Hoodwink, Discombobulate, Bamboozle

The original human dream which led to the creation of the short story “Synthetic Hormone Tribunal.”

Dreams are rich sources of imagery.

University tribunal, Professor rescues my job, Trams to school, equipment, the board game map is a tree.

Having done the thing, I found the keystone. A bookend for my days. Times when completely off the track leading to one regular habit. Time bores deep when time goes asleep. There's something validating about striving. I say I am worthy, I am enough, I suffice. Confident, cocky, lazy, dead. Hubris is unwashed, respect yourself or wreck yourself. Start slowly to finish quickly. Never got around to finding myself but then I checked between the couch cushions. Mom helped with processing my emotions. With two children under the age of four. In a new country with a new language and new health surprises, she practiced in her profession and succeeded in her career. The race begins and some step back. Neurosis is a measure of emotional instability. Score low and it is very hard to be unseated. I was neurotic as a child, this was a good thing because it lead to building better castles in the swamp. The third one sank but the fourth one stayed up. Tracts of land. Outbursts of synthetic hormones leading to societal collapse. Babalaba-ding-dong. Two fish gone honey. 

The Boy with Stars on his Back written by Me and the Playground.

Disclaimer: I, the author, hereby referred to in this statement as me, myself, or I,  generated this text in part with the generative pre-trained transformer version 3 using the davinci-3 model, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model.

Upon generating the draft language, I reviewed, edited, and revised the language prior to publishing the output and I take ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.

The image illustrating this post (for which I am wholly responsible) was generated from an original prompt by me and input into Dall-E2:

"highly photorealistic rendering of the skin of a boy's back with a tattoo of stars in an unknown constellation. the boys back is pressed against the curtains which are bending through the wall of the family house into a sunny beach in the mountains on a rainy day."

Prompt by me:

Write a third-person omniscient narrator point of view story about a family whose youngest child of three, Winston, learns he has a tattoo on his back of a star constellation and any time his family presses the tattoo against a surface, they tell him to shut his eyes and they vanish. As he grows up, he learns that his tattoo turns any surface into a temporary one way portal to anywhere so long as the anywhere in question is real and so long as the traveller has a firm intention to go to specific place they have been to previously by normal means. Over time, Winston begins to resent how he's often kept at home as a convenience for the rest of the family so grocery runs, school attendance, and work commuting are easier for everyone. Finally his feelings of being used as an object spill out and he does two things he was told never to do: use the star constellation on his back to travel through a portal and do so with no intention of anywhere specific, real or imagined. As he passes through the portal to the screams of his angry family who want to stop him he is turned into a beautiful kestrel which appears on the other side of the wall in the lane behind their house. The story ends with Winston, now a kestrel with irregular markings across its wings that look like a constellation of stars, flying higher and higher, singing with joy while people below look for the eagle which is not there and ignore the kestrel which is. Response by the Playground (full :

Winston was the youngest of three children in the family, and he was always a bit of a mystery. As he grew up, he began to notice that he had a strange tattoo on his back—a constellation of stars. Any time his family pressed the tattoo against a surface, they told him to close his eyes and they would vanish. Winston had no idea what was going on and he was too scared to ask. As Winston grew older, he started to realize that the tattoo on his back held a special power—it could turn any surface into a portal to anywhere in the world. As long as the place was real, and the traveller had visited it before, they could travel through the portal. Winston's family soon started using him as a convenient way to get around. Grocery runs, school attendance, and work commutes were all a lot easier with Winston's power to open portals. Winston was beginning to resent being used as a tool, and he longed for his freedom. Finally, one day, Winston decided to take a stand. He did two things he was told never to do—he used the star constellation on his back to travel through a portal, and he did so with no intention of anywhere specific. As he passed through the portal, his angry family screamed at him to stop, but it was too late. On the other side of the wall in the lane behind their house, Winston found himself transformed into a beautiful kestrel. To the surprise of the people below, a kestrel with irregular markings across its wings—like a constellation of stars—was soaring high into the sky, singing with joy. The eagle they were looking for was nowhere to be found, but the kestrel was impossible to ignore. And so Winston, the youngest child of three, flew higher and higher, free at last.