“Jesus Christ, I can’t believe we’re still talking about this.” For a woman who maintained that she wasn’t jealous, she sure wavered a lot.

“Well, are we? Are we?” she questioned.

“I don’t have time for this,” I replied. “I have to go. My flight’s just boarded the first class passengers and they’ll begin loading the rest of us any minute.”

She started to say something but was drowned out by the overhead speaker in the terminal announcing a gate change. When she repeated it she’d backed off her stance.

“I’m sorry. I can be passive-aggressive at times. Especially when I suspect somebody else is involved.”

The term is delusional, I thought to myself. Still, I thought better of burning the bridge. She did have her moments when she could be as sweet as a schoolgirl with a crush. And she had a body to die for.

“I have to go,” I responded, not acknowledging her last comment. “I’ll call you once I am back in town and my story has been filed.”

“You’re gonna forget,” she teased.

“I am not going to forget,” I maintained.

“I’m joking. Okay, have a good trip. By-” I hung up on her before she finished.

The fatigue factor usually resolved itself through sleep, but being that I was going to fly, rest would have to wait until I was good and liquored up. Usually that meant having a stiff one at home, taking a cab to the airport ahead of schedule so I could plop down in the terminal bar and have some overpriced Jack and Cokes while watching SportsCenter repeats and waiting for my flight to board. Today’s plan fared differently, however. The planned early arrival was cut short due to heavy traffic on the 405 freeway, and by the time I’d reached the check-in counter I was just a half hour away from the scheduled boarding time. That left time for only one drink in the bar, and I knew I had to make it count. I had barely downed my double Ketel One martini when the overhead PA announcement went off for my flight. Now I’d be nervous; nervous, fatigued, and far below my consumption level for flying. I felt sorry for the poor person who would have to sit next to me.

Luckily a modicum of rescue came in the form of Jeannette, the statuesque flight attendant servicing the rear of the plane. When she saw the fear in my eyes she leaned in to calm me.

“First time flying, hun?”

“No, but every time I wish it would be the last.”

“That’s so sad to hear! Fear of heights?”

“No.” I paused and looked around at the people in the surrounding rows. Some were so bored they strained to listen, as though we might be sharing some great news from the outside world. We’d been in the air for not even an hour and already it felt like it had been days.

“I’ve never gotten used to the idea of being comfortable in a flying metal death trap,” I told her.

“Now now,” she said while she curled her bronzed hair behind her ears and stooped a bit lower to talk, as if speaking to a child, “it is a well established fact that airline travel is one of the safest ways to get across the country.”

“That was in Rainman, and this isn’t Quantas we're flying,” I scoffed. I was getting more nervous. I gripped both arms of the seat hard.

“Well, you’re stuck with me for the next few hours,” she replied. “How do you normally deal with your flying fears?”

“By getting housed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Housed. Sauced. Stinking, filthy drunk,” I responded.

She nodded in acknowledgement. “A lot of people do that.” She removed a hand from her knee and stood upright, adjusting the wrinkles in her uniform sweater vest.

“I don’t suppose at this point you’d be the discriminating type. I’ll see if I can bring you a bottle of Johnnie Walker to help you cope.”

I smiled faintly. Most people would shun the alcohol for some alternative form of treatment like pills, but the flight attendant understood my needs. She also understood that if the booze made me a calmer passenger, then those around me would likely be more at ease too.

“Thank you, uh…”

"Jeannette.” She tapped at the plastic golden name badge pinned to her vest. “The name is Jeannette.” She leaned in again. “And don’t think you’re going to be able to suck down as many bottles as you like. The airline has a strict policy regarding alcohol consumption while traveling and enforcing it is no laughing matter.”

I held my palms outward in a Mea Culpa manner. “I understand. And if there’s more drinking to be done you and I will just have to get a cocktail once we’re on the ground in Philadelphia.”

She smiled. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Tiger. I already have plans with my fiancé once we land. But don’t worry – I have a few single girlfriends who are as presumptuous as you. Maybe I could arrange something.” She laughed and walked towards the service area of the aircraft.
___________________________________________________________________

“Hey buddy, where to?”

“Wherever the nerds hang out.”

“Huh?”

I smiled as I plopped my carry on onto the seat beside me. “Marriott downtown.” I paused while I consulted my itinerary sheet. “The one on Market Street.”

“Relax buddy, I know where it is.” The cabbie started the meter and pulled into traffic.

After a few minutes of silence he spoke up again. “You attending that convention there?”

“Yes, but not as a fan. I’m covering it for a magazine.”

“Yeah? Those whack jobs actually get some press attention?” he asked.

I laughed. “Whack jobs, huh?”

“Well,” he began, his voice gravelly with the bass of lifetime chain smoker, “you know…Mammas boys. The guys playing their computer games. They never get laid.”

“That’s a lot of assumptions there, pal. What if I told you I was one of those guys?”

He paused for a few seconds, clawing at the skin under his five o’clock shadow. “But you’re not, are you?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, I knew it, see. You look like the type of person who gives a crap about how he looks. You’re getting laid – somewhere, somehow.”

“Well, as long as you’re sure.” He laughed a loud, bellowing guffaw.

“So,” I continued, “what’s there to do in this town that’s fun?”

The cabbie started to slow. “Hold on, I gotta take this turn onto Broad Street slow, because…” he slammed on the brakes and honked, waving his fist at a car that cut him off. “…’cause there’s this blind spot where assholes cut you off!” He shook his head. “Sorry, you were saying? Oh yeah, what to do. Stay inside and drink, that’s what there’s to do.”

“Charming. That’s it?”

“Believe me, after a day with your nerd friends, that’s what you’ll need,” he laughed. “Seriously though,” he continued, pointing out the window, “it’s winter in case you hadn’t notice. A lot of stuff here shuts down.”

“Too bad,” I commented.

“You can still find stuff to do. I mean, you can’t go to Constitution Center or Independence Park because of the weather – or Carpenter Hall or Washington Square or Logan Square, come to think of it – but you can still do other things, like eat. We know how to eat.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said disappointingly. “Cheese steaks.”

The cabbie dismissed the notion. “Nah, that’s what everyone thinks we’re about, but it ain’t. You like Russian food? There’s this place on John Kennedy Boulevard that has the best borscht and goose with apples. Don’t know how we ended up with a street named for JFK. He ain’t from around here, he never did anything special here. He’s from Massachusetts, and New York has an airport named for him. So why we have a JFK anything is beyond me.” He turned around and grinned at me through the plexi glass divider. “The irony of having a Russian joint on his street is damn funny, though.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied.

The cabbie turned the car onto Sansom Street and in the distance I could see the Marriott sign.

“If you just want to grab a bite, go across from your hotel to the Gallery Market. You can find all kinds of stuff.” He paused. “Though I have to warn you, a lot of your fellow conventioners will be there, on account of them being afraid to venture too far out from the nest.”

We pulled up to the hotel driveway. “The Marriott Downtown…on Market,” he announced.

The doorman opened the door. “Welcome to the downtown Marriott, sir.”

“On Market!!” the cabbie added from inside the car with a howl. I shook my head and stepped out of the cab, trying to hold down a laugh. The cabbie was right; it was winter, and it was cold. Not as cold or with the accompanying biting winds that I remember of Toronto winters, but cold nonetheless. A giant thermometer mounted on the wall above the valet desk read low forties. A dusting of snow was on the ground, and in the airport on my way out to the cab line I’d noticed a newspaper headline promising more snow this weekend. I paid the cabbie, tipped the bellman who was loading my bag and carry on onto his cart, and asked the valet to point me in the direction of the Philcon registration desk.

Once I checked in I found my way to the registration desk. I was handed a packet with somebody else’s typed name blacked out and mine written off to the side with a Sharpie pen.

“Last minute replacement,” the guy running the table asked. It was more a statement than a question.

“Yes. Wired called for relief from the bullpen,” I replied, trying to make it sound like I was somebody they should care about.

The ploy worked. The man sat up in his metal folding chair and smiled. “Well, to give you some quick background we not only are a gathering place for writers and fan groups of the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres, we’re also one of the largest exhibitors of science fiction themed art.”

“Is that a fact?” I asked, trying to sound interesting.

“It is, it is,” he repeated, “both in flat and 3D artwork,” he added. “There will be a charity art auction on Sunday. You can contact Joni Dashoff for more information on that. It’s all in the packet.” He paused and frowned. “Don’t you want to write this stuff down?” he asked.

I tapped my forefinger to my head. “It’s all up here.” I smiled. “I won’t forget.”
___________________________________________________________________

It was only three hours into the Philcon convention and already I was maxed out on a lifetime allotment of nerd lifestyle, nerd philosophy, and nerd culture. I’d just come from a keynote address in the main ballroom delivered by sci-fi writer David Weber, who lamented the death of pacifism in the sci-fi writer’s community. He felt the passive voice in stories of galaxies at war had been supplanted by the need to be graphic in order to sell more books. I looked about the half-filled room and thought, he’s selling books? I picked up a copy of his latest, In Fury Born from a table in the rear where they were being sold and read the reviews on the back of the jacket: “Packs enough punch to blast a starship to smithereens,” said Publishers Weekly. That didn't sound like something a guy bemoaning the death of pacifism would write, I thought, but then again, at least the guy was getting published.

I walked towards one of the breakout rooms where the next symposium, a discussion on Star Trek founder Gene Roddenberry’s universe and its impact on the science fiction genre, was to occur. Kill me now.

“Hey,” said a voice, and I looked up just in time to avoid colliding with her. She was dressed up as a sci-fi princess of some sort. “You’re with Wired? That’s so cool! I read that magazine all the time.” She’d made out the overly large “WIRED MAGAZINE” printed on my credential pass swinging from my neck lanyard.

“No, not the magazine, it’s their website component. Wired blogs, if you will,” I said.

“That’s still cool. It’s cooler than being paid to dress up as the princess from the Hyperverse comics.”

“I don’t know,” I started, “the last time I was paid to dress up like a princess…” she laughed.

“I’m Lynda,” she said. “Glad to meet you, Tom.”

“Tom? Why do you think I’m a Tom?” I realized she got it from the badge. I never noticed they hadn’t updated the credential badge after the last guy – I guess his name was Tom – bowed out.

“They didn’t change the badge after the first guy Wired got to do this had to cancel. I’m Reed,” I told her.

“Well, nice to meet you Reed. That’s a much better name than Tom, anyhow.”

“Watch it, Lynda, flattery gets you everywhere,” I joked. “So what do you do here, exactly.”

Lynda sighed. “Oh, you know, you get your picture taken with the fans, you learn the chronology and storylines so you can answer the fan boy questions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my ass squeezed in the last day. But then again it’s probably been ages since any of them have seen a girl.”

I suppose where you live determines the levels to which beauty is equated. I think the women of Los Angeles - where the importance of looks, beauty, and fashion are paramount - would blow the women of Philadelphia out of the water on the quality scale. That being said, Lynda was still a very good looking woman, likely no older than 21 or 22. She was used to hanging out with a certain crowd, and the fan base of Philcon was definitely not that crowd. That was probably the reason she approached me to begin with: I was more in her comfort zone.

“Do you have to go listen to all the seminars?” she asked.

“Yeah, a good sampling of them. My strategy will be to jump from room to room and get a good overview of the place.” I dug a schedule out of my packet and handed it to her. “It’s a good thing too, because some of these topics are simply horrendous.”

She giggled as she read over the seminar schedule. “Time Travel for Idiots. Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Harry Potter and the Menace of Puberty. Fun With Drawing Robots. My Other Car is a Rocket. God, these are horrible!”

“They are, aren’t they,” I agreed. “How long do they have you parading around for the masses?” I asked.

“They have me ‘parading’ until 6,” Lynda responded.

“Well then, would a space age princess be interested in escorting a lowly member of the press to a nearby bar for a drink or a bite to eat?”

She laughed again. “Okay, but I’m changing first. You’re nuts to think I’m going out in the cold like this.” She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and slightly adjusted the girdle under her princess dress. Girdle aside, she looked like she needed to adjust little to look good. She looked like the type of girl who was used to looking good and got places because of it.

“Where do you want to go?” She asked. I never got a recommendation from the cabbie on decent bars in the area, only the Russian restaurant on JFK Boulevard. There was no way I was going to woo a girl over Russian food. That spelled failure from the start.

“I don’t know. You’re from around here, right? What do you suggest?” I asked, turning the tables on her.

Lynda stroked her chin in thought as if challenged to come up with the premier spot in town. “Standard Tap over on Second Street is always a good one. Good beer and hanging out.”

"There you go,” I said in agreement.

“Hold on mister, I’m not done yet!” Lynda exclaimed, planting a mock slap on my wrist. “Standard Tap isn’t the only place where we can have a good time. There’s Fergie’s Pub just down the street from here, and then there’s Tattooed Mom on the other side of town. Good burgers there when the kitchen is open. Let’s see…umm, there’s also Johnny Brenda’s in fishtown, but that’s not really a bar.”

Lynda attempted to keep going but I stopped her, putting my arms around the edges of her shoulders and squeezing.

“I’m sure all those places are great. Tell you what – I will put myself in your hands and you can be my guide tonight. Pick a place, a place you would want to go to. Don’t try to guess what I would like.”

She smiled.

“It will be fine,” I reassured her.

“So, I suppose a hot-shot media type like you is staying here in the hotel, huh?”

I nodded.

“I’ll pick you up around 7:30 then.” She winked and gathered up the bottoms of her princess outfit so she wouldn’t trip.

“Have fun making nice with the nerds today.”
___________________________________________________________________

I was going to take my life soon, I was certain of it. Plunging a ball point pen through my rib cage and into my heart never seemed as genius an idea as it did now. I’d navigated an insufferable afternoon of nerdish love topics, culminating in a seminar entitled “Logical Language Group Meets the Klingon Language Institute,” a juxtaposition of English and the made-up farcical language of the villains of the Star Trek television shows and movie franchise. Most of the banter involved a heated conversation around the finite levels of Klingon math and how its numerology compared with its real-life counterpart. With each utterance of their gibberish I found myself coming up with new and inventive ways to roll my eyes. By the second half of the session I had given myself a headache.

The session ended with little fanfare and as I packed my notes and laptop, the moderators approached me.

“Hey you, you’re the guy from Wired covering Philcon, right?” the lanky one of the bunch asked.

I nodded.

“We know you guys don’t think much of our event,” interjected another, a much shorter and stouter young man.

“Is there a question in there?” I asked.

“No, a message,” responded the lanky one. “You can tell your bosses to not make so much fun of us.”

“Yeah,” the stout one chimed in.

The third guy, a bearded stoner looking college kid, remained silent.

“You got anything to add, Cheech?” I asked the third guy, who remained silent.

“You’re probably some hired gun, because every year it’s a different person coming out here, but just because we are Star Trek fan boys and comic book readers gives you no right to write us off like second class citizens,” added the stout one.

“Well, at least you know what you’ll be in for when this gets published,” I said with a wince. I didn’t know these guys and I had no personal reason to mock them, but after spending an hour being tortured with the finer points of a fictional language with no practical use, I was ready to blast these guys in print. Apparently I wasn’t the first to come away from the convention feeling this way.

“Why? Why do you have to be like that?” asked the lanky one.

I finished putting my items into my Coach messenger bag as I answered. “That you guys are approaching me right now means you’re expecting it to happen. And why? Because you are easy targets. I assume you know that as well. So while I have you here let me ask you – and you’re on the record by the way – why allow yourselves to be such easy targets?”

“There’s no shame in liking science fiction,” the last one finally said.

“I’m not saying there is,” I responded.

“Sure you are!” exclaimed the stout one. “You, and everyone ever assigned to come in from the outside and cover these conventions. I see how you all are, with your chin held high and you feel just fine looking down on us, sneering down the end of your nose as we do things that seem foreign to you, that seem pointless.”

I chuckled, which only made the threesome angrier.

“You think it’s funny?” one said.

“No, I think you’ve been waiting a long time to say that to someone, and unfortunately for you you said it to someone who really doesn’t care.” I fastened the buckle on the bag and turned around. “Look, you know it’s weird and nerdy to everyone outside of this convention hall by our reactions. There’s a saying that goes 'if you can’t change the world then change yourself'. You’re never going to get people like me to come around to this Klingon nonsense. That’s a fact. The vast majority of people watching Star Trek end their relationship with the subculture the minute they switch off their televisions. You’re not going to make any of them embrace your goofball language.”

They scowled.

“My point is since you can’t change them, change the approach of this show. Look at this sheet,” I said, picking up the event schedule from its spot on a nearby chair. “I see events about literature, events about movies, events about art, events about comic books.” I stopped. “Okay, that’s pretty nerdy. But the first three are not. They’re quite universal in fact, and have an innate appeal. Hype those aspects of your show and you won’t seem so geeky.”

“That would be a front,” the lanky one said, finally relaxing his stance and leaning against a chair. “We embrace it all equally.”

I reached around and unbuckled my bag, reaching around blindly until I found my notepad. I flipped it open to my last partially filled page and then removed the Cartier from my inside coat pocket.

“All of it equally,” I repeated as I screwed the cap off my pen. “That’s great, it really is. I see here on the schedule there are a number of seminars littered throughout the weekend about writing in the science fiction genre and ways to go about getting published. How many of you do any writing?”

The last one, the bearded one who had been silent until moments ago, reluctantly raised his hand.

“Good for you, don’t be shy about it. There are plenty of people outside the doors of this convention who aspire to be writers of literature and poetry. You know who's not out there? People fluent in Klingon.”

I scribbled a few things on the pad. “So tell me Goethe, do you write short stories or some form of intergalactic poetry?”

“Um, I write short stories mostly, but I want, you know, maybe to string them together into some longer story someday.”

“Ah, an epic. You’ll have your work cut out for you. So who do you draw upon for inspiration?” I asked.

“The usuals: Battlestar Galactica, the Star Trek world, Star Wars, Robotech -”

“I meant writers,” I interrupted. “Who do you pattern yourself after? Your style, your approach. Those things.”

He paused and scratched the back of his neck, and then stroked his beard. “I dunno, I don’t really read that much, except Marvel comics and some Dark Horse stuff.”

I stopped writing. “You don’t read? How can you ever improve yourself as a writer? How can you develop – I mean, really develop – a story with legs if you don’t immerse yourself in text? You can’t learn any other way.”

I scribbled and muttered under my breath “doesn’t read. That’s ridiculous.”

I put the pad away for the last time and slipped the pen back into my coat pocket. “It’s a damn shame too, buddy,” I said, addressing the bearded one, “at least as a writer of poetry, a constructor of words, you’d have a leg up wooing the gals, because knowing the Klingon math structure isn’t a marketable skill.” I grabbed my bag. “Good luck to you guys, I really mean it. Just don’t go dipping into the Wired blogs if you know what’s good for you.”
___________________________________________________________________

There’s a stereotype most of us grew up with, a stereotype of nerdy teenage boys in their parents’ basement playing epic length, Pepsi-and-Bugle-fueled Dungeons n’ Dragons games while the rest of us were experiencing life. As we’ve grown up the occasional thought has passed: Whatever happened to these dateless, fashion-backward individuals? Did they all really turn into some variation of the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons? Unfortunately they never moved on, never evolved like the rest of us, and they gather yearly in the City of Brotherly Love to celebrate Philcon, a national conference on science fiction and fantasy. A gathering where no comic book is obscure, no sci-fi plot line obtuse, no fictional costuming off limits. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

“Oh my god, what the fuck is this, Becker?” exclaimed Kevin Kelly, the managing editor of Wired. I removed my Bluetooth earpiece and held the phone to the side while he continued.

“You completely alienated the attendees!” he yelled. I had to hold the phone away from my ear intermittently.

“You asked for sarcasm,” I said in my defense.

“Yeah, but I didn’t ask for a total character assassination!” Kevin paused as he went through the report I'd filed. “I mean, it’s in every paragraph. This is extreme. I’d hate to cross you.”

“Come on, these guys knew it was coming. They even approached my about it. They were already bracing for the inevitable.”

“That doesn’t give you license to go right at them, Becker.” He dropped the phone and cursed in the background as he retrieved it. “And don’t think the intent of the Dante line didn’t escape me.”

“But that’s exactly how it was, Kevin, it was a decent into hell. A decent into a pointless convention of freaks and geeks.”

“Those freaks and geeks make up a sizable amount of our readership, both in print and online. Especially online. God, I can see it now, they start checking out their RSS feeds and there you are, firing a shot right between their eyes. And then word makes it to the message boards. And then everybody gets pissed.”

“You’re not being a little hyperbolic?” I suggested.

“No,” he said with a sigh, “it’s happened before. It happens a lot with the freelancers we bring in. They aim a little too high and try to impress a little too much but it ends up backfiring. And I’m left to clean up the mess.”

We were both silent for a moment while Keving stammered, starting and stopping. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can publish this. I will pay your expenses for the flight and hotel as agreed, but I can’t pay you for this piece. And there’s no time to re-write it. If it doesn’t post now, then it’s old news and there's no point.”

Crap. I didn’t exactly need the money, but it would have been nice to say I’d been published by Wired.

“Well, if that’s how you feel,” I concluded. “Personally I think you’re overreacting, but you know the business better than I.”

“Believe me, I’m not overreacting. If I forwarded the hate mail you’d quickly see my point. Maybe another time, Becker, another opportunity, okay?”

I smiled to myself, trying not to let the sting of rejection get to me too much. “Certainly,” I replied with as much grace as I could summon.

“And Becker?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”