ysabetwordsmith: (Schrodinger's Heroes)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This poem was written to fill the "au: neighbors" square on my card for the [community profile] trope_bingo fest.

The following poem belongs to Schrodinger's Heroes, featuring an apocryphal television show supported by an imaginary fandom. It's science fiction about quantum physics and saving the world from alternate dimensions. It features a very mixed cast in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation. This project developed with input from multiple people, and it's open for everyone to play in. You can read more about the background, the characters, and a bunch of assorted content on the menu page.

Format: Poetry
Title: "Wouldn't You Like To Be"
Fandom: Original (Schrodinger's Heroes)
Summary: Sometimes it isn't the worlds where everything goes wrong that make you want to cry. Sometimes it's the ones where everything goes right.
Required Warnings: No standard warnings apply.


"Wouldn't You Like To Be"


Schrodinger's Heroes landed
unexpectedly in the midst of a forest.
Blackberries twined thickly around the trunks
of tall pecans, olives, and black hickories.

"What went wrong?" Morgan asked.
"I don't know," Alex said, pushing away
a branch laden with peaches.
"I put in the coordinates
for the Teflon Tesseract ..."

"I think this is the Tef," Ash said.
She pointed to a yellow boulder
with a distinctive fold like a closed fist,
almost buried under a veil of wild grapes.
"That's the same rock we were standing by."

"Then what happened?" Quinn asked.
"Did we get thrown back in time?
Our part of Texas is green, but not this green."

Ash scuffed at the ground with her boot,
kicking up fluffy loam dark with moisture.
"It looks like someone built up the soil
and planted a food forest," she said.

"I hear voices," Kay said.
"Let's check it out," Chris said.
Everyone fell in behind them,
with Pat and Bailey bringing up the rear.

They found the edge of the forest,
lined with purple-leaf sand cherries
and laced together with passionfruit vines.

Alter!Ash straddled the bench of a picnic table,
her handkerchief top tied up to show
an expanse of coppery midriff,
fingers busy typing on a laptop
while alter!Alex sat on the table itself --
which was painted like the periodic table --
waving her hands with great enthusiasm.

Alter!Bailey, alter!Kay, alter!Morgan were all
playing lawn darts with equipment that had
adjustable fins and other aiming finesse,
launching them gracefully into
gleaming aluminum hoops.

Alter!Chris stood over a barbecue grill,
flanked by his grinning cousins Luke and Bo
and their leggy blonde wives wearing cowboy hats.

Alter!Pat presided over a playground full of
squeaking swings and clanking merry-go-rounds
covered in children of all shades
from dark chocolate to white.

Alter!Quinn and alter!Midge were necking openly
on a park bench, their hair mingled
in curls of neon pink and auburn.
Alter!Quinn had breasts the size of acorn squash
and seemed perfectly happy about that.

Stunned, the heroes hid behind the bushes
and listened to the boisterous voices
spackled with laughter, carefree as songbirds,
caroling about what they'd done or would do or dreamed.

It didn't take long, after all,
to find out what had happened
to make this dimension so different from their own.

"Let's get the heck out of here,"
Chris said as he backed away.

"I don't get it," Alex said, bewildered.
"I turned the Tef into a commune?
I made a community center out of the
world's biggest superconducting supercollider?!"

"Looks like it," Chris said.
"Am I turnin' green?"
Ash peered at him carefully.
"No," she said. "Why?"

"On account of I'm so full of envy,
it's a wonder it ain't pourin' off me
like flop-sweat," Chris said.

"Come on, everybody," Quinn said gently,
herding them back toward their arrival point.
"We've got a world to save,
and we won't be doing it from here."

The heroes folded themselves
back into the manifold of reality
with no one the wiser.

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-22 02:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thesilentpoet.livejournal.com

HA! This made me laugh. I love the twist you get with the final line.

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