|
|
Well, I suppose I should inform the general readership of this site as to an important detail that I have neglected to mention for the last three months. While I am aware that the general readership consists of basically friends of the Warden and people to whom I do not wish to associate myself with anymore, nonetheless I figured that I may as well make an announcement regarding the progress of the novel. You see, I told myself that if I was incapable of finishing the first draft by new years eve I’d give up this foolish quest to drag myself out of poverty via literary accomplishment and accept the fact that I’ll be working horrible jobs that I hate till I finally die in my bathtub by drowning in two inches of water as a feeble crazy old man. Sometime in November I realized I was going to actually hit my goal, by mid December I finished it.
What I did was power through the book like a man possessed. When I reached the end I went back and read what I had. Then I read it again and again. I’ve read it 10 times in draft form and it was on New Year’s eve that I tinkered with the ending a little and came up with a tidy resolution that leaves questions unanswered but puts a nice bow around the main plot line. I hadn’t posted these later chapters on the site because I knew as I was writing them, and even when I was writing the ones I DID post, that this draft version was going to be drastically different from the final edit. Since no one comments on this site, well my articles, other than Jeen and the aforementioned people whom I am not interested in the opinions of, I didn’t think anyone would really notice or particularly care one way or another.
I left Adamus staring out a broken frame of glass that used to be a massive bay window at the top of the highest skyscraper uncertain about what will happen next but satisfied in his vengeance. No. I left Adamus standing on the train station to Hamburg to meet a friend he thought was long-dead. No. Adamus and Serra left the city and went to the ruins of the old world and rebuilt a small independent society knowing that in the end the peace they create will not last long. No. It could have been any of those three I suppose but it’s not. The past three months have been a major re-tuning of the framework I created last year in the big push, because I realized something after I had finished.
There was definitely something missing from the narrative. It seemed, to put it mildly, disingenuous; but I couldn’t place my finger on why exactly that was the case until a conversation with a friend of mine that broached the subject of the book’s progress. He looked at me deadpan and said, “this character sounds like he has a lot in common with you.” That’s when it dawned on me. I had been writing this book as though the main character and I were the same person, and therefore his narrative is really my narrative. How I would react to these situations, or at least how I’d like to think I’d react. The problem with the finished draft was the narritive style, it was all wrong for the character and who he was. So this re-tooling has been interesting because now I’m trying to say it like another person would.
So the main character’s a little more cowardly, a little more conflicted, and a little more confused about his role in everything. Outside threats become more ominous, confrontations inspire more dread. Serra’s different too, not just my idealized version of what loyalty should be, she’s more ambiguous now in her motives and plays off Adamus like a fearful element because she’s leading him, in his perspective, to do dangerous and unnecessary things. He’s less connected. Less in control. In other words, more interesting because the situation in the newer version I’m working away at feels like it may have hit the right chord.
Another thing I wasn’t wholly satisfied with was my original idea to kind of have a kinda classic/progressive rock soundtrack to it. Each chapter named after a song, each book named after an album. Which made me try to capture the mood of each song in each chapter, giving the narration a manic and uneven feeling. It’s not layers of plot building up to a final conflict, but many little things adding up to an abrupt end. This version lacks that, chapters aren’t dictated by an invisible soundtrack.
So basically what I have right now is a skeleton I’m applying muscle and organs to in the hopes of zapping it like Frankenstien’s monster thus unleashing it upon the literary public to screams of horror and rage. That’s how I roll, yo.
Go straight to Post
Popularity: 1% [?]
This may sound like a foolish thing, but I wasn’t afraid. Serra wasn’t either, she stood defiantly in the middle of the room, as though there was nothing in this world that could move her. She says, “try to keep up.” Then she sprung forward, the force of which made the Cicada dip slightly, she struck the door with enough force to rip it completely off it’s reinforced hinges, and rode it right into the side of the police cruiser that had it’s guns aimed and ready to fire, the magnetic lock cable it had anchored to us to halt our movement snapped off with ease, whipping back into it’s reel. The moment she struck it, she used her momentum to leap to the side and out of sight. The way she moved, the force of the impact as she hits the police cruiser, sending it spiraling off towards the ground. It looked ridiculous, spiraling away like that, it’s black gunmetal shape almost giving the impression that it were a large fly that had just been swatted away.
Cyborg. Probably high-level bionics. Military grade muscle fiber interlaced with a skeletal support system. Probably bone density supplements and nano-fiber. Definitely had spinal grafts, maybe titanium plating. Judging from the force she knocked that door off, I’d say she had the same treatment for her arms that she had for her legs. As a matter of fact I wouldn’t be surprised if she had an artificial body, but that seemed unlikely. Her touch was too warm, she still had human emotions. Something about taking the leap from human to bio machine did strange things to people. In my limited experience of it and what I’ve seen, the top police officers and some of the private security guys that go through the process lose their humanity in the process. They were perpetually on the net, never tired, never seemed to give a damn about anything. An emotional no-man’s land. Not her though. To be honest, I had expected to have been popped off by now. I confessed everything to her, not really out of trust, but because I thought that I was going to be executed any moment so I didn’t see much point in hiding anything. She said she was my bodyguard, and I laughed in her face. What a fool I was, she really is an army unto herself.
That’s when a more dangerous notion wormed it’s way into my head. I began to have a little bit of hope. It happened so fast, like a lightning striking, that I couldn’t stop myself. Once one begins to hope all sorts of insane ideas begin to gestate in one’s head. Ideas of escape, survival, even victory. In my experience hope was something that happened to other people, I never dared tamper with the stuff. That way I was never let down too bad.
Cicadas were piloted with an old control stick setup. Like you see in the ruined sectors of Europa, hovering around from landing to landing, scavenging old tech and fuel. There was a pain that resonated from the back of my head. Then what sounded like someone took an old circuit board and put it in a microwave. Then a flood of memories, reality and dream seeming to blend together in that moment. Zombie-like I wandered over to the control panel and pressed the manual override. With the magnetic lockdown the police cruiser Serra destroyed was placing on us gone, I could get the ship moving again. Outside I was half seeing, through the cockpit window, Serra holding on to the railgun mounted on the top of another police cruiser, and shadows of the past. The conflicting vision was of me piloting a helicopter away from a corporate strike team, you could see the logos on their body armor shinning brightly amidst the snow. They were firing up at me, but more to get my attention then to try and shoot me down, I must have left them behind. The image faded, but I found for a second I could think about it free of pain.
Click to continue reading “Monolithic Horizon; Act 1: Heathen – Chapter 6: Dead Man Walking”
Go straight to Post
Popularity: 1% [?]
When I first met John Seifer, it was at a press conference. This was after a failed assassination attempt on yours truly. The speech was my glorious assurance to the people that those responsible were brought to justice and that the threat has passed, but my heart wasn’t in it. The speech was flat, but no one seemed to notice that I didn’t even seem to believe what I was saying anymore. This is because I realized that I had become so used to lying that it came natural to show the correct inflection and emotion at times, like a reflex. While I didn’t summon up any feeling, there was no difference. This made me wonder what the point in me being a figurehead was. It was clear no one really paid attention to the government anymore, the people more that likely felt that I was totally irrelevant. Therefore I eventually came to the realization that I was most likely going to die. It wasn’t, as they say, a matter of how but when. The Commission’s market research data showed that most people didn’t even realize the government was still in operation, and therefore my termination was inevitable. That’s what Seifer told me after the conference was over. Off the record. It was the first time anyone talked to me like I was anything more than a tool, so I suppose that my guard was lowered slightly. Maybe that gave me the false pretense that he actually cared if I lived or died. Which, I should have known was far from the case.
This was over a year ago.
We only met about a dozen times, and each time it was off the record. From what I was led to believe about that sort of thing, with enough money you could say and do whatever you wanted and it wouldn’t be used against you. Which, was rather stupid in retrospect, but I was desperate for someone to talk to. Desperate to speak about the things that concerned me after ten years, almost seven of which I felt like a walking corpse, barely capable of functioning without being told what to do and where to go. Over the last three years the headaches would get more frequent and more terrible, a cackling electric fire across my synapses, feeling like my brain had been replaced like a teeming swarm of fire ants. The thing about the noises, is that I could hear faint sounds, almost like voices. Yet, it wasn’t English or slang or anything human. It kinda sounded like a phone connection. A modem. You see some of those in the more low tech areas of Europa. For the like of me I don’t know how I knew that. There’s a lot of memories in my head, unbound like that. Little fragments of information, little factoids but they aren’t based on any experience of mine. This, combined with my normal experiences day in and out has accumulated over the years into this growing hatred for The Commission. Like lighting a waterproof fuse, once ignited there is only one possible outcome.
Click to continue reading “Monolithic Horizon; Act 1: Heathen – Chapter 5: A Better Future”
Go straight to Post
Popularity: 1% [?]
Not dead. Eyes open, and there’s smoke and chunks of metal and plastic, white material from the airbags, the foam inside them already drying up, causing the powder left in it’s wake to give thier surface a faint glow in the blinking red crash lights. There is an automated message playing on a cracked screen informing me that the crash is indeed over, and to exit the vehicle and seek medical attention. Oh and don’t forget to have a pleasant day and thank you for using Circa inc for all your commuting needs.
Memories, triggered by the smell of electrical fire, the pain radiating from my head and limbs, by the feeling of being buried in rubble. Somehow the past was playing catch up with me. The accident that took me out of commission couldn’t be the source, there was no memory from that, as it was explained to me it happened so fast and was so violent that I was immediately incapacitated and unconscious. Maybe a mine, bomb, grenade, betrayal, crash. No, this memory was much older, from something deep in the past, and the pain normally associated with recalling anything from anything from that far back was momentarily less horrific then the current head trauma I seem to have suffered. I was buried alive at one point. There was a city, I vaguely remember. Hands, frail and with chipped nail polish on them start digging and I’m crying. Then the memory fades, the pain overwhelms the forces of my concussion’s. Usually if something triggers an old memory; say, a smell, a moment, a voice of a turn of phrase someone uses around me, I get the sensation that my head is just full of those little white and black waring dots from white noise, all of them trying to kill their way through each other and out my ears. Like a loud electrical buzzing that rumble across gray matter like thunder. So I push those feelings down, I forget the moment, avoid it if I can and go about my normal routine. Smile, wave, talk to the reporter, lie a little, lie a lot, who cares, what’s it matter, do it and don’t ask questions and get your pay and go home.
With a tremendous struggle I turn enough to look out the slot window, between a piece of concrete and some cables and glass the sky is burning in the background. Like an apocalypse, a personal one, because nothing is a cliché when it’s happening to you. The sky was burning, the smog and clouds glowing in hues of orange and red that seem to rumble and pulse with their own hidden life. My home was up there, old books, old tech that I had collected. The sitting room where leaders met with me to take pictures and shake my hand and smile then berate me and criticize me when the cameras were off. A grim smile begins to worm it’s way across my face, with the knowledge that at least that part of my life is over. This is what you could call, my pink slip. Termination papers. Write-up. In every sense of the word, I was irrevocably fired.
Click to continue reading “Monolithic Horizon; Act 1: Heathen – Chapter 4: Us and Them”
Go straight to Post
Popularity: 1% [?]
The capsule screen is black. I haven’t pressed the button yet. When the screen is black you get a decent reflection, it’s the kind of black mirror you envision in children’s stories. The colors are faded enough to mask how thing really are, but enough to give you the details. My face stares back at me, with it’s cut-too-short brown hair, it’s slightly wrinkled brow, and bright blue eyes. Bright enough to almost negate the toned-down colors reflected in our makeshift black mirror.
I lean forward, press a button.
The sky opens up around me, the only structure that still stretches up higher than my current position is the Demer Complex. It’s one of those arcologies, the kind that were ripped off from old oriental architecture. It’s a self-sustaining structure. A self-contained city. The standard rails won’t operate on it, you’ve got to get on the one railway that goes around the circumference of the tower, which, from this height looks like a mountain of steel Tall and angular. They call the railway system for the complex the stairway to heaven. Once you’re rich enough to ride it, you won’t be coming back down to gallivant amongst us mere mortals.
The capsule takes a dip. They call these capsules Circas. The kind I use, because it’s got a duel piloting system. That means that I can control where I go to a degree, I can choose routes, and change them on the fly by touching the screen and pointing to a different building, rail, whatever. The conduit towers are supposed to be used for two purposes, to catch people coming back from orbit and to place people in orbit. You can only use it as a quick jump halfway across the city if you happen to press the release at the moment it is about to pull you upwards and inside the tower. Inside your vessel is subject to what a spike would be inside a rail cannon.
During the decent I get a slight case of vertigo, this is all right and perfectly normal. When you lose the sensation of gravity and then are quickly reminded of it’s presence you tend to have moments like this. This is my vacation. This is my therapy. Thinking that I might die, it’s not as frightening as you may think. Especially when there’s always the prospect of my job looming in my mind’s horizon, making my thoughts of the future only of two things, which I’ve already had in ample supply in my life. Dread. Regret. The important thing to remember is, I’m not a monster. My job is the president of The Commission. You look at my face on the news every night, you hear my voice in every national address and speech. I show no emotion other than optimism, and what I say never has any true meaning. You see, there is an arrangement to ensure this is the case.
Click to continue reading “Monolithic Horizon; Act 1: Heathen – Chapter 2: Behind Blue Eyes”
Go straight to Post
Popularity: 1% [?]
|
|
