iFrankenstein
by
Bekka Black
Dedication
To my son and favorite reader.
OCTOBER 22 – The ship sets sail…
October 22 Text from Elizabeth Lavenza to Henry Clerval
10:45 AM
ELIZABETH: Vacation goal: Blast Victor out of the cyberworld & into the real one
HENRY: Not enough dynamite on the planet
ELIZABETH: I hope u r wrong
HENRY: Where r u guys now?
ELIZABETH: Southampton, England
HENRY: Where the Titanic sailed from?
ELIZABETH: Yup. Here’s a painting I just saw in Greenwich Maritime Museum
.
.
HENRY: It’s all fun and games till someone loses an…iceberg
ELIZABETH: Ha ha. At least the beginning of THAT cruise was fun
HENRY: Uh-oh. Where’s Victor?
ELIZABETH: Hiding in his cabin on ship. Banging on his laptop
HENRY: Sounds like u’ll have a fun trip! Almost as much fun as staying here in Palo Alto and watching him type
ELIZABETH: Advice?
HENRY: Maybe u’d be better off hanging out IRL with ur mom?
ELIZABETH: Mom & Victor’s dad are busy planning their National Geographic piece about the Walton’s last voyage
HENRY: That IS how the trip is getting paid for: free tix if they chronicle the ship’s final voyage
ELIZABETH: Whatever. It’s not the same without u here. Victor & I r like Huey & Dewey without Louie
HENRY: Am closer to Scrooge McDuck these days
ELIZABETH: That’s Victor
HENRY: Except it’s his computer not his gold coins that he loves
ELIZABETH: Even Scrooge came around in “Mickey’s Christmas Carol”
HENRY: All u need r invisible Christmas spirits and u r set
ELIZABETH: Hmmm…
October 22 Text from Elizabeth Lavenza to Victor Frankenstein
10:55 AM
ELIZABETH: The SS Walton won’t disembark for hours. Come onshore with me!
VICTOR: Isn’t it raining out there in nature?
ELIZABETH: Not any more. It’s kinda like this
.
.
VICTOR: Looks windy
ELIZABETH: It’s exhilarating!
VICTOR: Exhilaration is overrated
ELIZABETH: Ur body. Only u can live in it
VICTOR: Technically, parasites can live in it too
ELIZABETH: Ha ha. R u coming?
VICTOR: Can’t. Have 1 more object to debug
ELIZABETH: I’ve heard that a million times
VICTOR: It’d be faster if the damn ship had internet like my father, the Sperm Donor, promised
ELIZABETH: What’s wrong with the internet?
VICTOR: It keeps breaking + they won’t let me fix it
ELIZABETH: Can u survive 2 weeks without internet?
VICTOR: Maybe not
ELIZABETH: Have u ever gone a DAY without internet?
VICTOR: Why would I want to?
ELIZABETH: So u can meet urself IRL!
VICTOR: Cyber-me is still me. That whole IRL distinction is crap
ELIZABETH: Gotta go enjoy life, Sunshine Boy
VICTOR: Return to me in one piece
ELIZABETH: Not more than two pieces. Promise
Henry's Browser
October 22 Southampton – | Great Britain. Sail early evening. |
October 23 Bruges – | Belgium. Full day on shore |
October 24 Amsterdam – | Netherlands. Full day on shore |
October 25 Oslo – | Norway. Full day on shore |
October 26 Stavanger – | Norway. Full day on shore |
October 27 | Norway. Full day on shore |
October 28 Cruise in Sognefjord – | Norway. Evening |
October 29 Cruise in Nordfjord – | Norway. Evening |
October 30 Trondheim – | Norway. Full day |
October 31 | Norway. Morning |
November 1 Reykjavik – | Iceland. Full day |
November 2 Southampton – | Great Britain. Arrive early morning, |
Henry's Browser
Victor's Phone Notes: To Do
Use crawler to retrieve text from all portals I used in the past 5 years: email, Facebook, MySpace, twitter, Amazon reviews, Netflix reviews, YouTube reviews, SecondLife, Runescape, World of Warcraft, other online games, etc.
Dump the texts into a database, separated by end of message, periods, hard line breaks, etc. Borrow processing power to speed this up
Move results into AI database
Set up data mining engine to sort out meaningful questions + answers: AI chatbot complete!
Win the Turing test in all major online contests: True Turing, Conversationalist, etc.
Get scholarship + early admittance to Carnegie Mellon
Leave home a year early!
Finally spend “quality time” with Elizabeth
Rule the world
Screw up massively + be stuck living with the Sperm Donor another year until I graduate
Victor's Browser
Elizabeth's Browser
October 22 Text from Elizabeth Lavenza to Henry Clerval
9:10 PM
ELIZABETH: I dragged Victor out of his cabin & on deck this evening
HENRY: Bet he hated it
ELIZABETH: U r not going to believe this, but he was almost struck by lightning!
.
.
HENRY: Figures. Is he OK?
ELIZABETH: Fine, but mad! Now he swears Mother Nature hates him. He’s nursing a grudge in his cabin
HENRY: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did u like the play?
ELIZABETH: Southampton’s amazing!
HENRY: The Queen Mary had her maiden voyage from there. Remember that trip?
ELIZABETH: U were scared to go on the ghost hunting tour
HENRY: The entire Clerval/Lavenza/Frankenstein clans were there! If I screamed like a girl I’d never live it down
ELIZABETH: U were very brave in the end
HENRY: So patronizing. Ouch. That trip was awful!
ELIZABETH: I thought the Queen Mary ghost hunting tour was cool
HENRY: U thought all the yearly trips were cool
ELIZABETH: Every single one. Every single summer since we were 11. I miss them. Don’t u?
HENRY: Doesn’t matter, E. After that trip everything died
ELIZABETH: Not everything. Just Victor’s mom & my parent’s marriage
HENRY: And my freedom
ELIZABETH: What r u up to today?
HENRY: U 2 r missing the Palo Alto junior/senior homeschool prom right now
ELIZABETH: Is it fun?
HENRY: Didn’t go. Didn’t want to dance in the wheelchair
ELIZABETH: Remember when u taught me to dance in 5th grade for our first homeschool dance?
HENRY: My poor sad toes remember
ELIZABETH: If u can dance with me, u can dance with anything, even a wheelchair
HENRY: Do u know how gratingly cheerful u can be?
ELIZABETH: It’s not easy either
HENRY: :)
ELIZABETH: Miss u
HENRY: Miss u both. Tell Victor Mother Nature might not be so angry if he visited more often
ELIZABETH: Will do. G’night
HENRY: Sleep tight
October 22 Text from Alphonse Frankenstein to Victor Frankenstein
9:14 PM
ALPHONSE: Hey, Victor! Where are you?
VICTOR:
ALPHONSE: Don’t wait up for me, kiddo. I’ll be up late working. Lots of historical photos to plow through.
ALPHONSE: Good night.
Other Works
As Bekka Black
As Rebecca Cantrell
A Trace of Smoke http://www.amazon.com/Trace-Smoke-Hannah-Novels-ebook/dp/B002HRY172/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347018749&sr=1-1&keywords=a+trace+of+smoke
A Night of Long Knives http://www.amazon.com/Night-Knives-Hannah-Novels-ebook/dp/B003JTHY3A/ref=pd_sim_kstore_3
A City of Broken Glass http://www.amazon.com/Game-Lies-Hannah-Vogel-ebook/dp/B004OA640W/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347018855&sr=1-1&keywords=a+game+of+lies
The Blood Gospel (with James Rollins) http://www.amazon.com/The-Blood-Gospel-Sanguines-ebook/dp/B0089LOGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347018918&sr=1-1&keywords=the+blood+gospel
On writing
Making Story: 21 Writers on how they plot http://www.amazon.com/MAKING-STORY-TWENTY-ONE-WRITERS-ebook/dp/B00961NCMW/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347018997&sr=1-8
Now Write! Mysteries: Suspense, Crime, Thriller, and Other Mystery Fiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers
http://www.amazon.com/Now-Write-Mysteries-Suspense-Exercises/dp/1585429031/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347019088&sr=1-1&keywords=now+write+mysteries
First Thrills (anthology) http://www.amazon.com/First-Thrills-ebook/dp/B0050IDGAI/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347019194&sr=1-1
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Any resemblance to any other characters, living, dead, or undead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Cantrell
Artwork:
Friedrich, Caspar David.
Woman on the Beach of Rugen 1818, 1818. Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterhur, Switzerland.
Village Landscape in Morning Light (The Lone Tree). 1822. Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.
Woman at a Window, 1822. Nationagalerie, Berlin, Germany.
The Wanderer above the Mists, 1817-18. Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany.
The Cemetery Gate (The Churchyard) c. 1825-30. Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
Graveyard under Snow. 1826. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany.
Grebe, Fritz. Blick in den sommerlichen Hardanger Fjord. Oil on wood. Private collection.
Marszewski, Jozef. Nocturnal Landscape and Windmills. 1864. Oil on canvas. National Museum, Warsaw.
Millet, Francisque. Mountain Landscape with Lightning. c. 1675. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London, UK.
Odevaere, Joseph Denis. Lord Byron on his Death-bed. c. 1826. Oil on canvas. Groeningmuseum, Bruges, Belgium.
Pearson, W. Atlantic liner Titanic sinking bow first, 1912, with eight full lightboats nearby and iceberg in the distance. 1912. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Schouman, Martinus. The Explosion of Gunboat nr 2 Under Command of Jan van Spejik. Antwerp. February 5, 1831. 1832. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Van Gogh, Vincent. Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass. 1888. Oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.