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For the Slash the Slashers Challenge. Thanks go to Jess, for beta. Thanks also to Pearl-o and Slodwick for letting me write them. The book mentioned, Metamagical Themas, written by Douglas Hofstadter, talks about a computer simulation of a hurricane. One idea is that if you program a computer for that simulation, on some level you're causing an actual hurricane to happen in the computer. If you look at it one way, that could mean that writing something makes it real. Then again, if you look at it another way, it's rubbish.

Now with a handy dandy pocket history, for those of you who read this and went, "whafuck?"

The Hurricane Didn't Happen
by Hetre Z

There are no nicknames. Slodwick, and it's really kind of terrible how good that name looks up onscreen, never calls her Pearl or O or P or any mutation of that, not Penny or Pixie or Princess. It's always Pearl-o, almost formal, as if one of them were wearing butler's velvet and holding the door for the other. Pearl-o wants to hold a door.

-

It's instant messenger, sometimes, and livejournal dedications, fiction, a few emails. Pearl-o likes to listen to music while she talks, so she'll put the Benedictine monks on her sound system, or Bif Naked, or "American Pie" on repeat until Chevy to the levy is splattered across her brain in bright sticky bits. There's something about ambience, creating a mood, and sometimes it's bullshit but sometimes it lets her write her best stories. Sometimes, also, talking to Slodwick is part of it. But she never puts a red scarf over the lampshade; that would be too much, she thinks, and it's not like Slodwick can see it or anything, it's not like she'd notice through the IM window.

Sarah. When Pearl-o can, she tries to think of her as Sarah. "Can I call you that?" She types with capitals and periods.

"what?"

"Sarah. Can I call you Sarah?"

"um, sure," Slodwick writes. "if you want to."

And sometimes she thinks, too late, that people have their pseudonyms for a reason. She's never asked anyone else, so she never needed to think about it, but "Um, this isn't, like, stalker-y or anything, right?"

"hey, no, i'm just used to people calling me whatever without asking"

Oh. "Oh, okay."

"but it's cool that you asked. polite." There's a slinky on her desk, a tiny plastic one in rainbow colors, and she swishes it around a bit, getting up her nerve. Pearl-o turns down the music and then turns it back up again, and the song has gone into that little doo-dee-doo bridge thing and it's right there, right at the tips of her fucking fingers to just say something. To say something.

Pearl-o starts typing into the window and, "oh hey," Slodwick writes, "you don't want a nickname, do you? i mean, i can still call you pearl-o, right?"

"Yeah, of course." Singing this'll be the day that I die, this'll be the day that I die.

"What are you wearing?"

"ha! good one"

"Yeah, um. I thought so, too."

-

There's a diner down the street, they serve hot tea and home fries, and a big neon sign out front says "DINER" on it, as if the patrons needed to be told. Pearl-o doesn't watch anyone when she's there, although it's a perfect people-watching spot, the traffic of regular patrons and new customers, menus and a muttered "the usual" drifting through the room, riding on the smell of eggs and smoke from the kitchen. Mostly she wishes Slodwick were watching the people for her.

Pearl-o imagines her sitting across the table, sipping coffee and fiddling with the empty half-and-half containers, smiling, stealing a napkin to scribble fic notes on. Tucking hair behind her ears, maybe, and it's really kind of stupid to think of spending time with her there, when Pearl-o doesn't even know what she looks like. There's a scrolling marquee through her daydreams, the name "SLODWICK" in sparkly green letters, perched on the diner bench across from her, and Pearl-o knows that words can't smile but she wants it just the same.

"And there's this one waitress," she writes, "she's been there for, like, *years*, and she looks like she's fifty, like that Viola chick from 'Grease', right?"

"yeah?"

"She's so nice, and she'll give me extra ketchup with my home fries and I don't even need to ask." Her little plastic nametag catches the light, and she always smiles no matter how small the tips are. Pearl-o thinks, sometimes, that it's the perfect way to be, never wanting anything you can't have and always liking what you get. But she looks at Slodwick's story covers and livejournal entries, and the IM names on her buddy list, and thinks that you can't stop wanting things, even when you can't get them.

"that's so cool. am jealous. well, i mean, not about the home fries, because ketchup's gugh. but still, having a pattern like that"

"What would your pattern be?"

"like, if i had a diner? or my equivslent of one"

"Yeah."

"'equivalent', gah"

"Hee. Dig your mad typing skillz."

"shut up, not everyone can be perfectly capitalized."

"Yeah, yeah."

"i don't know what i'd do. maybe lex-loves-clark drinking games. drink one shot when lex gets a scene, drink two shots when the tv screen melts from the HoYay"

"Hehe. Take five shots when Jonathan bitches about the Luthor name."

"yeah! and i'd have piñata night with friends. and move to las vegas to get married to stef and rhiannon."

"But of course." She doesn't ask who else Slodwick would marry. There's no reason to.

-

"what do you want for your birthday?"

"Like, besides world peace and the Lex&Clark WB special holiday marriage special of much specialness?"

"yeah, besides that"

"A cherry bomb. Gilded, set with rhinestones."

"no, for real. it's a real question, i really want to know."

"Okay, say I wanted, um. Like, a date."

"like the fruit?"

"Shut up."

"okay, well, do you know any nice guys?"

"Guys?"

"yeah, you're straight, right? that's what you told me, isn’t it? i mean, i might have hallucinated the whole thing."

"No, that's. That's what I told you. I was just thinking, um."

"what?"

"No, I don't know an cool guys, not really. What do you want for *your* birthday?"

-

A boy in her study group brings Smirnoff three nights in a row, and passes the bottle around. There's a difference, Pearl-o thinks, between fucking over your GPA and letting the tension out, but she watches the bottle go around the circle and doesn't touch it. Her characters can get drunk, Lex could get smashed and Clark, if he had a barrel, could maybe get a little tipsy. It's funny how the stories she writes, the characters, can do so many things that she can't. That she doesn't.

The fourth night the bottle passes under her nose and she takes it, holding it lightly, because the glass is thick but it still might break, and takes a sip. One girl, the one who's failing English by half a letter grade, laughs a little behind her hand, and fuck her and fuck Smirnoff but Pearl-o takes another, bigger drink.

Walking home is like riding the merry-go-round, the ground tilting to the left or right and she sways with it. Pearl-o feels a little giddy, her birthday's in a few weeks, and similes are comparisons using "like" or "as". All her thoughts feel like the water in a fishbowl, everything connected and reflecting the light. She'll be eighteen soon, old enough to fall in love, and that's not what she's doing but she’s allowed. Slodwick would give her permission, she thinks.

The first thing she does when she gets on the computer is get on AIM. Her room is a little hot, or it might just feel that way because she's drunk. It's all about ambience, and she wants to talk to Slodwick, no real reason, just because. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey."

"hey back."

"Dude, gues what I did tonight."

"what?"

"Hehehe. Drank stuff."

"alcohol stuff, or unrefined petroleum stuff? or what?"

"Alcohol stuff. Wheeeee."

"haha, you're so sloshed."

":) Give the girl a bumblebee sticker." She probably has some in her desk drawer. Pearl-o starts looking, digging past Zip disks and class folders, glancing up at the screen every few seconds because she doesn't want to miss it. Anything Slodwick says, she doesn't want to miss it. The room curls in a little, like a mouth closing, but it's a nice feeling, everything's warm and a little red and nice.

"um, why?"

"Heh. No reason."

Pearl-o read this story once, when she was trolling around looking for fandoms she didn't know. It was Stargate, and the whole thing was about Jack's sixth sense for trouble, how he could feel it coming all along the back of his neck. She thinks about it while she's typing, how maybe he was faking the whole thing, and maybe the prickles were somebody spilling coke down the back of his shirt or tickling him with ostrich feathers, and Slodwick's online so it doesn't really matter.

"What do you look like?"

"hehehe. man, you must be smashed"

"Yeah, kidan. kinda."

"what'd you hsave to drink?"

"Stuff. Pale stuff, like, I don’t know, rum or something. Smir-something."

"smirnoff? wow, how much?"

"I bet you're pretty. I mean," because it sounds slimy even to her, "not like I'm, whatever, but you just seem like. I don't know, a lot."

"um, i seem like a lot . . .?"

"A lot to drink."

"oh! hee! you fucking sound like it, too. have you ever gotten drunk before?"

"No, I have not." Her fingers skip off the keys, a little, and the room is starting to spin. "It's not what I do. Do you have frends?"

"you're so cute. i'm saving this conversation for your birthday present"

"I do, but I always want more friends. or more than friends. It's so hard to tell the differemce."

"heh, yeah. it can be."

The room starts choking on her, and spinning her around. This isn't what she wanted to say and it never comes out right, not in stories and not here, but she can't see the keyboard enough to make it better. "I should throw up," she writes.

"that's definitely a plan"

-

Buddies Online: 0

Idle Time: 3 hours 45 minutes

Away Message: *hung*. *over*.

It's nothing, just a little flamewar, and fandom_wank swooping in to watch and toast marshmallows. She doesn't care for RPS one way or another, but there's this link in the comments and she follows it, two mouse clicks and it's just a bunch of random pixels on a screen, but it seems real, it seems like something she could be happy with.

"You should try it. I'm going to sign up, it could be fun."

"i'm not, i don't do the writing-without-headspace thing so well. i need to feel like i know the characters, so i can make them say stuff without feeling like an idiot"

"You're such a wanker."

"*flips you off*"

"Hehe. Just try it, it's not anything serious, it's supposed to be fun. Slash the slashers, it's like a little 'fuck you' to everyone else."

"and we don't get to pick who we write about or who we're paired with?"

"Well, you can always pray for it."

"hee. sacrifice a goat."

"Paint runes on the computer monitor."

"i could bribe the them to give me the pairing i want . . ."

"Yeah, see?" She shouldn't ask what Slodwick would bribe for. She isn't even curious, really. Pearl-o doesn't want to know who Slodwick will be paired with, if she'd be happy with that pairing or want somebody else.

"you know, i think i'll try it. you just email them, right? that's all?"

Pearl-o's sure she won't ask; it's not like she'd even know what to say or how to frame the question. But she keeps thinking, somehow, that if she signed up for this maybe somebody would notice, would take whatever she's feeling and write it down. It's a possibility, but probably not. Probably she'll get paired with some stranger from Harry Potter or Lotrips, and it's just fiction anyway, it's just words. It's not like there's anything real about it.

"Yeah, you just fill out their survey and email it to them. Like cake."

"wait, what's like cake?"

"Um, a *piece* of cake?"

"oh. hee. i thought you meant the challenge was. um. nevermind"

Maybe nothing'll happen, ever. Pearl-o's got books and books, so many words piled up on her bookshelf and none of them make it real. She looks up from her computer, and the first one she sees is Metamagical Themas, which is nothing, it's just a book like all the others and Slodwick signed off to go spend time with friends, and when the slasher challenge is over Pearl-o will still be exactly the same.

"The hurricane didn't happen in the computer," Pearl-o says, and it's just cryptic enough that she can pretend she wasn't hoping. Her throat hurts a little. It's the first time she's spoken out loud in what feels like forever, but it's probably only since yesterday.