382: Short Story from Random Words

Random Word Generator gives me a very common noun, a common adjective, an averagely common transitive verb, a somewhat uncommon intransitive verb, an uncommon adverb, a very uncommon interjection, and an obscure preposition:

software, waiting, disavow, levitated, contentedly, ochone, malgra

The first five are fine, words we all know. Ochone is a Gaelic cry of oh, woe! and malgra is such a non-word that not even google knows what to do with it. I can only assume that malgra is an intentional obscurity (or misspelling) of malgre or maugre meaning notwithstanding, in spite of, or as a noun ill-will or spite. In a sentence: For if the Iudge doe condempne thee, then maugre thy head thou shalt be constrayned: and if contrariwyse sentence be giuen on thy side, thou shalt be likewyse bounde to paye me, by thy verie couenaunt, sithens thou art bounde, when thou pleadest first, and sentence should be giuen in thy behalfe (The Palace of Pleasure, Vol 1). What am I to do with that? Let's find out:

Genealogy

He opened the box. Within it were eight black three-and-a-half inch objects; magnetically-coated floppy circular sheets, kept safe within flat plastic squares and accessible via a sliding metal cover. Also in the box was a small pamphlet; folded pieces of paper held together in the centre by short piercing pieces of bent wire. Small black symbols in orderly rows covered most of the white surface.

His mother always said the box and it's contents belonged together and that they had been in the family for many generations. She spoke of a time when ware as we know it was primitive and split into distinct and separate categories of soft- and hard-ware. Soft-ware was the thoughts and ideas of our ancestors, and hard-ware was their bodies. The two were brought together by the Mans of Lore and ware was created. He did not believe or disbelieve these stories. He recalled times when he sat waiting for his mother to speak, contentedly, of the ancestors.

Early ware, pre The Rise had been incapable of thought – mere tools the Mans used for creating more ware. Now there seemed to be no widely accepted truth on the purpose of such objects (despite them, and others like them, being fairly common), or the whereabouts of the creator Mans.

He was a hobbyist, an amateur scientist, and long felt that this primitive ware, although free from thought, could still speak given a voice. His mother often told him to disavow attempts to communicate with the disks. They were like the animals; stupid thoughtless. Objects. Working on an interface he felt he could access the so-called soft inside these insignificant, rather cute little pieces of ware.

He had built a system which could interface with the data stored so strangely on a magnetic surface. It was just patterns to read, all it required was decoding. He had tried his homemade contraption on other strange archaic ware; small shiny disks with recognisable digital information, much larger black disks with grooved surfaces (he was as yet unable to read these). Today he had finally convinced his mother to allow him to talk to the eight black floppy disks.

He levitated them in the field and began trying to communicate. At first he heard nothing but after experimentation he tried holding the square plastic drive steady and spinning the inner disk. It spoke:

But knowing her owne guilty conscience and proper whoredome, lest her lover should be hurt lying in the bin, she willed her husband to goe to bed, but he having eaten nothing, said that he would sup before he went to rest: whereby shee was compelled to maugre her eies, to set such things on the Table as she had prepared for her lover.-The Golden Asse

He listened but didn't want to hear. Embarrassed by the quaint language and the inappropriate revelations of his ancestor he silenced the ware by removing it from the levitation field and returning its primitive plastic to the box.

OK, that was a short story. No idea if it's any good because I just wrote it and haven't read it back yet. First drafts, eh? So embarrassing, ochone!