BVC Announces Kerygma in Waltz Time by Sherwood Smith

Kerygma in Waltz Time
Sherwood Smith

A salute to the wonderful world of fan fiction

This novelette presents a flat broke, hungry English major whose chief joy in life is story. But the world is not interested in yet one more Jane Austen wannabe. Desperate for a job, she enters a mansion whose ballroom is filled with books.

And then, beyond the virtual veil, she finds an even greater surprise…
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Sherwood Smith writes fantasy and science fiction.

Kerygma in Waltz Time

“Look,” my roommate says, her perfectly groomed fingernail tapping a printout from Craigslist.

“Go away,” I mutter. “It’s barely the butt-crack of…”

“Eight a.m.” Megan states it with the inexorable moral superiority of She Who Rises Early.

I try to pull my pillow over my head.

It’s said that the most irritating phrase in the English language is I told you so.

Don’t get an English degree. There are no jobs, there’s nothing you can do with a BA in English, headhunters will look at you as if your eyelashes crawled with pinworms as they ask, “Is there anything else you can do?” As if the study of one of the most spoken languages in the world, and its river of literature reflecting centuries of cultural evolution, is … well, like air, invisible.

I did try studying Theory of Mind and behavioral and social sciences to find out why the world of books is so intrinsic to my existence, but they all seemed to be spinning conclusions from the reflections on the cave wall, only in terms more modern than Plato.

Besides, all I ever wanted to do is sink into the world of story.

After scrimping pennies all through college and a couple years beyond, I’d come to New York City, believing it the center of the literary world. In these digital days, surely there is a place for the English major?

Yes, I hear you, I told you so.

“Noooo,” I moan.

Yesterday I went to a job fair, which meant standing for hours among hundreds of people just like me breathing their anxiety and unhappiness into the stuffy air, the elbow-jabs and hip knocks of covert competition making it extra fun. I’d promised myself to stick it out until the doors closed, and what did that prove? That I looked more pathetic than anyone else.

Megan yanks the pillow away. “This one is really you.”

I close my eyes, like the cat that thinks it’s hidden.

“If you don’t land this one, I will never, ever, try to find you a job again. I won’t have to,” she adds in a brisker tone, “because you won’t be around to nag. Five days from now, you’ll owe us rent for three months. Remember your promise on moving in.”

Three months no rent, and you are out. No ifs, ands, or buts.

My savings had run out at warp speed. I’d been cleaning the apartment for my roommates—I’d even cooked—and they were grateful, but Megan makes minimum wage at her “part time” job in the finance district (the rest of her eighty hours a week are as an intern, in hopes she’ll get hired for real) and Parker ekes an existence as a backstage grunt as she tries to make it in the theater.

The daily-more-palpable moral weight of their silence was my real reason for holing up to sleep through the day.

I am totally, thoroughly, unequivocally up shit c. without a p.

I sit up and take the printout from her hand. There, circled in pink highlighter, are the words:

Virtual game test subjects. Knowledge of literature a must.

I look up at Megan’s merciless black eyes.

“I know, right?” she says. “It’s so you, it’s ridiculous.”

“What do you mean? Computer games? I’ve never played one in my life. CGI blood and guts creep me right out.”

“‘Knowledge of literature a must.’ Says nothing about guns and blood. And did you take in that last line?”

Salary and benefits, both expected and unexpected.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, but I already emailed them on your behalf,” Megan says. “You’re scheduled for your interview at nine. I’ve got the hot water running in the shower, and Parker ironed your interview outfit before she left for the theater. So get your butt out of that bed.”