Today's #Scifi #fantasy short story #ForcedCreativity

        I was checking my traffic sources for my website awhile ago. It was the usual stuff(Google, direct url, as in people directly typing in my website) but I did run across a few interesting things. One is http://www.stumbleupon.com/ a discovery engine where people discover and rate web pages, photos and videos and stuff. I didn't know what it was until I saw it in my traffic source and looked it up. I think that is an awesome thing because it allows sites to be rated and searched so that instead of a search engine just digging stuff up you have people rating things and recommending it. Then later in the list I got traffic from an apartment ratings website. When I saw that my brain broke. How could that possibly reference to my site? Did someone have that open when they looked at my site? How could some link to it? Is there a keyword? Is there some link between flash fictions and apartment ratings beyond my knowledge...? What's the connection...? It's biting away at me...it doesn't make any sense... I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!!! IS LOGIC JUST A LIE? AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

(Remark from future me awhile after this post: Later found out its some program actually trying to go through my site just trying to get me curious to see where the traffic is as an annoying advertising tool against bloggers. Well they succeeded in messing with me and not in getting me to buy an apartment! A few free pageviews I guess? Still annoying in hindsight and probably the only advertising scheme I hadn't heard about. Stumbleupon might be legitimate though. At least it makes sense when google is a referring site!)  

Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Forced Creativity

         Genius. People used to say you had to just let it happen. But now they found chemicals and drugs to force ideas to come to you and invented tests to find out what people were susceptible to the chemicals. And I am one of the people who are most susceptible to those chemicals.

           So now they have me inside some padded cell with cameras. I shout out my ideas and whoever is watching records them. The cell is padded as the chemicals can induce a physical madness and cause me to freak. I wear a straight jacket too. Well, I wear a straight jacket if I freak or if I am uncooperative.

          The chemicals are in our food so either we accept “creativity chemicals” or we starve. All facilities are operated by the government and propaganda told the people our living conditions were wonderful. Letters to my family were forged. There are often hundreds of people in these facilities accepting chemicals and giving their ideas to the people with the cameras. Every government on the planet either has or is attempt to create these facilities.

          The chemicals force creativity by altering the stream of consciousness. I never was a “creative” person. Then they placed me on the chemicals. Now under the chemicals the way I think is changed. When you first eat a meal it takes awhile for them to take effect then when they peak you truly feel the effects. Normal reality stops being relevant. I'm not talking about stopping about caring about yourself or family. I'm talking about the walls of the room. Under the influence of the chemicals the only in thing in existence is your own mind.

         Then inside your mind you start to see new possibilities. The “ideas” that the chemicals are inducing. I can best describe them as paintings of varying degrees of vagueness, sometimes even to being perfectly clear and photo realistic. They can be images of completely new realities or just a simple new perspective on an old idea. The madness comes from the fact that I see tens to hundreds to even thousands of these ideas at once and they can combine and split into new ones. Within minutes of each other I've innovated on software production and created a premise for a new novel. And I shouted all those ideas to the people behind the cameras while inside the madness of the chemicals.

            After the chemicals would peak I would need a rest and they let me out of the cell and into my living quarters. A decent room with decent accommodations. A bed, a television, books a table a bathroom and a shower. They would also let me into a general area where I would be allowed to socialize with the other “thinkers” in the facility. Everything monitored of course, couldn't have us formulating an escape. We did actually eat at the tables together because it took several hours for the chemicals to take effect and we were guided back to our cells. With no paper we had no way of passing notes to communicate either.

         But then within my madness I came up with an idea. While trying to come up with an idea for a cure to blindness I began thinking of braille and in the madness I was also thinking of ideas about farming. It then hit me. Our facility was near a massive amount of blueberry farms so they were in many of our meals. They could hear us with their microphones, but they could not see us spell messages in braille with blueberries.

         And so I set my plan into motion. I first discussed with the general group of my facility that I wanted everyone to learn braille because I wanted them to help me work on an idea to “cure blindness”. They of course learned it quickly. I would then discuss my fake idea with the general group that would reach set up dead ends. I would then whisper “gossip” to other people. The microphones could hear my gossip, but the true motive of my gossip was as an excuse to lean in odd positions to “whisper” which was actually to conceal my blueberry messages from the camera while the person I was whispering looked at them. When I was done whispering I would just shake my plate and the message would be gone.

          It took months, but eventually everyone learned the craft of blueberry braille, oh how silly that sounds! But it was a lifesaver for us as we began formulating an escape plan. But we also got some privacy from the facility as well. People spoke freely and could say whatever they wanted in the blueberries.

         We began using the madness to formulate a plan while still contributing a few ideas to make sure they didn't catch on. Eventually after another year and half we came up with an escape plan. It involved creating an idea that required us to be near the outside of the facility. We also found a way to convince the facility to give some of us architectural plans of the facility as an “example” to inspire us for an idea as it was a place we were the most familiar with so for our ideas we needed that to inspire us instead of just any building. They were so arrogant about their security and desired our ideas so much they complied. We knew they would never kill any of us. And the continued madness of the chemicals was enough pain to justify any punishment they gave to people who couldn't escape. But we executed our plan and we escaped. A few didn't manage to, as we expected. But when they were captured they were smiling and laughing because they knew the end goal.

          The people who managed to escape, including myself, didn't stay together. The government facilities that held us would have both the police and probably the military pursuing us. Instead we went to every news station we could and told them our story quickly and the best part the locations. Not just the location of our facility, but the location of every facility we knew of. The government would transfer us “thinkers” between facilities depending on who they wanted to work with whom based on the ideas we came up with. We had many ideas. The news people jumped right on it. They didn't know if our story was true, but if it was they didn't want to risk it so they immediately left for the locations we gave them. And we kept traveling, spreading the news the best we could. And from the there it just built as more people found out the government was pressed more and more, and when it spread on the Internet eventually the government was found out and other governments were placed under suspicion by their people and they were doing they same thing to their “thinkers” that they were doing to me.

         When I saw it all resolve itself and I met my family once again I couldn't believe I figured out how to do it. It was the best idea I ever had.

         This work is copyright Langdon Kennedy you may share this(email it, print it, post it on your own website, broadcast it etc.) work unaltered as long as you credit me as the author and share a link to this blog with it and it is not for profit. If you have any questions and/or are unclear of these conditions email me at llkenne1@asu.edu