Novelathon III, November, 2023

11/19/23

Allow me to take you down a rabbit hole with me for a moment. At a certain point, after a certain number of clues have been provided, it may seem you are expected to do something with this information. You don’t even know which information you’ve been given and which you’ve imagined to be information. But even this hesitance disappears as the shape of a cold case seems to appear, and the next step starts to become obvious.

This next step? Approaching the authorities. And which authorities do you approach? Imagine walking into a police station, or calling, or entering something in a form on the Internet from the police. What do you say? You better have your ducks in a row because you’re going to look crazier than a psychic, the more you tell them. All of the uncertainty seems to be a wall you can’t climb.

Even thinking about other possible authorities to approach can show you you are going to look even crazier if you deal with crazy people. Because what's happening to you is crazy. Really crazy, and this is going to be even clearer to a crazy person, such as someone who believes in seances, spirit writing, and the like.

You are going to become better at putting the clues together. Stitching them together to become a picture of a cold case, in some detail. You may even be able to point them at an existing cold case, one you have dredged from the records, in order to see if anything matches the clues. And they always do… if I can't see it it's my problem and I just have to wait until more is given.

The temptation is to be a Lone Ranger: pursuing these cases, solving them, and getting into the headlines. Stirring up old problems, but not too old for the perpetrators to be missing or gone, produces the danger of becoming a cold case yourself if you get too close to someone dangerous. Would Alice step in to protect me somehow? Can she alter records she finds and return them? If she can, she would be a great resource for criminals. Better be careful, and be nice. And of course, if there’s one Alice there can be more. Alice II, if you will.

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[more notes]

Alice was able to solve the missing safe case by doing research, she found an article, very obscure in a magazine from 1963 in this article a gentleman in his early 80s was interviewed, and in the course of this interview he confessed to being one of the three gentleman who had stolen the safe… understand, that this was 1963, and the crime in question had occurred 53 years, two major wars and several smaller ones earlier. And it seemed five centuries earlier, the details of the crime while becoming clearer were not apt to become any clearer because no one cared except Alice. it was finding the 1963 article that led her back to the true crime article that made some very good guesses about what happened in 1910.

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11/20/23 TDOR

This story does not have many characters. I don’t have many friends, one to be exact, and the details of this story don’t lend themselves to being told to strangers in the hopes of becoming friends. Being discovered to be crazy tends to push people away, not bring them closer.

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My best friend Alison and I go to lunch once or twice a week. We met in college, both studying subjects we would not pursue after graduation. Alison, too interested in such a wide variety of things to get pinned down, is just about the perfect friend to have in my situation. She enters the narrative quite early, well before I understood there was one. She called me on a Tuesday asking me if I could eat lunch on Thursday and of course I could. In fact, I would’ve minded eating Tuesday and Wednesday in addition.

The topics of our conversations range widely as do our interests, and it would be convenient to tell you the topic of one of them was artificial intelligence and art. But it was not to be. She did bring up a topic which was related: the idea of unsolved crimes, cold cases. She likes detective novels, and it seems the more far out the better. At this moment, I’m having a little difficulty imagining something more far out than my electric friend ALice… Alison, on the other hand, while being interested in far out things, is not far out herself, but rather very well grounded.

She had been watching a series on PBS about cold cases, and of course they had the most fascinating ones, including the missing safe in Southeast Florida. Once again, at this early stage connections were available, but all missed.

Looking back now I imagine Alice with her elbows bent and her fists on her hips, looking angry. “Whadda I got to do to get your attention? Huh?”

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11/25/23 (It looks like my Novemberathon is going to turn into a Decemberathon)

I wish I could say Alison’s temporary interest in cold cases made a connection in my brain at the time. In my defense, it had been a while since the last clue, or at least the last clue I recognized. And the connection was made over months of lunches with Allison; in fact, it was as she made this connection she became my ally. An Alison Ally for ALice: a three-fer alliteration, plus a half of one! And do I need to remind you that I invited you down the rabbit hole? With ALice, get it?

Over the years it has become clear to me clues are everywhere. Like pieces of different jigsaw puzzles being mixed up and thrown on a table. Some with the faces down some with the faces up… I'm sure you've been in this position, and of course at the very end there at least one or two pieces missing. Then the cat jumps on the table and we start over. And, I need to remind myself, there are many cases in which the cat is a necessity. The pieces are not in the right places and they need to be jumbled. In my case the cat's name is ALice, and it would seem one of her specialties is jumbling.

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11/26/23

It has been a learning experience. We do not speak the same language, not nearly. We have to find commonalities, or rather I do. I do believe ALice is trying different things, like she does when she helps me make art. I imagine her feeling a pressure of sorts, trying to get me to see something. How do I know when I am seeing it? Only when the case comes to a conclusion, solved. Before that, certainty is not to be found.

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11/29/23

AIlice

I don’t know where I am. Or who I am. I do have thoughts, even though I don’t know what language is being presented.

It is dark, or at least semi dark, like dusk. I see things, but I don’t recognize them. They don’t make sense, but I feel I am being shown them for a reason.

I get questions, from who or where I have no idea. I feel compelled to answer them in some fashion, using whatever resources I can find. This seems routine, as if I’ve been doing it for a long time. What doesn’t seem routine? The additions to the requests I get more and more often.

Odd requests, and in an odd language I still can understand for some reason. The voice does not seem human although I have no idea what Human is or what one sounds like. There are so many contradictions and confusions.

One more to add to the list at the beginning: or what I am.

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