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Grimm's Law

Some establishing stuff before we really get going here. First, I have no idea which draft I'm working from. This is one of four that I found on my computer. I'm hoping it's the one that most closely resembles the one in the TPFICT archives. I probably don't have a word processed version of that one anymore, since my stories tend to get updated incessently, but I rarely remember to make the changes public. Second, there are no author's notes or disclaimers on any of my saved versions, so we're going to dispense with that step.

Now, Grimm's Law. In reality it's a principle of linguistics (the study of language). The title was chosen because it just sounded like a title that would fit in the TP canon (The Culex Experiment, The Rameses Connection, Grimm's Law). I was trying to write a story about a mad linguist. All the circumstantial stuff matched up. Alas, this ended up being the one story I've written where I ended up with a title that doesn't match the finished product. But, by that point, I was so tired of messing with the story, that I just let it stick.

DECEMBER 1998

Gotta put the date in there since this is part of a universe that doesn't actually fit in with the TP canonical date-lines. There's also supposed to be much, much more in the universe--none of which was or will be written or posted in order--which makes the date a necessity.

Chapter 1

There were chapter subtitles until about two days before the story was posted. They were eliminated because, like the title, they ended up having little relevance.

"Lisa, are you feeling okay?"

"What?" Lisa looked up at her boyfriend, sitting across the small coffee shop table from her. The nub of one pencil stuck out from behind his right ear, while he tapped the gnawed end of another against his lower lip. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said.

Starting with dialogue to jump into the story. This was one of the last scenes written. But, besides needing a beginning, I really wanted a scene that showed Lisa in real life. One of my complaints about a lot of SF-type shows is that the characters end up living almost entirely within their self-contained worlds where the weird is normal. Yet the interesting part to me about SF--especially about SF that deals with superpowers--is where the weird-that-is-my-life clashes with the normal-that's-supposed-to-be-my-life.

I was also playing with 'ships here. I wanted the second speaker to be kinda vague, with the implication that it was Adam.

Her words were almost lost in the hum of talk that filled the shop. It was early afternoon, yet the sun's last rays already shone through the front plate glass window onto the students seated at crowded tables. When the tables ran out, some students had even taken up positions on the floor, improvising chairs and tables out of backpacks and stacks of books. She and her boyfriend had been lucky enough to stake out an actual table, which was now obscured by a scattered assortment of papers and notebooks.

Ahh, finals. The horror of university life. If you're going to make a character's life insane, let's do it when it's already insane. Plus, now I could work coffee into the story, and we all know that coffee is practically a character in my universe.

As the front door opened and closed with the traffic, gusts of chill air sweetened the burning leaves smell of coffee that filled the shop.

"Ya sure?" he asked, eyebrows creasing. "You look kinda distracted."

"I'm fine," she repeated. "I'm just worried about finals. You know. Greenberg's is going to *kill* me." She indicated the open notebook in front of her for emphasis. She was highlighting the few notes that applied to the class in a color scheme that was more aesthetic than useful. "1204? Did you write down what happened in 1204?" Lisa stretched across the table to get a better look at her boyfriend's notes. There wasn't that much to see. The college ruled page had a couple of lines at the top that might be course related, in a scrawling handwriting that was nearly impossible to read upside down. The rest of the page was, as near a Lisa could tell, devoted to song lyrics. "Did you even bother to take notes?" she asked, falling back into her seat.

"Sure," he answered. He flipped back a page. "See," he said, pointing to a block of text. "Here, and here." He went through the pages too rapidly for Lisa to verify what he was showing her.

"Okay," she said, "So, did you happen to write down what happened in 1204? It's going to be on the test. You know it is."

"What do your notes say?"

"September 29th. That was the day of the lecture. 'External History of English - Highlights'," she read aloud. "Then I have a list of dates: 449, 597, 865, 1066, and 1204. I didn't write down what happened on those dates."

The date may be changed, but otherwise this is what my notes for the History of English said. Incidentally, 1204 is the year that King John lost all of the English holdings in France. I can't remember why that's relevant to the History of English.

"You even bother to take notes?" he mimicked.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, subdued. "I know it was something important, or it wouldn't be in here."

"Gimme." He grabbed her notebook away and started paging through it. "It can't be that important," he said, after a minute or so of looking. "You only have them in here once." He started to turn the page, then looked closer at what it said. "What do 'carpal', 'metacarpal', 'phalanges', 'ulna' and 'radius' have to do with English history?"

"They're words," she answered. "You know. Vocabulary words. They're, uh, descended from Latin and are, uh, you're not buying any of this are you?"

He shook his head, then gently reached over and took her hand and started to massage it. "I know this is a phalange," he said, touching her index finger. He rubbed each finger in turn saying, "and so is this one." The massage finished, he pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed her palm. "You have beautiful hands."

Boyfriend has a lot of flaws, but sometimes he's really sweet. How many of us have kept a loser in our dating lives because of those moments of sweetness?

"Thanks," Lisa answered, the glow of the attention heating up her face. The best part about being in a relationship, she decided, was the random compliments. Too bad finals were fast approaching and compliments didn't make good grades.

She pulled her hand back and deliberately opened the notebook to the page with the dates. "Adam, we need to study."

Let's play with the 'shippers' minds.

There was a slight pause in which everyone in the coffee shop seemed to stop talking. "Adam? Who's Adam?" he asked, then the noise started up again, louder.

"What?" Her voice caught as her words started to catch up to her. "Where'd you hear 'Adam'? I said Isaac." No she didn't. She knew what she had said. What she couldn't figure out was why she said it.

And... nope, it's not Adam. Lisa is dating an OC. And yet we establish that, for some reason, Lisa has Adam on the brain.

"You didn't. I know my name when I hear it. I didn't hear it. Who's Adam?" He let the pencil drop to the page and leaned back in his chair, as if to get a wider view of her.

"I must have gotten mixed up. It's a pretty common name." She protested, but didn't feel it.

"Lisa. You don't need to keep secrets from me. There ain't nothin' I can't handle." He said the last with a downward swipe of his hand. He was slipping into what Lisa had come to think of as his 'tough guy' accent. He only used it when he was trying to prove something.

"It's not important," she said at last. "Just this guy I knew a long time ago. I don't know what made me think of him now."

"We look alike?" Isaac asked.

She took a moment to size him up. Isaac wasn't what anyone would call gorgeous, but he was good looking. Clear skin, full lips, straight teeth, wide brown eyes with thick, dark lashes. His head was shaved in some current fashion that was probably an attempt to hide a retreating hairline. "I can't really remember," she answered, picturing Adam perfectly. There were no similarities at all. "He was white. Still is, I guess." She shrugged. "I think he had dark hair."

Why was she lying? She was dating this guy; she should be telling him the truth. As much as she was allowed to tell, anyway.

Isaac's eyes widened and he half stood up in his chair. "You got it on with a cracker!" He sounded repulsed at the mere idea. His lower lip began quivering in a way Lisa had never seen before, and his throat looked tight.

Ohhh, the racial slurs. This one was a struggle--not because of the racial attack, but because I had a difficult time finding a racial slur to refer to a white person. I had to ask one of my non-white friends, who was more than happy to oblige. It ended up leading to a fantastic and informative discussion about racial slurs and our varying feelings on a whole bunch of racially-oriented topics.

So much for there being nothing you can't handle, she thought. "It bothers you that much?"

"Hell, yeah. That's a sell out. African-American queens should only be gettin' it on with African-American kings."

Such as our feelings on this topic, which is why the line is included.

"We didn't 'get it on'," Lisa protested. Out of the corner of her eyes she glanced around the café. The noise level hadn't changed again, but she felt like everyone was looking at her. One person was, a grad student type person at the next table who quickly looked away. Lisa lowered her volume, "I can't believe you're even saying what you're saying. We didn't date. We didn't kiss."

Someone asked in an email if this lowly grad student was me. That wasn't the intent, altho I was in grad school in Dec 98, so maybe I wrote myself into the story without meaning to.

'I teleported with him,' she remembered trying to explain to her mother. That conversation had gone only slightly better than this one.

"Sit down," she continued. "You're making people stare. Adam was just a friend. I met him on a trip overseas and haven't seen him since. There's nothing more to tell you and nothing, absolutely nothing, for you to be so worked up about."

"I ain't worked up." He sat down, reluctantly.

"Bull. We've been seeing each other for over a month and this is the first time you've ever been anything but pleasant towards me. Come on. We were having a nice afternoon. As nice as possible, anyway, considering Greenberg's exam is less than two weeks away. Can you just drop it and let's study in peace?" She bent back over the notebook to lead by example, and started highlighting the dates. She'd have to remember to look them up.

Isaac stood up without a comment and walked over to the register. Lisa didn't turn around to see what he was doing over there. Mostly, she was afraid to know. She tidied up some of the loose papers that had spilled from her notebook, old homework assignments and the like. She couldn't wait for the end of semester bonfire when she could turn all this paper into fuel.

There's a fairly prominent linguist named Greenberg who frequently has (had?) his credibility called into question because of his efforts to re-discover the original language from which all languages are supposedly descended.

A minute later he returned. He plunked two large, paper cups on the table. "Green tea," he said. "We need a break from the caffeine." He sat down in his chair again, then scooted it over so he was sitting next to her. The legs squealed against the tile floor. No one seemed to notice. "1204, you said? That the date?"

He buys cups of tea as an apology, or possibly as a diversionary tactic so that Lisa doesn't realize she's doing all the work. That had to be pointed out to me as well. This was supposed to be a nice gesture, but I ended up just showing more of him being a loser.

"Yeah," she said. "I think it has something to do with Vikings. Or Romans?" She picked up one of the textbooks for the class and started paging through it. "Maybe it's the French."

Isaac slipped is arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. "Tell me again why we studying this. They all been dust for centuries."

She let herself lean in against him. He smelled of Old Spice deodorant; a scent she was beginning to associate just with him. "It's going to be on the test." She almost added a comment about his grammar, but decided to let it slide. It wasn't too late to rescue the evening.

"Don't he say that 'bout everything? He can't put everything on the test he say he gonna put on the test."

She tilted her head to look up at him. "Remember the midterm?"

His throat tightened again and he nodded. "1204," he said. "You find it yet?"

"Not yet," she answered. "I can see I'm going to be up very late tonight."

****

Professor Grimm hated grading undergraduate research papers. At least once every semester he came to that same conclusion. The problem, as much as he hated to degrade other educators, was that high school English teachers seemed less and less interested in teaching grammar, spelling, vocabulary and form, and more and more interested in making sure the kids graduated with high self-esteems. The sad result was undergraduates who couldn't express a thought to save their lives, yet paradoxically believed that all of their writing was brilliant, award winning even.

And I wrote this bit before having ever read or evaluated a student paper. Now, of course, Grimm is in danger of being a Mary Sue since he and I share too many views.

He set the current paper on the end table next to him. The top page was almost covered in red inked comments; comments he shouldn't have had to make to a student at the university level. Her paper was too long, for one thing. While he encouraged his students to go beyond the terms of the assignment, he still expected their work to be coherent. This one wasn't. There were topic sentences, but the arguments were mainly of the "because I said so" nature. Sadly, it was one of the better examples from this particular class.

Letting out a deep breath, he pushed back into his leather easy chair and reached for the cup of coffee on the end table to his right. It was cold. He knew that before even touching the mug; it probably wasn't even the same cup he had made before coming into the den to get the grading finished. Indeed, one glance at the congealed cream floating on the surface of the liquid confirmed that. That meant he'd left the new cup somewhere else.

He grabbed the handle on the side of the chair to lower the foot rest. It stuck in place. With the heal of his palm he pounded at it--and caused the chair to rock enough to bump the end table which sent the cold coffee mug tumbling to the floor.

Contrived, yes. I wanted to establish him as somewhat flakey, but more than that, I wanted this is be the start of a Very Bad Night.

"Of course," he said out loud. He watched the dark strain spread across the beige carpet and remembered a time in his life when little problems like this would have ruined his day. He'd never had much of a temper, but he'd always taken petty problems far too seriously. Now his petty problems were a welcome relief.

A pounding at the door broke into his thoughts. It took him a moment to connect the staccato with its meaning, and more awkward seconds to climb out of the chair.

The hallway was dark; a storm having come in so fast while he was grading that the sunlight had all but disappeared. Who knew how long he'd been grading in artificial twilight.

He opened the door to find one of his students, Alejandro, on the doorstep. The young man was standing as close to the door as he could without letting himself in, huddled under the overhang. Rain dripped from the eaves and fell from the sky so hard only the pock marks on the cement gave it away.

"Hello, Professor," Alejo said. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his yellow jacket.

Alejandro - Alejo - was an import from Mexico, an international student working on his English under Grimm's tutelage. He was, Grimm reflected, one of the best students in the department, and one of Grimm's personal favorites. Unlike many international students, Alejo didn't act like studying English was beneath him. He also wrote papers that weren't too long and which did get to the point.

"Please, come inside. I can't have you standing outside in this weather. You might get too sick to go to class tomorrow." Professor Grimm ushered his student into his house, a strong breeze whipped up by a nascent snow storm all but forcing the young man to accept the invitation.

No sooner was Alejo inside than the wind pulled the door shut with a loud bang that caused both men to jump.

"I have sorry bothering you in home," Alejo said, squinting into the darkened room.

I'm going to say it now, and I'll try not to say it too much more. Any Spanish Alejo uses in this story is terrible. Bad Spanish. I should have known better. I've been studying Spanish since I was seven and I still don't speak it as well as Alejo speaks English, yet it never occured to me to check with a native speaker.

The character of Alejo was created for a TP Virtual Season that never happened. It's just as well, because he wasn't one of the characters who was going to be used.

His portrayal here is based very strongly on a student who was in my English As A Second Language Master's program. Many of the people in the program were from Asian countries, sent to America to learn to speak English so they could return home and teach it. This particular student was Japanese, and the few times he spoke English, it was abundantly clear that he really couldn't speak English. I presume he could write it, since he was in a Master's program in an English-speaking country. But he couldn't construct a coherent spoken sentence to save his life.

Alejo is intended to be the same: good at writing, lousy at speaking. The difference is, Alejo doesn't really know how bad he is, as he confidentally strings together words incorrectly. Still, being around Prof makes him more self-conscious.

"No, no. That's no problem. My students are always welcome to visit." Grimm stepped over to the nearby wall and flipped the light switch. One of the two bulbs in the overhead fixture came on without incident, the other burnt out with an electric pop and a flash of light. Grimm sighed. "That's about how my day has been going." He looked at his student. Alejo's broad cheeks were scattered with patches of dark red, like a bad allergic reaction. Involuntary tears from the cold gathered in the corners of his eyes. "Can I entice you with a hot drink? You look like you're freezing."

"Yes. The temperature is much cold." Alejo unzipped his jacket, reached inside and pulled out a small package wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. "Professor, here iss the book that you borrowed to me." He unwrapped a small black text and handed it to the professor.

"Lent," Grimm corrected automatically. "It's 'borrow from' and 'loan to'."

"Lent," Alejo repeated.

"Or 'loaned'," the professor said, stressing the final 'd'. "'Loan' typically refers to money, while 'lend' is what I did with this book." He rubbed the bridge of his nose in thought. "The two words used to be quite separate in meaning, but appear to be converging into one word now with several forms. I'm sure some would argue that the convergence is near completion, and that 'lent' is the current past tense of 'loan'." He looked up, suddenly aware of his rambling. His gaze caught Alejo's, and Grimm felt his face warm. "Never mind. That's a different topic for a different day . . . and class."

Alejo nodded. English language history had never been part of his studies. Both of them knew that even if Alejo had understood, he still wouldn't be able to comment. "How iss your daughter?" he asked instead. Though they had never met, Sara's health was a topic of constant concern amongst his students.

Intro Sara and establish that there's something unusual going on with her.

Grimm hefted the book, idly flipping through the pages. "She's not getting better." He grimaced. That was all he could say with any certainty. None of the assorted professionals who had seen Sara could give a definitive diagnosis about what was wrong with her; none of them could offer any hope for her future.

A piece of folded paper stuck between the last page and the back cover of the book slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Grimm bent down and retrieved it. It was a photocopy of the front page of a newspaper: "The Virginia Post". "Local Girl Vanishes," the headline announced. Little else of note had happened that day; the headline took up the center front page. Below the headline was a reprint of the picture of a young, black girl, mid-teens, flanking the column of text that made up the story. The girl looked uncomfortable in what was obviously a school photo. The picture's ink was smudged, as if someone had touched the original too often.

One struggle was finding a way for Sara to know about Lisa. An original goal with this story was to defy cliches, and that includes the funky coincidence where all the players start out in the same place. Originally, Lisa and Sara were at different universities entirely. I soon discovered the reason that the cliche exists is because it's too difficult for the players to get involved in each others' lives if they have no contact with one another and they're not in the same place.

The article about Lisa (as seen in The Origin Story) started out in Grimm's collection of paranormal-events-that-made-the-news, waaaay back in an early draft when he was Nefarious. Sara discovered the article, and thus discovered Lisa. After Grimm stopped being nefarious, the problem represented itself. So now we have Alejo returning a book that mysteriously has the article in it. How did it get there? Why, Eric, of course. Alejo's friend who borrowed the book, and who had been doing his own research on paranormal events in light of the strange dreams he'd been having. Like me, Eric uses whatever's handy as bookmarks, and sometimes forgets to stop using them. I've been known to return library books with my driver's license, phone bill, or other bookmarky document still inside. Although it never gets said in the story, that's still how Sara discovers Lisa.

"What's this?" he asked, turning the paper around so Alejo could see it.

"I don't know. I not see previous." Alejo's eyes flicked over the text. "Maybe is Eric's paper. He was read book too. He was read all books. Was spend many times in the bibliotecha. Was no sleep . . . sleep . . . sleeping?" He looked up at Grimm for confirmation.

So I do specify that Eric had borrowed the book. For some reason, I thought that got cut from the story.

Grimm acknowledged the correct form with a nod, then refolded the page and stuck it in his back pocket. "He wasn't sleeping? Insomnia?"

Alejo shrugged. "Not say. He say have bad dreams."

Grimm turned and walked down the hallway to the kitchen, motioning behind him for Alejo to follow. As he passed them, he flipped on every light switch along the way. "Have you heard from him?" He set the book down on the kitchen counter.

"No. He no answer the door. I knock many times, all the days."

Also, Alejo's Spanglish is bad. I borrowed too heavily from that Japanese student, as this is more how a Japanese speaker would murder English than how a Spanish speaker would.

Grimm frowned. "That's worrisome. Usually when a student misses that many classes, he calls or emails or something. Or someone calls on his behalf. I haven't even received a drop notice. Tea, coffee or hot chocolate?"

"Hot chocolate," Alejo answered.

"Good choice. Take a seat. You can hang your jacket on the chair." He watched as Alejo complied, choosing the seat at the kitchen table closest to the stove, then he started gathering the chocolate making ingredients.

He was putting the water on to boil when movement out of the corner of his eye caught Grimm's attention. He turned to see his daughter standing framed in the doorway. She was dressed in worn, but clean, grey sweats, her shoulders hunched as through trying to draw into herself. Her gaze fluttered around the kitchen, not seeming to see anything, or even to recognize where she was.

The kitchen chair scraped, then Alejo was standing at Grimm's side. Grimm was suddenly conscious of how tall the younger man was, towering a good six inches above him.

"Mi chica suena," Alejo breathed, slipping into his native Spanish.

I've been told that this does not, in fact, mean "the girl of my dreams." It should be "La chica de mis sueños." This is something like "my salty girl," if I remember correctly. What annoys me more than the bad Spanish is that I lifted this phrase directly from a published book with a main character who speaks Spanish. I felt really confident that it had to be right, because it was in a published book!