The Wider World

The Wider World

A Collection of Stories for Seekers of Truth (in Fiction)

All stories written by Ray Foy

Arbordin Park Press

The Wider World

Copyright (c) 2015 by Ray Foy

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published by Arbordin Park Press at Smashwords

Columbia, South Carolina, USA

www.arbordinparkpress.net

This stories in this collection are works of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed herein are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Opinions expressed within this collection do not necessarily reflect those of the author or the publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except in brief quotations in printed or electronic reviews.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover photograph taken in Lao Shan, China by Dillon Foy

Reader comments for stories that make up The Wider World collection:

Davis and the Goth

Well written short story about being a bully and lessons learned. Has a touch of a sci-fi twist.

Very realistic story of bullies and an intended victim with a really surprising ending!! Well written.

Fire Dance

This was an enjoyable story set in a world I would like to hear more about.

This short story had a look of a novel...it was very good.

Another good short story by this author.

Madam President

This is a provocative story given today's political atmosphere and corruption...this one will remain in my mind for a long time.

The Spark

It was marvelous, both in feeling the pain, joy, and hope that this story discussed. The characters were real and...I will definitely read this author again.

A great read. This novelette was truly inspiring.

The Spark is an updated blend of the stories of Santa and the Nativity. Well done with believable characters and that touch of magic surrounding Santa that we all experienced as a child. I was hooked from page one.

My Christmas Carol

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will probably make reading this a yearly Christmas tradition. Great for young and old alike. Highly recommended.

For Donna, Thomas, and Dillon.

You guys are my wider world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank John M. Floyd (www.johnmfloyd.com) for his good-natured encouragement and example that led me to believe that writing short fiction was a worthwhile pursuit. My stories, Supernal and Madam President, were written as projects for his Writing and Selling Short Stories classes held at Milsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

I also want to thank Lyndon Perry, erstwhile master of the Residential Aliens website where he published spiritually infused short fiction, including my story, Supernal. He also included Davis and the Goth as part of his Res Aliens anthology, While the Morning Stars Sing. Both props were very encouraging to me.

You can find Lyndon at (www.lyndonperrywriter.com).

I especially want to thank my wife, Donna, for her love, faith, and support in the years it took me to compose the stories in this volume.

And thanks to my twin sons, Thomas and Dillon, for believing.

Contents

Foreword

My Christmas Carol

Author's Note: My Christmas Carol

Supernal

Author's Note: Supernal

The Spark: A Christmas Story

Author's Note: The Spark

Madam President

Author's Note: Madam President

Davis and the Goth

Author's Note: Davis and the Goth

Fire Dance

Author's Note: Fire Dance

Life Cost

Author's Note: Life Cost

Apocalypse Diary

Author's Note: Apocalypse Diary

Professor Ladner's Journal

Author's Note: Professor Ladner's Journal

FOREWORD

SEEKERS look for the transcendent truth they suspect lies beyond the common experience of physical existence. Their seeking is prompted by the ugly, oppressive, or simply boring reality they find in their daily world. It is a pressure that builds until a tipping point is reached--some switch is thrown that might be in the form of an event or sudden insight that shows them the futility of their day-to-day lives. That futility comes from living against their true natures, possibly under some oppression. At that point, they can no longer live as they have. They must find that reality beyond reality where they have a greater chance to live in earnest, dropping their delusions. They want to appreciate and express those ideals and qualities that constitute the harmony of nature, and that are the bonding agent for all life on a higher plane. I call that transcendent reality, the wider world.

Seeking the wider world is the ultimate quest and is at the heart of all existential searches. It is also at the heart of the stories that comprise this collection. Though the writing of each was motivated by the exploration of some facet of plot or character, or the desire to express some theme, they all examine someone’s journey to the wider world, or their sudden discovery of it.

Very often, the search is initiated by a problem that will only yield a solution by some breakthrough. I’ve used Christmas as a vehicle for exploring this idea in a couple of the stories.

My Christmas Carol is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in a contemporary setting with a technological slant. It contains Dickens’ indictment of materialism, but in modern expression of selfish consumerism. Rather than ghosts, a PowerPoint presentation facilitates the protagonist’s self-examination. It shows him life-scenes that point out the deficiencies of his world view. Accepting those deficiencies and resolving to fix them is what can take him to the wider world, if he’ll just make the mental and spiritual leap.

The Spark is a story in the saving Christmas vein. Nicholas is searching for expressions of love, remorse, and forgiveness that can restore humanity’s ability to celebrate Christmas. The story intertwines two plot threads. Each is set in its own world: one fanciful and one realistically gritty. The two connect via the spiritual, or numinous, realm. Each world is the wider world for the other, and when they come together, a third is formed that provides the locale to finish the story. The Spark is set in a near-future that I think is very possible (even optimistic, for I fear the reality will be worse). It asks what the place of Christmas is in such a world. That is, where is hope and love if they are not in the souls of people?

The wider world is usually seen as a utopian destination--a place of escape from the intolerable present. That desire for escape can cause a person to make questionable choices and even unwise sacrifices, especially if escape seems hopeless. I’ve been there and have felt the hopelessness of can’t go on and can’t quit. I explore those feelings in Life Cost, where a burned-out technology worker wants only escape from the daily inanity and degradations of his job. Escape is offered via an out-of-the-blue proposal that could send him on an adventurous trek, though at the cost of security, and potentially, his life. In this case, the wider world is only a glimpse and a promise. There is a cost for running to it, and a cost for staying in place. Matt Bell must decide which cost is greater.

Adversity can force us to seek the wider world out of fear. Because we are running from perceived danger, if we find it, we may not realize what we have found until much later. In Apocalypse Diary, I present just this situation. It is set in the near future at the point of civilization’s collapse. Scott Nassir, the teenaged protagonist, only saw the events he recorded in his diary as being the world’s collapse when he reached a place, distant in time, from them. When they were happening, he was simply fleeing danger, trying to return to the security he had long taken for granted. But he finds that his old security is gone for good.

It may be that the seeker reaches the wider world, but finds it disguised. In Fire Dance, Brian Hunt thinks he is only seeking his lost daughter. His search forces him to run from dangerous situations and cope with setbacks. He at least knows what success for him will look like--reuniting with his daughter--but he doesn’t suspect the change in his world view that will come with it. But as with so many of the characters in these stories, it is a change he sorely needs.

Of course, someone may reach the wider world and understand that he has found something good, but doesn’t know how to live within his expanded bounds. Perhaps he just doesn’t have enough life experience. That’s the case in Davis and the Goth, where bully victim, Marc Davis, finds a means of deliverance, but proceeds to use it in an unskillful way. His attitude does not advance with his abilities and so leads to false assumptions, even as he heads towards a showdown with his bully.

The wider world can be a transcendence of the world’s dark side as well as its light. That darkness, though, may not be so much evil as it is mysterious. That’s the case in Supernal where the mundane world of mundane actions intersects with the numinous realm. That intersection spawns a ghost story and gives Foster Wheeler a glimpse of how his world actually extends into intangible, but no less real, regions beyond the tactile.

The dark side of the wider world can be truly dark, even black-as-night evil. Still, some people seek that very darkness when their aims are selfish and amoral. Such communion with darkness reaps a dark harvest. This is the idea behind Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus as well as in my story, Madam President. In it, Senator Candace Wilke is desirous of the power and fame that will come from being the first woman US president, but she finds that when the path to power runs through a moral low-point, it can always go even lower.

To me, the best stories about seeking the wider world are those where the search is done deliberately. That’s why I tend to love journey stories, both fiction and true accounts. People who have sought the truth to guide them through their dilemmas by enduring the trials of pilgrimage have long inspired me. Such stories are staples in literature because they are such apt metaphors for the journey of life. In Professor Ladner’s Journal, I tackle this theme myself. The professor’s journal is a trail-blazing device passed from a seeker who has found the wider world, to one still seeking it. The junior seeker adds his experience to the account and so widens the way for those coming after. The seeker’s journey is a lone one, but the quest should be a cooperative effort.

The stories in this volume are presented in the order in which I created them. Many have appeared elsewhere prior to their publishing here. I’ve noted where and when for each in their accompanying Author Note. The Notes also provides some insight into what specifically motivated my crafting of the associated story, and what I was trying to accomplish with it. All have been revised for the sake of clarity and readability in my effort to make them the best expression I could for what I was meaning to say. As such, I think even if you’ve read the previous versions, you’ll find renewed value in their updated expressions.

In writing these stories, I was conducting my own search for enlightenment. Mostly, I wrestled with understanding the darkness that blocks us from the wider world. That darkness takes many shapes. It can be one person’s taken-for-granted materialism, or humanity’s disregard for nature, or the collapse of a society, or just an unfilled need for answers. How should one deal with all that, or overcome it? Whether forced to flee the darkness or deliberately seeking some better place, the path sought is a higher, more vibrant one. But remember that the wider world a seeker finds will always reflect the values and desires he-or-she brings along in the search. In mutual interaction, both seeker and sought will change for the better as long as intentions are sincere. The wider world seems to exist, and it seems that many who came before us found it.

Sometimes, I think I’m close.

Ray Foy

August 2015

My Christmas Carol

I REMEMBER staying up late that Christmas Eve and working on my new laptop computer with all the self-absorbed pleasure of a techno-geek, and no notion that anything was wrong. Sitting at my solid oak, roll-top computer desk in a corner of our large living room while my family slept, I happily pecked away on the keyboard with a hot toddy at hand. My keystrokes sang backup for the syncopated rhythm of raindrops-mixed-with-sleet hitting the window panes as I installed software on my gift from Santa.

I paused for a sip of toddy. Savoring the holiday spirit as files copied, I spared a glance at the packages beneath our beautifully decorated, perfectly formed, naturally colored, pre-lit, plastic tree. There was over five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff in that pile. Everyone was going to make out like bandits.

The big package, which was Michael’s new game system, served as the base for stacking smaller presents. The games for it were more expensive, but I thought he could trade-in his old system to get some of them. It would be worth it because he could attach this system to the Internet and play online with other gamers, which his old system wouldn’t do. He could even stream movies when he got tired of games. I thought I would even give it a shot myself, though it was a long way from the old Atari I played at his age.

Yes, technology had advanced and I was determined to keep up. Gaming was almost a survival skill now, anyway, and my kids weren’t going to miss out. That’s why I was getting Laura a PC Pal. It was just a little laptop geared toward teaching seven year-olds computer skills, but I thought it would amuse her and she might want to become a gamer like her big brother. We could have family contests.

Even Karen was getting some high-tech for Christmas. Her new iPhone made for a smaller package, but it cost more than the other systems. The display was even big enough for her to use it as an ereader and stop buying books.

I was confident of Christmas success. It was just as well I had passed on Christmas Eve dinner with my mother. I felt a little guilty about that, but, we had seen her earlier in the day and my brother would eat with her anyway. I wanted to spend time with my family and get everybody’s gifts operational. And I was sure going to skip that Live Nativity thing at the church. No, I wasn’t going to let false obligations ruin my family’s Christmas. I was a good Dad. I was sure I was.

I kicked off a download of operating system updates. It would take a while so I decided to just relax and finish my toddy. I grabbed the TV remote, plopped onto the couch, and turned on the power in a single, practiced move. Something was different, though. The couch felt unusually hard. I reached under my back and pulled out one of Michael's library books. A Christmas Carol. I tossed it aside and laid back. I tuned the cable to ESPN.

Yeah, old Bob Cratchit should have had a laptop. He could have worked faster and taken two days off a year.

I finished my drink over a rerun of NFL highlights. After a while, bored and a little tipsy, I turned off the TV and just stared at the Christmas tree lights. Green and red LEDs changed to pinpoints and then blurred into darkness as drowsiness, and the toddies, caught up with me.

The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake. Groggy, I kept my eyes closed, expecting to hear Karen telling me to come to bed, but the voice I heard wasn't my wife's.

I finally learned how to keep Christmas, young man. You can, as well.

My eyes popped open in sudden sobriety and I shot upright on the couch. Shocked, I found myself looking right into an elderly man’s pale blue eyes. He was wearing a red stocking cap and white dressing gown. His face was thin with a long, sharp nose and chin. Wisps of white hair protruded from his cap, framing his face with kind of a halo effect. Lines around his eyes and forehead suggested worry and stress, but his crotchety-old-man look was belied by a warm smile.

He kept smiling as he stepped away from me and settled into my recliner. He pulled the lever to drop the back and nearly spilled his drink.

His drink? He was sipping a hot toddy!

Scrooge? I gasped, and I had never gasped in my life. I guess the time-of-year and the old guy’s Masterpiece-Theater-look prompted my intuitive leap as to his identity.

Good evening, he said. I've helped myself to one of your spiced drinks. I hope you don't mind. It is excellent. Wonderful aroma. Makes one feel like Christmas–especially since you don't have the smell of a real tree in your house.

It's real. I bought it at Costco. Last year, on sale. What are doing here? I thought you were a figment of Dickens' imagination!

He chuckled.

Yes, Mr. Dickens had quite an imagination and he knew me very well. As I know you. If I’m a figment, I'm one that will teach you how to keep Christmas. Just as I was taught.

The hairs on my neck stood up. Was I about to be surrounded by ghosts in chains? Would shades looking like Santa Claus or the Grim Reaper point out that I had hit my little brother when I was twelve, or that I didn't always put my gum in the foil wrapper when I was through with it?

Oh? So more ghosts are coming to drink my toddies?

Scrooge chuckled again and I took offense at that for some reason.

The ghosts were for my time, he replied. For this enlightened age of short attentions, we'll take a more direct approach. Go look at your calculating machine.

My what?

He pointed.

You mean my laptop.

I grabbed the couch arm, and pulled myself to my feet. It took some effort against the inertia of the drinks, but I was determined. Look, when the ghost of Scrooge tells you to do something, you do it--especially after several hot toddies.

I stumbled across the rug to my computer desk. All the while, I kept glancing from Scrooge to the Christmas tree, to the fireplace, and back to Scrooge. He didn't go away. He looked as real as the house around him. If this was a dream, it was a really lucid one.

At the desk, I steadied myself for a minute against my office chair. Scrooge caught it when it tried to roll away from me. I sat. The leather squeaked and Scrooge pushed up to my desk. I stared at the computer screen until my eyes focused.

The download window had been replaced with a PowerPoint presentation. The first slide was displayed and entitled, Christmas Past.

Press the Space key, Scrooge said.

You know how to use PowerPoint?

Well enough, he said. Much of your technology reaches the other side. Mr. Dickens does struggle so with Word. Press the Space key.

Warily, I did.

The title slide passed control to a video. It was of a family apparently having Christmas dinner in a modest house. I could make out a mother and father with several children. They all looked familiar. Then I realized this wasn't just a video. It was a memory! My memory!

That’s the house I grew up in. We lived in the country. Nobody had a video camera. There were no video cameras then.

It is Christmas day, Scrooge said. You're thirteen.

I looked closely at the screen. There was a boy of about that age sitting at the dinner table.

That's me? I asked, but I could see that it was. I was sitting in my old familiar chair in that old familiar dining room just off the kitchen. I was surrounded by my brothers and sisters.

There's Bill, I said. Bill. He's alive.

He was eighteen then, Scrooge said.

Dad was alive too and carving a huge turkey. Mom was trying to get me to taste foods that made the house smell great, but that I would never touch--stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Beyond the table, I saw a cedar tree in the corner decorated with Christmas cards, popcorn strings, and cardboard ornaments.

I remember that tree, I said. Spindly. Not even real decorations.

You didn't know the difference then. They were more real than your present tree decorations. Adorning that tree that you and your family cut from the forest was a labor of love.

It was cold when we cut it, I said. Me and Bill and Sarah hiked into the woods with Dad. There were patches of ice on the ground and even snow flurries. I didn't feel the cold, though.

Why not?

I guess I was too excited. I was just a kid.

Your joy was the simple one of being part of a loving family, Scrooge said. He had returned to the recliner. You can get that feeling back. It's not humbug.

The PowerPoint window faded to black.

It's over? I asked.

Press the Space key again.

I did and the next slide displayed, Christmas Present for a few seconds, then morphed into another video.

This one was of my son, Michael, lying on his bed. I could see by the nightlight that he was crying.

Is that Mike now? Why's he crying on Christmas Eve? I thought he'd be excited about his presents.

I looked at Scrooge who just took another sip of his toddy.

He must be mad, I said, because I made him turn off his video game and go to bed.

That's what he would tell you, Scrooge said, but it's really because he wanted you to play the game with him.

I was busy getting his Christmas ready. I guess you're going to tell me that Laura feels the same.

See for yourself, he said and took a sip of toddy.

I pressed the Space bar and watched the monitor. Laura was sitting up in bed with her doll. She was talking to it.