Order and Chaos

April showers bring May flowers; at least, that’s what my postman always told me. What he always muttered bitterly as he trekked through rain, snow, and sleet, and sometimes even shine. My elementary school classmates, thinking they’re clever, would always tack “Mayflowers bring pilgrims” to the end. The point is, everything has a set order in nature. In the world. The entire universe.

Just as rain brings flowers, candy leads to cavities, eggs hatch and later grow to lay their own, the four o’ clock news gives way to the five o’ clock news, and collapsing stars bring forth supernovas. Even chaos is known to have an order. A crowd of people dissipates when tear gas is presented, bacteria swarm and grow exponentially around the most able food sources, and even the petals on my flowers I love so much grow in a logically perfect way.

This, of course, brings me to my gardens. Any second I don’t spend at the lab easily predicting results of adding this to that because chemistry follows the perfect order of the universe, I spend in my gardens. Nothing is more beautiful to me than seeing photosynthesis in action. As I take out weeds, prune dead branches, water, harvest, and read in my hammock, I am always sure that my garden is in the same perfect order. My beans always sprout before the cucumbers, and my blackberries and blueberries are always ready to eat before my apricots are.

My flowers are prized far above my vegetable patches and my fruit bushes. Though perhaps less useful, I love them so much more. My tulips are always first to blossom in the spring, and each follows a perfectly predictable order after that.

Today was my day off, so I slept in a few hours before rolling out of bed for a late breakfast for one. I do enjoy living alone; men are the one subject that doesn’t follow any seen order other than puberty, so I avoid them on every romantic stand point. After breakfast, I slipped into my favorite sun dress and my bright pink wellies and walked to my shed to fetch my hat, gloves, and tools, hanging the same place they always do.

I knew it had to be time for my primroses to be in full bloom; and sure enough, when I went to check on my multicolored bundles of primrose, they were all open and beautifully colored, as always. There, too, were my yellow daffodils and tall sprigs of muscari, and lining the front of my front most flowerbed are the dahlias. Everything just as it should…..

Dahlias?

Those aren’t due to come in for months.

After standing in shock for several moments, I ran over to check they were truly my dahlias and not a clever weed or trick of the light. But there they were, in full bloom though it is still early in spring. They weren’t playing by the rules. They chose to rebel against the set order of the universe.

So I did what I had to; I grabbed my flamethrower from its regular place at the back of the shed, and I carefully burned those dahlias down to the dust.

Even though the flames didn’t contain themselves and almost spread from my flowerbed to the neighbor’s doghouse, that, officer, is why I had to murder my dahlias. 

Round Up: Week 2

Prompt:

Write a story from the point of view of any inanimate object. Don't anthropomorphize it (it can talk, just not like Mrs. Potts level of humanism), just let it tell you a story.

Amanda

The inspiration for my story came exactly from my life. Majoring in math, but having no sort of career to apply it to. It is told from the point of view of a calculator, who tries so hard to help the antagonist solve his problems, but, unfortunately, there are some problems in life that cannot be solved through mathematical equations.

MY VOTE: Kylie

Korrin

The hardest part for this prompt was deciding what object to use.  There are so many different stories I could tell from so many different things.  What you look like as you stare at your computer screen.  How the fridge feels as you open its doors to only look around in shame and boredom to close the doors again without getting anything.  I worried for about five days deciding before I went with a bed.  At first I started writing about how the bed loved to serve and was happy, but then I could have made that really bad and I wasn’t really feeling excited about it so I went with sarcasm.  Sarcasm is my forte (not really a good thing for a person who wants to teach little children, they tend not to get it). But when you can make your older sister cry when she is ten and you are four just by using sarcasm, you know you have a gift.  After that it was easy, although I feel like the bed could have been more gangster...

MY VOTE: Kylie

Kylie

First off, I loved this prompt. I've written a story with this same kind of prompt before, and it was magical. Being a robot fanatic, inanimate objects that can think are the greatest things ever. Unfortunately, this prompt gave me a million ideas. I was about to write fifteen other stories before I finally settled on a robot that was in love with a human, probably because I’m on a huge Vision kick after Age of Ultron. Plus, cute robots are always a positive.

MY VOTE: Stupid Amanda made me cry with her story, so I guess she can have my vote.

Week 3 Prompt-

Start your story with "April showers bring May flowers, at least, that's what my ______ used to tell me." Then end your story with story with, "And that, officer, is why I had to murder my ______."

Get the Message

Today’s the day I tell you how I feel. I’ve been agonizing over this for months. I’m not sure I can put into words how tingly I feel when you touch me, or even when you talk to me. I know we don’t really talk much—you do most of the talking, I just do my job—but I think we can make it work. We’ve been together for nearly a year, after all. I think I’m ready to take the chance.

I remember the first time I saw you. It was the day I came out of the dark and finally saw the sun. And when you smiled at me—I thought I was going to die. You were so beautiful, and you smiled at me. Little old me. It was like the world had only begun to turn. Who needed sun when I had you? The sun can’t smile, after all. And it certainly isn’t as radiant as you.

I wish you knew instinctively. I wish you could know how beautiful, smart, kind, funny, and talented you are. You’re everything I wish I could be. There’s only one thing that could make you more perfect, and that would be if you noticed me and the way I feel about you. You don’t talk to me very often. You talk to my co-workers more than you talk to me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re all very lovely. But I’m the one who really understands you. That sounds so silly, I know. But I’m the one who hears your failures and your triumphs, and I love you all the more for it every day of my existence. If only they understood what you mean to me. You give me purpose. You give me a reason to go on working day after day after day. I’m the one who saves all of your important messages. I’m the one who has to report the bad news and the good news. I know everything, and I’m still so madly, deeply, passionately in love with you.

But today’s the day. The day I tell you something other than what it’s my job to say. Something like “Your sweater looks particularly nice today, Jim,” or “I’m madly, deeply, passionately in love with you,” or “Your booty be poppin’ in dem jeans.” Okay, maybe not that last one. I don’t want to seem too forward, even if it is true.

The key just turned in the lock. You’re home. This is it. This is my moment. I flip on the red light and it blinks slowly. This is it, Jim. This is the day I tell you. You’re in the door. Hurry, Jim, I can’t wait. There’s something important here, something I need to tell you.

You dump your keys on the counter and I feel like I might die. No! I have to be strong. This is the perfect chance. Today will be the day.

Oh, Jim. You’re so close to me. You must have seen the light. You must know that I have something important to tell you. You just don’t know that it’s my pledge of love and devotion.

You see me. You look so unconcerned as you reach your hand out to me, as if this was a casual and unremarkable moment and not the moment that holds our happiness in the balance. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel that electric tingle in the air that carries the promise of a better, brighter, lovelier tomorrow?

You push the button. “You have one new message,” I say. This is it this is the moment. The moment I tell you . The moment I say—

Nothing. This is the moment I completely freeze. My words won’t come out. Instead of romantic words of love and devotion, there is only a fuzzy silence.

You swear. “Seriously? This is the fifth time this month!” You slam your hand on the counter, causing me to bounce. “I swear,” you say, shaking, “if I get one more phantom call, I’m changing my number!”

So today isn’t the day. And neither were the other five times this month.

But next time. Next time will be the time.

Probably.

Solving Your Potential

I still remember the first time we met. I felt you rummaging around the top drawer of your father’s desk when your tiny hands suddenly gripped my case and I felt you pull me into the fresh air. Your father bought me mainly for basic number running and I had been stuffed in that drawer for what felt like ages. Your father never found my full potential.

But you did.

That first day, I could almost feel your sense of wonder as your pudgy fingers ran over my numbers and functions. None of them made much sense, seeing as how you were barely old enough to count to ten, but I was excited to be doing something more than adding and subtracting. I was built for something more. And I remember feeling, that very day, that you might be the person to help me realize the measure of my creation.

Over the years, your input began to make more sense and become more complex. As we progressed beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, I began to learn along with you. Though I hold all the functions inside me, only my user has the ability to access them. I only learned to graph as you learned to graph. When you moved up to matrices, logarithms, trigonometric functions, and exponentials, I found the code inside myself and discovered what I knew. With time, you learned how to add your own functions to my data base. Some were games and silly distractions, but others made me stronger, wiser, and more useful.

Your functions grew more complex, and with them, so did I. You gave me a speaker and taught me how to play notes. I became a great musician with your help. You gave me a camera and I was able to see you. You were all I ever wanted to see, from your thick glasses to your quivering smile. You showed me what equations can look like in the non-digital world, like the Fibonacci series found in the pedals of a flower. You took me on display and we won many contests. We grew together to be something wonderful.

As college approached, you deleted most of my functions to make more useful ones- programs that taught me physics and many theoretical formulas. Knowing the mathematical laws of the universe was a fair trade for my games and my camera.

I could always tell if we were in a test or finishing a homework assignment. When you are stressed, you type hard and fast, but when we have time to compute, you are gentle and careful about your input. I knew I was doing all the problems right, for you were the one who taught me how.

I guess you must have graduated by now, though. Last month we were in a very important test with complex equations, but you haven’t picked me up since. It’s been getting rather lonely. I now have so much potential, but no way to use it. I am useless without my user, and you seem to have moved on.

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Finally, I am in your hands again. But this time the equations are different. No formulas, no complexities, simply addition and subtraction. If I had to guess, I would think you are budgeting. If that is the case, I don’t like the numbers I keep giving back. I wish I could take away the negative signs for you, but you programmed me to work perfectly, so I must. The typing becomes more intense and I have less time to process one function before a new one comes up. I can tell you are stressed, but this time it can’t be a test. Why do I keep giving such low results when your potential is so high?

Suddenly I feel water dripping onto me. You really should be more careful with liquids around me. I thought we settled that in the great chocolate milk scare of ’98. Luckily you were able to save my systems and bring me back to life. You leave for a while, and when you come back I suddenly feel a long lost part of me back again- my camera.

As I look into your face, I see you have spilled water there too. Your hair is standing up like it used to when you were in trouble.

“How…?” I hear you whisper before shuddering silently. I long for you to continue, but have no way of showing it, so I simply wait.

“How do I get by with no job, and no money? I have a master’s degree in mathematics for crying out loud! I've tried harder than I ever have in my life… but I just can’t do it anymore. Why isn't there a formula for getting your life together?”

You shudder again. I wish I had a way to output information, to give you some answer. I notice my battery is running low and consider informing you just to be able to say something, but I don’t want to add any trouble.

You have so much potential. You just need to find a user who has the keys to unlock it.

You just need to find the function your programming fits.

Going against my code, I output two symbols to you, taking all the effort my hard drive encloses. “=?” I know you will understand what this means. But without a battery life to continue on, I black out, leaving you alone, but hoping you can solve your equation without me for a time.