Bizarre Writing Exercise #2

The following blog post and its partner (aptly entitled Bizarre Writing Exercise #1) came about as a result of my college English class. For a more detailed explanation of why this science fiction short short even exists, please see the italicized preface to Bizarre Writing Exercise #1 below…

[The following is a fragment of an interview with world-famous travelogue diarist Saniya Sachdeva that appeared in the December 2042 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine Online. It was printed on satin finish 20lb paper by a laser printer.]

Saniya is seated on a white velvet settee, clad in a multi-hued dashiki. “Do you like it?” she asks, without a trace of coyness. “A friend of mine in South Africa made this for me when I first started This Invisible Earth.”

I nod in reply. “It’s beautiful,” I say. In spite of the many interviews I’ve done with famous musicians, artists and television personalities, there is something in Sachdeva’s quiet, unassuming personality that undoes my usual, unflappable demeanor. I flip through my notes…

“If you could do it all over again, would you change anything?” I ask.

“No, I wouldn’t, because I don’t live in regret,” she replies sincerely. She pauses, looks up and to her right, then a smile slowly crosses her face. “Oh, looking back on my college days at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I suppose I would go back and not drink so much.” I can’t help but smile in return. “Me, too,” I add.

“What time in history would you like to have lived?”

Saniya thinks for a moment. This is Sachdeva at her most beautiful, contemplating, a sight one doesn’t often see when she is playing the role of television show host on This Invisible Earth. “I think I would have really loved to live when P.G. Wodehouse was alive. I would like to have met him and heard his opinions.”

“If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?”

Saniya doesn’t even pause for a second. Either she has fielded this question before, or she has already thought about this privately many times. “If I were able to go back, I’d go back to my school days. I’d definitely pay more attention in class. There was so much that I missed the first time…”

“What do you feel is the biggest issue with modern society?”

“That’s an easy one,” she says smartly. “Religion. Definitely.”

[The fragment of text ends here where the page is torn.]