Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Random Background Thoughts


NOTE: These are not instructions they are suggested possibilities, random ideas, and scribbled notes. If you wish to add to them please do so by commenting to this blog.

  • Who has brought Gerald to where he is and why?
  • What do they want with him?
  • Where is he?
  • Why do things keep changing?
  • What kind of reality is this? (different planet, different time, different dimension)
  • What is Gerald's background? (how old, profession, relationships,( I Roxy his girlfriend his ex-girlfriend?

GERALD: Screen Name OS_Infn8 cute in a nerdy sort of way and has relatively good vintage fashion sense. He loves his gadgets. He is a consummate computer whiz and has tricked-out his PC with robotic attachments and it is a super gaming system. It will run any game from any system. He has also modified it to accept full voice commands - it currently runs his apartment’s needs including making coffee and watering the plants, vacuuming, controlling the washer/dryer ironing shirts (though doing a very bad job on pants), washing dishes. It has been known to feed and provide water for a neighborhood cat

Gerald will discover that he has his cell phone in his pocket and that it occasionally works (though badly) in this place. It is a source of hope and it also totally frustrates him.

On every attempt to call Roxy he is always blipped to her answering machine. Her machine has a purposefully annoying (and nerdy) message.

Gerald can text but only a limited number of characters. Every once in a while he gets an incoming call

When he asks questions of the beings he encounters concerning where he is everyone answers him "you are here. If you were somewhere else you would know it."

The bird always comes back and is from this world. It first came to Gerald’s attention when trying to renter though the return point (which has always been there six feet out from Gerald’s window into the air-shaft) This portal is one of many. This particular one is named The Ninth Street Station. The bird, by the way, is angry with Gerald believing that crashing into the window is all his fault.

Gerald happens to live on eighth street.

Girl Friend ROXANNE – is a tree hugger and a vegan – the one thing that they have fully in common is that they are Neil Gaiman fans. Both like comic books – and insist on calling them graphic novels. They met at a ComiCon in NYC (calling it the lesser Comicon to that in San Diego). She is taller than he is and although quite the nerd herself she is very beautiful. She holds a Black Belt in Tai Kuan Do and in Aikido. She’s a formidable warrior. Gerald is mystified that she will have anything to do with him.

Friend 1: GABE (screen name pone4ever) pone means: “Kick-ass, beating up someone, winning something, damage. Used for video games or extreme sports.” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pone Gabe is a sci-fi nerd. Also likes Neal Gaiman but likes Neal Stephenson better. He calls them the 2 “Ns.” People mock him for it. He and Gerald argue over who is best of the two authors

Note. The names of the 2Ns (Gaiman and Stephenson) can be mentioned but there can be no quotes from either of them in this story.

Friend 2: MATHEW - bartender at a local club. Likes to think he knows a lot about computers and thinks he’s part of the click but seems kind of a poser. He turns out to be part of the other world and the personality he has taken on is just a charade he’s friends with Gerald because the port is outside Gerald’s window. The other world has been watching Gerald. Matt came for Gerald and the bird (XOLOPOTOLMAI) came for Matt. This guy looks like a caricature - the epitome of hotness like a super hero. He gets all the girls and wonder why Roxanne will have nothing to do with him. In his own world he acts very differently.

When people want to use the Ninth Street Station they have to shimmy up and down Gerald’s drain pipe. He lives on the fifth floor and people who use it find its location to be annoying.

In the other world Matt is a scientist of sorts and this is why he thinks he knows so much about computers in Gerald’s world. Problem is that in his own world computers are not the same as those in our own. They work on a totally different set of principles, that to us, seem like nothing more-nor-less than magic. In Matt’s world he’s built an automaton. He’s come here in search of more technology for it. On its completion it was only a matter of days that it became self-aware. It somewhat resembles the tin man from Oz. The name it has given itself is MOTH. The robot however is depressed - it has a Pinocchio Complex , and is constantly doing things (going the local fairs, buying cloth and sewing his own cloths) working to try to become human - but is always just off the mark – never really getting anything exactly right. Moth is becoming progressively more frustrated – in never perfecting it human-ness it is becoming more and more destructive..

Matt comes for Gerald because Gerald can fix his robot by giving it balance. Ppl in this world think of Gerald as a renowned computer therapist because he has made his computer able to accept everything his dose to it. His own computer is now on the verge of becoming self aware but he doesn’t know this. He’s bad at math but has a empathic relationship to computer science but it seems almost imposable.


  • How does it end?
  • He repairs the alien robot.
  • He gets the girl but doesn't even understand how.
  • Who is the bad guy?
  • Bad guy could benefit by the robot being angry
  • Bad guy has been convincing the robot that he can get revenge on the rest of the world that doesn't accept him by turning outlaw.
  • The way he lures the robot into this is by convincing him that if enough money is spent the robot could become human
  • There is a danger that the robot could find the Ninth Street Station.

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