Story Burst 8
Dear Friends,
Greetings from SPiNST8. We’ve really been enjoying putting our Story Bursts together for you and are now ready to put another spin on them, more about that in a sec. First, a look at this issue:
The Squeakerinos enjoy a day at the beach
A sci-fi flash of reincarnation
And the latest episode of Answer Key. What the heck has happened so far?
The story begins at the Aroa Research Center, where Amser Hughes is leading an experiment with rats dosed with “quantum slurry” that will prove the existence of the quantum brain. When one of the rats unexpectedly disappears and then reappears, fellow researcher Halit Adem discovers that the rat has traveled through time.
He brings his findings to Director Kairos in an attempt to gain his own research team to study time travel, but is denied. This drives him into the shadows where he works off the books, attempting to send rats both to the past and to the future. Having determined that the rats can only travel in one direction, Hal will drink the quantum slurry himself for a chance to follow them into the future.
Ok, back to our new spin on this newsletter: the animatic. An animatic is a series of sketches with accompanying sound track that tells a story. Usually, animatics are beefed up into full-on, big time animations, but we love their barebones essence and feel they suit our storytelling—what do you think?
With love,
SPiNST8 Cate & Steve
Squeakerinos
This week’s flash story:
Euphoria
Back outside of time, I asked her why she chose the late 20th/early 21st centuries to live her next life. The chance to live through the fall of another empire or experience another pandemic?
No, she said, for that moment of air between diving board and water: pure euphoria.
Watch the lo-fi animatic short Euphoria on YouTube
Answer Key: Episode 8
That morning Hal beat Amser in—she was probably on another early morning talk show—beat Kairos, and Iffan, who always reported to work at precisely 9am. The only ones there were workers at the loading dock rolling in tanks of medical grade O2. He went to his office and locked the door. Everything was in place. Of course what he had on his person—ID, glasses, and clothes—wouldn’t make the journey, but unless Hal underwent a complete personality change, his set of gym clothes would still be in the closet and a pair of spare glasses in his desk.
Hal grimaced after downing the slurry and sat back. Early morning sun was filtering in through the blinds, casting soft light on his bookshelf, his workbench, the inactive computer monitor, the pens and paper clips and notebooks strewn about. He tapped his foot—nothing was happening, and the mixture should already have crossed the blood brain barrier. Another breath. He started going over the ratios of the chemicals in the slurry, wondering how he might recalculate.
Then it started. A loose paperclip rose up and floated through the air to set gently down on the pages of an open book. As if a ghost had entered the room.