How Anya Learns to Write

  


  

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Codex

She found her doodles stored away in the bedroom closet, buried under blankets and assorted junk. There were three large cardboard file boxes. She dragged them out and heaved them onto the bed where she could look inside more easily.

All three were stuffed full of manila folders, each with a varying number of pages inside. She was surprised to note how thick some of those folders looked. She didn't think she'd written that much for any of her doodles.

She found the blank writing paper she was looking for -- several packages of narrow ruled filler paper -- stuffed into the back of the third box.

She always special-ordered narrow rule because the local stores only carried wide rule or college rule -- and those filled up with words way too easily.

She paused again in wonder at how many words her doodling seemed to have produced. It had always been so easy; it didn't seem right that it could come out to so many pages.

She had to be mis-remembering something. Her doodles couldn't be as extensive as they seemed.

She pulled a fat looking folder out at random and sat on the bed to look through it. Very quickly, she was swept into just reading.

Some of the writing was painfully bad, especially at the beginning, but the images that filled her mind were just as vivid and engrossing as when she'd first written about them. She had to force herself to stop reading before she could waste the whole evening.

She checked several other folders. Fat or thin, they all tried to sweep her into their adventures much the same way.

She remembered happily scribbling words on page after page, for day after day. She remembered resenting time she had to spend at work or school, or even just stopping to eat.

But, real writers didn't waste time doodling. They put in the hard work to write properly.

Leaving the doodles behind, she went back to her office. She'd wasted enough time fiddling with her doodles. If she was ever going to be a real writer, she needed stay focused on real writing work.

The word processor screen was still blank. Her mind kept throwing up bits of the doodles she'd just been reading, instead of letting her focus on creating an outline for the story she was supposed to be writing.

Restless, she got up to pace around the room while she tried to force her mind onto the right track.

After a while, she realized her hands were fiddling with something.

She looked down, and blinked. It was the Hyper Knot. It was still pleasant to hold, but not so much to look at.

She looked at the shelf where she'd stashed it earlier. The box wasn't there. Glancing around, she spotted it on her desk. A vague memory of dropping it there floated through her mind.

She frowned at the Hyper Knot, wondering if mind control was one of its properties.

Weirdly, that thought didn't cause any concern.

The Hyper Knot looked like a ball of string, but it felt like an amused laugh, as if Anya had accidentally made a small joke.

Weirded out, Anya looked away again quickly.

The Hyper Knot's box was still on her desk. She remembered seeing the word "codex" on it.

She blinked at the unexpected fragment of memory. That was an unusual word for something packaged up like a cheap toy.

She went to her desk to check the writing on the box.

Yes, the word "codex" was part of the gobbledygook on the bottom.

Codex was a word for book, or manuscript -- the ancient, hand-written kind.

Anya went back to the bedroom, where her doodles were still scattered on the bed.

Hand-written.

"But they are not books," Anya told the Hyper Knot, firmly.

She paused, surprised at her tone -- as if she expected the thing to understand her.

Then she had a counter-thought: The Hyper Knot wasn't a toy; it seemed to be some kind of supernatural artifact. Maybe it actually could understand her?

It felt like warm spring sunlight.

It looked like a ball of rough twine. But sort of blurry.

She deliberately chose to look away again.

She sat on the bed and opened one of the folders to somewhere in the middle. It was one of the thick ones, containing maybe 200 sheets of filler paper, single-spaced and double-sided.

Fidgeting with the Hyper Knot in her off hand, she paged through the file for several pages, gazing at the hand-written words, but not actually reading.

Codex.

That was such a different way to think about what she'd written on those pages. A doodle was a silly little nothing, but a codex was real writing.

Her doodles were still not good writing, though... so, they couldn't be codices.

On the other hand, there must have been bad writers in ancient times, too. Only the good codices survived, because the bad ones got used as toilet paper.

Anya snorted at that thought. She would never use her writing as toilet paper. Not even the worst of her doodles.

She sighed. Eventually she, too, would be gone, and someone would have to do something with all these useless files.

She didn't want to think about that.

She looked around the bedroom, instead. There wasn't much there besides the bed itself, a small nightstand, and the mess she'd made while digging out her doodles.

More interestingly, the back wall was empty.

Staring at that blank wall, she hefted the Hyper Knot. She had only tried one galaxy out of at least eight she could probably visit. There had to be more the Hyper Knot could do.

Maybe the word codex on the box was a hint that it could help her write real stories instead of just doodles.

The strings of the hyper Knot ball felt like soft suede straps.

Trying not to look at it directly, Anya set the Hyper Knot on the night stand, then went about tidying up the scattered folders. She hauled the file boxes to her office. She stuffed the blankets and other junk back in the closet and closed that door.

Then, from the bedroom doorway, to make sure she didn't get trapped in the room this time, she tossed the Hyper Knot at the back wall.

With the same oddly spiraling flight path, it smacked lightly into the center of the wall and stuck there, flattening into a disk. She waited while it expanded into the same recursive galaxies shape as before.

When it had stabilized, the galaxies were all distinctly colored, yet she couldn't tell one from another. She couldn't tell which galaxy she had touched the first time. The slow rotation meant the one in the same approximate area was probably not the same one as before.

The Hyper Knot was still difficult to look at. Looking away, she spotted a doodle folder she'd missed. It was shoved mostly under her pillow.

Fetching it out, she saw it was one of the horrible ones -- just a few badly written pages about the ancient Roman gods scheming to take Earth back from the Christian God.

It had to be one of the stupidest doodles she'd ever written.

She looked at the Hyper Knot.

She'd have to experiment to learn how to use it properly. She was bound to make mistakes at that. Better to experiment using something she wouldn't mind much if it got destroyed, than to risk ruining a real story. And if it really could help her write, experimenting with something this bad would certainly test it's capabilities.

Carrying the folder, Anya walked up to the Hyper Knot.

"Okay," she told it, not certain it would make any difference, "This one starts with Diana complaining to Zeus about the mess of the modern world. Let's see what you've got in you, my friend."

There was no way to determine which edge galaxy she should touch, so she just thumped the center of a convenient one with the knuckles of her free hand.

Just like before, she fell into it with a soundless swoosh... It was like falling into one of her doodles.