The Next Best Seller

I have a great idea for a novel or short story. I’m just going to put it out there and maybe someone who can write will steal it, because it looks like I won’t have time to write it any time soon. But I think it’s a good idea. It’s possible that it is similar to the themes of other stories, but I would still like to pursue it one day.

The idea came to me yesterday after I had finished playing a computer game. It’s one of those games where jewels fall down and you have to line them up and they disappear until all the squares are filled up with gold. It’s very addictive. I had a meeting with one of the students in the class I’m T.A.ing and I noticed that as I was listening to her, my mind was automatically lining up the open windows and shut windows of the building across from us. I realized that my brain was still playing the game. This is probably an old school psychological phenomenon with a name and everything, but I’ve never experienced it this prominently before. I used to feel like I was still riding a rollercoaster the night after a trip to the amusement park, when I would shut my eyes and feel as if I was about to go over that first big slope. Later that night I noticed my brain wanting to line up the chairs in the classroom I was in. I probably should keep playing this game down to a minimum.

Last night, as I was trying to sleep, little jewel-like skeletons lined up and winked out in my head. I started thinking how fun it would be to write a novel about a guy who becomes possessed by a computer game. (I know, yawn, it’s been done—but not by me!) The game, as he plays it, would allow him to become a hyper-genius, solving complicated quantum physics problems while finding a way to end food-shortages and invent an infinitely sustainable energy source. The only problem is no one will listen to him, and he can only maintain the brain power while he is actually playing the game. So, as he plays the game, he has to dictate complicated theorems and theories to the only person who he has a relationship with, his mother-in-law, he being a widower. She is a very smart woman, with a great deal of life-experience and common sense, but she can only take down so much. Plus, she blames him for the death of her daughter who died of ovarian cancer after he refused to allow her to have her ovaries removed because of his desire to create an heir. This atmosphere creates tension, needless to say, and a sarcastic and witty banter will define their working relationship. Finally, when all of the theories are put together, the possessed man takes the entire package to MIT to submit to the physics department. But they will have nothing to do with him because he isn’t a tenured professor at major university.

Without funding, the man turns to the only resource he has to sell his ideas, the internet. A Russian oligarch stumbles across the man’s website and twists the arm of a physics professor at Moscow U. to verify the research. The professor confirms the authenticity of the work and the oligarch sells the entire package to the Putin government. It is here where I get stuck.

I have to apologize for this post. It is mainly subconscious throw-up. I felt like I was starting to take myself too seriously and needed to get something ridiculous out there to clear my head. I’m feeling better now, thanks.