Writing Battle - Titan Base Five

There's a website called Writing Battle that has monthly competitions for short story writers. Each time, they assign you three story elements that you use to create your prose.

 

This is the third story I wrote for one of the competitions and wanted to post it here. Please enjoy!

The story elements I was assigned:

• Genre: Crossworld Fantasy
• Character: Startup Founder
• Object: Ticket Stub 

 

 

Titan Base Five 

by Jay McKiernan 

 

Although he was sitting in a relaxing, idyllic garden, Jeff Kang was stressed. Titan Base Five was everything he dreamed of. The golden ticket worked. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that the show’s producers didn’t hire any Asian people…

 

Officer Candy McIntosh was confused. She hated this feeling – she was obsessed with understanding everything. That had propelled her through the Training Facility, scared at least two boyfriends away, and made her invaluable on Titan Base Five.

She had never seen anyone like Jeff before. He would say that he was just your regular, average-looking Korean man. But to Candy, on an Earth with no Asian people, he looked alien.

She considered her next questions for him. The obvious ones were, of course, “What do you mean we’re living in a TV show? More importantly, what is a TV show?”

 

“Okay, let’s try this again,” Candy began the interrogation.

“Again?”

“Let’s go over this again. You say this is a TV show.”

“Yes. Titan Base Five. It aired in the late nineteen seventies and early eighties.”

“Over one thousand years ago?”

“For you. For me… over forty years ago.”

“You’re a time traveller.” Candy had met a time traveller before. A few of them. Everyone knew that only famous people, people you read about in historical texts, were time travellers. Not regular people.

“No. I’ve told you this. I come from another universe.”

Candy looked down at her notes on her technobook. “This is where you were a… billionaire?”

“Yes. I ran a startup. Sold it. I got a bunch of stock.” Jeff didn't explain, knowing that Candy didn’t know what either was. “I had way more money than I could spend. So I tried to solve a problem.”

“What problem?”

“How to get out of the horrible world I was in.”

Candy had made Jeff tell this story six times in the past three days. Nothing made sense and she barely understood anything. But she had to press on. The Base Commander wanted direct answers and wanted them yesterday.

Jeff spent most of his energy trying not to stare at Candy. She was his childhood crush on his favorite show. He would rush home after school and watch reruns every day. Jeff considered her his perfect woman. Well, the actress, Lauren Simpson, was perfect. But this wasn’t the actress. This was the character, living and breathing, right in front of him.

“Let’s talk about the golden ticket. That’s the next part of your story, right?”

“Yes. I had to figure out how to get into your world. The best thing I could come up with was a golden ticket. A magical symbol.”

“From a… what did you say… movie, right?” Candy had gotten Jeff to explain the concept of a movie before. She couldn't understand why you wouldn't make the story yourself. Why let others have the fun?

“Yeah. ‘The Last Action Hero.’ It’s a movie from the nineties. It was a big flop. The story was about a kid who had a magic ticket that let him enter his favorite movie. I wanted to replicate it. I had to come up with some magic.”

Jeff paused a moment before continuing his story. He was tired of telling this – his greatest success and failure all in one tale.

“Magic and science are essentially the same. They’re just moving energy around in different ways and different forms to get a desired result. Electrical engineers move energy through wires to power light bulbs. Magicians move energy, both positive and negative, to create spells.”

Candy didn’t believe in magic. If she couldn’t explain and understand it, it wasn’t real. “Your golden ticket is magic?”

She held up her technobook to show a picture of that ticket. It was just the stub, colored gold and covered in fancy writing.

“This one?”

“Yes.” Jeff wanted to curse but knew he couldn’t. No bad language allowed on a TV show.

“We’ve checked this ticket. It’s just paper. And ink. Nothing special about it.”

“Then just give it me.”

"Do you think it'll take you back home?"

Jeff looked down at his feet, trying to hide his reaction. He trusted her, knew she was a good person, just like on the show. He wanted her to believe him and set him free.

Candy smiled, trying to show sympathy and compassion for him. Clinically, she knew that nothing he said could be corroborated. It was the perfect delusion. Her commander was convinced Jeff was an alien spy but she wondered if he wasn’t suffering from some sort of ‘space madness.’

Jeff came up with a new idea. What if he could convince her he was telling the truth? He looked up, stared into her beautiful blue eyes, and said, “What if I told you something about yourself that I shouldn’t know? Something that I saw on the TV show?”

Candy couldn’t help but smile. This would be fun, she thought. “Okay. Try me.”

Jeff thought about all those afternoons, all those happy days as a kid watching Titan Base Five. What episodes were the clearest?

“Let’s see…” he said to himself. “You’re not a lieutenant yet, so this is happening in seasons one through three.”

Candy’s eyebrows jumped up her forehead. Lieutenant?

“How about this? Did you tell anyone what happened to you on your vacation to Hydros? When you found yourself working with a temple magistrate… what was his name? Gregor? You couldn’t date him… because he wasn’t Pathrosian.”

Candy locked eyes with him.

“Was he a good kisser?”

“How do you know that?”

“Do you believe me now?”

 

It was a simple request to push through the system. Candy’s role on the base ensured that no one would second-guess her. Jeff would be held under her watchful eye and in quarantine.

She believed Jeff. He knew things no one else did. He could explain everything. He could get her promoted. He could answer every question.

Like, what is a TV show?