One zero is a very short (~1100 words) piece of creative writing introducing a world view based on binary code (Matrix inspired I guess). Originally the prelude to a short story I planned to write, it's sat on my hard drive untouched for the past 3 years (although the first words were written sometime earlier). As a full story it will never see the light of day, so I present it here for your consumption. Does it stir anything in you? Do I have any potential as a writer of fiction (or what needs to improve)? Where would it take you if you were to write the next 1000 words?
Prelude
Kate carried the steaming malt drink with care as she climbed the stairs to the attic-come-study of her rented Victorian terraced house. On reaching her desk she positioned the mug out of harm's way, between the keyboard and desktop computer. Bleary-eyed, Kate turned her attention once again to the case study on the screen in front of her.
Shifting her weight in the chair, she silently cursed gravity as it seemed to take hold of her bones. The discomfort in her buttocks, she reasoned, was because her backside was being starved of oxygen. Like many medical students, Kate was able to visualise biological processes in graphic detail. Her mind's eye depicted the oxygen-carrying blood cells being squeezed out of the tiny blood vessels in her buttock muscles, as the bony parts of the pelvis bore into them. But this wasn't getting any work done.
She focussed again on the screen, but not before muttering another curse—this one directed at the task that kept her from enjoying a pleasant, long soak in her deep cast-iron Victorian bath. She liked Victorian, but she hated study. There was never enough time in a day and never restful sleep at night—the price of being too conscientious. It felt so unhealthy.
Kate read over the last few lines she had typed before making the warming drink she hoped would combat Winter's chill. It was clear that she could not rely on memory alone to finish her assignment. She reached for the heavily thumbed physiology textbook from the shelf beside her. The pages parted, naturally, at the place in the book she had visited earlier that evening—an explanation of the physiological mechanism that caused blood to clot in response to injury. Of all her studies, Kate hated physiology most. Things just got too complicated to properly visualise, and visualisation was important to her learning.
'God, how boring', she protested out loud.
With the book perched somewhat precariously on the edge of the desk in front of the keyboard, Kate began typing word-for-word how thrombin catalysed the conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin. Feeling even more uncomfortable, with her feet on the floor she pulled herself and the chair closer to the desk.
The realisation of what was about to happen came too late. Kate's momentum carried her middle into collision with the book and, via the keyboard, into the mug. The thick liquid sloshed over the rim and spilled onto the desk, quickly spreading like a miniature lava flow to engulf the base of the computer.
'Oh, shit!' Kate exclaimed.
With a sense of urgency she tore a handful of tissues from their box on the desk and proceeded to blot up what she could of the drink. "Cause and effect", she reflected: the laws of physics seemed so much more real than the laws of physiology. Still, laws were laws and you couldn't change 'em, right? What was it that Scotty used to say to Captain Kirk? Something like "Ye can'nae change the laws of physics Jimmy!" Of course, Kirk and his lot did manage to at least bend the rules—like that time when they used the sun's gravity to "slingshot" the Enterprise back in time to the 20th century. Humph! Kate didn't hold out much hope that a similar improbability could fix the disaster that was now her desk. Maybe if she threw the handful of tissues at her desk lamp with enough velocity, and at just the right angle, they would slingshot back in time ready to absorb the fluid just as it spilled from her cup? Yeah, right. But seriously, do you know how difficult it is to get sticky liquid out of a keyboard?
Kate was probably what people used to refer to as a "geek". Probably, because her slim build, pretty features, and blonde hair were more in keeping with being a member of a girl band than being your stereotypic overweight and greasy-skinned net-head. Used to, because her IT skills were pretty much the norm nowadays for 20-somethings in university classes like medicine. As always, information equals power: the more information you had at your fingertips, the more power you had to get one up over your fellow students in the competitive game called "getting an education". She was happy re-configuring her broadband router, accessing the Internet wirelessly from her handheld computer, or editing her blog's template files. Technology was a part of her life. Again, maybe this came down to her respect for laws. All her technology obeyed one simple rule: black or white, yes or no, on or off, zero or one. There was no grey—it was, or it wasn't. Kate very much admired this Binary Law. It sometimes seemed as if she tried to emulate it in life, although with varying success. It meant she was generally a good decision maker—as long as there were quantifiable variables to weigh up. In medicine this was often the case and perhaps this explained why Kate had wanted to be a doctor since the age of 10—one zero—or so. Computers and medicine seemed like natural bedfellows.
We all know life isn't really black and white, however, and deep down Kate knew it too. For her it was more of a framework that served to maintain the illusion that she had a greater an understanding of the world around her than she really did. Binary Law reduced the world into comprehendible and quantifiable chucks. It divided North from South, Good from Evil, Up from Down, Right from Wrong.
Even so, she could still make a good case for the pre-eminence of Binary Law. "What is black and white, really?" she would ask anyone who cared to listen. A B&W photo is not, for it includes all the shades of grey between pure black and pure white. But put this B&W photo onto a computer saved as an 8-bit greyscale image, and suddenly things aren't so grey anymore. To the eye the image still appears to contain a continuous range of tones from pure black to pure white. But now it's actually made up of 256 tonal values, with each value being described by an 8-bit code. Since a "bit" is the smallest unit of information a computer can work with, the ultimate difference between one tonal value and the next comes down to whether it has a bit that is "on" or "off". And there we have it—Kate's dichotomized view of the world around her. A world reduced to its component parts, an exact world, made up of order and rules. She believed that if she looked hard enough and long enough, she could discover a world without grey. A binary world.
I'm not sure that Scotty ever called Jim Kirk "Jimmy". Obviously well-written, Bruce - very descriptive, but ultimately too much so. Could Kate actually be your female alter-ego?
Hey you're right CC; that would've been "Capt'n"... Kate's obviously not the Trekkie she makes out to be. You may be right about the description OD, although as a prelude it was designed to introduce two things: Kate and her world view, and the malt drink seeping into her computer (which was central to the undisclosed plot of the short story). As for an alter-ego yeah there's a bit of me—not the pretty part, obviously.
Sounds good to me. I especially liked the bit where you take gray and whittle it into a bunch of binary black and white.
That's my core problem-solving strategy Kevin! It fits very well with a piece of advice I was given by a colleague many years ago: You don't have to be right—just definite!. In other words, always follow through a decision algorithm making distinct choices, and be prepared to justify those. This mindset has saved me from indecisiveness many times.
Well, in spite of my assertion, you've done much better than I ever could Bruce; I've tried writing fiction but am completely incapable.