THE WORLD OUT THERE

By Robert Sheckley

Writer

"All right," Jensen said. "We are going to sit right here and do nothing else until we write a thousand words. That will be our quota for the day. After that, for every following day, we will write another thousand words. We will keep this up until we quit it."

"You say 'we,'" Smith said. "Do you mean you and I together?"

"No, I mean you alone. You're the one who always claims he's a writer."

"I said 'was,' not 'am.'"

"Same difference. I believe you've written a fair amount of stuff."

"So what?"

"So nothing big has changed with you since then. If you could do it before, you could do it now."

"Maybe I could," Smith said. "In that case, what do you do?"

"I read what you write and encourage you when necessary."

"Pretty easy for you."

"I"m not the one who claims to be a writer."

"What do you claim to be?"

"An interlocuter. That is, I ask questions. You have but to answer them. And lo, the thing is done."

"You make it sound very easy."

"Why so it is. What's difficult here isn't a matter of judgement at all. I'm not demanding a story. I'm not asking for a plot. I'm simply asking that you write a thousand words."

"I don't think I like this," Smith said.

"That is because you are a lazy bastard who doesn't want to do any work. You just want it all to happen. Like magic."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, except that nothing is happening, the days and weeks and months and years are passing, and you're doing no writing."

"I don't see anything wrong in that."

"You yourself spend your time, most of it, complaining that you're not writing."

"I don't want to write about the fact that I'm not writing."

"What else is there for you to write about, since this is all you think about?"

"But this is boring. I hate my life!"

"That's all right. Hate it all you want. Just write about it. Or about something."

Smith thought about it. He looked at Jensen. Jensen was a small, ugly man with a wart on the end of his nose. An assymetrical wart, the ugliest kind. The wart was brown and red. Of all the facial disfigurations anyone could have thought of, this was undoubtedly the worst. That wart seemed to provide an infallible clue to Jensen's character, which, in a word, was wartlike.

"Very cute," Jensen said. "If it pleases you to write that sort of thing about me, go to it. Just as long as you write."

Smith considered. Some of the fun, if you could call it that, had already gone out of the project. Actually, Jensen didn't have a wart on his nose and was not particularly ugly.

"That's fine," Smith said. "Write it down, then take it back, just as you please. I never said your writing had to make sense. Just a lot of words on a page, that's what we're after here."

"I've already written five hundred words," Smith said.

"Fine. Write five hundred more."

Smith wondered where all this was taking place. He was tempted to name a site, but resisted. They weren't going to trap him as easily as that. Name a location and you're locked into it, and your work barely 500 words along. No, if he had to write, he'd leave this thing in limbo, where it belonged.

Nor was he about to tell why this was happening, or when. And he was a long way from giving any reason for it. He wasn't even sure which of them was Jensen and which was Smith. Did it matter? He felt that it didn't. 

He didn't even know how old he was, or how old Jensen was, either. He supposed it would all come out eventually. If there was any eventually. 

Nor did he have a title. Or a theme. Though the theme might be stuckedness in writing. That, so far, was what this was about. Or was it about something else? He didn't know. And that bothered him. Not as much as the necessity of having to write thousand words, however. That was a big bother. 

Still, he was almost seven hundred words into this. This mess. This experiment. Or whatever he wanted to call it. Another three hundred words and he'd be finished, and ready to go lie on his bed and wonder why he wasn't writing. He didn't have to lie on a bed for that. The answer was in front of him. Writing was hard work, and filled with no satisfaction. 

What he wanted now was a drink, or better, a joint. He wanted somebody to telephone him and tell him something interesting. Or invite him somewhere. He wanted, he wanted.

Face the facts, he told himself. Dragging stuff out of your head is inherently boring. 

Then why do you do it?

It could work. And then... A best seller... Talk shows... Movie deals...

"You know none of that stuff is likely to happen," said Jensen, who had been listening in on his thoughts.

"No. But it might."

"Is that enough to build a lifetime on?"

"Hey, are you trying to help or hinder me?"

"Neither. I"m just here to provide someone for you to talk to."

"A hell of a conversation we're having," Smith said dourly. He wondered if he should change that word. Why had he said 'dourly'? But what did it matter why he had said it? 

Meanwhile, the seconds were creeping by, in a slow and dreamlike way. Taking their time. He had a lot of those seconds at his disposal. Did it matter that he wasn't feeling especially good? No, it probably didn't matter, not to him, not to Jensen, not to anyone.

"La la la," Jensen said, in that annoying way he had.

"Please," Smith said. "I'm trying to concentrate."

"Well, pardon me all to hell," Jensen said. 

Smith looked up and found that nine hundred and seventy-eight words had gone by while he was hanging out at the keyboard. He was almost out of this! The thousand words were almost completed. And he hadn't even mentioned where they were or what they were doing. 

"What about another thousand words?" Jensen asked.

RSheckley@aol.com