Story: The Displacement of Invention

"Well that does it," said a curly-headed young man as he sagged into the plush booth. "That's the last of it, all gone."

The booth's current occupant, another young man with bigger arms and shorter hair, raised his eyebrows as he drank his beer.

"What's all gone?" he asked, when his sulky booth mate didn't elaborate.

"All my ideas," the smaller man said wearily. His name was Dan.  He was an as-yet-unpublished science fiction writer, and he generally had the look of someone who'd just walked unharmed from a car wreak.   "I'm all washed up, i'll never get my name out there now. Nothing left but the eulogy and the epitaph." He was twenty-six.

"Let's have it," said the other, whose name was Ben. Ben had been published when he'd won a short fiction contest at university, but not since. He was nearly thirty-one, and never seemed hurried.

For an answer, Dan slid a half-crumpled packet of office paper across the table. It looked as if someone had started tearing it in half, then stopped. Ben picked it up, flattened it.

"'Guns of Invariance,'" he read aloud, and seemed to wince. "Yours?"

"Essentially," said Dan with a sigh. "My idea, anyway. That is an early release of this years Oornt Prize for best short fiction. And it could have been mine, if I'da had more time." He took a long drink.

"No author name," said Ben, puzzled.

"I deleted it before I printed it," said Dan.

Ben frowned. "So who wrote it?"

"Who cares?" said Dan. "It wasn't me."

"I have the feeling," said Ben, "that when you brought this up, you wanted me to sympathize with you. You are making that impossible."

"Hm?" said Dan. "Oh I suppose you're right, I'm sorry. It's just frustrating."

"So you know the person who wrote it?" said Ben.

"Never heard of them," said Dan, staring morosely into his drink. "All I know is they stole my idea, and now they've got an award, and I don't."

Ben waited for more, but his friend had fallen quiet.

"So how exactly," Ben said slowly, "did they steal your idea?"

Dan sniffed.

"We're you hacked?" Ben asked. "Is this person a hacker?"

"Alright," said Dan, "they didn't steal my idea. But I had it first, all the same."

"Alright," said Ben, putting down his drink.

"I did," said Dan.

"Yeah," said Ben.

Dan was quiet again.

Ben sighed. "I'm working on a new story," he said. "It's about a family of Amebelodons."

"Uh huh," said Dan, who was scanning the front of the printed pages again.

"You know what an Amebelodon is?" asked Ben agreeably. This was a familiar pattern for Dan.

"Some kind of bacteria," said Dan absently.

"Ancient elephants," said Ben. "Lived about eight million years ago in pre-ice age Iowa. Jaws like shovels."

"Uh huh," said Dan.

"Research is a bitch," said Ben, "but there's a lot of leeway in the details."

Dan was quiet. He appeared to be rereading the printout.

"The baby gets separated from the herd," Ben went on, "and there's a, oh I don't know, a saber-toothed cat stalking him. It's have to be Barbourofelis I think, Smilodon didn't come around these parts until the ice age."

Dan looked up from his reading. "You don't know?" he asked with mild surprise.

"I just started writing it," Ben shrugged. "Haven't got that far yet."

Dan shrugged, went back to his reading without further question. Ben took another drink, looked at his empty glass, got up and went to the bar, came back in a moment with two new glasses. At that hour of the afternoon the place was pretty quiet.

"So what's this big idea, anyway?" he asked, sliding back into the booth and sliding Dan the other glass.

Dan mumbled something as he took a drink.

"What's that?" said Ben. "Too much time with the earphones Dan, I'm going deaf."

"I don't want to worsen the damage," Dan said with obnoxious clarity. He wasn't a bad guy, really, but Ben could see he was in an especially bad mood.

In spite of this, what Dan had just said made Ben grimace.

"This again?" he said.

"Don't tell me it's never happened to you," Dan said.

"I don't know if it has or hasn't," said Ben. "I'm trying to be a writer, not a security guard. Just because you have an idea--"

"It's not enough to just have it," said Dan. "You've got to tell someone about it. Once you've talked about it, once it's out there," he curled his fingers, blew on them dramatically, spread them in a gesture of dispersal, "they're gone, you can't get them back. They become someone else's."

"And the person you tell tells a friend," said Benny patiently, "who tells someone else, and then they finish writing before you do. At least it's flattering to have an idea that travels so well." He knew this wasn't what his friend meant, he'd heard this theory before, and wanted to skip to the end.

Dan shook his head with vehemence as he put his glass down.

"That's not it either," he insisted. "This happened," he pointed at the printout, "just because I said something about it. I told you about it, actually."

"Moi?" said Ben innocently. "When was this?"

"At Jake's party, last year," Dan said.

"I don't remember that," said Ben, half smiling. "What was the idea?"

Dan sighed dramatically. "I told you," he said. "It was about a defense contract, one of these billion dollar weapons deals, going to a computer firm instead of a more traditional contractor, like aviation or munitions."

"That sounds familiar," said Ben slowly, and took a drink. "Something about bullets that know where to go?"

"That can be directed by marking the target," said Dan. "Basic nanotech, you mark the target with a special pen and Ben you can shoot it."

"I remember that now," said Ben smiling. "The magic marker."

"The magic marker," said Dan, pointing at his friend in morose agreement.

"I remember asking," said Ben, "if you wanted to kill a guy, and you could get close enough to him to mark him with the magic marker, why not just stab him, or poison him?"

"Because," said Dan, "if you stab or poison a guy, you can get caught, or traced."

"Couldn't they trace the marker?" asked Ben.  "I mean this stuff has to be new to be noteworthy in the story, wouldn't it have been stolen from a lab or something?"

"That's act two," said Dan. "And shut up, it's cool."

"It is cool," said Ben. "Like a magic spell. I can get you if I make the magi gesture."

"Exactly," said Dan, finishing his drink and getting up. He returned with two more.

"So," said Benny, accepting his glass.

"So," said Dan.

"If you had this idea first," said Ben at last, "why didn't you just write it."

Dan looked tired. "I was," he said, looking away. "That is, I had been."

There was a silence.

"It's a tough business," said Ben.

Dan nodded. "You get one good idea," he said.

"And this story is all about this special kind of gun?" said Ben.

Dan shrugged.

"Is that a no?" Ben pursued.

Dan shrugged again. "It's a love story," he said.

Ben smiled. "Aren't they all."

Dan looked sickened. "No, I mean it's a love story. It's about these two kids who meet accidentally through a rip in time--"

"And they can't live without each other?" said Ben as he took a drink.

"Eventually," sighed Dan. "First they've got to overthrow the government in the boy's time, he's the one from the past."

"Sounds problematic," said Ben, who seemed to wince again. Ben suffered from involuntary analysis of most time-travel plots, and was able to enjoy few as a result. "This is a short story?"

"And the special guns," said Dan, "are from the girl's time, from the future. When they get together, it forms a bridge that all sorts of random stir gets through, and right away the timeline changes-- it's a mess."

"To be sure," said Ben. "Is it any good?"

"I can't tell," said Dan. "I read it in one sitting, but it pissed me off too much."

"It sounds like the guns aren't that important," said Ben. "In this story, I mean."

"They're not," said Dan.

"So why not just write your story anyway?" said Ben, raising his hands. "What could it hurt?"

"I can't," said Dan, "because everyone would think I just ripped off this story."

"So what?" asked Ben. "You know you didn't. And people borrow ideas all the time. Who cares as long as the story is good?"

"Me, for one," said Dan grimly.

"There are worse things," said Ben,  "than unoriginality."

"Not to me," said Dan.

"You take this stuff so seriously," said Ben. It was a phrase he used often when Dan was in a funk, and in the past he'd thought about having it printed on a hand sign, so he could just hold up the sign and save time for drinking.

He took another drink, got up and asked for two more. The place was starting to fill up, and there was s wait. Ben glanced at the bright afternoon sun slanting past the front windows, wondering if it were getting on towards dinner. He got his beers and returned to the booth.

"You're probably right," said Dan as he sat down.

"Of course," said Ben happily. "What'd I say again?"

"I get a little worked up," Dan went on.

"It's important to you," Ben shrugged, taking a light tone. He hadn't counted beers, but he had less interest in a melancholy Dan than he'd had in am the militantly self-righteous version. Fortunately, it turned out this time the beer was turning Dan philosophic, or what would pass under the circumstances.

"Look ," Dan was saying, pointing again at Ben for emphasis. "What's the first thing, the first thing you ask about a story. 'I just finished a great story!' says someone. What do you ask them."

Ben thought. "I might say who's it by," he said, which drew a shrug from Dan, "but I think you want to hear "what's it about.'"

Dan pointed at his friend again, his eyes flashing.

"Exactly," he said. "What's it about. What does everyone ask a bestselling author? Where do you get your ideas."

"That's not what I'd ask," said Ben.

"You don't ask anything," Dan flared flippantly "you choke and don't say a thing." He snickered.

"I said thank-you," Ben said with half a grimace. Why had he ever repeated that story. "Anyway people who ask that just want money, they think there's a secret they can get in on, start churning out best sellers of their own.

"They don't know," he added dramatically, "why those stories are best sellers in the first place." He took a long drink.

"The real reason being?" asked Dan.

"Who knows," said Ben, after finishing his beer. "But the reason I read stories fast usually isn't in the ideas, it's in the people."

"Hm," said Dan thoughtfully. "Maybe."

Ben sighed and stretched, made ready to get up.

"You got this week's?" he asked Dan.

His companion nodded.

"I emailed them to you before I came down," he said. "Most of them are due this coming week. Exams are right around the corner."

"Aren't they though," said Ben. "I'm thinking of going on vacation. I'll come back one week after the last final essay is due."

"You'd be broke all summer," said Dan.

"Broke-er," said Ben, "if that's possible." He stood, looked down at his friend and the printout. "Do me a favor," he said. Dan looked up. "Write down as much as you can of your gun story, I'll read it."

Dan waved. "Nah, I'm sick of those notes, I've had them too long. I've got a new one I'm working on."

"I thought you said they were all gone," said Ben.

"All the ones worth talking about," said Dan with a sly-for-drunk look.

Ben chuckled. "Glad you learned something," he said, shaking his head.

"You want me to look over your abio-whatsis?" said Dan, "The elephants?"

"Maybe in a day or two," said Ben. "Not quite ready yet.  That is, if they're not stolen by then."

"Haw haw," said Dan, and he drained his glass.  They left together.

At home, Ben opened his untitled Amebelodon story and wrote a few words of a thought he'd started earlier. The. He got a better idea. He saved the file, closed it, started a new one.

He typed, "Well that does it, said a curly-headed young man as he sagged into the plush booth...

It wasn't exactly his story, but he had a feeling that if he didn't write it, no one would.