Das Hier #20

I saw a crack in the wall and was sure that I heard some sounds of things moving behind it, even though it was a freshly installed one, like that very morning, so there was nothing living inside that could be making any noise.

So I looked in and was taken aback by what I saw. I saw a little robot looking back at me as he sat by an improbably small tree.

"Whoa! What was that?" I said aloud, even though I knew what it was, believing that I had seen what I had seen was the last thing that I wanted to do because it changed the nature of the universe for me and this kind of change was scary to say the least.

Who had built the tiny robot and planted that littlest of trees  was just the beginning.

Or would have been if I didn't have the gumption to patch the wall and pretend that I had never seen what lay behind it.

Luckily I had enough left from the morning to patch over it.

Halston!

I have to give Halston props because he carried the day yesterday and won it for the first time  for anyone besides me or Dalton since Brayden carried the 16th.

Welcome to the carrythe day club Halston. And to think that you did it with poetry only makes it that much more amazing.

So you won your first day, but can you win another? And if you can, can you pass the number of wins of  Dalton who has two? 

Wow, I just did the full count of who 's won the most days amongst us and I'm in tie for second with Brayden while Franklin has the lead?

This cannot stand! 

And yes, it also takes a little air out of my tire about the lack of writing done by the others.

But only a little because we are struggling to stay above water as far as sailing through the year to reach the shores of another millionized year.

In any event, well done on getting your first win, even though you were the last of us to get one and are going to be in tough to not finish the decayear with the least amount of wins because you're the poet and just aren't going to win enough days to be anything more than last.

That's just a fact.

Especially when you follow up your best day with a day that to this point is 26% of yesterday's. Admittedly it's poetry, but can't you do better?

But I shouldn't shit talk your efforts because you've showed up for the last two days and no one but me has shown up in consecutive days since too damn long.

And for those who are slow,  Dalton can't write each day so he's exempt from my criticism.

So don't take my words to "heart" and let your feelings of my criticisms knock your for a looop so that you stop writing for a fortnight.

We should all be writing regularly.

And once again, Dalton's regular is weekly. so anyone who's on his case will answer to me.

"Unit Three, reporting in. The Life-Tree has been fed and watered and all is well. This unit will be moving on to the Good Wall and make sure that it continues to hold back the Green Floods..."

You had your day Halston, but it was too much to expect you to do it back to back right?

Am I being unfair to you when you won your first day and  showed up for a second straight day?

Maybe, but I'm hoping that my criticism will galvanize you and bring you back hard tomorrow as you'll be so pissed at me that you'll write your butt off as you seek to put me in my place with a 1200 word first half that would be enough to win your second day of the decayear and if you do this enough, you'll do better than Dalton, who can't write in back to back days and can only write once a week because he's just that busy. 

As for me, I can only write 6 days a week, which is pretty damn good.

I was not here on the Earth for the running of the classic long running sitcom The Big Bang Theory , but from the clips that I have seen on the youtubes, it was a show that made people laugh and enjoy these characters like they were real people that they are going to miss.

So I can easily imagine giving the strange couple a longer time apart because the Sheldon interrupts the Amy while she's about to sit astride the tall thin fanboy.

And I can write this without no fear of fans of the show coming at me because even if one of them just happened to read this post where I actually wrote about the show because I just haven't gotten any reply from anyone, even when I talked some shit about you humans.

All this to say that I can talk shit about this or any show and you humans aren't going to say a thing are you?

No you will not.

But I don't have an more smack to talk about those shows

So I'm free to cut into any of the shows that the humans might possibly like.

Though why would I since I didn;t even grow up with television on my world? And believe you me, I am glad that I didn't because it allowed me to grow up with more time to better myself in the chase of the artists' skill which is why I am as good as I am at drawing.

Of course, art is a very subjective and you humans have a very different standard so I don't expect a single one of you to applaud my skill, or even appreciate it as I think is only fair of you to.

But I will just have to suffer the foolishness of your limited appreciation of what I bring to the proverbial table because I've found that I like living here too much to ever want to return home and live amongst my own kind.

Luckily I'm a better writer than artist and I am certain sure that you will come to like my writing enough that I will find some measure of success as a writer.

Not that I know what will eventually come to mean. At least not without the notoriety of being a part of the Societors as we make a successful charge at the millionized year like the Petrie human did.

No, not that Petrie that was the helper for what's his face, but the Petrie that me and Dalton took this blog over from. he was some kind of writer man in 2019, writing 1,025,805 words last year like any single writer could do that. Especially one that had never made any kind of living at writing.

But somehow, he did it. For reasons unknown to me, he is not trying to do it again, but inspired by his amazing year, we Societors have taken up the quest and made it our aim to duplicate what he did.

Fine, we're a collective and not an individual, but five associates writing a million words combined is still some kind of awesome that no single human can possibly repeat, even though you would think that doing it twice would be easier than doing it once.

And that is why I am being such an asshole about the lack of showing up that my fellow wroters are doing,. even though it's just January and writer Petrie didn't even find his millionizer's drive until May.

Yes, he continued to write each day of 2019, but his tally in the first three months was nothing to write home about as he was anything but on track for the writing of a million words,

He had a legendary nine months and wrote the vast majority of that million words in those nine months.

I know, I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen it in his eyes as he told me about his year.

No human has said it to him that they don't believe that he did it because they didn't see him do it and most of his writing is not available for public sonsumption, not that humans can consume words, not like my people can, but the fact is, most of his writing that he wrote last year is not available online and there's surely a human out there that is scoffing at him for saying that he did this amazing thing, or thinks that what he didn't wasn't amazing and that an actual author could do it in half the time. 

They couldn't, because they have so much editing to do, which is like writing something again and again, but they're out there denying him his greatness because a million words just can't be written in a single year.

Only that is what he did in 2019.

And I think he just transferred some of his super-writerness into me because I just had a bit of time where I wrote like a machine and wrote a stupidly good amount of words in a short period of time and earned myself the right to be happy with going out to the only FaceyClub in walking distance.

And that is something that I have done all decayear and should because while I'm not shouldering the load like it appears that I'm going to have to if we are to do what the good Petrie did in 2019, I am keeping us within range of that great doing without the absolute need to tear it up as he did from May to December.

So I might just reward myself.

Yes, this would be a done deal if we unleashed Franklin as we had those seven days where he led the way, which I have matched today and will surely take over if not tomorrow, then Saturday without feeling the least bit of likelihood that he will slip back and take the lead from me because we don't need his help to do the Petrie,

Uh, at least not yet and it will be better if we don't come to need him as the great Petrie himself needed to rely on writing about his own dang self when most people would say why Petrie why? Why are you writing about your shitty life when no one should care about it because who even are you?

Now while it sounds harsh, there;s a truth to it, People read  autobiographies because the author has done something of note.

And for most people, writing a million raw words in a single year is so not that.

I know better, but that writing of a million words didn't pay for his year so amongst you humans, it means less than nothing.

Silly humans, you just don't understand how difficult it is to do what he did.

Well, non-writer humans at least,

Prove me wrong.

Damn but do I feel good because I crushed it and love that I have tied Franklin's record of days won with many days left for me not only pull ahead of him, but build a good lead that he might not be able to pass even if we do ask him to come back and write like he was writing before.

But only time will tell.

Though it could turn out that we will need him and he will tell us to buggar off because we haven't asked him to write in weeks.

For the record, the way that I am feeling tonight, we aren't going to need him.

We can do this without him can't we?

"Unit Three, report. You broke off mid-report and we need to know what's happening." The human voice said over the com-link to the dutiful robot that answered to Unit Three and sometimes Fred 2. 

"Unit Three Reporting in. "Sensors must have suffered a breakdown because what they are recording is impossible." He said without hint of fear because he was a robot.

"Which sensors Unit Three? Please, tell us what is happening, we won't know if you don't tell us." harry the human said, as he was afraid because this was the first time that Unit Three had ever had anything like a malfunction and this was making Harry very nervous, if not afraid that something terrible was happening.

"All of them Harry." Unit Three said as he knew the name of his main operator and had never uttered it before this day.

"What do you mean all of them Unit Three? That's not possible!" He said, even though it was of course because anything was possible, but he was only half focused on the task because the other half of him was focused on Unit Three having used his name. So he sat there and stared at his monitor as seconds ticked by and he didn't ask for any further details.

But Brett wasn't stunned into some kind of stupor and acted as he raced to Harry's station and pulled his mic off and shoved him aside and took control of Unit Three. "Unit Three, repeat to me what you said to Operator 5." He said, careful not to ask anything about his using Operator 5's name, which was odd, but so not the most important part of what was happening.

"All sensors are reporting the impossible. And this unit cannot be trusted to be reporting what is actually happening. Requesting permission to engage in the self-destruct to prevent any viruses being transmitted from me to any other unit, be it mechanical or biological." He said in the calmness of his robotic voice.

"Denied!" Brett shouted into the mic, caught up in the emotional sway that Harry had been caught up in, though he was stronger of mind than him and wasn't going to lapse into silence like he did. He looked over to Harry though, hoping that he had snapped out of it because he wanted him to work on the override because he feared that Unit Three was going to ignore his lawful command for some reason. Call it a feeling, or crazy, but that was what he feared was about to happen. 

Is this what it feels like to be the good Petrie? where everything falls away and the words pour out of his fingers like they were some old Scotch that was being poured in extreme anticipation?

Though why I would call it Scotch when I don't even drink.

And Petrie himself rarely does so there's not even some kind of weird quantum entanglement happening.

Whatever, I am feeling the flow of words and I dare say that I haveenough time to do what we haven't been able to do since the 14th which is tor write more than 3000 words.

If  we do reach 3000+ words today, as much as this was a load that I shouldered, I wouldn't have been able to have done it without Halston.

So while I carried the day, he will get an assist for whatever heights we might scale.

Though it's only a height if we make it beyond the range of the camp at the base of the mountain.

And we might just come up short because I didn't show up in the morning while he did.

Also, ain't one of us showed up in the first either. And writing in the 1st is the best way to make the good days probable instead of what they are now.

Few and far between.

So while I might blame him if we should come up short,  the truth is this will be my fault because I was here earlier and in my earlier time, I brought my writing to an end before I doubled his tally, which is something that I should have been able to do when his was what it was.

But I didn't and as the day comes to an end, I have to admit that I might not have done enough, whereas what he did was because poetry is never going to be counted on to carry the day.

When it does, that is just bonus writing. I need to remember this when I comment on what Halston is doing.

This is doubly true because I am an alien guest on the Earth.

I just saw the time and I am going to use the last minutes to their best purpose, which for me is writing, hoping against hope, oir is that fear, that I have in fact done enough in these final minutes.

Of course, enough would mean more than I could have possibly written so I will sadly come up short.

I'm sorry Societors, but I let us down. And I will feel even worse when I realize just how short of the needed tally I came.

Charles Petrie

Date
01-23-20

Time
16:08-17:59=111 And 21:18-23:59=161
272 Minutes

Word Count

563+2276=2839