Knutt.”  This is not intended as a compliment.
• He is about 5 years older than Stan.
• He has spent time behind bars, but now he’s running a Pawn Shop.
• He is tall, skinny, and has the same green eyes as Stan.
• He’s a bad influence on Stan, and probably always has been.

Gail Ballard

We don’t know a lot about her yet.  What we do know is that she and Darlene/Angel Bell don’t get along, because she is always hanging around and trying to “get” with Stan.

Of course, there will be more characters than this.  OBVIOUSLY.  But these are the only ones Whitney and I have collectively developed.  Soon we will be posting our final “reveal” blog, explaining a bit more about the collective novel idea and what else you might be able to expect from it.  And there will certainly posts updating our progress throughout November – maybe even a few excerpts if you are lucky! *wink*

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

For several months now, my faithful blog readers have been reading the following tag before many of my entries:

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

You may have even come across this post, where Whitney and I tried our hands at writing a short story about the same characters, but without communicating about the plot beyond very basic structure.

Well, I am pleased to announce that we are ready to reveal the culmination of all our collective blogging and collective story writing!  This year for NaNoWriMo 2009, Whitney and I will be writing novels based on the lyrics to the Rehab song “Bartender Song.”

Now, you may wonder if this is technically allowed by the powers-that-be over at NaNoWriMo.  I can assure you that it most definitely IS allowed.  You see, the rules clearly state that you cannot have help with your writing, nor can you write collectively.  And that’s fine.  Whitney and I will not be writing collectively.  We will be writing our very own, 50,000- word or more novels.  They just are going to be based on the same plot idea.  ON PURPOSE.  And if you think about it, that is totally different than what happens a lot for NaNoWriMo.  There are always tons of people writing about similar plot lines – at any given time there are probably 80 sci-fi heroes trying to save the universe from aliens and 40 single girls trying to make it big in the even bigger city – but none of those people are writing similar novels ON PURPOSE.  So even though our plots are the same, our reasons for having the same plots are rather unique.

What are their reasons, you might now be asking yourself.

Well, for that, you will have to wait until our final ‘NaNoWriMo collective novel reveal’ post.  We decided this post is going to be one of three, and it’s not until the last post that we will explain what people can expect of our novels and this whole process, and WHY we are interested in writing a collective novel in the first place.

The next NaNoWriMo reveal post will give you some insight into our characters, those lovely, fictional individuals who will be tormenting us (did I say tormenting?  I meant giving us NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER…) during the month of November.  Until then, I leave you with the lyrics to “Bartender Song” by Rehab, otherwise known as our basic plot idea.

“Bartender I really did it this time
Broke my parole to have a good time
When I got home it was 6 AM
The door was locked so I kicked it in

She was trippin on the bills
I think she was high on some pills
She threw my shit out into the yard
Then she called me a bum and slapped me real hard

And in my drunken stuper
I did what I should have never done
And now I’m sittin here, talking to you
Drunk and on the run

I’m sittin at a bar on the inside
Waiting for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart, in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin’ car
Crashed that piece of shit and then stepped away

Ya know Moe I’ll probably get ten years
So just give me beers till they get here
Yea I know the sun is coming up
And yall are probably get ready for closein up
But I’m trying to drown my sole
I’m tired of this life on the dirt road
Everything that I love is gone
And I’m tired of hangin on

She got me sittin at a bar on the inside
Waitin for my ride on the outside
She stole my heart, in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin car
And crashed that piece of shit then stepped away

[Rap:]
Guess it was meant to be
Romance is misery
So much for memories
And now I am headed to the penitentiary
See me on TV
The next cop series
I am a danger
I guess I should have did something about my anger
But I never learn
Real things I don’t concern
I pour kerosene on everything I love
And watch it burn
I know it’s my fault
But I wasn’t happy it was over
She threw a fit
So I crashed that piece of shit Nova

[Song:]
And now I am going back again
Back to the pin to see my friends
When we all pile out that county van
They’ll ask me where I’ve been

I’ve been at a bar on the inside
Waitin for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart, in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin car
I Crashed that piece of shit then stepped away

[Fades out:]
Laaa laaaa la laa la la laaaa laaa laaa la la la laaaa
Heyyyyyyyy
Laaa
Laaa laaaa la laa la la laaaa laaa laaa la la la laaaa
Hey you bastard
Laaaa
Laaa laaaa la laa la la laaaa laaa laaa la la la laaaa”

(by Rehab)

By the way, if you’d like to read Whitney’s NaNoWriMo Reveal #1 post, you can see it here !

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

With a heavy heart, I announce that today is December 1, and therefore the end of NaNoWriMo.
Why is your heart heavy? you may ask me.
Because I failed at NaNoWriMo this year, I would tell you. I failed miserably. I fell 20,000 words short of the winner-mark.
For those of you who don’t know me well, I don’t do especially well with failure. It eats at me. It makes me depressed. I beat myself up – in fact, I am currently covered with self-inflicted emotional bruises.
Because I am so disappointed in myself for not finishing my novel, especially since I got such great feedback and ideas from people over the last month, I have decided that I am going to finish my novel despite the end of NaNoWriMo. My new goal is to have a completed and once-edited manuscript by the end of January.
If I have still failed by the end of January… it will not be good times.

© 2008 – 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Here is another installment of my NaNovel 2008. I honestly didn’t think I was ever going to crank some of this out, and I have to give tons of thanks and credit to Alex for being an amazing sport and letting me bounce ideas and problems off him until we came up with a way to make some of this work. I apologize for any glaring grammatical errors you may encountered – try to remember this is only a first draft!

From Chapter Five:

>“What are the Five Principles of the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster?” asked Sydney, pouring herself another glass of the black alcohol.

“Well, they are in the gamma ray protected, acid free case you passed when you walked in, but I am guessing you failed to notice them?” Zebulon said this very arrogantly.

“Yeah, I guess we did,” retorted Ben. Zebulon annoyed him. Sydney, though, seemed mesmerized by the man. She kept looking at him with big doe eyes, and he kept looking at her with the look of a man who was mentally undressing a woman. Not that it took a ton of imagination to mentally undress Sydney. They were both still wearing their wet suits over their bathing suits, and that was it.

Zebulon took a deep exasperated breath, as if explaining his five laws the people of Etisoppo live by made him the most put-upon man that ever was.

“The first principle of the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster is that the people of Una Quartus are to periodically leave the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster food and drink at a designated location in the kitchen of the very diner we are sitting in. They are also to keep a private table for the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster to eat this food at available at all times within the diner.”

“Why this diner?” asked Sydney.

“Because it’s the closest restaurant to my living quarters and back when I was scrounging around for food and drink all the time I came to find this diner had the best stuff around,” explained Zebulon. As if to make his point, he poured himself a glass of alcohol and drank it down. “Anyway, the second principle is that only the cheese provided by the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster is to be consumed. All cheeses are henceforth considered sacred, and consumption of any such cheese is tantamount to a sin. The Invisible Flying Cheese Monster cannot guarantee your safety if you eat sacred cheese or any cheesy products.”

Ben burst out laughing.

“The people here have settlements on their moons, but they buy that ridiculous rule?” It made no sense to Ben.

“I didn’t make up that rule yesterday,” replied an irritated Zebulon. “Time passes a lot faster on Etisoppo in comparison to Earth. I have been missing on your planet for two hundred years or so, but I have been on Etisoppo for nearly two thousand. The culture and technology you see here today was not in place two thousand years ago. Do you really think Jesus Christ would have been a wild success if you had placed him in nineteenth century Europe instead of first century Jerusalem?”

The man had a point, thought Ben. Although, his statement left a load of other questions unanswered. Sydney seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she asked, “How are you even still alive if you have been here for so long?”

“Well, I have wondered that myself,” confessed Zebulon. “But it seems that this world is composed of something I have decided to call anti-matter, and since I am composed of regular matter, Earth matter if you will, the laws of physics and aging don’t apply to me here. I haven’t changed at all since my arrival. It is my belief that the gamma ray bombardment I experienced when I traveled through the worm hole that brought me here has placed my matter-based cells into a state of permanent stasis. As long as I remain on Etisoppo, it is likely I will never die.”

“No offense, but anti-matter isn’t something you just thought up. We know about the stuff on Earth, too,” Ben felt the need to point that out. Sydney rolled her eyes again. If this was going to turn into a testosterone pissing contest, she might have to leave.

“Well, we didn’t know about it on Earth when I left, so I did come up with it on my own. It’s just validates my theory if you guys now have proof it exists,” Zebulon countered.

That shut Ben up for a moment. Then he asked, “Is that what happened to us when we went through the worm hole – we were bombarded with gamma rays?”

“I don’t think so,” said Sydney, surprising everyone.

“You have a theory on what happened to us, Syd?” Ben was completely taken aback by this.

Sydney nodded. She wiped her fingers on a napkin, relishing the one hundred percent captivity of her audience. It made her feel more like herself, something she had not been feeling since she woke up flat on her back on that mountainside.

“I think the worm hole that brought us here was not the same worm hole that brought Zebulon here. No one can see Zebulon. But Sela Kilgore was clearly able to see us. I think the tingling sensation we felt when we came-to was the feeling of our bodies completing the change from regular matter to anti-matter. It’s the only real explanation for why we aren’t invisible to the Etisoppians.”

Zebulon regarded Sydney with admiration. The girl was sharp. She reminded him a bit of himself when he was just out of school. “What do you do?” he asked her.

“I am currently unemployed. But Ben is a freshly-minted doctor of astrophysics!”

Ben was heartened by Sydney’s attempt to bring some of the spotlight onto him. It made him a little less insecure that Zebulon was about to usurp his position as her favorite guy.

Zebulon looked at Ben like he was seeing him for the first time. “Astrophysicist, huh? It must be killing you that you don’t know what physics laws brought you here.”

“Maybe a little bit,” admitted Ben. “But you seem to have a lot of the answers worked out already.”

“Two thousand years to conduct physics experiments will give a person a lot of answers,” said Zebulon. “But I digress. The third principle of the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster states that on the first Tuesday of every fourth month of the year, you should bring a wedge of
Swiss cheese to the local temple of the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster for blessing. This cheese will keep your home in the good graces of the IFCM, allowing miraculous things to happen.”

“Do people really do that?” asked Ben. He still couldn’t believe any society of such technologically superior beings would fall for this stuff.

“Oh yes!” Zebulon nodded seriously. “It’s a huge deal, especially in Una Quartus. They shut down government offices and schools every first Tuesday of every fourth month so people can receive their cheese blessing.”

“What are the other two principles then?” asked Sydney, anxious to uncover more about this legend that seemingly ran the planet they were on.

“Principle four says that the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster is all-knowing and always right. All these laws and any subsequent laws created by the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster are absolute and are to be strictly adhered to. Anyone not following these principles may be subject to a forced dip in the nearest water pond.”

“Isn’t water poisonous here?” asked Ben.

“Yep,” replied Zebulon. He did not feel any obvious remorse at the harsh punishment for going against his rules.

“So then what is the fifth and final principle?” Ben was a little nervous to hear it since they seemed to be getting more and more vindictive.

Zebulon smiled. “If you ever think the Invisible Flying Cheese Monster is wrong, please refer back to rule number four.”

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