* Id: Acheron * Revision: 3 * State: approved * * Log: * Revision 1 1994/10/17 Jonathan David Harmon * Original archived version, edited by Steve Baker. * * Revision 2 1998/02/27 Jon Harmon * Updated version. * * Checked-out 1999/07/30 Roel van der Meulen * * Checked-in with * Revision 3 1999/08/04 Roel van der Meulen * Edited and author-approved. [General question to everyone: can we use two article identifiers on one article? Specifically: if a rewrite was edited by another editor?] %t Skipping Along The Trail To Acheron %n 8R ready for review %s A Group-Authored Insanity %a Jon Harmon (jharmon@mail.utexas.edu) %d 19980225 %i The Acheron Story %x Harmon, Jonathan David %x Clio, Michigan, USA, Earth %x Stories, Short %x Writing Style, Douglas Adams' %k Story, Agent, Alien, Clio, Houghton, Web, Round Robin %e Early in the 1992-1993 school year, a group of seniors at Clio High got bored in their advanced placement English class [1]. The next day Jon Harmon, a member of this group, brought in a notebook which he had planned to use to take notes. What was actually written in it he will most likely remember until he's old and grey and can't even remember his own name. Before class, Jon scrawled "Skipping Along the Trail to Acheron" [2], a title which he hoped was sufficiently ludicrous, across the cover. He then wrote a short introductory paragraph to a story, and handed the notebook to Barb Gross, a friend sitting behind him, when he got to class. She read the first paragraph, snickered, and wrote a bit of her own. She then passed it to Alan Head, another friend, and thus the cycle began. By the end of the year the group, consisting of five regular authors and two or three irregular ones (that is, five authors who wrote often and two or three who wrote occasionally -- all authors were irregular, as can be surmised by reading the story), had accumulated 68 pages of drivel; drivel which has actually been described as "funny" (although more often as "insane"). The main group consisted of: Jon Harmon, the "Keeper of the Sacred Scrolls," as he came up with the idea and thus "guarded" the original notebook when the group went off to college (he is now pursuing his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Texas-Austin); Barb Gross, a nose-ring wearing rebel who also happened to be president of the Clio chapter of the National Honor Society (whereabouts unknown); Alan Head, a Baptist who somehow manage to hold back most of his objections to the writings of the other authors (and, in fact, became much wilder than any of them); Jon McCarron, the Author who came the closest to pursuing an actual career in writing (he's currently a theatre major at Michigan State University, and starred in an independent movie which might be released some day); and Kyle LaVelle, hands down the funniest of the authors, who once wandered the streets of Clio looking for someone to cut his hair (he has since cut his hair and moved to Florida, and now works as a professional hippie in a health food store). The Story, as it is often called by The Authors, is about an `agent' who has forgotten that he's an agent, and his various `adventures'. It doesn't really have much of a plot until about page 60 of the original text. Instead, it wanders from moment to moment, following the life of Norman Arless, the `agent', as he searches for his `mission'. While this may sound like exactly what is necessary to make a story exceedingly dull, the story is actually quite interesting, and has been called funny by everyone who has ever read it, even those who have no real reason to simply kiss up to The Authors. One even found it so funny that work began on a _Skipping Along the Trail to Acheron_ radio show at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth, but this effort came to an abrupt halt when Barb Gross dropped out of Lehigh. The story was also published (at least in part) as a serial in Michigan Technological University's Daily Bull. Jon Harmon also tried to write and produce an extremely low-budget _Skipping Along the Trail to Acheron_ movie (the kind made by a group of friends with a standard video camera), but never quite finished writing the script. Those members of the group who have access to email (led by Harmon) often make an effort to continue the story (it never even came close to a resolution). However, the efforts usually last no more than a month, and result in only a paragraph or two. Any additions are posted to the official Acheron web page at http://get.to/acheron as they are received (or, at least, once Jon gets around to reading them). Comments (especially positive ones) are always welcomed by The Authors at jharmon@mail.utexas.edu. [1] Class where you supposedly learn what you need to take the test to get college credit, but are mostly just told what to think about particular poems. [2] Acheron was the river in Hades over which Charon ferried the dead. It was also used by the ancient Greeks as an alternative name for Hades (or Hell). The title really had _nothing_ to do with the story, though; I just thought it sounded kind of kooky. %e *EOA*