Category: fiction

Sex, Memory & Imagination

You’re living a long time. One hundred and five is now the average age of a human. That average is creeping up. We’re all living longer as medical technology monitors and addresses issues 24/7. People aren’t being born, and some children are being kept as children.

Thereby is an argument: if a child is kept physically, emotionally and intellectually at six years old because that’s the age their parent(s) prefer them, but they’ve been alive for forty years, how old are they? Most planets, corporations and governments hold that if they’re maintained at an age, they count at that age if it’s an age whereby they’re somebody’s wards or in a protected status. So, for example, some are adults (which varies mightily in the future) but look like they’re twelve, because they liked how they looked then, so they’re counted as their true age. But if they’re twelve and are treated as twelve years old even though they’re fifty, they’re treated as twelve.

Civilization is more complicated in the future.

One decision many face is what to embody. As memory is augmented to provide greater storage and enhance recall abilities because people are living longer, people typically embody their memories as an avatar that can be compiled as a physical presence. That way, instead of just engaging in internal dialogue with themselves, they can call out their memory and invite them to have a drink or share a meal while they discuss their recollections. Brett’s memory is a tanned blonde woman in a red dress (who doesn’t have a name) and Handley’s memory is a pirate named Grutte Piers, based on the real Piers Gerlofs Donia. These aren’t their first memories but they’re their current memories in ‘Long Summer’.

Something similar has evolved for sex. Many people have decided that fake sex with an avatar of their design is more enjoyable than having sex with another actual person. People have foibles. Foibles can be very irritating. The foibles can be mitigated to some degree but people are a bit unpredictable. Many people have learned that they don’t like their sex partners to be unpredictable.

To solve these issues, people often create one (0r more) sex avatars (sexatars?). Like the memory, it’s an embodiment that’s compiled to exist for a period. People can decide exactly who they resemble and how they’ll act. If they want, they can create animal avatars and have sex with animals as a human or compile or modify themselves to be animals and enjoy their sex. Whatever creepy depravities humanity enjoys can be indulged by creating sex avatars. A few people have married their sex avatars. Avatars are people, too, my friends, except they have different rights.

Sex and memory are the two main items people have embodied as avatars but a few people create others. Some have their intelligence or imagination embodied as an avatar that they can call out for visits. Brett has created an embodiment of his personal computer and communications systems, and calls it Carl. Others have gone the good and evil routes, creating twins of the opposite end of their moral spectrum (as they see it). A few enjoy themselves so much that their have avatars that are exactly like themselves created so they have themselves as company. Most find this doesn’t work well, that as people, they’re not the wonderful companions they thought they are.

All of the avatars are as that as anything humans create. Maintenance is needed or the avatars break down and cease functioning.

With all these facets acting in parallel, the population of humanity is slowly cresting, and the average age is creeping up. The oldest humans are upward of three hundred years old. Despite proliferation of new communication technologies and people living longer, people are living more and more in isolation, with only their memories, sex and other embodiments as avatar companions. Sometimes, they miss family or friends and have ideal avatars of them created, too. It makes for happier holiday meals. Meanwhile, Mom, Dad and Sis are alive on other worlds but never hear from Bro.

Yes, it’s an interesting and complex civilization, in the future. Another day of writing like crazy is in the books (ha, ha).

This post has been brought to you by coffee. Coffee: it’s good for thinking (and bowel movements).

4

Doya Ever…?

Writing like crazy….

Well, actually thinking like crazy and developing background information to help me advance my understanding of what the hell’s going on in ‘my’ novel. I don’t know if I claim it as much as it has claimed me.

But, as frequently happens with me, this noodling about background sprouts tangent ideas. Writing about another intelligent race (the Milennial) and their complexities (the Lavie (which are their elders) gain weight and lose their limbs, becoming a food source for the larvae), my writing brain comments, “Boy, there’s a terrific short story in that.” Naturally, an argument commences between the novel writer in residence in my brain and the short story writer.

Does this ever happen to you? You’re writing one piece but another suddenly calls and makes an inviting proposition?

Naturally, I said no. The short story writer in me has less traction. I enjoy short stories, love reading and writing them, but I enjoy the novel form more. I tilt toward the novel. So I tell the short story writer, “I appreciate the idea, but we need to stay focused.”

“Come on, it doesn’t need to be long, just twenty-five hundred, maybe five thousand words.”

“I said, no.”

“But it’ll be easy. You can knock it off in a couple days.”

I laugh. Writers are always making such promises. “No.”

Pouting, the short story writer sulks away. “You’ll be sorry someday,” I hear him muttering. “You’ll see.”

The novelist doesn’t let me dwell on that. “Excellent,” he enthuses. “You dispatched him with aplomb. Now, on to the Profemies and the heritage left behind their departure….”

4

I Remember

I remember the day we couldn’t set the water coming out of the faucet on fire. That was just the start.

Little Stevie had made the find. He came out and said, “I can’t set the water on fire.” Daddy said, “What are you saying?” I looked up from my texting to see if Stevie was joking, and then texted, ‘St says water won’t catch fire’. B, S and J all sent back ‘OMG’ and shocked emojis. ‘Really’ we all texted and texted ‘LOL’.

“The water won’t catch,” Stevie said. “I’ve been trying for like five minutes.”

Daddy snorted. “You must be doing it wrong, son.” He chuckled the way he does when he’s acting superior. Without looking up from her iPad, Mom said, “Go check on it, Heath.”

“Okay,” Daddy said. “Pause the movie for me, would you?” He stood up, stretching and groaning while Mom paused the movie. I followed Daddy into the kitchen. He was instructing Steve like he was a little kid, which he is, he’s just six, but it pissed Steve off, and Steve was saying, “Give me the lighter, I’ll show you.”

“I got it, I got it,” Daddy said, holding up the lit lighter to the faucet and turning on the water. The water didn’t catch. “Huh,” Daddy said. I laughed. “Shut up,” he said. I laughed again, and texted what had happened to my friends. They all sent LOLs.

Daddy bent down to the running water. “There’s no smell.” Standing up, he yelled, “Bev, the water won’t catch fire. And it doesn’t smell.”

“What?” Mom called back.

‘Water doesn’t smell’ I texted.

Turning off the water, Daddy went into the other room with me and Stevie. “Kid is right, the water won’t catch on fire,” Daddy said.

The earth stopped shaking and the wind fell still. Daddy froze in like mid-step. I tell you, it was unnatural. Then the rain stopped. All of us looked up at the ceiling and listened. “What’s that noise?” Mom asked.

“That’s it,” Daddy said. “There isn’t any noise.”

“You’re right,” Mom said.

I texted, ‘It stopped raining’. Nobody responded. ‘Hey’ I texted.

It was so quiet. Little Stevie said, “Mama, I’m scared.” Tears sparkled in his eyes and gobbed out and down over his cheeks. He’s such a babby. He moved to Mom and held onto her legs. I wanted to do the same but I’m older. I’m supposed to be cooler. “Stop being so clingy, Steve,” Mom said. “Honestly.”

We went to the windows and looked out. The rain had stopped. Weird. Mom’s iPhone rang. “Barb,” she said, meaning, Barb, her sister. She answered it. “Barb. Yeah, it stopped here.” She said to us, “Barb said it stopped raining there, too.”

Aunt Barb was about five miles away, out in the new subdivision by the mall. She lives above a Trader Joes. It’s really cool.

Daddy’s phone rang. “Dan,” he said, meaning his friend, “Dan.”

“Hey,” Dad said into his phone. “Big D.”

Dad calls Dan Big D because he’s a little guy but he has an important job. He’s a store manager but he’s talking about going into politics. Daddy says he should. I don’t know about that. Big D means Big Douche to me.

“I was just about to call you,” Daddy said to Dan and Mom said to Barb, “And Stevie said the water won’t catch on fire. No, Heath tried, too.”

Daddy said, “It’s not raining here, either. When is the last time you remember that happening?” I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me because it hadn’t made any noise. Mom said something else to Barb on the phone and laughed.

“Why isn’t it raining?” I asked. “It’s June. It always rains and hurricanes in June.”

“Thank you, miss obv,” Daddy said as I finished, “Well, what’s going on?” As if they would know.

Mom said, “Come on, everyone, something is wrong. We better turn the channel and see what’s going on.”

“But I’m watching Caddy Shack,” Daddy said. To Big D, he said, “Yeah, it’s the new remake. Yeah, I’m watching it again. Yeah, it’s better than the last remake. I think it’s better than the original.”

Mom said, “It’ll still be there, Heath.”

“Okay, okay,” Daddy said. “Dan says he has CNN on and there’s nothing on it.”

Mom picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. Nobody was saying anything about this. Nobody was texting me either. ‘Hello’ I texted. ‘WU@?’. Nothing. I checked my signal. Five bars. ‘WTF’ I texted. Mom was looking at her iPad and talking to Barb on her iPhone but she said to us, “I don’t see anything on the Internet, either,” like the Internet would be able to tell us anything.

Then it started raining again, and we all sighed, because it sounded normal again. Then my phone pinged. My friends started telling me what was going on. It had stopped raining at their places, too. Mom was talking to Barb and Daddy was talking to Dan, and he started watching Caddy Shack again.

I remembered it all because it was just last week, either Monday or Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, one of those, I don’t remember which. Steve came out with a flaming glass of water to show us and I could smell it clear across the room, which made me feel better.

It was good having it all back to normal, but for that one day, everything was so weird.

5

Here You Are

Need more coffee. Need that caffeine fix. Oh, it’s not what you think, what you might think, no, you think I’m addicted, but I’m not, not really. I guess…if I stop and think about it, I could claim that I am addicted, I’m as addicted as you, I’m addicted to you.

Makes me giggle. You don’t understand, you don’t understand, you have not a clue. And you ask, explain, but you don’t want to know, you think you want to know, but you don’t, not really, because this will break up your little –

Okay, then, okay. I’ll explain. Let me…sip some coffee…and compose myself. Hah. And I will tell you.

It…started so long ago, long before I started drinking coffee. I was a child.

Yeah, weren’t we all? Snark. Well…maybe not….

I was a withdrawn child. Illnesses kept me isolated and alone. Nothing terribly contagious nor of a terrible nature. I was prone to respiratory illnesses and would end up feverish and in bed for weeks, summer, fall, winter, spring. Naturally, these spells would cast their influence over others. Parents would decide…maybe…something is wrong with him, that he’s always so ill. Perhaps you’d better not play with him, Johnny, Alice and Suzy, because I don’t want you to catch anything.

Ignorance. Prejudice. Fear.

So I was alone. I devoured books. We weren’t rich so Mom brought them to me from the library. She worked as a telephone operator, so she often couldn’t go, and they only let her check out a few at a time. Dad was out of the picture. I don’t know if they were actually divorced by then or just separated and working out the paperwork. He was in the military and stationed overseas in Greece, Turkey, Germany, Vietnam. Birthday and Christmas cards reminded me of his existence. Sometimes he came, driving a shiny new Mustang, Thunderbird, or Riviera, but he was only there long enough to for a ride and a dinner and admiration of his new car.

My older sister would sometimes get more books for me, but my older sister was an older sister, developing interests in becoming a woman, which then meant learning fashions of hair, music, clothing, nails and jewelry, and understanding her body and why men suddenly looked at her differently. Yes, she told me about them sometimes, after her friends’ fathers suddenly had a new light in their appraisals of her. It scared her.

I watched television but this was the late sixties, early seventies. We received the big three  networks and PBS. Not much was on that interested a sickly prepubescent boy.

In that time came a cat, a little feline, Tiger, yes, original, a stray young feline who must have belonged to someone else. She came to the porch one warm summer morning when I ventured out to taste the air. Purring, mewing, rolling on her back and rubbing up against me, she was clearly interested in being permanent friends. So I begged Mom. I cried. I confessed about how terribly lonely I was, working hard to make her feel guilty until she surrendered after the usual promises that I would feed and take care of the cat, make sure she has fresh water, yes, yes, yes, I swore to it all.

Taking care of Tiger wasn’t a problem. She liked doing her business outside, always reminded me when she was hungry, and drank from the sink whenever I went into the bathroom. She was a curse and blessing, as they say.

Tiger liked staying with me wherever I settled myself to endure my attacks. We played but she mostly spent her time sleeping or grooming herself. Yet, I noticed she would be grooming and then suddenly just pause and stare at space. Or she would be asleep and awaken with a jump, twisting her head around to stare. And she would keep staring, like something was there, staring and motionless.

After this happened so many times, I began wondering, what did she watch? What did she hear? Why was she staring? I convinced myself that something must be there.

And I read short stories and novels about cats seeing other things….

So….

So.

I began training myself to fall still and watch the space where Tiger looked. I learned to slow my breathing and heartbeat and shut out every distraction. I learned to listen and see….

So I saw them coming.

You might have called them ghosts. That’s what I thought they were, at first. A trick of light that vanished under my fear. I chased the fear away, stealing myself to be stronger and braver. After all, if this little cat beside me could be so brave and watch these others, so could I.

I thought at first they were ghosts and I tried addressing them as ghosts, asking them, “Why are you here,” “Why do you haunt me,” and things like that. I thought they were ghosts because their style of dress was similar to our fashions but dated sometimes, similar but different sometimes. But none seemed injured or dangerous. They just came…seeping in….

One day, one was a little girl. I was on the living room sofa. Bored with ‘Let’s Make a Deal’, I’d turned off the television.

I hated being sick. I wanted friends. I wanted to be able to get up and do things.

The living room featured a large ‘picture window’ as Mom called it. It looked out onto the quiet suburban street. This was a planned housing development. Tiger was staring out the window, as she liked to do. The little girl, long dark hair tied back, in a sundress, was walking down the street. The sundress had no color. Her feet weren’t visible enough to say what she wore. I don’t mean that I couldn’t see her feet because something blocked my vision. I’m trying to explain that her strong little slender legs slowly tapered into nothing at about her knees. She appeared to be walking without feet and wasn’t touching the ground.

“Ghost,” I whispered. Tiger and I kept staring. The little girl passed without looking at me. As she walked by, she gained feet. She wore generic white tennis shoes, as we called them then. Her sundress became blue. Her skin became whiter. I recognized then, I’d been able to see through them to some degree, and now I could not.

I watched her walk down the street. Then, a few minutes later, a woman came down the street. She turned toward the house on the other side, where the Lanceys lived. John had once been my best friend, back when we just played with Hot Wheels. But now he played baseball, which I couldn’t do.

Like the little girl, the woman was semi-translucent and had no feet, but like the first apparition, she gained substance and color, becoming an attractive twenty-ish blonde woman in a tangerine pants suit. She wore sunglasses that covered her upper cheeks as well as her eyes. Large hoop earrings dangled and bounced, catching the sun.

But I was certain…she’d not been wearing sunglasses and didn’t have earrings before, just as she didn’t have feet. Now she had them all.

Now she turned and went toward the Lancey’s cement driveway. Now she entered it and went toward the brick ranch style home. Now she –

Awareness jolted me, awareness like I’d never known. I stared longer at the Lancey house, ignoring the woman. The Lancey house was different than it had been yesterday. I was certain of it but I couldn’t what was different. But watching the woman again, I realized, the Lanceys were no longer neighbors to the Silvermans. Another house separated them, a brick split level that hadn’t been there before.

The woman entered it.

The little girl came out.

The double wide garage door went up. An orange AMX Javelin backed out.

I knew cars. Mom bought me Sports Car Graphic, Road & Track  and Car & Driver when she could. I would have known if that orange car was on our street.

I would have known if that house was on our street.

I mentioned it to my sister when she came home from wherever she’d been with her friends Tracy and Linda. She looked deeply puzzled. “Are you talking about Heather, the little girl across the street? She’s lived there six years. She was born there. Don’t you remember? I went over to see the new baby but Mom didn’t think you should go.”

No, I did’t remember that. That was a vicious twist to the moment. I didn’t remember that at all. That left me to wrestle, which perception was right? Neither fit the parameters for making sense. I couldn’t believe that I’d not noticed that house and car before.

I mentioned the car to Debby. She laughed. “Yes, you love that car. You’re always going on about its engine and wheels and horsepower and stuff.” Giving me a funny look, she walked away.

What she said sounded right but what she said wasn’t true. I knew Heather had not been born in that house because that house hadn’t been there the day before. Yet, after Debby told me that, I remembered, yes, that’s right, they wouldn’t let me into the house.

And then I remembered…walking down the street…and looking at the houses…and deciding, here is where I’d like my house.

I remembered, I would like a friend, and I remembered, I would like a sister.

Then I wanted…a cat, and lo…there was a cat.

I knew I was on the verge of discovering something tremendous. Holding my breath and closing my eyes, I thought, I want to play baseball. And knowing what to expect, I opened my eyes and turned my head.

There was my Micky Mantle autographed bat and my Roberto Clemente glove. My father had given them to me.

I remembered walking down the street. I remembered, I would like a sister, and there was Debby.

But Debby didn’t like me. Debby didn’t want me. I remembered her saying, “You’re always so sick.”

And then…I was always so sick.

Yeah, I know, you’re saying, what? What are you trying to say? I don’t believe this. This guy is crazy.

Sure, say what you will. But a few minutes ago, I said, I want some coffee, and then I thought, I want a computer, and then I thought, I want to write something and put it on the Internet and have someone read it.

And now…here you are….

 

7

‘Speak, Memory’ and Me

‘Speak, Memory’  is a recounting of one person’s creation of a bot based on a friend to cope with their grief. The bot is based on her friend’s emails. It is a fascinating read into how one person turns to clever use of technology and information to bridge her loss.

The tale has meaning to me for my writing. Memory is an enormous aspect of the future in ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’. While death is conquered through complex machinations involving resurrection, regeneration or cloning (multiple paths exist), and diseases and illnesses are staved off by embedded nano-meds (which use compilers and teleporters to seamlessly import medicines and treat you without pause), memory is a larger problem. First, your pre-death memories must be stored and accurately restored to you when you’re returned to the living. People living longer need to remember more, especially as space exploration and colonization exponentially expands and technology keeps racing ahead. Memory thus becomes augmented with biological drives as well as networks. You’re constantly connected.

As part of this extrapolation of what might be, memories of specific people, such as grandparents, are further developed through big data/social media mining. This creates a far deeper and broader database of their personality. Further, the database is housed in an avatar and AI dedicated to being that person. So, for example, your grandfather can be summoned into your presence as an avatar and converse and interact as your companion, even though he passed away several hundred years ago, or still lives, but is on the galaxy’s far side.

Last, as people struggle to remember specifics, many have created a separate avatar that houses the augmented, expanded personal memory. For Brett, his memory is an attractive tan blonde. He does not name her but calls her ‘memory’. Madison Handley, however, once based her memory on Mal Reynolds from ‘Serenity’ and ‘Firefly’. After out-growing it, she changes her memory’s appearance and disposition several times. By the time of ‘Long Summer’, when she’s become a pirate, her memory has taken on the aspect of Grutte Pier, the Frisian pirate formally known as Piers Gerlofs Donia.

As a further component of memory and extended living, I had to determine what route memory will take. Are future people’s memory perfect? What does it mean to perfectly recall a moment? Recent studies show that our memory is very imperfect, and those imperfections help us cope with existence and survive. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. As part of that, which version of memory is collected? The perfect, unbiased version, or our personal edition? In the end, both are collected but only law enforcement normally accesses the perfect memory to resolve conflicts and solve crimes.

The rest of us prefer our personal recollections.

2

The Fork

There is a book called ‘The World According to Garp’. 

It’s not an obscure novel so you might know it. Written by a guy named John Irving, who has written and published several pieces of interesting fiction. Some have even been made as movies. I think this one was made into a movie, and had several major actors star in it.

In the book I reference, the main character is TS Garp. TS Garp is an author. His mother, Jenny, a nurse, also becomes a writer. But her process irritates Garp (as I remember it) because she never seems to indulge in the silence of thinking and editing. She’s always hammering the typewriter.

I often think of that because I love that silence, when I drop a still bomb on my existence, cross my arms and stare out the window to think, where do I go today?

That summarizes my situation. I just finished a major piece of the pirates’ tale. Today, I’m thinking, do I continue writing the pirates’ arcs or do I turn to Pram and his team’s activities, or back to Brett and his role? Each have beginnings and middles to further develop in the push toward climax and denouement. The arcs all seem equally easy and difficult to write, that paradox of writing tension where you’re on a peak, trying to capture the lightning. But I’ve been spending so much time with Handley and her captain and crew, I’ve really enjoyed their company and know them so well. I wonder, how important is that? I know Brett very well, too, but he is a more complicated person, in a complex situation, and yet is the novel’s largest cog. But Pram’s POV offers a major twist and I’ve been sitting on the edge of that for several weeks, letting it brew.

So I sit in personal silence amid the coffee shop’s music and conversations, meditating to a degree about which story to take up. That’s actually a lame description of the process. I open the book in my mind and return to each arc’s place where I paused. Consideration of where they’re stopped and what’s to happen next is studied. From that process, one aspect gathers a stronger brightness, a sharper focus, a more immediate presence. My mind takes up its mental pen. I begin to see and hear words. Words become sentences. Scenes flower.

Then I know where to go, what to write, and I begin again, to write like crazy, at least one more time. Often it’s the middle of a scene. It may not even be ‘connected’ with what’s already written. I know I can write such bridges later. I’m interesting in writing down the bones. I’ll add verisimilitude and substance in the immediate edit. The immediate edit is the stage I conduct after completing a scene, just part of building continuity and managing pace and story.

In that marvelous way that brains can work, my thought processes are segregated and compartmentalized, and while I’ve been thinking about this post and my process and writing, I’ve been thinking about the novel and the aspects I’ve described. From these ruminations have arisen the next piece to write.

Here I go again. It is such a wonderful high, the sort of moments that you hope will never end….

3

Apologies to Joss Whedon

Many science fiction works have affected and inspired me. Hundreds of books, of course, from fantasy like ‘The Hobbit’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, to ‘hard’ science fiction, like Asimov’s Foundation series, and books and series by authors such as Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Biggle, le Guin, Butler, and many more. The ‘Star Trek’ franchise is a large influence, but also ‘Battlestar Galactica’, movies like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ ‘Bladerunner’ (along with several other movies based on Philip K. Dick’s works), ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ and more recent offerings such as ‘District 9’. One series and movie I really enjoyed, however, was Joss Whedon’s adventures of Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, and his crew on Serenity’.

Three things happen in my distant, planet terraforming, space-colonizing future. One is that people are still affected, inspired and shaped by these fictional works. Second, the series is often ‘rebooted’ multiple times. And third, when the reboot takes place, some fundamentals are changed.

Rebooting is a recent trend. We used to just call them a re-make. But as books and movies are rebooted, they’re often changed. Look at all the changes we’ve seen in the reboots and re-makes of Sherlock Holmes. They’re often updated (such as the ‘Holmes’ series, where Watson is a vet of the war in Afghanistan), or given new skills (see Robert Downey Jr’s performance of Guy Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’), but their sex can be changed (like Lucy Liu playing Watson on ‘Elementary’), or their race (James West in ‘Wild, Wild West’), to provide new angles.

So, in my future setting, one of the characters was inspired by Joss Whedon’s ‘Serenity’. In their future, the movie was rebooted as a series, and then more movies followed. But Mal’s character was changed from a man to a woman. Mal was a man (in my version) who took on a female sex and appearance after his wife disappeared. See where all this is going? In a way, future Mal is a Josey Wales – Richard Kimball – Robin Hood aggregate. Mal is a female, with an all-female crew. Jayne, portrayed by Adam Baldwin, is re-named Mahrk, so the character, a female, would have a pseudo male name. My character fantasized about being Mal and traveling the universe in her own ship, and thus ended up working in space for a corporation.

Stealing from reality, many people actually believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Groups and societies are dedicated to this premise. Likewise, my hero, Handley, was once part of a group who believe Mal Reynolds was real, and part of a secret history that has since been covered up.

So, apologies to Joss Whedon for what I’m doing to your creation in the future, but thanks for giving it to us.

And now my coffee cup is empty, and I’m finished writing for today…for the moment.

4

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

Sat Down to Write

I sat down to write today after a pleasing session yesterday. The baristas had gifted me an extra espresso sized serving mocha in addition to my standard QSM. I sipped it down, delighting in the melange of mingling flavors, and I remembered —

A new character’s name is Ckyl. Came to me last night.

A scene I wrote in my head about the starship, River Styx, and its occupants and description.

And more details about tachyon syndrome.

Changes to Chor. I’d focused on sex and sexual preferences and choosing or accepting sexual identities, but I’d not considered some of the other matters available to my future people. So I’d overlooked that Chor is a cat person.

And Pram wonders why becoming a cat person is a popular choice. People don’t want to be dog or bird people, although he’d encountered some of them. He knew of a few who went the centaur route (with one also managing to incorporate a unicorn appearance). A small society of humans had transgened themselves into dinosaurs, and another group into dragons, and there are small knots of gnome, fairy, demon, and leprechaun peoples, but cat people were far the most popular and most frequently encountered. He was pleased, though, because he remained unique. There were a few Titans out there, and a cyclops, and a couple of Hercules pretenders, Minotaurs, Hulks, and Avatars, and super-heroes from ancient comic books, but he was the only Colossus, even after all these years.

Pram had not asked Chor about why she was a furry human Siamese with diamond blue eyes and a lazy, busy tail. Asking people about their choices is impolite.

Okay, now that I remember those things, my imagination is fired up. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

5

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑