#11.1

fictionality: light

Imagine for a moment that you wake up --

-- after every other person on Earth has vanished, and you are left to sort through the abandoned and decaying remnants of human civilization as a on your own.

-- to the announcement that all art is banned; that creative expression is a betrayal of your fellow citizens for personal satisfaction and punishable by lethal torture.

-- as a member of the opposite sex.

-- after being thawed out of a centuries-long cryogenic sleep, into a world as alien and unreal as so many visions of advanced extraterrestrial life.

-- to the sound of a phone call from a mythical hero of times past since returned from the dead, coming to ask you to take up arms as a comrade in one final righteous endeavor.

-- without one of your sesn senses, stripped of so much of your connection to reality and feeling ever more distanced from everything and everyone around you.

-- in a hospital bed with no memory of your past existence.

-- with the realization that your surroundings are a sham, crafted for the enjoyment of an audience and producers who care only about their quarterly profits.

-- behind a set of drums in front of a roaring crowd of thousands, on stage with a handful of mutual strangers assembled as last-minute backup members of the world's newest musical sensation.

-- on the middle of a battlefield as two, perhaps three, sides converge upon a single strategic point to wage upon one another what each believes is holy war.

-- in the afterlife, with an angel lying next to you.

-- as your home burns down around you, ceilings crashing inward as all of your possessions turn to little more than unremarkable, u indistinguishable piles of cinders and ash.

-- to the news that you have inherited enough money to rival the GDP of several small nations from an unknown benefactor, along with instructions stating only, "Spend wisely."

-- as anyone but yourself, liv in any setting but your own.


Write down the story you envision. Seal the results in an envelope. Have a friend do the same with the prompt you chose. Then exchange your compositions and read each other's work.


Adjust your perceptions accordingly.