I have a Wednesday night writing group. We do prompts, and drabbles, and it’s a good time. Everyone comes out with something so different! They’re short snippets – the drabbles are only supposed to be 100 words (eventually I got there!), a warm-up for the later prompt. I’ve decided to post my favourites, because why not? This one was more recent, and I got two in the time limit that I liked.
Mistakes #1
Cell division is a glorious microscopic ballet.
A dancer’s silhouette is revealed from an artful smoke machine; so too does our genetic material coalesce from the organised chaos of the nucleus into chromosomes.
Diligently, they twin themselves, then separate, pulled to opposite ends of the stage; and then the stage itself splits in two, and you don’t see that shit in Swan Lake.
But the most miraculous part of all this is how much it gets fucked up and you still end up with a human being at the end of it.
Only now you’ve got red hair. You’re welcome.
Mistake #2
A weed is any plant that grows where you don’t want it to grow. It’s a context-specific term. A mistake is to do something when you intended something else.
An error is a computer telling you to go fuck yourself, because you’re speaking gibberish (as far as the computer is concerned).
What do you get when you combine these things?
Well, I got a sarcastic cyborg plant person, and after 50 magical years of marriage, I don’t regret a single thing.
Coda: I posted this on tumblr as well – I always do – and on tumblr the devil is not so much in the details as scattered liberally through the tags and I went on a journey with this one. Indulge me as I cross the streams!
#every living organism is a filthy mutant and we really don’t say that often enough
#mutation is the raw material of evolution
#most mutations either do nothing or render the developing organism nonviable
#some mutations do multiple things and it’s real weird strap in
#the mc1r gene is expressed in the skin and there’s a version that codes for red hair and increased melanoma risk dammit but guess what
#that same mutation is expressed in the brain and affects pain perceptions and analgesic response
#more tolerant of many kinds of pain
#more sensitive to hot/cold pain
#varying levels of resistances to local analgesics
#seriously my dentist has to give me like 3x the amount and she tried to trick me just to confirm
#so this is what I mean when I say mutation is the raw material of evolution and all of it is a mistake in some aspect of cell replication
#this means that you are a good thing that came from many many mistakes
#feel proud
#I’m not sure how this plays into the sarcastic cyborg plant person but I am picturing a steampunk triffid rolling its eyes
Nothing if not verbose 