Storytellersunplugged

There is relative quiet, the computers are still working, mine making sounds like waves lapping at a houseboat. Not long before the power outage, I had an idea for a short story that involved this very plant, the surrounding neighborhood, a loss of much more than simple electricity in a dystopian society. (This is me now typing this at 10:35 PM, I had originally written “minorly dystopian,” but frankly, I think Chicago is adding to the “minorly” part on a daily basis.

August 27th is the “Night Of The Two Moons.” I am told this because I have been sent the exact same email from several well-meaning friends and relatives over the past month. Always the same bold red print. Yes, Mars was closest its been to the earth in centuries and yes–through a telescope–the planet was as luminous as a full moon. But, see, that event occurred back in 2003. And every year that email makes the rounds, reminding us that it will not happen again until 2287 and this is a once in a lifetime event! Again, all well-meaning, with no fact-checking. The saving grace being that I wasn’t told to forward the message to fifteen people to be blessed, cursed, get a phone call, or have a monetary windfall thanks to some Nigerian or (lately) Scottish bloke.

Briefly, if one can expect that from me, my story idea involves two guys using a mimeograph machine, powered in some way such as the Professor might have come up with on Gilligan’s Island. They print something out on a yearly basis, a type of newspaper, only with a dateline of Omaha or perhaps Wichita. The pages are then passed from hand to hand throughout Alsip and Crestwood, then Oak Forest, some relating the “news” from the west, nothing being distributed northward because Chicago is gone. The news is letting all of us in south suburban Illinois know that everyone out there is A-OK–it likely would take a year, give or take, for the ultimate snail mail to make its way here from Nebraska–and things are getting better every day. The point of the story is that the sheet with the smelly blue ink that gives me memories of Charles Gates Dawes public school is passed around with virtually the same news, almost word for word, written each time. This year’s dateline might read Tyler, Texas or Abita Springs, Louisiana…even more great news from smaller towns in this sad new world. The narrator leaves the plant, looking at the sky, recalling the not that long ago email about the two moons, but knows the heavens are obscured by the soot of whatever calamity has occurred and he would not be able to see even our own moon.

It is strange the amount of stories where the setting is at an industrial park or simply in the south suburbs. After a year here, I’m fairly comfortable with knowing the area as well as I do Chicago. I know several writers whose main characters reflect their real life jobs. Teachers, reporters, even state troopers. I doubt very much that one of my stories would get optioned with Steven Seagal in UNDER SIEGE 3, with the tagline “I’m the pressman.” I’d never be able to write anything novel-length set “out here” in what amounts to Sunnyvale in the Buffyverse, except with more chaw cups and gimme caps.

I am working on a novel, as I now have an agent again. I am happy to know Chicago just as I remember it, even though I have been to the Loop only a handful of times all summer. I am confident that I haven’t lost my tether to the grime. For me, writing a novel is like constantly changing baby diapers, but its a welcome change from trying to sell a story with an original idea before LAW & ORDER rips it from the headlines. I do miss Jerry Orbach, though.

As always, I hope that some of you reading this gets a kernel of information that spilled from ol’ Frankenstein’s brain. Thanks for reading this. And if you go out tonight, don’t expect those two moons. Not in this lifetime.

Wayne Allen Sallee
Burbank, Illinois
27 August 2007