Tumbling After

Luke Bellmason's NaNo-novel, day three:

Among his other life-threatening injuries, LeVant had lost an arm and eye in the attack. The arm was quickly replaced. They had scanned his existing arm, mirrored the resulting 3D model and fabricated a bio-mechanincal replica within twelve hours. The operation to attach the new arm had taken barely more than two hours, but the eye would take longer.

A Corp doctor, dressed in the light blue robes of the Corporation Medical Division, explained to Taylan that a replacement would have to be grown from live cells extracted from LeVant’s good eye. This would take at least two days, and she shouldn’t expect him to regain consciousness before then anyway.

Taylan had stayed with LeVant in the ward aboard the Corporation’s Medical ship all night and all the next day. She felt sorry for the fact that there had been no one else who had visited him. Apart from a procession of corporate officials and medical staff, there had been no family of friends to come to see him.

In the weeks since they’d arrived in system, she had not had much contact with Kerrin LeVant. He’d been so wrapped up in Corporation business. All the stuff he’d been preparing for over the last eight years on their voyage from Earth had come real. Taylan realised that the time on the ship on the way over here had been like a holiday compared to the work they’d both been thrown into since they’d arrived.

She’d used the excuse of her own injuries to keep herself aboard the hospital ship, but they were not nearly as serious as the ones he’d suffered. He’d lost so much blood before the med team had been able to get to them and on the evac shuttle they’d struggled to stabilise him. It had been touch and go whether he’d make it. Now, he was over the worst, but he still had not woken up.

Eventually Taylan herself fell asleep, though she fought it. She knew what horrors awaited her in her nightmares and didn’t want to have to experience it all again. She had considered asking for the drug the top corp executives used which kept them awake with no ill effects, removing the need for sleep completely and allowing them to work continuously without fatigue, but the medic had advised against it in her condition.

She had been right to fear her nightmares. Each was a more intense rendering of the events of the previous day, but prolonged and unceasing. While the actual explosion and its aftermath had lasted less than half an hour before they’d been lifted out, in her dreams no help came. The explosion continued outward, through the crowd in front of her, splitting alien and human bodies open as she watched helplessly. It split her own body open and continued through the air into the sky and out into the orbit of the Earth fleet and the station. And when it was all over, she would wake up in the hospital chair and the explsion would start again, destroying LeVant as he lay in his medical bed, taking him apart slowly, atom by atom, in a never ending cycle of destruction.

When she finally did wake up, she burst into tears only to discover that LeVant had woken up and was sitting bolt upright in front of her. He leant into her and put his new arm gently around her shoulders. It felt warm and soft, but it was unmistakably mechanical. Even more so when LeVant stretched around to put the other arm around her. She sobbed for several minutes while he comforted her, before realising that he was probably in some considerable discomfort himself.

“I was supposed to be the one doing this,” she said. “I wanted to be here for you when you woke up,” she managed, through tears.

“You are,” said LeVant, unsteadily. “It’s a welcome sight, let me tell you.”

“Do you know what happened?” Taylan asked, suddenly recalling all the things she had rehearsed in the hours she’d waited.

“Last thing I remember was sitting down, next to you,” he said. “Then waking up here about fifteen minutes ago.”

“So you don’t know about the bomb?” He stared at her, open mouthed. Taylan worried that she’d said something wrong and that the shock was probably the last thing his body needed right now. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you right out like that…” LeVant shook his head,

“Bomb?”

Taylan was scared to speak, frozen in time just like she was in her dreams. She watched LeVant go through the different reactions to this new information.

“Is that why my arm hurts so much?” He said. Taylan couldn’t stand it any longer. She sprang from her seat and ran from the room, her legs barely able to carry her. She desperately looked around for somewhere to throw up and managed to make it to a sink in a room on the opposite side of the corridor. As the contents of her stomach drained slowly into the sink, she had the thought that she wasn’t supposed to be here.

The thoughts started to come; she wasn’t trained to be talking LeVant in his current condition, she wasn’t supposed to be in his room, she probably wasn’t supposed to be on a Corporation ship without being on official ELIJA business. Then her panic spread wider; she was six light-years from her home planet, she’d nearly died and if she had been killed her parents wouldn’t even have found out about it for another six years. For all she knew, her parents might even be dead!

She started hyperventilating and stood up from the sink, only to be hit by an intense dizzyness. Two medics were there in time to catch her as she went down into a faint.

She had no idea for how long she was out, but the ward’s artificial lighting system had been set to night mode. She looked up from her bed to see LeVant sitting there beside her.

“Hey, seemed only fair I should return the favour,” he said. She smiled back at him. It filled her with an enormous sense of relief to see him there. His strength, his familiarity. It was comforting.

“Did they tell you?” she said. “Everything?” 

He nodded and lifted up his artificial arm to show her.

“This was what was bothering you?” Taylan gave him an apologetic sort of look.

“It all seemed like too much to take in at the time.”

LeVant picked up a stack of smart paper and showed it to her. “I’ve been catching up on events, I’ve got to get back to work pretty soon or I’ll never make the time back.”

“You’re going back to work already?” Taylan said.

“I have to, can’t afford to lie around here. The timetable won’t stop just for me. I’ll be in the next room if you need me.” Then he kissed her on the forehead and turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said.

“Please, just a minute longer.” She grabbed a hold of his hand and then couldn’t figure out if it was the real one or not.

“Listen,” he knelt by the bed and leant in closer to her, “when we’re out of here and you’re feeling better I’ve got the most amazing surprise for you.” She looked into his one remaining eye. “I’m going to take you to meet someone, if you can keep a secret.”

“What? Who?” She said, but he just laughed softly. Now, it felt silly to be acting like giddy school children, but the excitement on LeVant’s face made him seem like a nine-year-old at Christmas who knew what presents she was getting.

“You’ll never believe it,” was all he said. Then he left.

-1,190

The Company

From Luke Bellmason:

I’ve fallen way behind with my NaNo this year, so I’ve had to abandon the idea of writing the novel in the month of November. However, I think the story is interesting enough to continue with so I’m going to write the 30 parts I would have written and had roughly planned out. It might take until the end of December or beyond, but who’s counting?

—

2 The Company

The investigation into the bombing began almost immediately. As usual, each of the three sides of the Earth Expedition wanted their own people on the investigation and the local aliens had both a police investigation and a branch from the government. Despite the huge number of people on the job, or maybe because of it, none of them found anything. This was as expected.

Warbur waited a discreet amount of time after Dita had left the scene, then followed him to the Capital city of Tho-Tewr-Turl. ‘Turl was a stark contrast to Tok-Cenb; an industrial hub with factories pumping out smog and manufacturing consumer goods in an early example of an emerging capitalist economy.

The Vonbekians had managed to accomplish all this before the Earthers had arrived and the smog in the atmosphere had allowed astronomers to identify Vonbek as a planet that was not only inhabited, but also in the latter stages of an industrial revolution.

Current estimates placed the most advanced sections of Vonbekian society somewhere around the middle of Earth’s 20th Century. Only later, before the first ships were ready, did the Earth astronmers detect the tell-tale traces of nuclear explosions in the Vonbekian atmosphere. It seemed that Earth history was being followed all too closely. This single fact had thereafter been used to justify every interference made by the Earth Expedition.

The factory on the outskirts of ‘Turl was older than most of the others which had been built around it later. It’s original function had already been outmoded by various engineering advances and several attempts had been made by the owners over the years to update its machinery to keep up with current technology. To Warbur, every building in the whole district was as useless as the other, age made no difference. On the Corporation ships they had fabrication systems which could fit on a desk and manufacture anything.

The owners of the block had been only too happy to rent it out to the newly formed company. ‘The Company’ was how Warbur and Dita referred to it too. It had a nice, anonymous ring to it. Their ‘front’ was the newly formed branch of xeno-linguistics. They ran a language teaching service and provided translations into English. They did not have many customers, but since they were being secretly bankrolled by the Earth Government, this didn’t really matter. The company had recruited many new teachers and linguists who were interested in this new field of study. Invariably these aliens were pro-Earth and among the most intelligent of their species; precisely the kind of people they wanted to recruit.

Warbur drove the car along the newly constructed highway from the airport and turned off into the side road and finally into the factory car park. There were a couple of lights on at the top of the building and only one other vehicle in the parking space next to his.

He found his way inside the factory through a low door and climbed the long shallow stairway up through seven or eight flights to the top floor. There, he saw the tiny offices from where the lights eminated and the single figure crouched over a desk.

Dita was reading from a computer screen and Warbur could see clearly from the images and vid-clips that he was studying the Earth-Encyclopedia entry on ‘Terrorism’.

“It’s all rather depressing, isn’t it?” Said Warbur as he entered. “Remember that everything you read about in there happened over centuries, seeing it all compressed down like that might give you the impression that humans aren’t the kind of people you would want visiting your planet.”

“Hmmm,” said Dita, “seems like there’s plenty of Vonbekians who think that already.”

“We aren’t proud of our past,” said Warbur, “but we always hoped you could learn from our mistakes. That was one of our reasons for coming here.”

Dita closed the display down and pulled out some sheets of paper that had been lying on the desk beneath it.

“Do we know any more about the attack?” He asked.

“Not really, it was a bomb, planted some time before the presentation took place. No word on whether it was a trigger or a timer. There’s not much we can piece together.”

“So what do we do now?” Said Dita, looking up at Warbur.

“We figure out who planted it, and why.”

Dita handed the papers to Warbur. There was a list of names, photos and details, all written in English.
“These are all the people we know about who belong to the Separatist movement. You’ll remember I told you about them before, but until now they’ve been content to merely talk about getting rid of the Visitors from Earth and holding demonstrations.”

“So something must have changed,” Warbur mused.

“What were the motives for terrorist acts?” Asked Dita, “in Earth history, what did they hope to achieve?”

Warbur sat and studied the names while he thought about Dita’s question.

“Terrorists were usually people out of power, marginalised, who felt they were being ignored or persecuted. Minorities usually. Many governments saw them as criminals and refused to even talk to them.”

“We refuse to negotiate with terrorists!” Dita quoted from the encyclopedia entry.

“Despite that, these groups often achieved what they wanted; exposure in the media, and recognition from whoever they were targetting.”

“But their methods?” Said Dita, “civilian targets, indiscriminate bombings.”

“It made them almost impossible to stop, and the methods worked. That’s why they used them. They often achieved what they wanted, though sometimes only after years and at great cost. Would the people on this list fit that profile?”

Dita went to a larger, older computer at the back of the office and turned it on.

“We have a couple of agents in the Seperatist movement, we had them recruited last year at your suggestion.” Warbur nodded.

“What level?”

“Intel mainly, we get updated about what’s happening, but not near the top level. Pretty weak stuff really, but from what we’d been hearing we hadn’t considered this group to be much of a threat. Are you sure they’re responsible for the bombing?” Dita asked, then started opening some of the files which had popped up on the screen.

“I admit, it’s very odd.” The old computer was not a Corporation model. It was at least thirty years old, pre-dating even the formation of the seven companies that eventually created the Corporation.

Non-corp technology was now almost impossible to find, but it was vital they used something which Warbur knew had not been made by the ‘enemy’. That computer Dita used had more processing power than all of the computers on the rest of the planet combined. Almost everything in the office that Warbur had provided them with was a relic from Earth’s twentieth century and the spycraft that went with it was even older than Warbur was, but it had to be this way. Vonbek was at a stage of technology roughly equal to the post-atomic age and there were strict guidelines and agreements about what technologies Earthers could bring down, or even talk about. If ELIJA stumbled onto this office and found computers, a large scale scandal would ensue which could jeopardise the whole expedition and lose favour back home.

“Here we are, the Separatist leader. No Earth name I’m afraid, but we have given her the codename ‘Ysna’.” Alien names were unpronouncable, so the four letters of the postcode for the location they were born in could be used. It made for some interesting combinations. Warbur went to look at the file which Dita had brought up on the screen.

“We should bring her in. I’d like to ask her a few things.” Said Warbur.

“I think we could handle that, but where?”

“Some local office,” said Warbur. “The local police station if there is one, I can arrange the necessary orders, whatever you need.”

-1,329

The Children of Tok-Cenb

Here's Luke Bellmason, sharing the first chapter of his NaNoWriMo novel:

It was easy to tell the first wavers from the second wavers; as the shuttle approached the surface of the planet, the second wavers were all standing at the panoramic forward windows of the upper deck, while the first wavers, like Victor Warbur, remained in their seats.

Warbur had seen Vonbek many times before, and was more interested in watching the passengers. Taylan was the focus of his attention at this moment, and when he glanced around at his fellow passengers he could see that she was the focus of theirs too. It was perfectly understandable.

Firstly, she was young. About twenty-eight years of age and full of health and energy. Secondly she was enthusiastic, a trait that many of the first wavers had long since lost in the decade that they’d all been here, and thirdly she was single.

There was very little chance that she’d be interested in the slightest in any of the boring old men who’d found themselves assigned to this particular excursion down to the planet, but that didn’t seem to bother them Warbur observed. It was more of a case of fixating their playful fantasies on someone who was completely unavailable and yet real, rather than whatever dream woman they had created for themselves over the years to maintain their sanity out here.

Most of them had families of course, but they were either back home in the Earth system, or were living here and so were part of the everyday mundanity that had become the dull background to their existence.

Taylan’s attention was not on them. She was standing next to the man who was only a little older than her, but who was already in one of the most senior positions within the Corporation.

Between the three of them, Warbur, Taylan and ‘corporation boy’, they represented the three main factions of the Earth Expiditionary Force, which was the whole point of having them attend the presentation on the planet. It was yet another official engagement that some senior executives at the top of the chain of command had decided would make good press for the propoganda machine which even now, almost ten years after they’d arrived at Vonbek, was still trying to persuade the alien population that this was a great, bold new era for them.

Since the ‘couple’ had arrived on the shuttle, at the station in orbit, the girl and the corporation representitive had been inseparable. They hadn’t said more than three words to anyone else, yet had talked constantly to each other all the way down. Corporation boy was quite knowledgeable about every aspect of the alien economy, politics and social make-up as any high-climber in the corp would have to be, but Warbur knew he’d studied it all from books and reports. There was a huge difference between knowing something and experiencing it, as Warbur had. Many of the early reports had been proved wrong and assumptions made about the alien society and the way it functioned had been shown to be far too simplistic.

There were many facets to the society they had encountered. contact with one group or local authority did not guarantee that another would want to have anything to do with them. There was no central leadership as such, everything was local. That was what was so brilliant about the ‘children’. It had been a very useful ploy, to get at least one small group of aliens on their side, though at the time it had been nothing more than a solution to the language barrier. As Warbur listened, he heard the corporation’s representative recite the standard version of the events to his companion.

“You see, they had this problem with communicating with the Aliens when they first arrived,” he began. “It seemed like an intractable problem. How do you understand a language that you have no basic understanding of? It’s totally alien, in an alien culture where you can’t even figure out context. What you do is you find a bunch of children and you teach them English.”

“Why English?” Said Taylan, showing her true colours as the ‘independant observer’.

“It had to be something, I guess they could have picked Spanish or Chinese. In a way, it didn’t matter. Once we’d taught them one Earth language, we could translate it into any other. English is universal enough that most of the who countries who contributed to the Expedition would agree to it being the lingua-franca.”

Taylan extended her left arm and tapped something out on her wrist, notes to be reviewed later. Then she looked back out at the approaching planet. It was close enough now that Warbur could see the greenish tint of the sky starting to illuminate the upper part of the troposphere.

“So they picked a group of children on the planet and taught them English,” prompted Taylan, who knew the story anyway.

“Yes, but they didn’t bargain on how successful they would be. I mean, all they did was leave a few tablet computers lying around in a village where they knew they’d be found and load them up with language apps. You know what happens when you give technology to children. The adults largely ignored it, I mean they knew where it had come from, but the children, oh they figured it out.”

At this point in the story, Warbur decided to make his introduction. He could not bear to hear this story, his story, being told by someone else.

“After one week they’d mastered the alphabet,” he said from his seat, “after two they could match words with images. After three weeks they knew most of the rules of pronunciation, syntax and grammar. By the end of the first month, they could read, write and speak fluent English.” Warbur stood up and walked to the window, next to Taylan and the Corporation Representitive.

“And after two months they had hacked into the Earth Government communications network,” Corporation Boy said, no doubt trying to embarrass Warbur. It had the opposite effect.

“The alien children who were selected were nothing special, but there are gifted children in every group. Once we began to educate them, we discovered that their minds were easily as advanced as our own.

“But you can’t educate someone to a higher level than yourself,” said Taylan, “they might be even smarter than us given the proper training.”

“Ah well, that would be the Corporation’s department,” said Warbur, “I believe their AI programme is going to do all this and more.” He said this knowing full well that the Corporation’s AI programme had been five years away from fruition for the last twenty years, and was an intense source of embarrassment to them.

It suddenly occurred to Taylan to introduce her friend to the Government Offial and she turned to Warbur and said, “this is John LeVant of Corporation Operations,” they shook hands.

“Victor Warbur of the Earth Government,” said Warbur, keeping things deliberately vague. “And you must be ELIJA,” Warbur chuckled at the girl, noting the insignia on her suit.

“Yes, Selina Taylan of Earth League Interplanetary Joint Alliance,” she shook Warbur’s hand. “So, you’ve actually met these children?” She asked. Warbur smiled, wryly.

“I helped to create them. I set up the project after initial contact with the aliens, that was over ten years ago. They’re all grown up now. The boy your friend mentioned, the one who hacked into the comms network, he’s the one we’re going to meet.”

–

The shuttle set down on an open grassy plain about a kilometre from the town of Tok-Cenb. There were fewer people than Warbur had anticipated, but then aside from its importance to the Expeditionary Fleet, Tok-cenb wasn’t that remarkable. In reality it was little more than a mining village, with one ‘mayor’, one ‘elder’ and a few ‘councillors’. These titles were approximations of course, but the translation between English and the native tongue had always been tricky.

The Children had made this small town famous around the entire planet, but this didn’t seem to have had much of an economic impact on it, in the ten years Warbur had been coming here, he’d observed very few changes aside from the rapid maturation of its citizens. Vonbekians aged about at about twice the rate of humans and seldom lived beyond the age of thirty-five solar years. Still, it was disappointing to see such a poor turn-out, especially with the visitors here.

They all waited for the ramp to descend at the back of the shuttle and walked down into the damp, barely breathable air. There was no fanfare and no applause, since both of these practises would have been totally unknown to the locals, but one alien did approach them and extend an appendage in a very human-like way. This was the ‘boy’. Now a full grown adult and a long time acquaintance of Warbur’s.

“Mr. LeVant, Miss Taylan, this is Dita.”

Warbur knew the Second wavers would have studied the aliens during their trip, but now as he watched for their reaction, he knew they were realising the great gap between the idea of a thing and the reality of having it stand in front of you. The aliens were squat creatures, about four feet high, and were an odd shape. Three legged, three-eyed, three armed and arranged somewhat like a three-pointed star when seen from above. The arrangement extended right down to their toes and fingers, three on each arm and leg.

Both LeVant and Taylan were not merely speechless, but breathless, hyperventilating. Warbur waved a hand and a crewman from the shuttle rushed forward with a portable oxygen container.

“You’ll have to excuse my friends, they’ve never met an extra-terrestrial before,” said Warbur.

“It’s ok, I remember the first time I met a human. It was stressful for me too,” said Dita, in perfect English.

They followed the alien, LeVant and Taylan gripping on to their masks as they walked, to the stand. It was nothing grand, but a simple stage built onto rocks and packed down straw. There was seating for the humans along the front, while the Vonbekians required only a clear space to rest, folding their rear two legs together to form a kind of seat.

Warbur had studied the schedule for the day’s presentation and knew that, like most Vonbekian events, it would take up many hours and be intersected by multiple stops for refreshments and informal chats. They never did anything in a hurry.

LeVant offered the seat next to Warbur up to miss Taylan, then took the seat on the end. Some of the other officals who had come down on the shuttle with them took up the seats in front and behind them and Dita sat at the back of the group.

The Mayor took to the stage and began speaking in the local dialect, which was immediately translated into whichever language was necessary by the computers in each human’s headpiece. The speech was standard, non-threatening and bland. Designed, it seemed, to offend no one and to welcome the new visitors to their humble planet. The effect of hearing second hand and spoken in the same flat automated voice that they listened to all day every day did little to counteract the soporific effect this had on each individual. This and the stifling air they were breathing between puffs on the oxygen cylinders had most of the human audience teetering on the verge of sleep within a minute of the Mayor’s address.

They were all suddenly brought out of it by a large explosion, which eminated from just behind the stage and expanded out into the audience. It took out the stage so completely that those who had been standing on or near it were instantly vapourised. The front four rows of people were killed either by the blast or the lethal shards of rock which were thrown outwards. Anyone behind that was in with a chance of surviving, though random luck seemed to determine the severity of the injuries suffered.

Warbur been forced back on top of Taylan, but LeVant who had been on the end had been hit. He was still alive, but barely. One by one each survivor rose from the ground to see which of those around them had not made it. Dita came forward from the rear and went straight for Warbur, picking him up and shaking him to his senses. Warbur could see Dita talking at him but could hear no sound at all, his ears were filled only with a single tone, like the feedback from a faulty microphone. Taylan stood and then saw LeVant and rushed to his side.

The Vonbekian response was slow and disorganised. The crew and security from the shuttle were on the scene long before any of the local emergency services had arrived. The injured humans, including LeVant, were bundled onto the shuttle and flown back up to the fleet’s medical ship. Taylan went with them, though she was able to walk to the shuttle herself. Warbur elected to stay behind and assist the security services in making sure any vital evidence was not lost and the scene was left as undisturbed as possible.

“What happened?” Dita asked Warbur, once the worst of the ghastly situation seemed over. Warbur had to consider his response.

“It was an attack I believe,” he said.

“An attack?” Dita repeated. “I don’t understand, what kind of attack.” Warbur didn’t quite understand it himself, but could think of no other explanation.

“Nothing like this has ever happened on your planet before?” He asked. Dita shook his head.

“There have been wars, fights in the past, but this, I don’t see how it fits with what you are saying. Where are the attackers?” He looked about him, seemingly puzzled by the concept.

“It’s called terrorism. It’s something we used to be very good at on Earth in one period of our history. And it looks like now we’ve brought it to with us to your world.”

-2,357

Catching a Glimpse of a Wild WriMo

Today and tomorrow, I'd like to share some NaNo-related entries from Luke Bellmason's blog. I'm a little late with them, but I think you'll enjoy them just as much.

In a few days I am going to be taking part in NaNoWriMo. For those that don’t know, this stands for National Novel Writing Month (though actually it’s International).

The idea is that during the month of November you have try to write a 50,000 word novel. This might sound difficult but 50,000 words in 30 days works out to about 1,666 words per day, and there is no stipulation in the rules which says the novel has to be any good.

NaNoWriMo is all about getting people writing, and the emphasis is on volume rather than quality. For writers who do lots of planning (but very little writing) this is an opportunity to change things up. Instead of editing and stressing over minor details of plot and character you just write. It’s a bit like jumping on a motorcycle, pointing it towards the sunset and heading off into the unknown.

One of the best things about it is that you’re doing it with thousands of other people and there’s a lot of support given to participants, with writing events across the whole month both online and off. The groups are also divided into regions so you can find out who’s participating in your area and maybe even go along to a write-in and meet some of them.

Everyone wants to know what you’re writing and how far along you are, and yes there’s a healthy sense of competition involved. Dare I say you even get a buzz out of beating someone who was ahead of you in word count the week before. As writers crash out and fall by the wayside, you’re determined that ‘this won’t happen to me’ and it pushes you on.

You aren’t allowed to start writing until midnight on the first of November, but you are allowed to plan your story out before this. I’ve been working on my idea for this year’s NaNo for quite some time and I’m actually really looking forward to starting work on it.

The story revolves around the first Earth expedition to an alien planet. The first wave has already been established, first contact has been made and a small colony of humans are living on the alien world.

All of the main characters are based on my favourite characters from various spy shows and books.

The theme is going to be a kind of mash-up of science fiction and spy thriller. Think John LeCarre meets Philip K Dick, or Isaac Asimov meets Ian Fleming.

The hard problems of preventing bacterial contamination and translating the alien language have already been solved by the first wave of the expedition. As the novel starts the second wave have arrived from Earth and one of the three main characters has spent the last seven or eight years travelling aboard and interstellar ship to reach the alien world.

There are three main factions on the Earth side; The Earth government who are the official representatives of all of the planets in the solar system who funded the expedition. The Corporation who provided almost all of the technology used to reach the alien system. And then there’s the UN type organisation called ELIJA, which stands for Earth League Interplanetary Joint Alliance.

Obviously there are multiple tensions between these three groups. The Corporation has been granted licences to sell various Earth technologies to the aliens, whose technological level is equal to that of Earth in about the year 1950. This means the Corp can look forward to many years of profitable technological advancement at a slow and steady pace as they drip feed everything from washing machines and refrigerators all the way through to iPods and jet packs over decades and decades. Meanwhile the Earth force is trying to establish a more permanent colony on another planet in the alien solar system which is a sort of Mars like planet that requires extensive terraforming before it can be made habitable. Then on top of all this ELIJA is ensuring that all the rules governing ethical behaviour and law is observed and neither faction exploits the Aliens.

The aliens themselves are also split into different groups. One is what you might call the pro visitors, who represent the younger generation who have grown up in the shadow of Alien visitors and to find them exciting and interesting, while on the other side are the Separatists who want the aliens to go home and leave their planet as it was.

My idea is to use all the tropes of spy fiction but in a totally new setting which is a blank canvas of my own creation allowing me to play around with hi-tech spies and the like without Earth history getting in the way of things. Which is another way of saying that I’m too lazy to do any real research on the last 200 years of global politics and making up your own global politics is more fun anyway.

I’ll be posting each day’s chapter (assuming there is one) on my blog the following day so you can all read along and see how the story develops in real time, plus you can add your own comments and ideas as we go along and I might even incorporate some of them into the story!

I did try NaNoWriMo in 2011 (with a story called vampires versus zombies) but only got as far as Day 15. So this time I’m hoping to get at least a little further if not finish the whole thing.

Please check back for more updates and watch this space on and around the 1st of November to read the first opening chapter!

NaNoWriMo 2013

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies goes like this:

Alien: Best laid plans of mice.
Human: And men.
Alien: What?
Human: Best laid plans of mice and men.
Alien: Oh. No, I don't think men had much to do with it.

I had every intention of participating in (and winning) NaNoWriMo '13. The book was going to be called Sixteen Thousand Nights. I already had an outline as early as last winter.

But I had to sit out this year. November's half over and I'm just getting back into blogging. I'm happy to be promoting Resist the Devil and getting The Sandfruit People ready for release, but I do miss the adrenalin rush of NaNo. To everyone who is doing it this year, I want to let you know I'm thinking about you and look forward to joining you again one of these Novembers.

Status Update

Years ago when blogging was new and I first heard of it, I imagined that a 'web log' was the online equivalent of those fascinating logs kept by the travelers on the American frontier. In case you haven't had the pleasure, here's an entry from James and Nancy Coon's log of their 1847 Oregon Trail journey:

Photo: jacksonholejournal.net

Mon Jun 14th

Buried Turner's son, three years old. Left south fork of the Platt at 12 o'clock. Camped on the prairie eight miles from the river. Here we used buffalo chips for fire for the first time.

Cold. Seventeen miles.

Daily reports of exciting adventures sounded like a wonderful thing to read, and was it true that I could actually just go on the internet and read them for free, once I'd learned the secret of which characters to type into that little space at the top of the screen?

The first several times I actually saw a blog, I didn't know what I was looking at. I thought I had been directed to a blog, but what I found didn't look like a daily log of anything, much less of an exciting adventure. I figured I just didn't know what I was doing, and hoped I would learn eventually.

Then one day I stumbled across an article about art blogs in Spanish and finally got the point of what a blog was. Now I have my own blog, and guess what? I make daily entries. I guess that's the only thing I have in common with James and Nancy Coon. I don't even mention the weather, usually, or how far I've traveled. But if you're curious, Cold rane. Zero miles.

I'm guessing the Coons didn't do guest posts, either. I did a guest post on South Wales Shorts about someone dying of exposure in a desert. Thanks to Damian (@shortstoryblog on Twitter) for having me. The Third Sunday Blog Carnival (@thirdsundaybc) ran my story "Euthanasia" in December, and has accepted another story for their February 17 issue. This one's about genetically engineered humans.

I have some more stories I'd like to post here, especially "The Suitcase Man" which inspired Bronwyn Cair (@bronwyncair) to come up with the plot for next year's NaNoWriMo project Sixteen Thousand Nights. Unfortunately, my hard drive crashed, the backup is on CD's, I can't seem to find my external optical drive, and both computers with integrated optical drives are broken. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with fiction; real life is strange enough.

I'm editing Resist the Devil again in preparation for a relaunch in April.

I guess I'm about a quarter of the way through the second draft of my novel An Analysis of the Cardassian Language, and really enjoying it. I've posted what I've done so far; see the links above. I may finish this draft around August. Then I'll need to do a third draft to refine the details of Cardassian architecture, mannerisms, social life, etc. After that will come copyediting and proofreading. This book is not a quick one to write by any means because it requires intensive research (but I love doing research). More on that tomorrow.

Photo: northlandchurch.net

Sixteen Thousand Nights is still a twinkle in its mothers' eyes. It won't officially get started until November, but we've already got a basic outline for it. Sometimes it's wonderful to have the luxury to let ideas mull, to let our subconscious minds get a whack at them, and that's what we're lucky to have with Sixteen.  It's going to be a suspense novel about waking up on the wrong side of the American criminal justice system.

The Suckers Guild for indie writers is building up steam. We still have a few more preparations to do before we can start accepting members. Thanks to M Joseph Murphy (@windswarlock) for all your hard work on this, and for being so easy to work with. Every group needs a difficult member, though, and since you don't seem to be any good at that, I'm going to try hard to be as difficult as possible. Sorry if I've been slacking in that department.

Why I'm Writing a Star Trek Book

Last October I was having a little trouble deciding which book to write for NaNoWriMo. I'd narrowed the options down to two:

Photo: ehow.com

16,ooo Nights. Suspense. When Gretchen locks her keys in her car and can't afford a locksmith, a stranger offers her $5,000 to deliver a locked suitcase.

An Analysis of the Cardassian Language. Science fiction. Faine is drugged, kidnapped and left on an enemy military base.

Cardassian Language was the one in my head clawing to get out, and I wondered if I was even going to be able to write Nights before I'd gotten Cardassian Language out of my system. But could I seriously entertain the thought of writing Cardassian Language? I had trouble imagining that I could actually look people in the eye and say, "I'm writing a Star Trek novel." I may as well go around saying, "Hello, I'm writing unpublishable junk."

I asked my writing buddy Bronwyn Cair which one she would pick. "Definitely the Cardassian one," she said. "It will help us build connections for pitching our Star Trek screenplay to Paramount."

"But it's fanfiction," I objected.

"So?"

Photo: startrek.com

"So, fanfiction isn't quality fiction. It's not a real novel."

"Yours is." she countered. "So what if other people write junk? Show them how it's really done."

Now that I'm well into toiling through the second draft, I'm very glad I took her advice. I'm still not used to admitting I'm writing a Star Trek book, but most of the responses I get are actually very positive. And I'm pleased with how it's turning out.

An Analysis of the Cardassian Language

If you've been following me a while, you know I'm writing a novel called An Analysis of the Cardassian Language. It was born last month during NaNoWriMo, and I'm posting chapters above as they become intelligible. (At least I think so. If you find unintelligible chapters up there, please let me know.)

So you're walking down the street one day and the next thing you know, you're lying on the floor someplace where you don't belong and you're not welcome, but you're not allowed to leave. Turns out it's a military installation, and it's not even our military. They slap a pair of handcuffs on you and ask what you're doing there, but of course that's exactly what you'd like to know.

That's what happens to Faine Channing in Cardassian Language. She's in Chicago about to go home to her kids, and then she wakes up on a space station. Fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be interested to know that the station is Terok Nor, or Deep Space Nine when it was still being run by the Cardassians. Of course, we're at war with the Cardassians, which doesn't make life any easier for Faine.

NaNoWriMo is pretty intense, and like many wrimos I took a week off from writing after it ended on November 30th. Meanwhile I gave Faine her own Facebook page and started having a little fun with pictures. Today I plan to jump back into the text. Be on the lookout for more tabs above.

Tweet

Noveling November

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, it's time to confess: I had two books going in November. Yup, it was a crazy month of writing full-tilt on both of them. One was my NaNoWriMo novel An Analysis of the Cardassian Language, and the other was real life.

Maybe it's Murphy's Law or something, but I don't know why the universe had to pick November to throw all these insane situations at me. Still, November is much better than some time in the winter. And it was a warm November, too, and it didn't even snow to speak of. I can't tell you much about it because while I'm pretty open about my own life, I don't blog about the lives of my family and friends. But if I were to write down everything that happened, just in November, with enough backstory to let it make any sense, it would be a book. And it would be a page-turner, too.

Writing my NaNoWriMo novel was a lot of fun, when I could get to it. I did manage to win (write 50,000 words in 30 days) but came far short of the 75,000 words of well-organized plot and well-written prose that I had hoped for. Still, considering how active King Murphy was, I feel good about it. What I do have, at 51,000 words, is a good start.

You can read a few chapters by clicking the links at the top of this page.

Tweet

Writing Blitz, Day Fifteen

I'm catching up. Now I'm officially only two days behind. Here's Chapter Five:

As soon as I was alone I headed straight for the bathroom, yanking the blue microfiber t-shirt over my head as I walked. At least the mirrors in this strange place were more or less normal. I pulled my bra strap down over my right shoulder and took a good look at my collarbone area: no scars, no visible lumps, nothing different from how it always was. I ran the fingertips of my left hand over the spot, feeling carefully. Nothing.

Photo: Seventeen.com

I put my shirt back on and checked my left ankle. Also nothing. So whatever that little charade was about on the table, they hadn't actually done anything. Maybe just a cheap way to keep me away from the exit doors. Well, at least now I knew where to find them. If only I could get out of this room.

There were no windows in my room: it couldn't be that easy, of course. I stood for a moment and looked at the ceiling. It wasn't a dropped ceiling, of course, and it didn't look any more promising than any other part of the room. I walked around and took a quick look at the floor: no particular reason to think I'd find a quick escape route through there, either. I wished I had some way of knowing which storey I was on, whether this building had a basement, and all sorts of other details. But I didn't, so for now at least I'd have to work with what I had. I decided to start with a thorough examination of the walls, to see how strong they were and whether there were any places where I might be able to break through. There was no telling what would be on the other side, though, but I'd figure that out when I came to it. I started at a random stretch of blank wall roughly opposite the door, and knocked on it with my knuckles. It didn't seem to be made out of sheet rock, but I couldn't tell right away what the material was. I kept knocking, moving my hand by increments up the wall, then over to my right, then down again. If it had been a traditional wall of sheet rock or some other wall board laid over studs, I would have heard and felt a change as my knuckles passed over the studs, but in this case there didn't seem to be any change. So maybe the wall board itself was some sort of strong material and part of the actual structure of the building, instead of just being a covering over the structure. In other words, maybe I wasn't going to be able to break through it. I decided to see if I got any different results from another part of the room.

I knocked on the walls at eight different places and got the same results every time. The only place I hadn't been was up high, close to the ceiling. Now, how was I going to get up there? I'd already stood on the desk, but the ceiling was high enough here - or else I'm short enough - that I still couldn't reach to the top of the wall. I picked up the chair from behind the desk and carefully tried to set it on the desk without breaking the computer. It wasn't that I cared whether I broke the computer or not, but I didn't want to leave any clues as to what I'd been doing. It was better, at least until I had a fuller understanding of my situation, for my captors to think of me as the shy, compliant type and not to feel they had to watch me too closely.

The chair wouldn't fit. The shape of the desk and the shape of the chair meant that I couldn't get all the chair's feet on the desk at the same time, and jostle it even slightly, without one of the feet slipping off and taking the rest of the chair with it.

So I carried the chair to the bed, moved the pillows and set it near the wall. Then, very carefully, I climbed onto it, then gingerly stood up, taking my time and using the wall for support..

The moment I was fully upright, a jolt of electricity shot through me. I fell off the chair, missed the bed entirely, and hit the floor with my side, knocking the wind from my lungs.

In that long, desperate moment before the air came painfully back, I heard Gul Dukat's voice say calmly, "I'm disappointed in you, Teryn."

I raised myself to my hands and knees and coughed, and struggled to breathe. When I could speak, I said, "Gul? Can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you," came the answer. "I didn't know you enjoyed building towers so much. Are you an architect?"

"No," I answered, and coughed.

"No," he repeated, "but you have deceived me."

I wondered how I should respond to that. I wondered how I could have been so dumb as not to realize they would have bugged the room. I wondered where the cameras and microphones where hidden, and whether the Gul could see me now as well as hear me. I wondered if any of my bones were broken.

"Did you hear me, Teryn?" Gul Dukat persisted. "You've deceived me."

I wondered who Teryn was, and why he'd confused our names. "Yes," I answered. "I'm trying to figure out what you're referring to."

"You seemed happy enough to sleep with me last night. I thought we had something good going. And now I find you trying to escape."

"It won't happen again," I promised, and meant it. I wouldn't be touching the top of the wall again, at any rate.

My breathing was becoming more regular now, and I got off my hands and knees and sat on the floor. Moving hurt: I was badly bruised, at best. I felt very grateful that I hadn't landed on my head.

"Gul?" I asked.

"Go ahead."

"I think I need a doctor."

"Why? Are you dying?"

"No, but I think I could have cracked a rib."

"A souvenir, then. A reminder to improve your behavior in the future. Is there anything else, besides your medical status?"

I couldn't believe he wouldn't let me see a doctor. "Yes," I replied numbly. "Are there any other places I should be aware of, that are off-limits, besides the top of the wall?"

"The top of the wall isn't off limits," he answered. "Insulting me is off limits. Consider yourself warned."

"Of course," I answered, confused now. "Did I insult you, Gul?"

"I would consider attempting to run away from me insulting. Wouldn't you?"

"I didn't mean it that way," I said.

"I trust you see it differently now."

"Yes, of course. I was just wondering, are there any other places I need to avoid touching, any other places that have live current running through them?"

The Gul chuckled. "You think there's an EM current running through the top of your wall?"

"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't know what EM is."

"Electro-magnetic."

"Oh. Yes," I replied, feeling foolish. "I did think that."

"Your quarters are safe, Teryn. You have permission to touch any surface you wish - as long as you do it for appropriate reasons. The EM surge you felt came from your implants; I decided a mild buzz would do you good."

"I think I understand now," I said, feeling deflated. What they'd told me about the airlocks, then, could be true, too. I wondered why they called them airlocks. This place was far too big to be a submarine.

"Good," the Gul responded. "Dukat out."

I got up and limped to the bathroom and pulled up my shirt in front of the mirror. I don't know what I had expected to see, besides a large red mark where my side had hit the floor. Wincing, I felt each of my ribs on my right side. I didn't feel any obvious breaks. It still hurt to breathe.

I went back to the bed to try to get some rest. I wished I'd had something to read. I couldn't even count the ceiling tiles, since there were no tiles to count. I decided to review everything I had seen and heard since the linguistics conference, and see if I could come up with any useful conclusions. Then I fell asleep.

Someone woke me with a tray of food. It was a scars-and-fins male again, in the gray uniform. I'd never seen any of the people with scars only on their noses doing anything except scattering before I got close to them. And I hadn't seen any women with the scars and fins, only men. Maybe they were the result of a genetic experiment that produced only males.

The only part of the meal I could identify at all was some kind of fish, and even then it was a variety I'd never seen before. It didn't taste very good but it did give me energy, and that's all I cared about. And anything would have been better than not eating, which I hadn't since the rouladen with Derek the day before.

I ate and forced myself to do some gentle stretches on the bed and walk about the room. I knew I'd hurt more in the long run if I didn't take care of myself now. Then I sat in the chair, propped my feet on the desk and tried to recall everything I had seen, heard, even smelled, in the past two days.

They brought me another meal, built around what must have been a goose egg, and other than that I was left alone. I went over every detail I could remember, but nothing gave me a clue as to where I was, how I got here, who would have done this, or why. I couldn't help feeling like Derek had had something to do with it, though.

Eventually the door swished open a third time. "The Gul will see you now," said my visitor. It was the same guy who'd brought me the goose egg.

“Tell him,” the Gul was saying over his intercom when I arrived in his quarters, “he'll obey my orders or I'd be happy to grant him the privilege of becoming the first Cardassian ore-processor.” He dismissed the guard with a flick of his head but didn't acknowledge me. I clasped my hands behind my back and stood waiting.

After a few more exchanges he said, "Dukat out" and turned to me. "Teryn, do you know how to mend clothing?" he asked.

"Usually," I answered, figuring I'd better qualify my response before he accused me of deceiving him again. "It depends on what type of clothing it is, and what's wrong with it." That turtle-shell armor top he wore, I wasn't sure I could mend, but the pants would be okay.

"It's a lost art, perhaps," he remarked. "Being a Gul isn't always as glamorous as it seems."

"You're the commander of this station, right?"

"And Prefect of Bay Jour," he sneered. "But my little Teryn is here now." He had been standing, and now he sat down in his desk chair and slouched lazily. "Come here," he ordered.

I went to him and he pulled me toward him, hurting my injured ribs. I gasped and stiffened.

"What's wrong?" he asked, looking offended. "You don't like me now?"

"Sorry," I said, "it's just my ribs."

"Whatever you did to your ribs by your own misbehavior," he said, pulling me toward him again, "should not affect your performance for your Gul."

I nodded. "Could I have something for the pain?"

He brushed a lock of hair out of my face with a tender motion of his hand and shook his head. "If I took the pain away," he explained, "I'd be robbing you of the chance to learn your lesson. But enough of this subject. What shall we do tonight?"

I really did try to please him, but he was beyond pleasing. By the time he finally fell asleep, he'd added several bruises to my face, to match the ones on my side.

But in the morning he was all charm. He opened his eyes and smiled. "Good morning," he said. "How did you sleep?"

"I don't think I slept much," I replied.

The smile disappeared. "Pain?" he asked.

I nodded.

"You should have asked me to give you something for that," he chided, and got up. He came back and knelt on the bed beside me and used that hissing thing on my neck again. The relief was dramatic, and immediate.

"Thank you," I said sincerely.

"Don't mention it," he replied, and I wondered if that was an order or just another way of saying 'you're welcome.' I decided to be on the safe side and not bring it up again. "Are you hungry?" he asked.

He must be on drugs, I thought. I wasn't hungry, but I figured I'd better eat while I had the chance. "Sure," I said, "breakfast sounds good."

A framed photo caught my eye, for two reasons. For one thing, it looked so ordinary. In a station full of strange walls, strange desks, strange video monitors, strange turtle-shell-armor uniforms, even strange faces and necks, here was a regular photo in a regular plastic stand-up frame. The other reason was the people in the photo itself. In the middle was a smiling Gul Dukat, and on either side of him were people with the scars on only their noses. On his left was a man, and on his right a woman.

Dukat with Bajoran leader Major Kyra Nerys 

"Is this you with some of your friends?" I asked, hoping to learn more. 

He stopped on his way to the alcove. "That was taken when I became Prefect of Bay Jour."

He'd said something similar last night. I decided I'd better keep the tone light and not appear to be pressing him for information. "You look happy," I remarked.

He nodded. "It was a happy occasion. As soon as I took office, I started making changes. The death rate for those poor people dropped twenty percent."

"Death rate!" I blurted out, in spite of myself. From his behavior yesterday, I could well believe there was a death rate.

"A very unfortunate situation," he said. "They're just not as advanced as we are. But we're changing that."

I felt impressed, in spite of myself. I stood there for a moment looking at the faces of his two companions. "Are these leaders, or spokespeople, for the people of Bay Jour, then?" I asked.

He looked up from the alcove. "They look so innocent, don't they?"

Breakfast was just plain odd. It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad, either. Or maybe I just wanted to get away from the Gul and back to my room. Not that that was going to be the same anymore, either, since now I knew he could spy on me whenever he wanted. What I really wanted was to go home. I missed my kids.

"I'm having company today," he said cheerfully between bites. He seemed to be enjoying the breakfast, at any rate.

"Family?" I asked, then wondered if I should have said that. If he was a result of a genetic engineering project, he may not have a family, exactly.

He didn't seem to mind, though. "A colleague. A fellow Gul, in fact. We have a lot in common."

"Oh, good. I hope you enjoy the visit," I said sincerely.

"I'm more concerned that he enjoys the visit," he replied in a serious tone. "I'll be lending you to him tonight." He leaned toward me and seemed to pin me in place with those awful eyes. "Be sure that you make him happy."

Tweet

Related Posts:

Writing Blitz, Day Ten

Writing Blitz, Day Nine

Writing Blitz, Day Four