This is part of my project “(fictional) notes from The British Museum,” wherein once a week, I visit a single room at The British Museum in London, zero in on an intriguing object therein, and quickly write a piece of flash fiction inspired by that object.
As ever, the stories in this series are not about museums, or artifacts, or history, or at least not necessarily (maybe sorta sideways accidentally). I’m simply letting an object in the museum inspire my geeky, warped mind. Here is this week’s object:
And here’s how the story begins:
The story is live now at my portfolio site, and also at my Patreon; at either place, it’s for Patreon patrons only. Which you can become for as little as $1 per month. Will you miss a single dollar? Probably not. (And if you would, then dear god, please do not worry about me and just look after yourself.) But lots of readers — and I do have lots of readers here! — sending a dollar a month my way could make a real, significant difference in my quality of life, my mental health, and (most importantly) my ability to put more words together in entertaining and enlightening ways for your enjoyment.
Please support my work if at all possible. Because my work will definitely go away — and out of desperate necessity, quite soon — if a lack of support tells me it is not wanted and appreciated.
Thank you.
I sometimes include quotations in my answering machine messages. I’ve had the same Ursula LeGuin quote in my outgoing message for a very long time. I might replace it with “No one respects the theater, actors least of all.”
On another topic, I’m strangely fascinated by the comments that suddenly started appearing underneath an old review that had no comment thread. The comments themselves probably weren’t that interesting, but because I could read only the first dozen words or so, on the Latest Comments page, it was tantalizing to speculate about what the rest of each message said. Do you think you might reprint the (now-deleted) discussion, or was the mystery more intriguing than the messages?
There was nothing in the least bit interesting or intriguing in any of the comments. They mostly were nothing beyond what you could see on the Latest Comments page. I’m pretty pissed off that Disqus allowed them to be posted, though.
Hey, another tease for the story! Everyone give me a dollar and go read it!