Portland, Oregon. July, 1983
"'But I'm still the Doctor,'" Harriet bitched, her lips pursing with a little moue of disaproval. "He says that like it’s the end of the matter. Well, I’m the one paying the bills."
Nigel stared out the car window, tuning out his mother’s rant. He needed new glasses, the optometrist, had said so. But his mother insisted that his vision was perfectly fine. Nigel sighed. His Brian Aldiss novel sat in his lap. He didn’t dare pick it up and read while his mother was talking. Instead, he sighed, and nodded and looked in her general direction, his gaze focusing on the space beyond the car window.
He wished he could be somewhere else. He wished he could play sports. He wished he could write like his idols. He’d written a few reviews here and there, had even published one or two. But it wasn’t a career to speak of. Maybe he should quit trying to be a writer, get a part time job.
A butterfly landed on the car mirror, distracting him. He tuned out his mother’s negativity a little more, watching it. It was a monarch, black wings laced with colour.
He watched its wings beat once, twice, and then it was off.
His mother’s voice intruded. He didn’t want to listen. Be a writer, he thought. Then an idea occurred to him. Surely there weren’t a lot of writers on the Pacific Northwest. Maybe he should write to Starlog and some of the other magazines. Starburst, that was the English one, wasn’t it? He could offer to be their Pacific Northwest Correspondent, unpaid of course, but it would be a title. Maybe he’d get taken a little bit more seriously if he had a credential like that. Maybe he could even get into conventions for free.
His mother went on and on. She’d approve of that surely. Free conventions? She always complained about the price of everything. Yes, he decided, he’d do it.
"What are you looking at Nigel," his mother demanded. "This is the Doctor I’m talking about."
"Nothing," Nigel said quickly, but then amended. "A butterfly... but it’s gone now."
Pacific Coast Correspondent, he thought, that had a nice ring. Surely someone would go for it.
***********************
This is our POD. Everything that happens will proceed from the consequences of this trivial little moment in the middle of nowhere.
For the record, Starburst Magazine was a British Sci Fi media publication of the 80's and 90's. It was the English equivalent of America's Starlog magazine. It also received regular newsstand distribution in the United States.
Nigel and his mother, unfortunately, are fictional characters. But Nigel's sort... a young sci fi media and print fan with dreams of becoming a writer, is an almost universal trope to be found everywhere. Through the 70's and 80's, there was a plethora of newsstand magazines, specialty magazines, small press publishers, fanzines, zines, newsletters, bulletin boards, APA's, conventions, clubs, contests, which offered markets or at least outlets for Nigel's species. There would be literally dozens, or hundreds of real life candidates or stand ins for Nigel, in the appropriate places and times we're looking at to get the ball rolling. All it would take for any of them, is a moment of trivial reflection or decision to try and move their career forward, by doing something that they didn't quite get around to in OTL. Nigel is a fictional character, but he stands in the place of any number of real persons unknown to us, who might easily have supplied the key POD.