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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Time Travel in 100 Words or Less 

Laurence Simon of This Blog is Full of Crap fame is also the proprietor of a podcast devoted to "100 Word Stories" -- stories completely told in 100 words, or less. Each week he has a contest for anyone to contribute by the Friday deadline an audio recording of their own story on that week's topic, and then readers vote for the stories they like most.

This week's topic for the 100 Word Story Contest was time travel, and although it took me a long, long, long, (...etc...), long time to complete my 100 words, I did manage to submit an entry:

Laurence's story deadline loomed. My promised 100 word opus still unfinished, I dozed off at the computer. Waking later I discovered my story's window gone, and trudged off to bed dejected, obsessing over unfullfiled promises.

47 years of guilt-driven research later, Eureka!

I hastily recorded these words to disk, gutted my toaster, added batteries, and activated my time machine.

Suddenly standing behind my younger, dozing self, I closed his abandoned story, inserted my CD and emailed this file.

Now home again, that old story contest's results beckon. I hope 47 years' labor was enough to at least finish second.
With such lofty goals as second place, it looks like I should have spent at least another 47 years tweaking and tersifying my tale, but then again, the joy lies in running the race, not in winning it (unless of course you happen to be the winner, in which case winning is a lot of fun).

If you want to hear my story read in my own voice, and also listen to quite a few other inventive and succint stories about time travel, check out the full entry for this week's contest.

If you really, really liked this -- or even really, really hated it -- there's lots more:
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