Hall of the Mountain King ch 1

I.

Michele re-read the first chapter of her Big Bang Theory fan fiction and found it good. (Follow the complete story at Fanfiction.net: The Mirror Image Iterations)

The idea had come to her suddenly. Why not have aspiring actress Penny be cast in a sitcom about 4 socially awkward physicists? Only let the physicists be four beautiful women, who scared away all the men because they were so smart. And the actresses would want to spend a few days following around the people on whom they’d been modeled – Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj. Naturally, hilarity would ensue.

Michele had an interested layperson’s knowledge in the sciences, but she couldn’t come close to replicating the complex physics-related dialog that the 4 main characters exchanged at least once per episode, let alone the scientific metaphors and similes with which the uber-smart Sheldon Cooper laced his conservation, but then no one would expect her to. As long as the dialog resembled what the characters would sound like, that was good enough. Where she hoped to succeed was with the plot and the interaction of the characters.

Michele stretched and decided it was time for a hot bath. She took her Kindle with her into the bathroom, and shortly settled down in the hot water for a long soak and read. The Kindle was an electronic reading device which would not react well if dropped in water. But Michele had been reading paperback books while relaxing in the tub for decades without losing one – she saw no reason to think that the Kindle would break that record of success.

After heating the water to the appropriate temperature and filling the tub to the appropriate depth, Michele slipped in, smiled with sybaritic pleasure, and began to read Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent. Although Barr had been writing her mysteries featuring National Park ranger Anna Pigeon for over ten years, Michele had only just discovered the author.

Blind Descent takes place, for the most part, in caverns underneath the earth, part of Carlsbad Caverns called Lechuguilla. In reading the descriptions of the actual getting into the cave – crawling through teeny tiny holes and inching along like a worm – Michele shook her head. She prided herself on her adventurous spirit but spelunking was one activity that she would never, ever try. But the descriptions of the actual caves themselves…the beautiful limestone formations of various kinds – draperies, lily pads, soda straws, cave pearls, stalagmites and stalagtites…she would like to see those.

Michele remembered that when she had checked into this motel, there had been a rack of brochures of various sites in the area, and she was sure she’d seen a brochure for some kind of cavern…. After she finished her bath she’d go take a look.

II.

Michele reclined in bed with a stack of sight-seeing brochures. She’d decided to make off with every single one the motel had to offer, and divide them into topics – sites she’d like to see and write about, and sites she didn’t…but which she’d at least mention so that her readers would at least know about them.

There had actually been a couple of brochures advertising caverns – all of them in northern Virginia. There were the Luray Caverns, which the brochure claimed were the most famous, but there were others within a few miles of each other – the Shenandoah Caverns, the Endless Caverns, the Skyline Caverns, and a few others.

She would go see them all.

Finally, her work for the day done, Michele decided to relax and watch something mindless. The motel had cable with dozens of channels…she didn’t want to watch any crime dramas – too grim, or any sitcoms – no intelligent ones on like the Big Bang Theory were on, only annoying ones with family units featuring precocious and annoying children, a bossy wife and a browbeaten husband…blah. As usual, the only biographies on the Biography channel were that of actors. The NASA channel featured direct video from the space station, but there was no sound, and in any event that wasn’t what she was in the mood for.

Finally she came across the Golf Channel. The 2010 Open at Pebble Beach was being repeated, the one where Irishman Graeme McDowell had won and American Dustin Johnson had had an historic collapse in the first four holes, with the Grand Slam of disasters, triple bogey, double bogey, bogey and par. Michele watched a few holes in aesthetic discontent. 99% of the golfers wore the standard baggy pants that seemed de rigeur on the golf course these days….only Dustin Johnson had worn a well-fitting pair of slacks – and white at that – that fit nicely over his crotch and allowed those who cared for such things to have a bit of eye candy. It was so unfair… the women had to wear the highest of high skirts to show off their legs to the crowd, but the guys, as in practically every other sport, walked around looking like they were in their pajamas. Discrimination, that’s what it was.

Michele sighed, and decided that rather than watch this eye-candy-less sport, she’d go to bed, and get an early start the next morning. She had much to do…and perhaps she’d have some pleasant dreams…