Week Two Has Stories!

Somehow I've made it to week two of this whole blog/vlog weekly thing, and I'm super proud of myself. I think this a new high for me as far as sticking to New Year's Goals goes. I think that I made the decision this year to strive for goals I actually WANTED to achieve and that that has made this entire process easier and a lot more fun. This week for your reading pleasure I have two short stories I wrote over at 750words.com. We might have our fights but that site is certainly keeping me writing with it's wall of shame looming over my head.
Remember these stories are rough drafts so I make no promises about grammar (especially commas, Lena), but I hope you enjoy them. I also appreciate feedback so if you want to give me some I'd really love it. If you don't that's totally cool too. I'm a lurker quite often so I understand the tendency to always read and never comment. Enjoy the stories

Henry

The moon landing, everyone knows that story, or at least they think they do. What they don't know is that the moon landing wasn't all about simply proving that we could get a man on the moon, it was much more than that. The moon landing was all about hiding something, something the government never wanted anyone to discover. Haven't you ever wondered why we quit going back? Sure, they can claim it was a waste of money, but the truth is that they didn't want anyone to figure out the truth.

So, the question is, why did they let me go? Did someone at the top decide it was time to tell the truth? Did they figure there was no way I'd find out? Did they just not care anymore? I can never be sure why they allowed me to discover the truth; I only know that I did. By now you're wondering what in the heck I'm talking about. Well, give me a second, and I'll tell you. My name is Annabelle James, and I'm an astronaut with NASA. A few years ago the decision was made that we were going to send someone to the moon again, to give rest to the theories that it was all a hoax, and I jumped at the chance. I trained for years and spent even more time in interviews, talking about how excited I was. It was a one woman mission, well, one woman and one chimp. Joleen was my partner in space, and I was glad to have her. In fact, it's because of her that I even made the discovery at all, but more on that later.

When launch day finally arrived I was more excited than I've been in a very long time. I barely slept the night before and was ready for launch hours before anyone else was. Everything went smoothly and before I knew it Joleen and I were in space. The view was stunning! I'd seen so many videos of space, but nothing compared to it actually experiencing it. I slept a little on the way to the moon, and Joleen woke me up in time to take the lunar lander down to the surface. She's pretty intelligent, for a chimp. When the lander touched down I spent a few minutes trying to build up my courage. I was about to set foot on a place that had been untouched for years. I would see things that no one still living had ever seen. Joleen had no such thoughts and pulled at my arms and legs until I finally opened the portal.

I wish I could explain what it's like to be on the moon, but that is impossible for someone who hasn't been there. The training they give you in NASA doesn't even come close to the true feeling of jumping across the lunar surface. Joleen seemed to enjoy the moon even more than I did. So much, in fact, that she ignored my calls and wandered off on her own. At the time I was frustrated, but I would soon discover that Joleen knew what to do much better than I did. After collecting some samples and setting up the lunar rover I was assigned to launch, I decided to find Joleen. Tracking her was easy, but she'd traveled quite a distance. By the time I reached her the only footprints on the surface were her's. This would seem strange when I found what Joleen discovered, but at the time I thought nothing of it.

Joleen was sitting in the center of a crater pulling at something half buried in the ground. I was surprised to discover that rather than an old lunar rover it appeared to be a bone. I couldn't figure out what a bone would be doing on the moon, so I decided to investigate. I often wonder if it might have been better to turn back, but I didn't then and I can't change it now. A few hours of digging later proved that I had indeed discovered a bone, but rather than a chimp or some other animal, as I rationalized it might be, I found a strange skeleton. This looked like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was vaguely human in shape but had three obvious legs which each had two joints and a set of four arms, which were strangely thin and lacked hands. I checked my oxygen to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating, but everything seemed in order. I had found an alien. More than that the skeleton was buried with a US army jacket and a small steel box marked with the President's seal. I took as many pictures as I could, and worked to bring everything back to the lander.

I returned to find Houston slightly panicked that I hadn't checked in, but I just explained that Joleen had run away. I mentioned nothing about what I had found, I needed time to think. We took the lander back to the ship and I started our return trip. I took advantage of the time to myself and examined the steel box. It was locked, but had been buried a long time and I had no trouble breaking the mechanism. Opening it was a much more difficult task. I fought with myself for a long time, trying to decide if this was really something I wanted to do. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore and I flung open the lid. Inside was a collection of papers and photos detailing the alien, who was named Henry. Apparently Henry crashed to earth and actually lived in a government facility for years. The army jacket was his. It was with his help that we made our technological advances and he actually designed the first space shuttle. When he died the government didn't want him discovered and so they sent a final mission to the moon, to have him buried where no one could find him.

By the time we reached earth I had made the decision that I wouldn't be quiet. I was going to tell Henry's story even if no one believed me. I wanted the world to know who he was, what he had done, and the truth about life in the universe. I stepped off of the shuttle with Henry's bones in a bag on my back and the box in my arms, ready to scream the truth to the press even as government agents dragged me away. Imagine my surprise when it was the President who met me on the end of the gangway.

"You found him. It's time they knew anyway."

Emily

This world gave me no child, so I built one. Perhaps built is not the phrase I should have used, created might be a much better description. I can leave it up to you to decide. Many people have called my child an abomination, a freak, a monster, a demon, and a crime against nature. I called her Emily.

Before she was my daughter, Emily was a lot of other people's daughters too. When I was creating her I figured this would make her a perfect child. After all, all those other people seemed so sad to have lost their daughters and cried about how perfect they were. Now, before you get any Frankenstein ideas in your head, I want to take a second and explain myself. It's true, if you met Emily on the street you probably think she was nothing but pieced together flesh brought to life, but I assure you that isn't the case. I might have started with parts collected from perfect little girls all over the world, but Emily is much more than that. I never believed that flesh could be reanimated anyway, and even if it could I didn't want to run into the same problems that Doctor Frankenstein did. On the outside Emily might be other people's daughters, but inside she's 100% mine.

Originally Emily wasn't my daughter at all, when I first started tinkering with cogs and gears I still had dreams of John and I having children and growing old together, but the accident changed all that. One car crash later John was dead and I'd lost the only daughter I would have a chance to bear. My mother tried to encourage me to find someone else, but I know that John had been my one and only, and nothing could bring him back. I could keep part of him though, and Emily literally has his eyes. It was almost a year after the crash, and I was tinkering with an artificial intelligence program that John had been working on when I found a file labeled Emily. John had originally designed it to be part of a robotic doll or teddy bear that could learn and act like a child. He'd been making it as a gift for our unborn daughter. With John's program, a small robotic body, and a covering gathered from the local graveyards, Emily was born.

She was born with a body that would always be seven, but her mind started fresh and new. Teaching her about life gave me a new purpose, and soon she was teaching me things I never knew. I spent the first eight years of Emily's life living in our house in the country. Since Emily didn't have to eat it was easy for us to be self sufficient. I explained to her that she wasn't like me, but I couldn't really explain how she'd been created, because she wasn't ready for that. The problem was that she was ready to be outside. Despite my protests Emily was determined to see the towns she'd read about in books, and in the end I couldn't deny her the chance. I dressed her in a way that would make her look as much like a normal child as possible, and prayed that no one looked too closely.

At first town seemed like a wonderful idea. Emily excited watched from the car and asked all sorts of questions. I took her to a museum and we walked around the park. She especially loved feeding the ducks small bits of bread. We spent the afternoon watching a Shakespeare performance in the park and I thought we were going to have the perfect day. That was until we met the ice cream cart. The cart was surrounded by children, as ice cream carts tend to be, and Emily was drawn in by the bright colors. The real problem came when the man offered Emily an ice cream cone. Despite my insistance that we didn't need ice cream today, the man gave some to Emily for free. I tried to walk away before Emily could eat it, but she was curious, I never ate ice cream at home, and she tried it. Ice cream and electronics are not meant to go together, as anyone who has spilled some on a computer is aware.

We weren't nearly far enough out of the park when Emily started to spark, and despite my best efforts to scoop her up and leave, people noticed. They rushed over, assuming I'm sure, that something was wrong with my daughter. When they discovered what was really happening, and what she really looked like, the screaming started. I grabbed Emily and ran towards the car as fast as I could. The mob followed me, screaming about what an abomination she was, and what a terrible monster I was for creating her. I couldn't even pause to get the ice cream out of Emily's hand. That ended up being the biggest mistake I've ever made. By the time we were safely away in the car, she was shorted out and her motherboard was fried beyond repair. There was no way to bring Emily back.

When I got home I laid Emily to rest in the garden and returned sadly to my lab. I stared at my tools and the computer and quickly made a decision. Molly, is never going to be allowed to go into town.

***

Till I next fail at failure.