While writing part eight of my current short story series I introduced a new female character named Racquelle whom I rather quite like. I can see going off on a story tangent with her fairly easily, but the arc of the story I’m telling doesn’t really require her in that way. I suppose I could pocket her for some other stories later on. Or kill her off and use her daughter or niece to fill that space in a future short story series. Tough call to make. I can see her adding alot of humor and toughness to what I have planned, but I feel like she will need another two or three self contained problems to solve to use her properly if she is to live. Which could potentially hoop my plans, like a rough finger in the bum. What to do what to do. I know the broad strokes of what I want to happen and where the whole thing is to lead. It spans the galaxy, time and humanity as a whole. That’s alot of ground to cover for an interconnected short story series by an amateur writer. I think I’ll give in to my penchant for ballooning stories and characters. After all that’s how I wrote the first book chunk. Letting the people created within find their own ways to fix a problem or create new and interesting ones. All while heading ‘roughly’ in the direction I planned. But perhaps in a haphazard manner. I’m about to get busy with work, and I’m on day 36 or 37 of writing everyday, so I want to keep the momentum up, and the discipline in place. The habit of just writing nonsense blog posts was what triggered a vivid daydream, and hatched the second chunk of this series, so bonus points for perseverance I guess. Do I – kill off Racquelle unceremoniously, secret her away for a later date, involve her more deeply in the coming story, or ignore her for the sake of the initial story line I had half baked in the first place? If she works for me, like Ms Taylor did in book one, then she may stick around for a while, and do some crazy shit.
Category: With Thoughts Like These
Dreading the return to school.
Have my kids at home for the rest of this week and then as of Monday they will return to in person learning. At least until everything crumbles, or one of them gets a sniffle and they all have to come back for 1, 5, or ten days of isolation.
This wasn’t so bad when I just had the one school aged child, and we were on a less transmissible early variant. But two kids – fighting and whining and getting very little out of their online classes is a real pain. Upgrading their learning by being in person is great, but worried sick of an infection and serious illness, the potential for a constant slew of interruptions to class is going to be just as bad.
I am going to vent / whine / complain about it here, and now, incase that wasn’t already very clear. Feels very much as if we are damned if I keep them home, or damned if I send them back into the fray. It’s all just a little exhausting to be honest. Losing sleep and changing my mind every other day isn’t much help either. Does the social isolation and sub par quality of elearning outweigh a possible mild infection? Or are my kids the ones who will wind up in hospital on ventilators, or suffer life long complications from long covid? It is a really horrible choice to have to make.
We were all violently ill in Jan/Feb of 2020, but was that the OG COVID-19 or a run of the mill flu. It left me ill for three weeks and then some, but at that stage no one could get a test unless you were on deaths door and in the hospital ICU. And I wasn’t anywhere near that bad. I did get prescribed Tamiflu which was awful, but I came through it five days later on the mend so…
Times like these I wish we lived somewhere warmer, as being able to ride our bikes, swim, hike and be outside in the sunshine. Made elearning far more bearable to just run outside to burn off steam. We’re not so keen when it’s well below zero with nearly two foot of snow on the ground. Snow and cold lose their appeal pretty quickly here. Although the crystal clear blue skies and sunsets are gorgeous.
Take care of yourselves. I don’t envy the choices we have to make in order to survive this.
Snow Day: Part Deux! The snow plowening of school parking lots and walkways.
Well good people of the world, it would seem that mother nature was not yet ready to concede her grasp on the Covid circuit breaker known as online elearning. So after yesterday’s massive 21.6 inches of snow fall in some portions of southern ontario the grounds keepers weren’t able to keep up with snow removal and their usual cleaning duties, thus we are gifted one additional learn from home day. Which is… yeah, fine by me. Did a little bit of driving late yesterday, and I’m good with this decision. Seems that two years of working from home has left many Canadians lacking in the common sense required to drive in almost two feet of snow. So the break is welcome.
As a side note, somewhat related to it being a snow day. I really shit the bed by not picking up a snow blower in the off season. I grabbed a couple other tools for the house we needed, and balked at having to pick up a heavy awkward snow blower. Now that my back and shoulders are singing with strain and rage, I regret that decision by summer time/ fall me. What a dope! This is Canada, snow is a thing here. Mind you I don’t recall ever getting close to two feet in one twenty four hour period, but whatever. Eight to ten inches used to be the big drop we all dreaded but knew was coming. This was a personal record for amount shoveled in a day. Thank the gods my neighbour was out after the plow came by the second time as they deposited a four foot tall wall of snow at the end of my driveway after I had just finished the rest of my walk ways and deck. He made short work of what would have taken me another ninety minutes of aggravation.
Here’s a blue sky for you.
Have some thinking to do on the story front today, and possibly tomorrow. I managed to tie three threads together loosely, and now I need to get into some action set pieces and corporate intrigue. Both of which require a fair amount of prior planning on my part. For fight sequences I usually break out some action figures to try to keep track of where characters are in relation to one another. If I had the time and resources I’d build a miniature set and act it out in cardboard and plastic and talk it aloud into a tape recorder to transcribe/edit later. But as it stands I just smash toys together or put objects on a table top to help myself out a bit. The cup has lune of sight on the fork, while the spoon spins downward in a tight spiral. Blah, blah blah.
As I was saying, lots to think about so here is a lovely blue sky image. Take good care of yourselves – or not. Up to you where applicable.
Planning with mind games.
A good chunk of my process for writing creative short stories is day dreaming as much of the story before hand prior to writing it all down. The more time I spend lurking around in a coherent story the better the written work tends to be, or at least I tend to veer off on strange tangents a lot less. However finding the time to ruminate in my own head uninterrupted is increasingly difficult. More over once I carve out the time to do so I am more often than not drawing a blank on how to progress the story line. I know the broad strokes of where I want to go, and roughly how to get there, but I am unable to imagine it, to walk around in it, to inhabit it. Most likely two years of stress and anxiety about Covid is tamping down the creative side of me. My kids are now older and require a different amount, and different kinds of attention than they did in 2020.
One thing I can do to help calm myself or juice up my creativity is find photos that have an interesting play of light in them. I like striking contrast and orange late evening or morning light. It’s short and fleeting but makes a statement. Something like this:
“And you’ve had a job before this one correct?”
“Yes, that’s true I worked at an aquatic zoo”. “Is that like an aquarium?” “Oh, you know that term, I assumed that was just insider corporate jargon.” “No, no – that’s a fairly common term for water based fish conservation.” “Hmmm. I respectfully disagree.” “Well, can you tell me what lessons you learned working at the aquarium.” “There you go, throwing that corporate jargon in my face. The fish zoo I worked at had several kinds of penguins and bottle nosed dolphins.” “Ok, do go on please.” “Sure thing. Ah – the first piece of information is that penguins can be vicious. And dolphins like to engage in rape.” “COUGH! – Goodness I wasn’t aware of that. How did you learn those things and what actions did you take because of it?” “Yeah, ok, right. Well, what can I say – penguins can’t take a punch. And I don’t recommend retaliating against a dolphin by raping it with said stunned penguin. That’s for sure. No sir.” “Wait – were, were you raped by a dolphin?” “To be fair… what do you know about lady dolphin vaginal secretions?” “Good lord , nothing. I don’t know anything about female dolphin vaginas.” “Count yourself lucky then doll. That shits like Valhalla. Only way there is to die in battle!” “What does dying have to do with dolphin vaginal secretions, vicious penguins and rape?” “Well skinny dipping in the tank and taking a dolphin dong in the bum will ruin your hole weak if you let it. Taking a short cut through the penguin exhibit nude is also not suggested.” “Jesus H Christ.” “Welp, the little bastards jumped up and bit me, so I punched it in the head. And even unconscious it was rigid which gim’me an idea, so I trekked back to the dolphin tank for a wrestle and to settle my score. You’d be amazed at how helpful an octopus can be when…” “Oh my, well I’m sorry to say that it has just come to my attention that the current supervisory position here at Little Tykes Nursery School has been filled. Good day to you sir.”
“Would you like to know why you don’t mess with the folks in the orange jumpsuits?”
Here’s an illustrative anecdote to get you on board with why we lay persons as a general rule don’t raise our voices or encourage the ire of the admiralty or Company ruling class dressed in bright neon orange. Broadcasting their toxicity like a beacon.
When I was coming up through the Tourus mechanical engineering program, there were always stories about people who had done something awful like make an Admiral look bad in front of colleagues or had become too familiar and offered an ill timed barb in public. These poor folks become pretty easy to spot once you know what you are looking for. Both at the Tourus school and further along at the Mars Technical Institute. What you want to find is someone well out of synch with the usual age bracket, who knows, from experience, what they are being taught before the professors and instructors open their mouths.
See the orange oligarchs are the type of sociopaths that will refer you back to remedial instruction should you ruin their day. This means a person whom has all ready completed their four years of education at the Tourus, did well enough to be chosen to go to the Mars Technical Institute and do four to six more years there, depending on your specialty or generality. Getting hired, traveling the weeks or months to your newly minted job and then working for however long it takes to upset an Orange mafia bastard and get sent back to day one to do it all over again. No skipping ahead, no breaks, no winks or nudges. Day one – again. Sometimes if you’ve fucked up enough you are granted a long enough stint back on earth where you lose your innate ability to function in zero g, and then have to start the initiation process like a gods be damned chump.
Only for your offended Orange bastard to check in on your progress and get you tested on all of your practical work at the expert level because you know what you’re doing – and this is after all, a punishment. These orange fucks keep excessively detailed files on their offense taken, in order to ruin your life repeatedly. All that so that once you get out of the Mars base of operations they can swoop in at the last possible second to redirect your life and have you assigned to some black site based beyond Pluto with zero amenities and no chance for advancement. Pure. Fucking. Evil.
That’s why you don’t mess with the orange crowd, either that or they’ll push you out of an airlock to starve to death over a lengthy float in total vaccum.
Addendum: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
A bell is ringing somewhere in this room…
It is at once both soft and yet insistent. Peeling my face up from my beds mattress I realize it is the chime of my intercom with a message notification. I can also now feel a slight buzzing from my wrist biometric unit. Head lifted from the bed, I roll to my left, feeling the fatigue of my last rotation through the ship as a Half-Three crew member, or the more popular terminology ghost crew. Laying now on my back, I pull each leg individually up to my chest and stretch out my hips, ankles and knees. Six four hour shifts per twenty four hour day for sixteen days straight is what is known as a hell week to all new ghost crew. It’s an unofficial officially sanctioned introduction to the dynamics aboard the Dirty Starling, and just about any other vessel with more than a thousand crew members across the solar system, and beyond. The fugue like state we enter in order to access much of the ship wide systems knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. I’m a generalist, so I can do a little of everything, but I don’t remember much more than snippets of any given shift. I float into and out of rooms, departments and situations to place a finger in the dam, and fill a warm spot on shift until someone else can take over full time. It’s not all glamour or suicide missions into the heart of a broken down reactor core. Sometimes I just sit in a seat and keep a space warm while I twiddle my thumbs. I’m just an average guy, you know, run of the mill. Part of becoming a Half-Three is being able to meld into the crowd and be inconspicuous. I’m a six foot tall, one hundred and eighty five pound guy. Just some guy. My eyes don’t twinkle, I don’t have a dazzling smile, my voice isn’t rich velvety smoothness. Just a guy, who passes through the ship to fill gaps. That’s my life, passing through and filling gaps. And that life is currently beeping at me to read an urgent message.
Ref code ultima_00094763 At 06:00 report to sigint terminal forty seven, followed by cargo bay 003471 for the remaining five shifts. Access to restricted materials handling area will require a full body scan before and after. End.
So much for getting a minimum of forty eight hours off between rotations on duty. But that’s why they pay us the big bucks I guess. I can’t spend it if I have no down time, or family, or friends, or hobbies or much of a life – at all.
I pull a fresh beige ghost crew uniform out of my closet, feeling the pressure rings snap tight over the various points of my body. These suits are a godsend incase of a serious injury or loss of cabin pressure aboard a space fairing vessel like the Dirty Starling. Each pressure point acts like a tourniquet when needed during a traumatic injury. The crew uniform coveralls are linked to your biometrics and will clamp down at the two points closest to a puncture or wound. Saved countless lives that way. Also nanotech safety helmets cover your head in the merest fraction of a second if vaccum is ever detected. From the spec sheets we reviewed at the Mars technical institute you could live inside the suit without any external supplies for close to a week. A terrible, horrible no good week, but you’d live to tell the tale – apparently. Great stuff, these crew uniform coveralls.
After dressing in my room I trigger the reply notification from my orders and a glowing blip appears on my wrist. The navigational application will lead me to the signals intelligence terminal I need over in the science department decks. The nav app could successfully lead you through Daedalus’ labyrinth to any broom closet you needed to find the whole world over. It’s a technological marvel. From the status report I have about two hours of walking to do unless I can flag down a side by side crew transport, or a weapons hauler willing to let me hang off the back. The main passages on the Dirty Starling are large, but not as wide as the thoroughfare aboard the Tourus. The Tourus is a space station floating geosynchronously in the dark shadow of the moon. It’s where everyone starts their love affair with space as a human at least. The process to get up there is – let’s say… unpleasant. But a necessary evil if you will. I interned in the machine shop there for four years before being pulled scholastically for the Mars Technical Institute Half-Three program. I spent another five years there doing as many subjects as I could manage until under going the required brain surgeries and subconscious training regimen.
After day dreaming my way through the bulk of walking around the vessel I find the appropriate SIGINT terminal bay in complete disarray. Wires are hanging out of the walls and panels, sparks are shooting across the cavernous room, the lighting is flickering when it stay on long enough to show itself. Along the back wall is a massive row of floor to ceiling windows with technical drawing over laid on them. Star charts and conversion tables are displayed there as well. Down the hall a warning klaxon can just barely be heard. They impossibly loud boom of the klaxons is unmistakable. I had never realized they could go off separately in different parts of the vessel. I assumed it was an all or nothing ship wide alarm. Hmm.
I step into the space beside terminal 47 and search for the standard ship board time, I make a note of it on my uniforms left sleeve. It’s here I will make a series of three dashes to mark off my shifts for the next twenty four hours. Marking the start time let’s me know what time of day it is when you get deep in the weeds of a long rotation. It’s a lot of mental gymnastics if I’m tasked with doing anything time sensitive.
A commotion is breaking out in the centre of the room. A tall man in a burgundy uniform is arguing with a disheveled maintenance technician dressed in a red uniform, she looks tired and irritated. The burgundy dressed man is attempting to harang the technician about the mess and disruption because his superior is on the way down and the upgrades haven’t been completed yet. Apparently this is the usual state of the room, and it’s a software issue which the maintenance woman regards as not her problem. She’s trying real hard not to scream that she only does hardware and you need a programmer to fix the UI issues. With a puff of exasperated breath the red uniformed technician brushes her hair out of her face and marches out of the door. Immediately she splits in two at the waist and dumps buckets of blood onto the floor and wall in the hallway. A deafening silence fills the room as SIGINT techs all stare in awed shock.
Before they can compose themselves an orange jump suited woman steps across the rooms threshold and over the remains of the bisected tech. “Well what the fuck is going on down here Jones? Are my signal upgrades ready yet or what? Who the fuck is painted over my walls down here Jones!” The short angry woman in orange coveralls is red faced and has sharp features. A serious short hair cut closely cropped to her well shaped head. Jones, the burgundy wearing director of the SIGINT terminal bay is sputtering and distraught. “I have no idea why she’s” “….AWOOGA…AWOOGA…AWOOGA… CONTAINMENT BREACH ON DECK 19. ALL HANDS TO MUSTER STATION ONE… REPEAT CONTAINMENT BREACH ON DECK 19. ALL HANDS TO MUSTER STATION ONE. REMAIN AT YOUR WORK STATION…DO NOT GO INTO THE HALLS…AWOOGA…AWOOGA…AWOOGA…” and just a suddenly as the klaxon kicked on, it shuts off and the red flashing lights go back to soft blue. “Jones! Why the fuck are we getting a station wide alert a full seven minutes after it was dispatched?”. “I told you before ma’am, the signal attenuation out this way is awful, the signal repeaters miss half of the signal and fail. We’ve got thousands of miles of cables and fiber optics to reach us here and for some reason we can’t diagnose without tracing every inch of the line or inspecting every single junction panel between here and the bridge. It’s a logistical nightmare, sir. Ma’am, sir.” “Jones, do you mean to tell me that we can look and talk to the furthest reaches of known space outside the ship, but can’t figure out how to get a warning directly from the admiral on the bridge in a timely manner?” “Uh… yes sur – ma’am sir. We built the external system ourselves, and the internal system we just oversee after the fact – sir.” “Yes, well as long as our project gets results we can put in another requisition for the alarm system to come in via our departments wrist comms instead.” With a sharp turn of her head the orange uniformed woman turns to look at me, her hawkish eyes a piercing grey. “You there, Mark is it. I know you were to go to materials handling next, I rode in on your personnel transport, but I’m going to commandeer you for a few extra shift blocks to man a couple of terminals at once while we clean up what remains of my best maintenance technician. Christ all mighty Mark, she walked right into the on coming path of a loose particle from our Hadron Collider. Burned straight through her. I’m going to have to write to Josephines parents”.
I don’t really know if the orange jumpsuit meant to get that familiar with me, but looks like I’m here for a bit, so best to settle in.
Part Two: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
“Hey! You must be Mark… welcome aboard the…
Dirty Starling, we have your crew corners ready to go, in it you’ll find your uniforms and a detailed docket for your next twenty four hours. So I understand you’ve signed on as part of our Half-Three crew contingent. You guys are nuts, but I hear you rake in the dough though!” The stout woman gesticulates wildly as she talks animatedly at me, not seeing the puzzled look on my dour face. “Did you just say crew corners? Don’t you mean my quarters?” I weakly interject mid sentence. “Huh? Oh, right, you’re not from around here. It’s sort of a colloquialism to these larger ships and kind of a dig at folks on your work detail. Your ghost like work mates hate the term quarter, since that’s the standard shift on these ships, four six hour shifts for every twenty four hours. But you guys work six four hour shifts per day, and coined it corners, because, well… you guys work anywhere and everywhere three out of every four hours and just kind of crash in corners, under chairs or tables, in bundles of coiled rope or what have you, then miraculously turn up at your next shift – to do it all over again. It sounds ghastly, but that’s why you lot get paid those big bucks right!” She hasn’t stopped pointing at things or taken more than half a breath the entire time we’ve been walking. “This is you. Set yourself up, read your crew details thoroughly and get some sleep. I don’t imagine I’ll see you again for quite some time Mark, so be well”. A wide arc of a wave passes within millimeters of my nose, and with a crisp twist, she loping down the hallway of the crew corners.
Standing in the grim grey hallway, my bisected metal door grinds open as I touch my palm to it. Biometric readers are every where on board this massive ship. No need to try to remember any codes, it’s all linked to my DNA/RNA and several other key markers I’m not aware of. A dim orange light is the only illumination inside the wide but narrow room. Spacious by Navy standards on earth, pretty big for a single individual in space. About four meters long, two meters wide. The door and open pathway along one wall, a closet sized bathroom/’shower’ outlet type cubicle on one end, a raised bed with desk underneath, with cupboards over top, and a full length closet on the opposite end. Clean, cozy and entirely unadorned with ornamentation. The lone object in the room is my crew information packet with my first six work details, and a voucher for my first meal aboard the vessel. Upon closer inspection the room is plastered with various warnings and guidelines for the optimal use of my crew uniform while on board. Lots of black, yellow, red and white labels. Very ominous and kind of foreboding. Nothing I haven’t seen before back at the Mars technical institute where I trained to be a ship board generalist. I can do just about anything in a modest, read mediocre fashion. Just enough to keep the cogs grinding along for a three hour session, until the real deals make their way to your location.
A loud chime signals the standard crew change, and I grab my voucher and head off to the mess hall to eat, and nose around the ship while still in a coherent state of mind. Along the way I pass several hundred people bustling from one thing to another. Each dressed in colour coded uniforms talking in jargon heavy bursts. No one looks up from their desks, bunks or conversations. The crew corner portion has a real college dorm vibe, with people talking through open doors, sprawling in the halls or hanging around in small cliques. I continue to walk on until I can smell the mixture of food, b.o and mild disinfectants and sanitizers.
The mess hall is enormous, with a massive bank of windows that look out over the bulk of the aft section of the vessel. Lots of curving grey domes, and twinkling blue lights. The neon lights glow in reflection on the concrete like glass. I walk under a huge set of hoods which contain some high pressure vents. In the centre of the room is a massive semi circle of vending machines, buttons, slots and glass drawers. Not quite replicators, but close enough to be science fiction. I slide my voucher into an available slot and choose a sixteen ounce prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus and a thick rich brown gravy, along with a Heineken branded pilsner. Turning to my right to see my name appear on a glass drawer I pull out my steaming hot plate and head to an empty table. As I step over the back of my seat I hear a soft voice say “Beige uniform eh? You a Half-Three then huh? That’s a nice dinner you got there. I always thought you guys were a myth, but here we are.” A large androgynous person in blue medical uniform half waves at me sheepishly. “Um, well yes. I transferred in today. Will rotate in at 03:00.” My answer is short, concise and as non committal as I can make it while I smell real food mere centimeters from my face. I plunk down onto the seat, it whistles under the newly acquired weight. A soft pfft as air escapes from the foam padded seat cushion. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your meal, I just haven’t seen many of you guys around. I did my residency on earth and I marvel at your ability to work six four hour shift blocks per day while you are on rotation. It both scares and amazes me!” A plump cherubic face peers out from under longish dark black hair, with a off kilter toothy smile. “Don’t be too impressed, they pushed some sort of synaptic device into my head at the technical institute on Mars so that we can function under high stress for brief periods of time, many times per day. It also allows us to ‘learn’ a great deal of surface level instructions on hundreds of jobs. I can even, in the most dire of circumstances work as a medic or a nurse during a level one, two or three medical procedure in any standard zero g operating room. But I’d warn against that, just between you and me. I’m a puker. Involuntary, I assure you. But detrimental to the sanctity of any given surgical endeavor.” I flash the briefest of warm smiles. “I’m Mark. Nice to meet you…?” I wave a fork lazily in the med tech’s direction. “Oh, uh it’s Alex. I’m Alex. Nice to meet you Mark, the fully fledged Half-Three! Man oh man, nobody’s going to believe that I met you!” Alex is flushed pink in the cheeks. “What do you mean? I’m sitting right here, out in the open, with you. The whole ship can see us with their own eyes. The cameras can all see us”. A befuddled look is crawling it’s way across my face, slowly. I am losing my good will and social cheer rapidly. “Uh dude no. You guys have biometrics that allow you every where and anywhere, and can seemingly travel at will across the ship. No cameras or software can track you lot at all. Hence the nickname ghosts”. Alex thinks better of sitting down at the table and backs away quickly. “That’s why you guys don’t have any photo ID, you don’t show up on camera!” And like that Alex is gone, melted into the crowd in the mess hall as I tuck into my prime rib.
Sixteen days later a well worn yellow side by side drops me off at my crew corners door. All that can be seen as the mono tracked vehicle passes is a pile of filthy clothes and dirty brown hair piled up in the vehicle bed. With the pull of a lever the bed tilts up and the limp body slides out the back like an animal still birth. With great effort I stagger to my feet and I place my palm against the cool metal triggering the bisected doors to split apart. I fall face first into bed and the whole world fades to black.
Part One: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
One of the most vivid dreams I ever had was…
Me listening to my daughters tell a combined imaginary tale about knights, dragons and monsters in a mystical land, and I was trying to transcribe this hectic, self referential logic nightmare of a tale as they spoke it out loud in tandem like a vomited stream of consciousness. It was such a vivid memory, I could feel the fluctuating story ideas, like they were there breathing at my finger tips. It made almost no sense as they told it, but in my dream I was able to sort of throw it on the table to smash apart, and then take a really wide angle lens to it and rebuild it into a coherent epic fantasy novel. The best part about it was taking the whole spoken tale and sort of doing this exploded view – like you get of an engine diagram format, but being able to draw elements together, or add parts and realign story beats so that it all made sense, and flowed together. It was a wildly exciting dream, and when I woke up I remembered absolutely none of the story, but only the rush of picking it apart and putting it back together to make some kind of sense. Which sounds tedious, but also like a performance in and of itself. I’d love to revisit that dream, and actually remember the story my girls told me. If you’ve ever spent time listening to kids under six tell you stories, you know how many gaps there can be, what sort of logical leaps you need to make, and how easy it is to lose the plot. Good times. I guess I had a dream about editing. Wow! – go me. in
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