Writing exercise from Writers SIG, 11/18/2004 Given: Setting (Heather): The "Kingdom of the Sun", consisting of an island floating through the thick atmosphere, but living, like a jellyfish jungle, with tentacles that pick up nutrients. It's run by a despotic emperor, and people live on the tops of trees. Gimmick (Ed): The planet moves unpredictably among various suns, such that seasons are random. There's a high chance that the planet will, sooner or later, get too close to one of the suns and fall in. Characters: (Elisabeth) Daikon is the scion of an aristocratic family, agoraphobic, obsessed with creating sculptures of utopia. Daikon fears the real world, preferring to stay at home. (Dan) Gretna, 17, has transformed her left arm into chocolate. She is afraid of poisoning New Guinea, her 2 year old dog. Trebucu is a tall wispy, former librarian and martial artist Conflict (Novalis): One character discovers that a catastrophe may befall the setting; another character, his/her friend, is responsible. Write (about 30m, with a title and three or four word changes when I typed it up): Jupiter Stumbled ---------------- They say that scientists cannot explain the flight of bumblebees; I like to imagine those who say this themselves imagining perplexed a scientist sitting at microscope, looking at yet another tiny corpse, mumbling, "It just doesn't make sense!" I know how bees fly; as a research scientist, I picked up a lot of science trivia. But the evolution of this gliding jellyfish we call home is still a mystery to my generation's greatest minds. Indeed, this entire planet, caught between three gyrating stars, ever on the blink of the annihilation, has converted many of the most devout atheists to Christianity. Our Emperor's ruthless secret police have converted the rest. I know that it is not the hand of God that keeps us from the fiery gravity wells, but alien technologies which our ancestors discovered after the Crash. Their price is small; a few every year are driven mad by their crackling energies. I checked in on my daughter, who was trying to read a book. Her melting prosthesis left chocolate smudges on the pages. A small price, to those who do not bear it. When my Gretna was six, there was a flare and I awoke to a wetness on my cheek. "Mommy, I have a chocolate arm!" Actually, it was a chocolate bar stuck into the bleeding stump where she had sawed her arm off. Since then, when she is without her chocolate arm, she quickly becomes hysterical, then catatonic. Gretna was not the only one taken from me by the madness. My childhood friend, Daikon, has retreated from the world preferring to build utopias of sculpey and doll house furniture. These models, and other artifacts of madness are what the machines demand in exchange for our lives. When I visit Daikon, she barely notices me except to brush away a stray hair, another symptom of her relentless search for perfection. I can see in her eyes that the real Daikon is still there, trying to get out. When I visited her last week, I noticed that her sculpture had taken a new turn; instead of minute pieces, her new work was life-sized. I got in my blimp, and floated over to Daikon's mansion. I found her standing on a perfect chair, in a perfectly painted room, among the flowers, paintings, and exquisite wax people. I thought at first that she was repairing the light fixture. The machines are jealous intelligences. Their charges invariably withdraw from the world, to live alone even in the company of others. They forbid suicide, and punish us all for the sins of the few who escape them into death. Only my quick reflexes, honed by years of Judo training, allowed me to catch her as she kicked the chair away. but when I think about her eyes at that moment, I am not sure I should have.