Sam Without Pants. Here is wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

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I’m stumped.

I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what I should do about the fact that I don’t know what to do.

Stop that kid.

Okay, so, I should be doing some of the tasks on my list. I look at that list of things, and it’s just so big, and so overwhelming, and, oh god, kid, will you just stop that? Go to the other room. No, you can’t watch TV. Just give me five minutes, okay?

Sigh.

Okay, start. My list. Crap.

Okay, what’s the next thing due? I should do that.

Wait.

I keep doing that. I keep doing the next thing due, not the step that will take me one step closer to not having to do the next thing due, one step closer to my dreams. WHAT? No, you can’t! Go into the other room and play there! Yes, you can do that.

Okay, what’s the big thing I want to do? Well, there are so many things I want to do, I don’t know where YES! You can grab a juice out of the fridge. Take a box, not from the jug, okay?

Deep breath.

Should I count to ten, too?

Meditation, yes, that’s one of the big goals I have. Not sure I can meditate with this deadline tomorrow. Wait, tomorrow’s deadline, the article. Okay, yes, I know what I should do now, the article. Okay, bringing up my editor… title of the article?

Crap.

Um…

Okay, this is why I hadn’t started this last week, or the week before, or the week before. Does everyone do their tasks just before the deadline or is it just me? I guess I could do an article on procrastination and mock myself for procrastinating, but wouldn’t that just mean that the next client who is thinking of hiring me is just going to read it and thinking, nope, don’t want to torture my editor with that kind of slacking. Of course, if they knew their stuff, they’d give us deadlines that could be missed, and still be on time.

I guess that wouldn’t be a deadline then, would it.

And why does deadline have dead in it. Is it a dead line, a line not breathinga any more? I mean, what does a line have to do …

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

Sam?

Come on, kid, answer already.

Sam!

I swear, kid, you are Calvin incarnate. Where are you?

Okay, here’s your shirt.

And your…

Is that you in the front yard?

Really kid?

Naked?

Sigh.

Okay, I like this one, Peripheral Turbulence. Here is wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

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The alarms were going off. The lights were flashing, making the room stupidly red. Whoever thought this design was a good idea clearly never had to look at a console when the room was pulsating red. Jeffries gritted his teeth and turned to his partner.

“Okay, what was that?” he asked.

“I have no clue,” McGraine responded, looking intently over the dials and lights in front of him. Everything had looked normal to Jeffries both before and after the alarms started going off, before and after that bump.

“Me either. Turn off the damn alarms already.”

“Okay.”

The comparative silence was welcome. The hum was below their hearing, but they felt the sound, knew that at least the engines were still going. They didn’t know yet if they were okay.

A few minutes later, McGraine commented, “I can’t find anything wrong. We didn’t seem to hit anything, everything is within normal parameters.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing, but, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah, nothing really blipped a cruiser their size. Nothing physically could.

“Okay, go backward with the stats, find the first anomaly.”

Twenty minutes later, they had found something, but weren’t conviced it was related: an expanding gravity wave doesn’t rumble a starship, and certainly not at the frequency they felt. Between stars, in the space they were moving in, no, even that was odd.

“Want to drop out?” McGraine asked the question he knew they were both thinking.

“Not really.”

“Think we should?”

“Protocol says yes.”

“Do you think we should?”

“Should? Yeah.”

“Are we going to?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

McGraine kept the systems looking backward at the data it collected before “The Bump,” as they started calling it. An hour after that, the data revealed another anomaly. McGraine and Jeffries looked at it, puzzled, then asked for a translation to the data.

“Uh, so, drop out now?” McGraine asked.

Jeffries looked at the message from the third ship that had ever entered The Loop, the famous one lost to the stars two centuries before, with myths and legends and lessons in the history books, the launch that nearly stopped humans from reaching the stars. He looked at it, completely in disbelief.

“Unpassable peripheral turbulence ahead. Advise retreat.”

The ship rumbled again.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story about it. Today’s random link gave me the band name Muttonchop Neil, and the thought, "Holy moly, why are they all so weird?"

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He looked up again at the bright lights overhead, then back down to the stage. How many times had he stood like this? The town was different, the crowd was unknown, but the stage? The stage was the same as it ever was. Different colour, maybe. Different layout, maybe. Different size, yes, but always the same.

How many years had he done this? Too many to count.

How many lungs full of smoke had he inhaled over those years? Also too many to count.

How many songs had he sung? Too many.

Drinks had he drunk? Too many.

Nights forgotten in the mists of memory. Too too many.

And one never so.

He looked at the stage again, and looked down at his feet as he stepped on the first stair. Guitar in hand, fingers around the neck, thumb carressing gently, he walked up the next two steps to the stage, listening to tonight's small crowd, remembering the echos of that night.

She had been excited to go to the show, not because she cared about the performer, but because he did. She wanted to know about him, what moved him, what inspired him, why he kept playing every day.

She hated loud places, but braved that show, to understand him better. They had watched his idol on stage, the tickets expensive for the small venue's show, the intimate setting. They had watched him through the first set, waited anxiously for his return, and sat enraptured in the second set.

The music his idol, his god, his dream made sang to his heart. He had known for so long this is what he wanted to do forever, play music he had heard that night, music made from that man's voice, his fingers, his soul.

He had expected to do that forever with her. He shared that with her that night.

She was gone the next.

He walked to the middle of the stage, sat down on the stool and looked out at the crowd. A few jokes here, a short story to connect with them. A scan to see a couple leaning in towards each other. He wondered if the woman was there because she wanted to know more about his interests, his passion, his loves.

He didn't know, but he played to her anyway.

He played to the woman in the audience, and to the woman in his memory.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next band name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story about it. Today’s band name, is Love Smears

---

Bzzzzzzzzzzt!

The two flies buzzed around Artie’s head again. Artie was sick of it.

For reasons unknown to Artie and all of his classmates, bugs seemed to love divebombing Artie. He showered twice a day, he ate all those awful vegetables his mom gave him. He did every thing the doctor told him to do, and no adult who was asked seemed to think he smelled weird, but the bugs kept dive-bombing him.

While such bombings seemed amusing to all of his classmates, Artie didn’t find them amusing. Not one bit. Not that his dislike seemed to stop the teasing from his school peers. Or the bombings from the bugs.

Bzzzzzzzzzzt!

The two flies buzzed near his ear.

Artie threw out his hands in frustration, just as the bus went over the speedbump into the school turn-around. Artie loved his bus driver, Uncle Sam. The old guy had been taking that final turn and speedbump at breakneck speed for decades, giving all of the kids on his bus a small jump into the air, to the sounds of squeals and gasps. All of the kids on the bus had shared that joy with their parents, whose eyes would crinkle in merriment at the memories of their childhood bus rides over the same speedbumps, at the same too-fast speed.

The bus lifted Artie up.

His hands connected with both the flies, which had been starting their next dive-bombing run.

Both went over to the window Artie sat next to.

The window and Artie’s hand survived. The flies did not.

Smeared across the window was now a trail of fly guts and parts. Artie looked at his hand, then at the window, then at his hand, and back to the window. Kids stood up to leave the bus, as Artie sat there. He had never connected with a bug before. They had always eluded his vague battings. Now he had just killed two. At once.

“Wow.”

Artie turned around to the girl behind him, sitting in the next seat over. He was sure he had never seen her before.

“That was quite ninja,” the girl continued.

Artie stared at her. When had a girl talked to him when not forced by a teacher or a parent?

“My name is Amy,” she said.

“Uh… Artie.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Uh… you, too.”

“I’m new. This is my first day. Can you help me around?” she asked as she stepped into the bus aisle to leave the bus.

Artie unconsciously wiped his hand on his jacket. “Um… sure…”

Someone had talked to Artie. And that someone was a girl.