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Sunday, June 22, 2014

Today's #flashfiction #AlphabeticChaosAndOrder

“We can rebuild him, we have the technology.”
Humpty Dumpty* #quote



        Today I went to my card game thing. Talked with my friend Jessica as I usually do when there, we haven't been able to hang out at other times because work's been keeping her busy. (She works at an animal hospital and they took in extra kittens that have yet to find a home.) Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Alphabetic Chaos And Order

         “AFKGYUIJYOPRTU,” the alphabet soup said to Edwin Dalon, the orderly chef. It insulted him with the random nature of its distribution. Disgusting. No order. With luck he could use his spoon to fix the ugly thing and make few words. However all his fixes would swish and wash away as soon as he moved the bowl.
          Edwin Dalon's friend called him obsessive with the way he made sure everything fit right in place in an orderly fashion. He simply called himself sane.
          “When the pieces of a clock are out of place you say it's broken, right?” That's what Edwin would tell anyone who told him he was to obsessive with keeping things in order. And he felt the alphabet soup fit the nature of a broken clock. Giving such a thing to children! Every effort should be made to show the proper order of language, not this garbled mess. (Though he found the many inconsistencies in language to be offensive, going so far to invent his own to write a journal, poem, and then novels in.)
          The orderly chef decided he needed to fix this somehow. Destroy this monster. Be rid of it. He would hope he could take it behind his house and shoot it like a sick dog in a way that the children that adored it couldn't see.
He knew he couldn't just magically make all the alphabet soup in the world vanish. The only solution Edwin could think of was to create a replacement. Some sort of other alphabetic creation following order. Something that didn't swish around as a chaotic mess in a bowl. If parents would choose to give their children food holding letters in it, it would be his.
         The chef spent all his free time working to create his replacement for his enemy. Alphabet soup did however possess many powerful competitive properties. The food's sheer convenience made it attractive to the family. Also the “each time different” did provide some entertainment.
However the chef's experience in the food industry did lead him to an eventual answer. He would create alphabet crackers. Each would be imprinted with a letter and he would make different words come with the boxes. It would be different each time, but the word's would be organized.
         Sane as he put it.
         A company loved the idea put out the crackers as he designed them. Put an education spin on them as well. Mass production followed.
         Though Edwin profited financially from his venture he walked through the park one day and to his horror he saw his cracker creation being combined with the alphabet soup. Children enjoyed taking the words he carefully packaged and mixing them up with each other and soup. He not only created a new source of chaos by making something else the children could mix up, but it could combine with the chaotic creation he despised so greatly.
          Alphabet soup sales increased rapidly with the alphabet crackers supporting them in a new lunch phenomenon that struck a nation. The fad nearly drove Edwin mad.
          Order, chaos, what does it mean? Maybe that could be found in some alphabet soup.

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