by cmsellers » Fri Apr 28, 2017 3:52 pm
Somehow I was living in a tiny house, and was driving it around on a trailer attached to my car (which was actually the car my late grandfather gave to my brother). I decided I was going to live in a Home Depot parking lot, since it seemed like a good location. I left the lot, then returned and while I was trying to unhitch the trailer, a wisecracking black guy observed that the sewage and electricity weren't working, and attempted to call the electric company to complain. I just ignored him, because the unit was self-contained and I assumed he was a panhandler.
Then I realized I'd parked in a reserved spot. As I made to move, I saw a meter maid going door-to-door, knocking on car windows and telling them they couldn't park overnight. I high-tailed it out of there and moved to a shadier spot. I tried to call my mother, who is a lawyer and the one who suggested I buy a tiny house and park it in the parking lot of Home Depot near the model sheds, and my phone died. I have a pre-paid phone, so went into Home Depot to buy more minutes.
I noticed a table with free giveaways, which had one brown paper bag falling apart. Fortunately, I suddenly had my messenger bag, should I want anything from it. It was filled with almost=new science-fiction novels from authors I'd heard of, many award-winning, and though I don't usually read novels, who can pass up free? I went through, and noticed that one of these things was not like the others. It was thinly-disguised Star Trek fan fiction in an unusually cheaply-priced trade paperback which showed no signs of having been read even lightly.
I assumed it was a vanity-published book that had been given as a gift either by the author or someone who knew the person who left the books liked "sci fi" but knew nothing about the genre of SF. I loaded my bag with books by the likes of Chris Platt (obviously a combination of Christopher Priest and Charles Platt; I was reading about The Last Dangerous Visions a couple days ago) and Vernor Vinge, leaving only the odd book out. I headed to the back of the store, where for some reason the TracFone cards were instead of their usual place up front.
As I headed back, a cute girl came up to me and asked if I liked science fiction. I said I did and asked if it was her collection, which she confirmed. Then, as I was trying to figure out why a cute girl would initiate a conversation with me, and remembered how the likes of James Tiptree Jr. and Andre Norton wrote under pen names so that nobody would know their real names were "Alice," and remembered that women like to write fan fiction, and it dawned on me that she might be the author of that book. So I asked, and she confirmed it. Then I apologized for not taking her book, and she said that she'd been leaving large chunks of her collection on the table with copies in the hopes that people would take it, and I hadn't been the first person to leave only her book.
Then I apologized and offered to take a copy and read it, and then I got the idea she was a member of a cult trying to convert me, and then I woke up.