Mostly my rejections have consisted of form letters differing only by logo: “Thanks for your interest in our press, but at this time our publishing schedule is full.”
Last Christmas I finished writing my first novel, The Cube People, representing three years of work. The protagonist, Setrac Sed (that’s Descartes spelled backwards – not genius, however I was having fun) awakens on a raft, floating down a river and lands on the banks of Cube City, not knowing who he is or how he got there.
The people of this idyllic society worship the Cube. The Cube is a supercomputer that keeps track of all atoms within the walls of Cube City. Hence, the Cube knows or can predict what is going to happen to everyone and everything within the city. The Cube can prevent all accidents, all crime and all illness. Each citizen has a micro-processing chip implanted in his head to help the Cube keep track of all potential thought patterns.
I built in a love story with Setrac Sed and a woman named Zia. It turns out that the Cube knew that Zia was going to start a revolution in the future, which would ultimately destroy itself and the city. The Cube found multiple revolutionary pathways amongst its people (my fancy sci-fi way of saying, if the revolution hadn’t begun with Zia, then somebody else was going to lead the revolt; it was inevitable). The Cube’s solution to stop the revolution from happening was to send in Setrac Sed, who turns out not to be a man, but an android built by the Cube. Analogous to God sending Jesus to save us, the Cube sends Setrac Sed. What the Cube can’t predict is the Cube itself. That is to say, the Cube can’t keep track of its own atoms, its own thought patterns. Therefore, the Cube wasn’t able to foresee that Setrac Sed would fall in love with Zia. Thus, this leads Setrac to kill his father, the Cube. Oedipus – who doesn’t dig Greek tragedy?
Yeah I know, a little geeky, but I am a computer programmer after all. I find determinism fascinating. Imagine if there were a super computer that could keep track of every atom in the known universe. If you believe that atoms and molecules behave in certain set ways, then in theory you could predict exactly how everything was going to unfold. That super computer could map out your entire life. It would know for example that on July 17, 2026 at 1:23 p.m., you would be thinking about getting yourself a chocolate or maple walnut ice-cream cone, the choice you would make, and what kind of cheeky banter you would make with the clerk as you paid.
So what? That’s what my wife would say. Poor Sarah. She doesn’t care for science fiction. Somehow, I’ve managed to get her to read everything I’ve written. I’m a horrible speller. Sarah is God when it comes to spelling. So I say, thank God.
Just a few months ago, I sent the first three chapters of The Cube People to eighteen different publishers. Sarah helped me address and organize all the envelopes. “After all the help I give you, you’d better give me a baby,” is what she said after we’d dropped all the packages at the post office. Did I tell you she was wonderful?
I’m restless. I always have to be working on something, writing. I’ve begun a new novel entitled Hungry Hole. It’s a horror story. I work on it when I can, which is mostly in the evening, though sometimes I write at work. I have a lot of down time at work. There seems to be a lot of people with a lot of down time at work: e-Bay shopping, blogging, planning their vacations. I write. I don’t feel bad about it. I work hard when there’s work to be done. Plus I’m fast, which probably contributes to my free time. I just don’t have the motivation to be a “Peter Cann,” our resident Tech-3 on the floor. He’s the man you go to when you can’t figure out a difficult computer problem. He knows our mainframe system inside out. He’s been here for decades and always makes time for you. Visiting Peter’s cubicle is always an experience because he also has a worldly knowledge of many things: art, history, philosophy, you name it, Peter Cann can tell you about it.
I have no passion for my work. Doing the kind of code maintenance that we do in my shop is strap-a-sponge-to-your-
chin-to-collect-the-drool boring. Your brain leaks out of your ears. It’s worse than watching Nashville in the crappy seats of the Mayfair Theatre with a drunk and raving Phil beside you extolling the virtues of Altman’s cinematic genius. That reminds me, I need to email Phil back about Thursday’s film. Sarah gave me the okay.
The phone rings here in my office. It’s the clinic. They’ve lost my sample. I have to go back in tomorrow to give them another cup of my essence.
Hungry Hole: Chapter One
A Novel by Colin MacDonald
Ryan managed to hit the goddamn beam, again, on his way down to the cellar.
“Fuck,” said Ryan.
“You okay honey?” asked a snickering voice from the top of the stairs.
“Remind me to pad this stupid thing, or get my legs cut off at the knees,” replied Ryan as he continued to descend, rubbing his forehead, into what Gillian called, “The-Amityville-Horror-serial-killer-pit-of-hell.” Two bare light bulbs illuminated old wooden shelves, boxes marked “office” and “bedroom” and Gillian’s hardly used exercise bike. The flaking white walls exposed the rust-coloured underbelly of foundation, like the skin of a scab-ridden burn victim. Hunched, Ryan staggered to the little room in the front of the house inhaling a funk of mould, century-old sewers, mushrooms, earth, paint cans and cardboard.
On his way back he didn’t notice the small crack in the concrete floor. He tripped, managing to smash the last Mason jar of hot and spicy dills.
“Shit,” said Ryan.
“You okay honey?” asked Gillian again, this time with an even deeper laugh.
“I’m fine, but I managed to lose the last of the hot and spicys. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, just grab some of the extra garlic ones, and get another bottle of wine.”
As the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” became louder, so did the stoned giggles of Dean and Marsha. He envisioned Gillian dancing barefoot with her glass of wine being beautiful, entertaining, being her usual self. He looked down at the mess he’d made. A tiny stream of brine trickled toward the crack, pooled momentarily at its edge – surface tension holding for a second – then broke and dribbled into the earth.
He cleaned up and brought Gillian her pickles. Dean and Marsha attacked the jar like savages. Gillian sexually deep-throated her pickle causing everyone to laugh to the point of crying. The pot was good.
“You might get some pickle action tonight buddy,” said Dean as he nudged Ryan. Gillian winked at Ryan. Ryan smiled back.
All of a sudden, loud barking could be heard coming from underneath the window at the side of the house. “What the hell is that?” Dean asked.
“That’s Spike, our crazy neighbour’s pitbull.”
“Jesus, friggin’ thing sounds possessed,” laughed Dean. “What’s it doing?”
“Whenever somebody walks by on the street, it runs up and down between the houses as if it was one of Satan’s very own hounds. The little bastard actually managed to get out once and bit me on the ankle.”
“Good lord,” said Marsha, biting into a pickle.
“Why didn’t you have the thing put down?” asked Dean.
“I told Bill, that’s the neighbour, I told him, ‘Bill, if that dog ever gets out and bites another person, I swear to God I’ll get him put down.’ Bill said that was fair enough.”
Everyone sat stoned, listening to the dog growling and running up and down beside the house. “I don’t see anyone walking by,” commented Marsha.
In the basement, the crack opened a little more.
Duck Feather Press
PO Box 521
Toronto, ON
M5T 8A1
January 2, 2006
Re: Manuscript Submission
Dear Colin:
Thank you for sharing your manuscript, The Cube People, with us. Duck Feather Press unfortunately does not publish works of science fiction. We are only interested in works of li
terature.
Best of luck with your writing.
Sincerely,
Judy Miller
Editor, Duck Feather Press
Six months later…
Crazy Larry and Suzy Scratch
I’m doing coding review on one of Dan’s programs. It’s a mess. I don’t think he even bothered to compile the damn thing. I fill in the last comment box, number 15, on our standard code walkthrough 811 form about which areas of code need to be fixed. Shortly after, I find yet another coding error. Another form is needed. I look for one in my filing cabinet, but of course I’m out. Off to the photocopier. I wouldn’t dare ask Carla to borrow a walkthrough form to copy – touching one of her pieces of paper might throw her into cardiac arrest. I’d ask Dan, but he called in sick again. Brita has her headphones on, her right leg is bobbing up and down, a piston, and I can make out the tinny sounds of heavy metal. Her headphones are big and make her look as if she might be running the radio on a World War II submarine. She appears to be reading some online leftist news service. I deduce this from the hammer and sickle in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. I tap her on the shoulder. She removes her headphones – screams and pounding drums erupt from the speakers. I’d have a headache within a minute.
“Yeah, what is it, MacDonald? What can I do you for?” she spits.
“Can you give me an 811 form to photocopy?”
“Yeah, yeah, shit, just a second,” she huffs as she pauses her music.
“Don’t want to miss a note of that,” I say.
“Fuck MacDonald, you got something against Slipknot?”
“No no, I’m just kidding you, Brita. Just seems a little loud for me.”
“We’re living in the bondage of capitalism. What happens when you don’t pay your taxes?”
“Umm, I don’t know, maybe nothing. There are all kinds of things that could happen. We’d probably send you a letter asking you to please pay.”
“But after, after you don’t pay for a long time, do you know what happens MacDonald? You go to motherfucking jail. The cops show up at your house with guns and drag your ass to the slammer because you didn’t pay your taxes. How can we call this freedom?”
“But you work for the MRC, you’re one of the people responsible for putting tax dodgers in jail.”
A strange look, a mix of confusion and anger washes over Brita’s face. “Here’s your form, MacDonald. Make sure to bring it back,” she gruffs.
“Thanks,” I say.
As I exit the quad, I hear Carla open her drawer. Shhech shhech goes the spray bottle. This is normal procedure after anybody exits our quad. Walking along the outer wall I see Crazy Larry, or at least that’s what Phil and I call him. I’m not sure what group Larry works for, or what he does, but he’s built himself a cardboard wall/barrier made from the green tops of paper boxes. Taped to the boxes is a handmade sign offering the following information: I’m wearing earplugs. If you wish to contact me please send me an email. Thanks for your cooperation. –Larry Young. If there were ever an employee to go postal it would be Larry. I often listen, waiting to hear the cocking sounds of a rifle. If I ever do hear a shot, I know which way I’m going to run. Once some movers dropped a filing cabinet – BOOM! – I shot out of my seat at warp speed. I was halfway down the hall, heart racing, palms wet, when I realized that Larry, nor anyone else for that matter, wasn’t shooting.
He’s standing up, as he often is when I walk by, looking out the window at the parking lot. I can see the yellow circle of the industrial earplug wedged in Larry’s oversized melon of a head. His lips are moving ever so slightly but I can’t make out anything he is saying. I wonder if he uses the same earplugs over and over, or does he use fresh ones daily, or maybe he changes them on a weekly basis?
Larry too is in a quad, but two places are empty. The only other occupant is Suzy Scratch, who sits diagonally across from Larry. From all accounts, Suzy is an old veteran, has been around MRC from the time they used punch cards. Apparently, she suffered some sort of collapse in the nineties and was off work for a while, but when she came back, she just wasn’t the same. Every time I walk by, Suzy is busy scraping away at a scratch-and-win lotto ticket. She never seems to have any work to do; she’s just waiting to hit it big I guess. I puzzle over what she’d do if she actually won. As I pass by the entrance to their quad, I glance back and sure enough, there’s Suzy scratching away. I continue down the hall to the coffee room where the photocopier resides. A large notice has been placed on the wall above the copier:
Attention ALL STAFF: Photocopying is at an all-time high. Please think twice and copy once. Thanks for your cooperation in this important matter.
–The Management
I look at the walkthrough form in my hand. “Do I really need to photocopy you?” I ask the paper. The paper doesn’t reply and I grow incensed at its silence. I feed it into the machine and select a conservative ten copies rather than twenty. Peter Cann comes waltzing in with an empty coffee mug and heads over to the communal twenty-five-cents-a-cup pot and pours himself one. He sees me and says with a smirk, “Take it easy, photocopying is at an all-time high.”
“I see that,” I say as the copier spits out my last page.
“Hey, I finished off The Cube People last night. I thought it was really really good. The analogy of art as freedom against determinism was really interesting.”
“Hey Peter, wow, that’s great. It means a lot that you liked it.”
“I think you’ve got talent, Colin. You hear anything back from any publishers yet?”
“One rejection so far. I’m not optimistic.”
“Don’t be discouraged, it’ll happen for you. Are you working on something now?”
“Yeah, a new novel called Hungry Hole.”
Peter smiles at the title.
“More science fiction?” he asks.
“More horror than sci-fi.”
“You know I tried to read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and threw it straight into the trash. Awful garbage. However, The Dead Zone was one of the finest pieces of literature I’ve ever read. So I say to you Mr. MacDonald, keep it up,” he says raising his cup in salutation as he leaves.
I feel good. I’d given him a copy of The Cube People because he’d asked to see it. I didn’t actually expect him to read it, let alone like it. I can’t wait to tell Sarah.
On my way back I notice that Larry is no longer staring out the window, and because I’m not looking straight ahead, I don’t see Larry when he comes barrelling, head down, out of his quad. We crash into each other. This scares the bejeebers out of me and I nearly drop my paper. Larry’s bug-eyed face is only inches from mine. “Sorry,” I blurt out.
Larry doesn’t say anything to this, doesn’t apologize either. He just stares at me, confused. “I think they know,” he blurts out, then continues down the hall.
“Fucking freak,” I mutter to myself, passing Suzy, still hunched over her desk, scratching.
When I get back to my quad, I can smell disinfectant coming from Carla’s desk. I glance over at Dan’s desk and see a decaying, half-eaten muffin lying beside his keyboard. Is this some passive-aggressive move on Dan’s part to drive Carla batty? Not his style – he’s just a plain old slob.
“Here’s your 811 back,” I say to Brita, although I doubt she can hear me.
She swivels in her chair and responds loudly, likely due to Slipknot blasting in her ears, “Just put it on the fucking desk MacDonald, Jesus, can’t you see I’m coding here?”
I log back onto my machine and an email from Phil greets me wanting to go to lunch; apparently he’s starving and about to lose his mind. Before I even click reply, Phil appears at the entrance of my quad. He performs a huge fake sneeze in Carla’s direction. Carla looks like somebody just told her that a family member had died.
“Must be coming d
own with something,” says Phil.
I try not to laugh.
“You ready dude?” asks Phil.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Time to get the fuck out of Dodge, baby.”
I lock up my machine, alt-ctrl-delete, as I hear Carla open her drawer for the spray.
Sunshine Valley Mall
I don’t really know why Phil bothers to email me about lunch; he comes by my desk at the same time every day and says the same thing, “Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.” Dodge, our office building, is located across the street from a shopping mall. If I don’t bring my lunch, which Phil never does, this is where we go.
We frogger our way across the street through heavy traffic and into the temperature-controlled environment of Sunshine Valley Mall. Escalators carry us upwards through the suspended 3-D fibreglass clouds. When we reach the top, the bustling noise of hungry shoppers is almost deafening. A huge wrought-iron archway with the words “Sunshine Court” greets us. Choices abound. Neon and fluorescent lights illuminate the culinary repertoire of such fine eateries as New York Fries, Pizza Pizza, Subway, Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, KFC and the family-run Lebanese place, The Shawarma Pit. We’ve been coming here for years and don’t bother to discuss where we’re going to eat. I hand Phil seven bucks and look for a good seat near the tranquil artificial rock mound, equipped with a soothing waterfall, goldfish pond and lush plastic plants. From this magical vantage point, we can gaze into the den of beauties, the all-female staff of First Choice Haircutters. Phil gets his haircut at least once a month, usually from Lulu, the clipper with the biggest breasts. Within five minutes, Phil has returned from The Shawarma Pit with a couple of waxed-paper-wrapped chicken sandwiches, garlic potatoes and sodas.
The Cube People Page 2