Tag: Science fiction

A Dark & Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

My psyche has been talking to me for the last few days. With some reluctance, I recognized what my psyche was telling me. Being a stubborn soul, I preferred ignoring my psyche for as long as I could. Yet, I’d come to a fork. I could continue to the right, along the path I’d been following. I already knew that was rocky. The going was treacherous and uneven. When it comes to writing, following a treacherous and uneven path is mentally and emotionally exhausting, especially if you know that following the other path would be a smoother journey. But —

Exceptions exist. But, the other path was the one my psyche was telling me to take. But the other path didn’t directly relate to the novel I was writing.

Yet it did; I needed to know what happened with Phileas and Brett. Generally, I knew Phileas is a highly respected scientist. Working for a major corporation, she led a team searching for the latest God Particle, a project known, with matter-of-fact drama, as the God Particle Search Project. Significant progress was slow, so another project, private and personal, the stuff of her childhood dreams, drew her.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Phileas first read those words when she was two, but once they were read, everything was changed. ‘A Wrinkle in Time’, by Madeline L’Engle, was the first book she read more than once, and in fact, went on to read a dozen more times. By the third time, she knew all the words and didn’t need to read the book, but settling into bed and opening up a screen above her face soothed her. Being in bed and secretly reading under the softly glowing faintly blue panel was cozy. It was a romantic escape for someone who was otherwise ruthlessly determined, logical, practical and mathematical. In fact, it was a dark and stormy night on Castle Prime, while visiting, when the weather control system in one of the domes malfunctioned, that crystallized the epiphanies that initiated her turn toward her personal project.

It was a dark and stormy night. 

For me to understand what happened with Brett and Phileas, I needed to know more about Phileas and then learn about what happened with her and Brett. I knew many basics. Brett had a son. He didn’t know he had a son. The son, Kimi, had been illegally conceived.

Kimi worked for Phileas on the GPS Project. Brett was a fourth-waver, inhabiting newly terraformed planets on the corporation’s behalf to prove it was safe. Kimi’s ‘fake’ father had manipulated the genetic maps related to Kimi and Brett. The systems had caught the errors but flawed results ended up reversing the maps so the systems thought Kimi was Brett and vice-versa. That’s the basis of the first novel, ‘Returnee’, available on KDP.

While writing ‘Returnee’, I established that the systems thought Brett was Kimi. What I didn’t establish but I knew was that as part of that, Phileas had inadvertently taken Brett when she thought she was abducting Kimi. She took Kimi, along with the rest of her team, because she’d traveled into the future. While in the future, she’d learned things, and now she was covering her trail, and attempting to keep others from following her path – because she knew, in science and technology, that major discoveries like hers rarely happen without like discoveries being made elsewhere.

The result was that the GUFIN virus was created and brought back from the future. And this is where the next novel, ‘Long Summer’, (the work in progress) comes into play. To know what happened with Brett, Phileas, the GUFIN virus, and the Travail, I had to know what happened when Phileas abducted Brett and wiped out his knowledge of what had happened.

And that’s what my psyche was ordering me to do: write that out so I fully understood it. Naturally, I had to write it out in story form, because I think in story-telling form when I’m writing fiction. So, thinking about Phileas and her background, and her literary hero, Meg Murry from ‘A Wrinkle in Time’, I was able to begin:

It was a dark and stormy night.

As I knew, the first line is actually homage to another novel — and Snoopy, of course, loves it — but once I wrote it, Phileas leaped to life.

Time to shut down and call fini to another day of writing like crazy. No words were written in the novel today, but so much progress was made.

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Twelfth Night

A friend gave us tickets to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a thank you gift.

We attended the play last Sunday night. It was updated to take place in 1930s Hollywood. That premise seemed a little thin at times, as characters were still called the count and the jester, and the studio was referred to as a land. Overall, it was well acted and enjoyable…for as much as I paid attention. For as the lights dimmed and the play began, I thought, “What does Handley’s imagination look like?”

Almost everyone (future studies estimate over ninety percent of people) in the future have an augmented memory. The augmented memory has a variety of options available. One of them includes creating an avatar of your external memory. This presents you with the opportunity to talk to your memory about your memories and life. Your memory can also be a memorable companion, so you’re never alone. You always have your memory, which is useful in space.

Madison Handley, however, went a little further than the norm. Although she embodied her memory as an avatar, she also embodied her imagination as an avatar. Thus, she and her memory played with her imagination as well as her friends when she was young. But, as her mother warned, “Someday your imagination is going to get you into trouble,” her imagination caused trouble and Handley took the fall. (It is her imagination.) After that day arrived, Handley banished it. Now her memory is requesting an audience for her imagination on its behalf because her imagination has some suggestions to help Handley out of her current situation.

All of this led to the standard use questions about the character. As I developed the background to this while at the play, I thought of other imaginary characters and the troubles they caused. A movie was semi-recalled. It seemed like it was in the 80s or 90s. The imaginary character was green and male. They had disappeared, but now they were back.

That’s all I could remember. I thought I would google it sometime but didn’t get around to it. Then, today, while thinking about the imagination and shaving, I remembered, ‘Drop Dead, Fred’, Phoebe Cates, Tim Matheson, Marsha Mason, 1991. Then, remembering those sudden details, I searched for confirmation on the net. Yea, verily, I was correct. The movie only received 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I wondered, why do I remember it so well?

All of this cogitation, delays and results – the process – amused me. Took a while of circling but the memory finally landed.

Now back to my novel. I still don’t know her imagination’s appearance but I believe that will come. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Hear That Sound?

Do you hear that sound? I think of it as a thousand thousand metallic and plastic insects clicking their way around the world. It’s really millions of fingers typing on keyboards. It must be happening after reading this headline:

Cosmic radiation may leave astronauts with long-term cases of ‘space brain,’ study says

I mean, come on. Look at all the graphic novels, horror tales and science fiction stories that headline can inspire. The actual story behind it is not as rosy, citing the chance for many long-term ill effects, including chronic dementia.  But the story also says, “But it’s not clear exactly what effect space radiation has on the brain because there are different types of radiation and they’re delivered in different doses.” Maybe space brain will develop mutant space zombies (which may be redundant, as I think zombies are mutants). Or space brain unlocks telekinetic and telepathic powers of which we’ve fantasized.Maybe space brain triggers weird time travel or teleportation skills, or the ability to see or experience other dimensions.

Of course, space brain may just cause space rage or space laze or space gaze. Who knows?

Let your imagination guide you.

 

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Greetings from a Sexagenarian

Back when my mother was in her late seventies, she went dancing on Friday nights. She often mentioned how much she enjoyed it, and enthused about the old people and their dancing skills and energy.

That always drew my laughter. “The old people? Mom, you’re old.”

Impatience snapped through her response. “I mean the really old people, you know, in their nineties.”

While I understood her point, it amused me that she didn’t think of herself as old. Now, at sixty, I understand better.

My wife was in a conversation with a man in his mid-eighties. She’s a few years younger than me and mentioned to him that she was middle-aged.

He seemed amused. “Middle-aged? Isn’t that well behind you?”

I was taken back when she told me. If she’s younger than me and she’s not middle-aged, than what am I? What constitutes middle-age?

Does it matter?

Not really, and yes, and no. Middle-aged, as already demonstrated, is a vague, inaccurate term. Definitions by psychologists and institutions vary, as it does by era and culture.

Part of it, which disturbed Mom, and bothers me, are the connotations associated by these terms, young, middle-aged, and elderly. Think ‘young’ and contemplate the images and ideas springing to mind. Substitute ‘elderly’ and ‘middle-aged’.

Yet, in most of the advanced world, these labels mean less and less. So I’m taking up the Latin route. I’m sixty, so call me a sexagenarian. I like it. Easy to spell, and it has sex embedded right in it. Mom, in her eighties, is an octogenarian.

I mean, what does middle-age conspire to mean? I’ve been accused of being immature, old beyond my years, and an old man before his time. I’ve also been deemed young at heart by some, immature, or young in spirit by others. My older friends – in their late sixties to upper eighties – call me their young friend.

It’s all context and impressions. Like everything else, a spectrum of behavior, expectations and impressions establishes others’ perceptions and judgement. Yet this can change by day. Give me a short night of sleep and I can appear as a cranky old man. Pour a little beer in me and I can be as immature as a two-year old. Mostly, I’m somewhere in between.

I don’t dress ‘old’ but nor I dress ‘young’. I adopt dress that is neat without calling attention to me. My hair is thinning and retreating as fast as antarctic ice (but with less alarm), and when the sun gets its rays on it, it goes silver and white. Do I care?

Hell, yes.

And hell, no.

See, I’m trapped on that spectrum. I logically understand aging and its impact. I also appreciate the freedom of aging, and its limitations. I know I can’t do anything about it, nor influence others’ impressions of my age and their labels, so why care? But then someone says, “Isn’t middle-age behind you?” and I’m newly irked.

In the future setting of my novels, ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’, you can bet it’s addressed, because we’re driven by advertising, perception and self-image, themes that sharpen in that future setting. You can bet that a civilization that has developed a technological work-around to dying has done the same with aging’s impact and their appearance.

It becomes an exercise for the characters and their thinking. Many embrace genetic sculpting to develop a look which they like and others appreciate. It’s just like hair, mustache and beard styles and colors, or even jewelry. Some take up the approach, how do I want to look today? What color should my skin, eyes, and hair be? Others emulate famous people, but more establish a look and keep it. A few chose to resemble cats, dogs, dragons, centaurs, and other creatures. It’s almost free and relatively easy.

The 4G in my future (the fourth generation of space colonists) have taken it to an extreme, part of their statement about who they are and their stand. Their leaders look prepubescent. That fad is spreading. They think it’s a meaningful statement of who they are and represent, but others who have lived longer and done more, mostly understand how little that appearance really means. There are some who are more easily swayed, or want to be included in the new youth movement. It’s fun to think about and one of the great joys of writing fiction.

In one of my vaguely conceptualized ideas, people who become zombies immediately look young and beautiful, which sways a large segment of weak thinking people, who want to look young and beautiful again. And as zombies, they have no cares about work, taxes, politics, wars, civil rights or the environment.

Which takes me from here to there and back again. Because, after all, weren’t we really talking about mindless zombie thinking about what it means to be old?

 

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The Writing High

I’ve been working hard on three separate chapters in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. These chapters were all about the pirates.

It’s been stressful and challenging. Research and heavy thinking were demanded. I was putting together how the pirates interlock with the larger story. It was like trying to weave with spider webs sometimes.

The first chapter was exposition and interactions aboard the Narwhal as the new crew learned about one another. We were introduced to the main pirate character, Handley, her memory, Grutte Pier, and her parrot, JR. Handley’s background of being shaped by a reboot of ‘Serenity’ was included, and the ongoing debate among this loose confederation about being called pirates versus being called freedom fighters.

My use of ‘we’ in ‘we were introduced’ was deliberate in that last paragraph, as I met her and came to know her through the organic writing process. We’ve become pretty close.

The second chapter was about the pirate ship’s hunt for targets and increasing acrimony and dissatisfaction among the crew with the captain. None of them know him, and he’s a swearing doom and gloom machine. It seems like he’s always pissing on them.

The final chapter was the most satisfying to write and edit as the pirate ship Narwhal encountered the Intrepid and Missouri. Editing, revising, proofing and polishing led to that most glorious of experiences, a writing high. I sit back, so damned pleased with how the scenes were unfolded, meshed and finished. It’s one of hundreds of tasks required toward a finished novel, but it was a big one, and it feels awesome. This is absolutely why I write.

Now, though, wistfulness shrouds me. Half of my coffee remains and I think, what’s next? I’ve only been writing ninety minutes. My rear end isn’t even numb yet but I’ve emerged from the creating fog. Slowly the high drains behind the demands to continue. The novel isn’t finished.

Weeks, maybe months, of writing, editing, et al, remain. For now, I’ll enjoy the high, or more correctly, given my nature, try to enjoy it.

My coffee is cold anyway.

Cheers

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

The Hip Bone Is Connected to the Tachyon

I’m having fun with science fictional physics, conceiving way out ideas for ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. Part of this is playing with the chip. What’s a chip, you say? This is actually a chi particle. 

The chi particle is the essence of life energy, the spark that brings inanimate matter to life. In my grand theories, there is a formula of balance that I’m still working out involving the need for the universe to maintain an equilibrium between the chi energy and all of the rest. Most importantly for the entire balance of understanding, the chi particle begins in the realms of dark matter.

Additional characteristics for my grand particle begins with the hypothetical and unproven particle, the tachyon. Like the tachyon, the chip travels faster than light, traveling even faster than the tachyon. Its imaginary mass attracts tachyons. Tachyons become knotted with the chips. As knotting happens, the tachyon draws energy from the chip, slowing both the tachyon and chip. But the chip’s mass is not a direct proportion of the tachyon’s mass, but compounds the tachyon’s mass, adding to the knotted chip’s mass. As the chip-tachyon knot slows toward the speed of light, the tachyon gains more energy, slows more and degrades, giving up its mass to the chip. The chip, acquiring actual mass, begins a transition from dark matter to matter and acquires gravitons. The chi knot seeks the proper stew of atoms and conditions to develop and begins evolving as a life form.

This all is pretty preliminary. It has no math underpinnings, and no doubt many people will tell me either, you’re drinking too much coffee, or you’re fucking nuts. They’ll also grimace, appalled by my display of ignorance, but it’s fun for me, and provides further structure for developing my plot and writing the novel. I mean, this is why we call it science fiction.

Sometime, when I’ve advanced my thinking about it more, I’ll post a snapshot of tachyon telepathy. Remember, as Brett learns (eventually), what happens in stasis, doesn’t always stay in stasis.

I’m twenty-six thousand words into ‘Long Summer’. The summer’s computer issues threw me out of my writing – conceiving – imaging rhythm, and it humbled me. I gleaned how much I take for granted the ability and opportunity to sit down and write.

Got my mocha. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

9

Tying Lines Together

Again, so the lines follow the characters, or the characters follow the lines. First up is Pram, the Colossus, who is employed as a terraformer despite his wealth. That’s how he enjoys spending his time, turning uninhabitable planets into places where humans and animals can live and breed.

Brett has a separate story line, and we know how Pram and Brett’s paths cross. Now, we also know how Brett and Kimi originally interacted via virtual mail in ‘Returnee’, where Kimi explained their relationship to Brett as Brett coped with being shipwrecked on Earth, his lost memory and malfunctioning Backhand (who insisted on calling him Stephane, which actually made sense later). So that’s all understood. What must be sorted here and now (or sometime in the course of writing this mangled tangle) is what’s going on with Tauren and Kimi? (Keep in mind Tauren’s true identity, which Kimi suspects but can’t yet prove.) (Also keep in mind what Tauren did to Brett, although Brett doesn’t know that – yet, but that’s one of the things he’s to learn – need to define, refine and capture his learning process, too – do a snapshot.) What happens on Kimi’s mission on behalf of Tauren that takes him to Pram in search of Brett? (Oh, does he find out the truth? Interesting thought.)

Last, I must figure out the relationship between humanity’s increasing fear of death (even though they no longer die, because they’re continually resuscitated, thereby causing a proclamation that they’ve now conquered death and space (false and false)) and Tang, and his agenda.

(And what exactly did happen with Tauren? That must be clarified for myself. I need to write a Tauren snapshot. I see the need for several snapshots.)

And the next last is that other piece regarding Brett’s recovered knowledge (about the Willow Glen attack) and how that’s folded into the next sequel. (See, that’s another snapshot.)

What about the diamonds? Good question. Another snapshot is needed about them.

I think I’ll also create a snapshot of the terraforming process Pram follows so those details can be incorporated.

Okay, it’s all becoming clear-er-ish. Time to write like crazy, one more time, and see where these characters and their lines take me.

Giddy up.

3

Delivery Rules

I know he’s out there. Watching. Waiting, exercising Zen patience. I know the Delivery Rules.

First Rule: inconvenience the customer as significantly as possible.

It’s not about profit and loss or corporate vision and mission statements. It’s about people with power. They have the package. I want the package. So they have the power.

Oh, delicious power, how they love watching me leap up when a truck passes my house. “Is that it?” they mock, imagining my voice, bringing up their super-powerful binoculars to see my disappointment, laughing as they finger a few more drooping French fries into their mouth.

They don’t know that I know the rules. I’m aware of them and their delivery watch. “Keep hidden,” I tell my wife. “Don’t go past any windows.”

“This is ridiculous,” she answers.

“Shhh,” I hiss, pointing up. “They’re listening.”

She stares at me.

I explain, “They’ll know you’re here. We want them to think we’re not home or can’t come to the door.”

Amazement disturbs her gaze. “And why do we care if they know I’m here?”

“Shhh.” I look out the windows. Of course I can’t see a delivery vehicle. They’re not fools. They cloak the van with invisibility so they can stay out there, watching, without being detected, until they believe I’m not home or available and ‘attempt’ delivery. I know how this works.

I move closer to my wife so I can whisper. “They’re out there. They’re waiting for me to leave or take a shower. Then they’ll ring the bell. I won’t hear it so they’ll leave a notice and try again tomorrow. That’s how they get you.”

She stares at me. I don’t know what that look means. “How do I fit into this?” she asks in a Very Normal Tone.

Her refusal to keep her voice down disturbs me. “Quiet,” I hiss. “Come on. What’re you trying to do?” Realizations penetrate my thinking. “They got to you, didn’t they?”

Her eyes widen. “Who?”

But I get it. I understand. “Never mind.” I smile. “I was just joking.” I let slip laughter. “Pretty convincing, wasn’t I?”

She doesn’t seem convinced but I put her behind me and leave the room. Out there, in the living-dining-kitchen great room, I pace and pace, trying to figure out what I can do.

But it doesn’t matter. They have her. They’ve already won the day. Yet, I can’t give up. Not that easily. I’ve been playing the game too long. This isn’t my first delivery. “I’m going to take a shower,” I call, very loudly.

“Okay,” she answers, a mumble.

I go into the master bath and turn on the shower, hoping to fool them, and then slip into the hall to get to the front door to wait. I meet my wife coming down the hall. She looks startled. “I thought you were taking a shower.”

Checking on me. Oh, I get it. I smile. “I am.”

“But you have all your clothes on.”

I nod. “I know.”

Shaking her head, she walks past, saying, “I think you need to relax.”

Relax, oh, they’d like that. Hearing her turn off the water, I run back into the bathroom. “What are you doing?”

“You’re wasting water,” she replies.

Pushing past her, I turn the water back on. She’s talking but I can’t understand her. “What?” I ask. She’s talking again but I still can’t understand her. “What?” I shake my head. “I can’t hear you. You’re talking too low.”

Diversion, I realize, and then the phone rings. The rules require them to ring the doorbell, but if I don’t hear it or answer in time, they leave – and then they won. “Was that the doorbell?” I run for the door and yank it open as my wife answers the phone.

A notice hangs from the door handle. I rush out to see if I spot the truck, a rookie error born from frustration. They already cloaked the truck. Nobody can hear or see it now.

“Did your computer come?” My wife asks from behind me.

I smile without looking back. “No. They left a notice.” I go back in past her, glancing at her face. They got to her. I see it in her brown eyes. I don’t know how. Probably bribed her with a discount coupon for shoes.

“I’m sorry,” she says, closing the door, but there’s no sorrow in her voice.

“That’s okay,” I answer with false cheerfulness. “There’s always tomorrow.”

Yes, there’s always tomorrow, when we’ll play again. I know the rules.

Someday, I’ll win.

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