Inconvenience Store
By Cosmic Cairns on April 28, 2020 4:18 pm
When I'm not toiling away in near-total obscurity making music, I like to scratch the creative itch by toiling away in near-total obscurity writing fiction. I finished writing my first book back in 2004. It was a kind of comedy adventure with numerous fantastical elements. I kind of likened it to Alice in Wonderland meets Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I made up a bunch of weird stuff out of thin air, but I also took things I was encountering in real life and putting fantastical twists on them. For instance I lived near an institute for the blind at the time so I thought it would be kind of funny if there was an institute for blind people that was invisible. After all, why waste money on paying the visibility bill when it wan't needed?
I had been taking a bunch of science classes at the time and we had just learned about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which is pretty cool in its own right. I twisted this for my own purposes into Heisenberg's Uncertainty Shop. It was a store in which nothing about it was certain and was prone to changing randomly. This included its location, its appearance, how you entered and exited it and what items it had in stock. Even if you bought something there you couldn't be certain that it was what it appeared to be. One character buys a Hawaiian shirt, which turns out to actually be an exiled alien prince from the distant planet Orf who proceeds to possess him. Later on in a sequel I wrote another character purchases an egg salad sandwich, which actually turns out to be an insidious device that forces anyone within listening distance to dance uncontrollably. So you know, basically it's a tale of gritty realism.
Years later I posted the book online and I got reader comments along the lines of how annoying it would be to shop at the store. I quipped back "It's pretty much the world's first inconvenience store." I thought I was pretty clever, but then I got disappointed with myself for not thinking of that earlier when I actually wrote the story. I suppose I could always go back and insert that line in, but in the meantime I nicked it for the title here.
This is an instrumental that kind of morphs in uncertain directions. It's mostly synth based, but there are also two bass lines playing simultaneously at certain points and some electric guitar. It might be playing over the speakers in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Shop. Or maybe not. You really can't be certain.
Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Walter White in Breaking Bad named his criminal alter ego after Werner Heisenberg. That was an awesome show, but that was actually my one nitpick with it. Why would a chemist name himself after a physicist? I mean, come on, doesn't every scientist believe deep down that their field is superior to all the others? There's a reason my 8th grade science teacher chose Earth Science and it wasn't because he couldn't hack it in another field. Or at least that's what he claimed at the time. I think he also taught Gym class.
***Edited to add since a couple of people have asked, it seems that this link works to take you where I have my books posted. You might have to register for a free membership to read though. https://www.wattpad.com/user/Wuckster
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)
Positively weird and I like it!
