"The Power of the Printed Word" - January 23, 2025
A put-upon textbook editor discovers a mystical way to seek revenge and gain power...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s selection is an excerpt from the short story “The Power of the Printed Word,” from the anthology 13 MORE TURNS, available on Kindle, on audiobook, and in paperback.
“The Power of the Printed Word” is a relic of the 1990s, and since I’m feeling generous, I’m presenting it to you as a complete story. I wrote it while working as a textbook editor at a small publishing firm. This was back when computers were still making their way into the working world.
We literally had to make edits with pen on hard copy and send the documents back to the word-processing department where a handful of workers would input the corrections into the computer files.
Word processors were people; camera copy was a real thing; desktop computers were not provided.
There was a certain degree of finality that happened when something went to camera copy. It was expensive to print another version on the photo-sensitive high-glossy paper. So we were understandably under the gun when the manuscript made it to that stage.
You can understand the fit people threw if you actually found an error that late in the game. Additionally, I have never had the best penmanship which I’m sure you can imagine caused some problems.
One final note on “The Power of the Printed Word.” This was one of my near-misses in publishing. An unnamed magazine sent me an exuberant acceptance letter for the manuscript.
But alas, the magazine never published the piece. When I inquired about it, the editor sent a curt letter saying they had decided to pass, after all, without offering a customary kill-fee.
The publication folded only a few months later. I was not surprised.
-Kevin Carr
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Illustration by annekarakash (@annekarakash) from Pixabay
The Power of the Printed Word by Kevin Carr
Josh Kramer involved extraterrestrials in presidential politics for no other reason than because he was bored with his job.
Why not? It was the 90s. Aliens are a big deal. The X-Files was the biggest hit on television. The 50th anniversary of the Roswell landing was a few short years away, and Art Bell peddled extraterrestrial conspiracy theories for five hours every night on the radio. John had been at this job since 1988, and for the past seven years he’d come into the office, work his eight hours, and trudge home. Now he wanted to have a little fun.
Technical textbook editing was not exactly the epitome of excitement and thrill. Never once had Josh Kramer met a Bond girl in the production department. Never once had Josh Kramer been required to pursue an enemy in a high speed car chase like Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Never once had Josh Kramer had an excuse to leap to the aid of a co-worker during an assault by zombies, werewolves, goblins, ghouls, psychos in hockey masks, or the Elder Gods from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.
To put it simply, Josh’s job was dull. So, one Wednesday afternoon, he decided to add a little spice to his humdrum life.
After editing page after page of a manuscript under an impossible deadline, Josh’s frustration finally reached the breaking point. He hated the fact that he had to catch every error before the manuscript went to camera copy, a high grade paper which could be photographed by a printer. He knew that the word processing keyboarders would shift the file from a dot-matrix manuscript format to the final camera copy printed pages to be sent to the client. Time and time again, Rand Jennings, his editorial supervisor, insisted upon perfection when a manuscript went into camera copy.
“When it’s in camera copy,” Jennings would say, “I want it to be final. Make it perfect! Because when it goes into camera copy, it’s set in stone.”
Josh reviled Rand Jennings. He knew the man only cared about the fact that camera copy paper was far more expensive than regular bond paper, and too many camera copy prints lowered economic efficiency. That pompous oaf constantly insisted on better quality with faster production. Too often, Jennings would threaten to fire Josh if his “rates” did not increase. The management had their pets, and those people – although they were generally incompetent and poor workers – were lofted as the heroes of the company.
Josh did not know what came over him that Wednesday afternoon, but he wanted to figuratively spit in Jennings’s face. There had simply been too much pressure for one day.
Josh picked up his red liquid gel pen and drew a heavy line through the last sentence of the activity he was editing. After making a curly pigtail mark to indicate a deletion, Josh drew an editor’s carrot beneath the red-lined passage and replaced it with the following:
The first President to appoint an alien from another planet to his cabinet was Gerald Ford.
Josh picked up the page and stared at his work. His lips curled up in a tight smirk. This will definitely get under Jennings’ skin. This was no error. It was editorial sabotage. Such a blatant statement will send the man screaming into Josh’s office the following morning.
Josh picked up the manuscript, paper-clipped it to the cover sheet, and dropped it in the “Out Tonight” box in the production department.
• • •
Later that evening, Josh plopped down in his favorite Lay-Z-Boy chair to channel surf. First, he caught the end of Die Hard on HBO. He surfed around the channels immediately after Hans Gruber took the express elevator to the parking lot outside of the Nakatomi Tower. Josh wanted to find something interesting, but nothing looked appealing right away. Normally, he would turn to the Sci-Fi Channel, but they were in the middle of a Lost in Space marathon.
“God, I hate Lost in Space,” Josh said. “Kids shouldn’t be allowed in space.” He scanned down the dial, and when he reached the mid 30s, he slowed a bit. Although he detested politics, he liked to check CNN Headline News every now and then for an update on world events.
What caused him to stop this time was not David Goodnow’s no-nonsense accent and pointed coverage. What caused Josh Kramer to stop flipping channels was the appearance of a little green man behind a podium adorned with the Presidential Seal.
The being was short – only about four and a half feet tall. However, it stretched its long gangly arms around the podium and held itself aloft with dignity.
“Yes, Susan?” the alien asked one of the reporters. Its huge black eyes engulfed most of its face. The only other features were a lipless mouth and two tiny slits for nostrils. Its massive cranium wobbled as he shifted attention from one reporter to another.
When the reporter began asking her question, Josh noticed that the being was wearing a blue suit and red tie.
“Dear God,” Josh whispered.
Then, the actual event began to sink in. His mind spun back to earlier that evening just before he left the office. The immortal words of Rand Jennings rang in his head:
Make it perfect! Because when it goes into camera copy, it’s set in stone.
“What have I done,” Josh said softly.
David Goodnow’s face filled the screen once again.
“Mr. Zickxs Lan, a member of the president’s cabin since his inauguration would not let up on the immigration debate...” the newscaster’s voice began to fade into a drone.
Josh’s bitter smirk crept across his cheeks.
“What have I done?” he asked himself again in awe.
• • •
Josh Kramer almost did not go to work on Thursday morning. He was worried about Rand Jennings. Josh could just see the flames shoot out his supervisor’s ears when the man saw the final camera copy of the manuscript he had sent to production the night before.
But soon, Josh convinced himself to go to work. How else would he see if he could do this again? First, an alien in the cabinet. Next, anything he could imagine!
Upon arriving in the office, Josh silently ducked into his office and closed the door. He wanted total privacy to contemplate his next move.
Within fifteen minutes, a sharp rapping exploded from his door.
Knowing exactly who it was, Josh called, “Come in.”
Rand Jennings burst into the office holding a single page of manuscript. The supervisor’s brow glowed a brilliant crimson. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, and the man had already loosened his tie to let the steam escape.
“What the hell is your problem, Kramer?” Jennings spat.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Josh lied.
Jennings threw the manuscript onto Josh’s desk. The paper settled under the air drafts from the air-conditioner, and Josh recognized the infamous last line.
“I can explain...” Josh began timidly.
“You don’t need to,” Jennings bellowed. “I can explain it for you! You’re getting sloppy! I need the best quality going into camera copy at the fastest possible rate! How the hell am I to run a project with this crap coming through?”
“I know,” Josh said, hanging his head.
“You had better get your damn sloppiness under control soon!”
“Sloppiness?” Josh asked as he looked up suddenly. “You mean my penmanship?” he asked.
“Yes!” Jennings said. “What the hell did you think I was talking about?” Without waiting for a reply, Jennings bent over Josh’s desk and pointed to the red chicken scratches of Josh’s writing on the page.
“There!” he said. “You can’t tell the difference between your letters. Your r’s look like n’s, your g’s look like s’s, and you can’t tell the difference between capitals and lowercases for your p’s, c’s, and k’s!”
Josh’s eyes brightened as he snatched up the manuscript and looked at the copy. Sure enough, there were several penmanship errors. The first one to catch Josh’s eyes was the word near, which looked like rear.
“That’s all?” Josh asked.
“All?” Jennings yelled. “It’s damn enough! I’ve got camera copy all over my desk with silly misspellings! I’m talking camera copy here, Kramer! Those pages should be perfect!”
Josh held up the manuscript to Jennings so the man could clearly see the last line in its new form.
“Are you sure there are no other errors that I should be aware of?” Josh asked.
Jennings squinted, skimming the manuscript quickly. Then, he said, “No, Kramer. But I want this garbage writing to stop. There are plenty of other people who could do your job at a faster rate with better quality!”
Without waiting for a response, Jennings stormed out of the office.
As soon as he was out of sight, Josh let his bitter smirk creep back onto his face.
• • •
At a quarter until five, Josh Kramer knocked on Rand Jennings’s door.
“What the hell do you want?” came Jennings’s bellow.
Josh cracked open the door and stuck his head in just a tad.
“Oh, nothing, sir,” Josh said softly. “I was just making sure you were in here.”
“What the hell?” Jennings screamed. “I’ve got a deadline breathing down my neck, and you’re checking up on me like my goddamn mother?”
“Really sir,” Josh said. “It was nothing. It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Get the hell out of my office!” Jennings spat. Then, after a moment’s thought, he yelled, “And don’t bother dragging your sorry ass here tomorrow if you know what’s good for you.”
Josh smiled. “Bye, Mr. Jennings,” he said, and ducked into the hall.
Jennings fumed for a moment and then reluctantly went back to work.
“Damn that bastard!” he swore. “Just checking up on me?”
Jennings shuffled some papers around and snorted heavily out. He did not know when the shadow fell over his desk, but when he actually noticed it, he jumped in fright.
“Who the hell are you?” Jennings asked suddenly.
“I have no name,” the being said with a crackling voice, grinding through the dirt and filth of the grave.
Jennings rose from his chair. Even at his full height, Jennings found the spectre to be two whole feet taller than he. The man wore pure black, most of his frame obscured by a massive ebony trench coat. Although his head was uncovered, the being’s face hid in mysterious shadows. The one feature that Jennings fully noticed was the face as white as ash, and the red eyes brighter than hot coals.
“What the hell do you want?” Jennings asked, preparing himself to run.
The beast before him smiled, showing glistening ivory fangs. “Just your flesh...” it said, picking its yellowed teeth with one sharp claw. “And your blood... and your bone.”
Before Jennings could move around his massive mahogany desk, the beast lashed forth with a clawed hand, gouging a meaty chunk of dripping flesh from Jennings’s chest. As he looked down from the beast devouring the bloody meat, Jennings saw a camera copy final page on his desk, spattered in his own fluids. It was the last line that caught his eye before he collapsed:
Rand Jennings never expected the vampire to come at quitting time.
• • •
Josh Kramer stood on the roof of his apartment building surveying the city beneath him.
“In a moment, you shall all be mine,” he said.
After indirectly causing the death of his manager, Josh had turned one final page into the production department for camera copy. Once the last pages were printed, Josh knew he would have no more worries. After much debate, Josh had decided on the perfect phrase to replace the last line:
At 5:45 on June 7, Josh Kramer became the most powerful god in the whole universe.
Although he felt it a little corny, Josh knew it would be the best way. He had no idea how long this strange power would last, so he planned to take full advantage of it while he could. He knew he would never be able to go back to living the normal, dull life of a technical editor. Now, he wanted more than James Bond. He wanted more than Steve McQueen in Bullitt. He wanted more than Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Josh Kramer wanted it all.
“I will be a god,” Josh whispered, standing on the ledge of the apartment building’s roof. “I will be all-powerful.”
He looked down at his watch, which told him he only had a minute to go.
Feeling a soft tingling in the very cells of his body, Josh Kramer waited for the onset of his mighty change. In a moment, it happened! He felt his atoms split with an excruciating agony. Fire welled up within him. The pain was enormous, but Josh bore it. He knew it would only be momentary.
“I will be a god!” he bellowed. “And I will be merciless!”
• • •
Marge Stevens looked out her apartment window to see her lovely marigolds.
“Pretty fine flowers,” she said to herself. “You deserve one hell of a pat on the back, Marge.”
She smiled broadly. This year, her marigolds had sprouted faster and taller than ever before. Their golden petals practically filled the window, blocking out the sun’s rays. In fact, Marge had never seen marigolds as large as hers. They were simply amazing.
However, Marge knew she could not claim the entire incident to be a result of her tremendous gardening abilities. She knew it had to be the patch of soil and grass she found on the roof the other day.
That was a strange thing. It just seemed to appear out of nowhere – a massive grassy mound with deep black soil. After it had laid there for about a day, and no one had claimed it, Marge had scooped up a bit with a trowel and brought it down to her window garden.
It had worked miracles for her marigolds.
“My word,” Marge Stevens said, admiring her flowers. “That has got to be the most powerful sod in the whole universe!”
THE END