Touch me. Touch me like you didn't touch me last night.

For those of you who have made it here early, this should tide you over until more people arrive. I wrote this as an exercise in telling a good story longhand, using only one side of a sheet of paper. It's a few years old, but it still works, given its nature:

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    Mark was twenty-five when he discovered that he had been living his entire life in six dimensions. He had just gone through a particularly disastrous breakup, and while attempting to scoop his neon tetras from Susan's fish tank, he made an eerie discovery. After several near misses, his palm brushed against the fish, which promptly swam at and into his hand.
    Stunned, Mark grabbed a cup and -- as though passing a blessing -- waved his hand over the top, palm down, depositing the fish and a quantity of tank water from nowhere in particular.
    This was, Mark realized, almost cripplingly cool.
    He now knew his fate.
    He would become a Master Criminal™!
    He would walk through bank walls, hiding the gold in another dimension in his head; he would bewilder his pursuers by inverting their perceptions of color and shape; he would allow bullets to pass through him, and would cripple his enemies with nothing but thoughts of sour milk! Nobody could stop him! But, no...thievery was not the way...
    He would become a Super Hero™!
    He would stop criminals by passing a hand through their brain, rendering them unconscious; he would walk through crime scenes, psycho-magnetically attracting particles of hair and skin from the perpetrator; he would peer deep into the mind of the average white-collar thief and he would cripple his enemies with nothing but thoughts of how a dance club smells after 2 a.m.! Nobody could stop him!
    Mark opened his front door, smelling the blue sky for the first time, tasting the wind against his cheek, and hearing the future call his name.
    As he paused to reflect, Mark was promptly mauled by a neighbor's Doberman pinscher, learning a few moments too late that all dogs bite in seven dimensions.

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Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
I didn't promise they'd all be modern classics...
Just consider this a warm-up...

benjamin

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benjamin talks at compositemolecules@yahoogroups.com
Everbody else can speak at dead-horse@yahoogroups.com
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