Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Sun, 23 Aug 1992 14:41:35 CDT
From:         Tushar Samant <tushar@ZAPHOD.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject:      tmesis 1
Comments: To: words-l@uga.cc.uga.edu

I once wrote an extremely ridiculous and very rambling "SF story"
about tmesis. Since I spent a lot of time writing it up, I feel I
must post some parts of it. Remember it IS rather ridiculous.

Part 1 of 2 parts.
_________________________________________________________________

You might ask, why the hell am I reading up on genetics, or roman
history. Well, I ask the question to myself, at the end of every
day, pretty theatrically. And then I also go through the process
of wondering what I did to deserve this fate. The point, though, is
that I very well know why I am doing it, and the reason of my amateurish
hacking at disparate things is that their knowledge will help me
change the world, in some slight way.

I think I have created the wrong impression now. So first of all let
me make it clear that I CAN change the world - it has been demonstrated.
I can do it because I possess a superpower.

Whew. Putting this down in a credible way is going to be pretty hard.
Take my word for it that I have a qualitatively different ability to
influence the world, of which I am a singular non-repeatable possessor.

Anyway, I can't help it now if some people say "bah" or use more fashionable
interjections, but to those who haven't stopped reading already, I must
ask to suspend disbelief for much more time than they have already done.

It all started when I had this extraordinary dream. Ordinarily my dreams
are - they are ... ordinary dreams. That is to say, ... well it is
irrelevant. I may mention here that people say I am an "academic" type,
but all that means is that I tend to float to the top of the class many
times, and many times I have delivered above average assignment papers etc
etc, but as to whether I am a swot, I am emphatically not in the deepest
sense of the term "swot". So it is not surprising that my dreams are very
much like most others', say, fantasies, and in any case I need not be
defensive about this.

So at some moment in this particular dream, this woman with the cascading
hair disappeared and an oldish man appeared, looking rather silly and
claiming his name was Steiner. At least that's what it sounded like.

This was obviously an unwelcome interruption, so I told him to push off. He
said that he had important business, I - that's to say yours truly - being
one person who would listen to him credulously but also had some elementary
intelligence. He was going to give me a superpower, and all he expected in
return was its intelligent use.

I was befuddled. In a sense, dreaming of possessing superpowers is wish-
fulfilment of a sort, but I don't like this kind of abstract fulfilment at
all. Concrete and immediate gratification is what my simple mind wants.

He was alarmed at my hedging; he hurriedly produced two 26-sided dice
labeled with the alphabet - one in upper case, one in lower. I was to throw
them, he said, and for any word which started with the two letters which
turned up, I would possess the referent of that word in superabundance.

I asked him to repeat this. It definitely was the weirdest dream I have
ever had. I was so dumbfounded then that I didn't question the existence
of 26-sided dice, though of course that might have ended the dream there
and then.

"Let's assume for instance", said Staedtler or whoever, "that you throw a
P and an o. Then you can possess anything from poignancy, politeness,
poise, poeticality, pontificality, polyglottism ..."

"Or poisonousness, poverty, pointlessness", I added, "maybe ...
po-facedness ... and ... pogonotrophy? Something like that ..."

"Yes, yes, you get the idea", he said. "Only one of these, by the way.
Whichever you choose, you get in superhuman terms."

"Or suppose I throw a V and an i. Then I can have ..."

"Please cast the dice. There isn't much time."

And I, with the rotten luck that I have, threw T and m. Out of 676
possibilities, T-m.

"You'll have to give me another chance", I said. "There is no word
beginning with t-m."

"But there is."

"No, no! That's cheating! A WORD, that's what you said! I don't want to
possess loads of trademarks! I don't want to be a guru of transcendental
meditation! I don't bloody well want to own the world's Terbium supplies!"

"Thulium", he said.

"Whatever it is, I don't want that. Don't cheat ..."

"You talk too much", said Schmidt. "The spoken word is a powerful thing;
don't cheapen it by producing an excess. You are insufficiently familiar
with the dictionary. Look it up after you wake up."

He disappeared. The woman with the sandalwood aroma didn't reappear.
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