Adam Troy Castro by Among The Tchi

Author:Among The Tchi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-26T00:37:04+00:00

The next day, his head pounding from all the drinks pressed into his hands by fellow writers eager to see another get as sloppily drunk as they’d seen themselves get, Carlson left the compound of the humiliated and found his way to the university’s main library, where the Tchi on duty took one look at him and inquired, with just the right degree of scorn and condescension, whether he was really in the right building. Didn’t the works here have subtexts and subtleties no human being could possibly understand?

He smiled and handed the withering snot a list of three titles alleged to be the greatest novels in Tchi history. The snot told him they were available via hytex link. Carlson smiled and said, “Aaaah, but the sheer sensory experience of holding the books in my hands, as I soak up the brilliance…!”

It required an interlibrary transmittal and consultation with the director of the Human Studies program, but by late that afternoon the Tchi authorized the replication of three volumes in approved Mercantile translations, printed and bound in the format Carlson always preferred when he read novels on paper.

This was a mistake.

None of the novels were shorter than three thousand pages.

Grimacing as much from the weight as the prospect of reading these behemoths, but adopting the fiction of happy anticipation, Carlson lugged them back to his bungalow and spent all of that night beginning the first and by reputation most honored among them.

After six pages he went back to the beginning, unwilling to believe that the story was unfolding as it seemed to be. Confirming the awful truth, and feeling more and more despair by the time he bulled his way past page one hundred, he rejected the impulse to feed the damned thing to a fire and forced himself onward, ever onward, paragraph by paragraph, tedious line by tedious line.

Somehow, heroically, he reached page two hundred that night, having already misdiagnosed the pain of getting that far as a dozen separate strokes. Before he collapsed, he flipped the remaining pages all the way to the end, confirming the awful truth.

In the morning he knocked on Sandra’s door. “Want to take a walk?”

She was frowsy-haired, wearing a cloth robe and drinking something hot from a cup. “Depends. Given up on defeating them yet?”

“No,” he said. “Actually, I think I might have a handle on the situation.”

She raised an eyebrow and brushed a sleepy tangle of hair away from her opposite cheek. “I must say. Heroic fantasy’s a new genre for you, Bri.”

“No, I’m serious,” he insisted. “I just need to clarify some things. Come on, take a walk with me.” When she hesitated still further, he added, “Unless you’d rather stay home and try to write…”

The terrible truth about novelists is that precious few of them, given a choice of activities, would rather stay home and try to write. Faced with a way out, Sandra moved faster than any whirlwind.

An hour later, the two of them had settled beside the same stream where they’d last spoken two nights before.

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