FF – Explaining

Thanks to the wonderful Ted Strutz for the photo this week. I was tempted with futuristic roadkill, but this bit of fun came instead.

Explaining

“Pixies,” I said.

“Pixies?!” My nephew spun towards me. He’s used to my scientific answers: refraction makes the sky blue, bites itch because of histamines, etc. When he asked how the dispenser gives him soap, he was probably expecting light beams or heat sensors.

“Pixies,” I said. “They sit in the machine and whenever they see a hand coming towards them, they panic! The Watching Pixie calls up to the Defensive Pixies and they fire soap!”

His eyes lit up. “But soap isn’t a weapon!”

“Makes the hand go away, doesn’t it?”

A full minute later: “Is soap pixie poop?!”

If you enjoyed the science in this week’s Friday Fiction, check out this old Inspiration Mondays story about how fridge lights work.

FF – Special Relativity

Photo credit J Hardy Carroll

Special Relativity

Time moves slower on a train. It’s the perfect chance to read or to write, even to sleep. If you don’t mind occasionally waking up in Wales. But the world moves faster around it, changes at a glance. Bleak warehouses become sheep, huddling from the rain that minutes ago was sun.

You can age a year just waiting for leaves to be cleared, but the world won’t hold on. The wedding can’t be delayed for a single guest, even one who might have put a stop to it and told her she was making a mistake. Especially not for him.

Extroduction

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is a great example of why I didn’t study physics beyond 16. I just… no, it’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m not saying I know better than our great scientists, I’m just saying this is theoretical too far for me. If you are interested though, here’s the video Sebastian and I watched this morning to try to understand it for this story. Start about 3 minutes in for the portion this narrator is referring to.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – YouTube

Friday Fictioneers – Watching the World

It’s Friday again (how does that keep happening? Any minute, it’ll be Christmas!) and time for another piece of fiction. A little snippet for you this week, with two characters I feel I would like to work with. The photo is from Doug MacIlroy, the other responses can be found on Rochelle’s website. Do pay both of them a visit – you won’t be disappointed.

Watching the World

Grandpa was always making things. That morning, I arrived to find a papier-mache ball drying in a bucket.

“What’s that? The world in a bucket?”

“You know I can’t tell you,” he smiled, “Or I’d have to kill you!”

I checked facebook while I watched him work. Lois messaged me: “Whatcha doin?”

Mom said Grandpa was “two cakes short of a picnic,” and in town, they called him “Crazy Doug”. I couldn’t tell Lois where I was or how much I enjoyed being there. Instead I looked at the globe wrapped in chicken wire and replied, “Just watching the world.”