It was an old rug that I didn't even know I had until I went looking for a computer cable in my storage closet. It looked Persian, or definitely from somewhere in the Middle East, how old, I did not know. It was far too musty and dusty for me to keep around though, so I rolled it up and started hauling it to the dumpster.
That's when it lifted me off the ground and deposited me flat on the pavement face-first.
I couldn't believe that I had tripped over absolutely nothing at all. I had certainly done it in the past, but I thought those days were long gone. I stood up to collect the rolled-up rug, to no avail, as it was levitating just in front of me at eye level. I was not aware rugs could convey facial expressions, but there is something new to learn every day.
It glowered at me.
“Watch it,” it said, “You were about to toss out a magic carpet.” There was not a doubt in my mind that it was a Persian rug. I could hear the Persian accent, and for a moment I imagined it in a market stall in a crowded Iranian market trying to sell me some broken pots.
I pinched my nose to check to see if I was still conscious. I felt an appreciable amount of pain. “I was?” I said.
“I am older than your grandfather's grandfather's grandfather,” the carpet said.
“You certainly smell like it,” I replied. As if I'd been prompted, I let out a sneeze.
“You think yourself wise, boy?” said the carpet. “Many feet have trod upon my vibrant fibers. I have had beggars, sultans, kings and diplomats stride across me. Men, women, children, lions, tigers, monkeys, dogs and cats all have graced my surface.”
“You didn't mention a vacuum cleaner,” I said.
The carpet took this opportunity to sweep low to ground level, knocking my feet clean from under me. “It would not do well to talk back to me, boy,” it said. I felt a rushing of wind against my face, as the carpet lifted me up and up into the sky. “All it would take is one flip of my side, and you will never crack another of your jokes again,” the carpet threatened.
I nodded in understanding. “I see.”
“Let me tell you a story, child,” said the carpet as it drifted over the city. The smog, which was trapped over the city by the surrounding mountain ranges, was making my eyes water, and I started coughing. “I've come from over an ocean you couldn't see if I took you higher than these mountains,” the carpet said. “I've heard more conversations than you could ever have if given an extra two hundred years to have them. I've heard the best laid plans of mice, men, and women alike, and I've never gotten an opportunity to tell anyone about them.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because jerks like you keep locking me in their damn closets, that's why,” the carpet said sternly.
“Well,” I said, “I think I might be able to help you with that. But there will have to be some changes.”
“What kind of changes?” the carpet asked.
A few minutes later, my carpet lowered me to the ground. I walked straight into the building it had taken me to. “Hello,” I said to the store clerk. “I need to buy a vacuum cleaner.”
A Shot in the Dark
Whatever you say about the internet, about the amazing achievements it has garnered on the frontlines of peace, information, or cheap pornography, I will never ever be convinced that it has made things easier for writers.
You see—
“Caroline?”
—The only thing the internet has done for writers is allow the rejection slips to pile on faster, and in greater numbers. Ten years ago, it would have taken my whole life to get rejected by one hundred literary agents, and today, in this modern information age, I’ve already achieved hecto-denial, and I’m hardly into my thirties.
“Caroline?”
“What, Mark?”
Mark is my roommate. He was holding our mail in his hands. He usually just leaves the mail on the bar stool so I can knock it over on my way in from work. That’s when I pick it up, toss the debt collection bills into the garbage, throw out the junk mail, and read the one or two pieces of actual mail that I get, only to discover that they were actually more debt collection bills cleverly disguised as letters from my mom.
“You’ve got a letter from… NASA?” said Mark.
“Really?” I said, surprised. “That was fast… here, give it up.”
I looked at the envelope. Yes, it was indeed from NASA. I had been so wrapped up in my digital exercises in futility that I had forgotten that I had recently used the physical post office to send a real letter to some actual astronauts. I didn’t expect them to reply. After all, agents or publishers don’t, and most of their work is done right here on planet Earth.
“So… what is it?” asked Mark.
“I asked them a question,” I said. “It was a joke, really. I was a bit tipsy, and I had a few first class postage stamps, and I hadn’t used my typewriter in a while.”
“What was that question?”
“I asked if they could send one of my query letters off into deep space.”
Mark blinked a few times. “Erm,” he said. “You mean those letters you send asking people to publish you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
A query letter is the staple of the publishing industry and the bane of writers and agents alike. In three hundred words or less, it is the job of I, the writer, to summarize my ninety thousand word novel in a way that is both enticing and easily understandable, and then follow it up with a polite request that they, the agent, ask to see more of my work. Most query letters on Earth are written by people who can’t write a proper sentence, let alone a ninety thousand word novel. Then, when these people are asked to condense their novel into a single page, they end up turning out literary pieces worthy of… well, the third grade, maybe.
That might sound like good news to people like me, who can arrange words on a page in a way that doesn’t trigger peoples’ gag reflexes, but it’s not. Because you see, it is only by the time the agent has waded through six hundred query letters written by self-important and linguistically handicapped people, that they finally wander, bleary eyed, numbed by the onslaught of bad queries, onto mine. And they’re not in the mood to hear about my kitschy, tongue-in-cheek detective thriller.
Form rejection.
“It’s kind of funny,” I remember telling Mark over a dinner of microwave pizza with my mouth full, his fussy girlfriend annoyed by my presence during their special movie night, “Agents hate it when you mass query them, you know? That’s when you use the same query letter to copy and email a hundred of them at a time. But they all use the same form rejection letter. Every single one of them. Agents that work in different agencies… live in separate states… who have probably never even heard of each other… they all use the same damn letter to tell you that they’re not interested in your novel. And that’s if they reply to you at all.”
“That’s… er… that’s great,” said Mark.
“No, it’s not. Anyway, it’s just an observation.”
Meanwhile, back in the present, Mark was trying to ask me something that he didn’t want to. I could tell because he was biting his lip and scratching the inside of his ankle with his shoe. It must be incredibly painful every time he does that. I bet if he just learned to be confrontational, he wouldn’t be missing so many layers of skin on his leg. “So… Sasha’s coming over,” he said.
“So you want me out of sight,” I replied. “All right, I’ll stay in my room.”
“Thank you… er…”
“One of these days,” I cut him off, knowing that an apology was coming, “I’d like to have free reign of my own apartment.”
“Get a boyfriend. Then you can have free reign of his.”
“That’s Sasha’s method, not mine,” I said. “All right, I need to send more queries anyway. Have fun.”
I went into my room, and tore open the letter.
“Dear Caroline Jones,
We have read your proposal to send your letter out into dark space, and have agreed that it is a re
asonable request. As it happens, we are in the final stages of preparing our Hermes Space Probe, a small vessel that we hope could reach very near the speed of light with a combination of gravitational slingshots and a revolutionary particle drive. But that’s all science stuff, which we’re sure you don’t care much about.
Anyway, the probe will be holding a gigantic cache of digital data, the most data ever sent out to space by any agency on Earth. On board will be music from great artists like Elvis Presley, oceanographic discoveries like the wreckage of the Titanic, anthropological data like human anatomy diagrams (don’t worry, we’ll make sure they include vaginas this time)—
“Erm,” I said aloud.
“—And various other miscellaneous material sent in by people like you. Granted, you’ll be sharing hard drive space with people that didn’t think we really landed on the moon or who think JFK was assassinated by the Kool-Aid man, but that’s the beauty of the amazing human imagination, is it not?
“Depends on your definition of ‘amazing,’” I said.
“Enclosed is an email address that you can send the final query letter and full manuscript to. We here at NASA want to assure you that one day you will get that book published, even if it’s not on Earth, and not for a few million years.
Sincerely,
Jordan Myers,
NASA secretary and rock-star receptionist,
Washington, D.C.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “I mean… they’re really going to do it. They’re going to send out my query letter into space!”
I was more excited about this than if I had gotten a full manuscript request from an agent. I sat down at my computer immediately.
“Dear Intergalactic Space-faring Cosmonauts,” I wrote. “I am seeking representation for my humorous detective thriller, A Shot in the Dark, Complete at 91,000 words…”
I smiled. The name of my novel was quite fitting. We would be firing a small silver projectile at the speed of light into the space between galaxies, literally the darkest place in the Universe. I finished up my query letter, and went to bed.