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Tag: Science-Fiction

There are six books which I read cover to cover in January.

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The books in question.

I read Mary Robinette Kowal’s “The spare man“, “Fart Quest Vol.4“, Tom Segura’s “I’d like to play alone“, The first two “Dungeon Academy” books, and then Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of memory“. With a partial read of Robert Evans’ “The kid stays in the picture“. A book I feel like I should go back to now that I have cleared my schedule for reading through until July 1st, 2023. But we’ll see. It repeats itself alot, with the gambling, drinking, and adultery themes. The names, and motion pictures change, but ultimately he’s retelling the same six stories over, and over again, with that Shake or slap an hysterical woman, old Hollywood charm. The girls are prizes to be claimed, and discarded at whim. Interesting, up to a point. Not my tempo. As it were.

I’m about the start in on the N. K Jemisin Broken Earth Trilogy, so I have high hopes! Please let them be good. It would be better if they were great, but I’ll gladly take good any day of the week. Exceptional would be amazing, but a good trilogy, with no filler feeling chapters is hard to come by. Is this the authors seminal work? What they’re known for? I don’t know. I didn’t do all that much research, but a few names I trust from previous high quality references to books gave this one a thumbs up, and it has won a prestigious Sci-fi award for the whole trilogy, book by book. So that’s gotta say something positive? Doesn’t it!?!

I should really go back and try to read more of the Carl Sagan book, but it came across like a text book, so I need to be in that sort of mind set. For education rather than entertainment. That was the difference between reading about the Pluto mission, versus the Mars rover stuff. One was *a story*, the other a technical play by play, like a parts list, and engineered drawings in exploded view. One I thoroughly enjoyed as it did contain lots of education information inside the story telling, the other I detested, and only got part way through before putting it away. My labouring over a text days are done. Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, even Business Admin textbooks were a chore at times, and I’m glad I don’t have to hack my way through those sorts of things anymore.

Also I do want to know how the Grapes of Wrath ends, but who-boy, that was an exercise in patience for colloquial speech patterns. Feels like it will mean something by the end, but gah! The idea of spending the next five months reading five pages at a time to just get to the end of it feels like a total waste of my time. Can it provide a great enough epiphany at the end to warrant such a slow, halting, and seemingly unending read? I don’t see it. Not from the 150 plus pages I have all ready read. Maybe the end packs the most whallop? I don’t know. Seems fool hardy to leave your whole message for the very end. But I’m no writer of an American Classic. So he’s gotta know what he’s doing.

Today is Wednesday, and I’m looking at being pretty busy today, and this evening. The kids have things to do every night of the week excepting Friday, and the weekends. One month in and I am exhausted, so who knows how the kids are coping. I know they enjoy it all. But, I think we need to narrow down some interests, as this is a bit much. I am grateful that I get to see the improvements from gymnastics, Taekwon-do, and their dance lessons. Had I still been working downtown for any number of breweries or agencies, I’d never get the chance to see this stuff. I get to see them tey it for the first time, work at it, conquer it, then build upon it. Rather lovely – at times. Anyway, great day to you all.

Dribble, drip, drab, dram, & drop. One of these words is not like the others…

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Tuesday! It is here, and the sky is grey – again. A real Debbie Downer of a winter. I now realize why I was so happy and excited for the sunny blue skies last year. It’s because we usually just have this drab grey monotonously neutral coloured sky. These shades of grey do not inspire any sense of joy at all. But a beautiful blue sparkly, twinkling winter’s day, omg, that could be one for the story books. The gloom really does add a layer of suck, to an already dreary season. All the leaves, and flowers are gone, the colour sucked right out of the everyday. No green vibrant grass. The trees are all grey/brown, the streets are grey, the side walk, curbs, and gutters grey. Ugh! Hideous. But a big, bold, open crystal clear blue sky adds so much to a regular day. It’s a shame we do all of our lights based holidays before winter really gets going. January & February need their own lights show extravaganza of a holiday. Otherwise it all looks so damn bleak. Boo!

Almost done with January as it is. Not much longer and we’ll be looking at Valentine’s Day, then March Break & St. Patrick’s Day, then Easter, then the May 2-4 of Victoria Day, and by then POW! All the colour has come back, and lawn mowing is a thing, same with park play dates, bike riding, skateboards, and playing catch on the lawn. Spring, Summer and Fall are far superior seasons to our southern Ontario winters. So much more to get out and do! Bring it on!

Oh, reminds me. I need to sort and hang up all of yesterday’s laundry. The cycle, it never ends!

I had to put a pin in the Bob Evans book, to read something a little more contemporary & light hearted. Just opening up more space to get through it all, by reading other books from this years list now, which are shorter and less dense, as the length of the Evans book might take me a while to get through. I don’t want to miss my twelve books in a year goal, by getting slowed to a halt by one of the longer, and more densely written autobiographies. So, I figure when I feel it start to drag, I’ll put a pin in it, pick up another book that I can finish quickly, then go back to it, knowing that I haven’t squandered all of my time by not being smart about it. If that makes any sense.

Old Hollywood is intriguing, but – so many names, and places, and people, and actors, and motion pictures, and studios to keep track of. I have to look many of them up to get a sense of what he was gossiping, or spilling the tea over. My knowledge of Pre 1980 Hollywood is pretty bare bones to begin with. I thought this book might ignite something like an renaissance of old movies for me, but not really. At least not yet. I like it, but it’s longer than a good chunk of my other books, and even after reading seventy-eighty pages at a go, it feels as though I’m making little to no headway on finishing the damnable thing! It’s like the page count is growing as I’m reading it. Ha. I know it’s not, but it feels that way to me.

So I’ll detour for a day or two into some Fantasy realm type stuff, then hop back into the autobiography. Bim, bam, boom!

My life as a contract killer.

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Image Credit: Thomas Dubois

It started in the early winter of 2199. I was working sixteen hour shifts piloting my cab-barge over Sante Feyokyo ferrying people around the vast sprawl of the newest metropolis in the midwest. The ash that falls like snow in mid February makes you feel every subzero degree of the blistering and cutting winds. Especially in the open are cab-barges that became the go to cheap transport options for the working class and those just above destitute. I pulled my waxed canvas coat tight around my face, the harsh material of the collar grazing my rough cheeks.

I was hauling empty bread crates by the tonne over a thirty mile stretch between eleven pm and five am. I’d had a few calls to let actual people hop onboard with the crates to double dip on fares when my phone chimed. I was worried it was my guild calling me on my double dipped fares but it was a private number on the line. As I pulled up to the sixty fourth floor dock I heard a woman exclaim “No way! I’m not getting on that thing, it’s a death trap!” But her date, or companion told her just how expensive a covered cab would be, and she balked and squeezed onboard with the icy, ash covered black bread trays stacked twenty five high across the deck of the barge. I indicated with my chin that they should hold onto the crate tie downs and not move around once we were on our way. With a swell like a rising tide, we bumped off the dock and floated out along the dark high rises, and the vivid neon advertisements. I used my gravity paddle to steer us around the traffic buoys, and out onto the main traffic thoroughfare. The insistent drone of the advertising jingles slowly drowned out by the engine hum, and the whipping winds full of ash.

The phone was quiet while I tagged their chips to pay for transit when the phone line crackled. A message appeared then slowly faded away. Then I recieved nine more messages, from the FBI, CIA, INTERPOL, NMPD, and various other agencies requesting I terminate both guests on my cab-barge. The last message was an invoice, paid to me for six thousand dollars. Looking around the cab-barge I couldn’t really see the companion riders I was hauling. But every so often when we hit an air stream, or heat swell I could see the tension pulling on the line, from the riders holding on for dear life. So I untied the tie downs, and hit the gas into an eddy, and watched the lines spill out and a barely audible gasp escape from the falling riders.

I slowed down and crawled around the front of the dark barge to re-secure my empty bread crates as I floated four hundred feet in the cold night air, and toggled over to my banking app on my phone and watched the funds deposit from INTERPOL.

From that day forward I continued on as a cab-barge hauler, and executed anyone that the various agencies paid me to.

“He’s strange, eccentric and terrifying.”

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He talks in a sing song but staccato manner, with emphasis wherever he pleases. He dances with grace and the fluidity of an otter. His pale visage, and croaked rasp will send you running for the hills. A more vile and vulgar an individual you will never see. Wrapped up in himself with a blood soaked cloak of spies and slaughter.

You don’t get to become supreme leader without having killed entire opposing bloodlines and all of their heirs. It’s thirsty work, and the Blood Gods will not be sated.

Take heed young noble men and women. When you look the emperor in the eye, know that he has both a blade at your back, and arms aimed at your families across the imperium. No one is safe, until everyone is safe. And no one is safe from the wrath of a god king whose sworn an oath to the Blood Gods.

Our life’s milk shall be drank by the altars of blood this day, and every other! Rest not until you have carved rib bone with your saber. Rattle them not. But plunge them deep and swift into the heart of madness at the center of struggle. Go forth, and die with honour! If not for your sake, do it for me! May the gods have mercy on your souls.

“Do you know why I asked you come here Ms. Darla?”

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“Hm. Do you have some terrible inkling for what I might have in store you for?” The doctor asks through his surgical mask. He isn’t facing Darla whom is strapped down onto an icy cold metallic gurney. His attention elsewhere as he is looking over his personal hand written notes and diagrams tapped up to a wall in his private surgical bay. The drawings are gruesome but are also the product of someone with artistic talent, and more than a little flair.

The sage green tiles of the operating room glisten with moisture as the large overhead drum lights buzz loudly in the quiet theater. The quality of the light is a brilliant, nearly pristine blue white. Darla has to squint to make out the shape of the doctor across the room from her. But the starkness of the paper stands out against the darkness of the rough hewn rock walls above the green tiles. Massive double doors swing gently as the air circulates constantly through some whisper quiet hepa filter units. The air tastes astringent, like bleach residue and quat sanitizer spray mixed together. It tastes thickly on her tongue and sticks cloyingly in her throat. The center of the floor, directly under Darla and her gurney is a sloped polished cement floor that terminates in a large drain grill that occasionally gurgles and burps as the base UB313 tilts and rotates under its orbital stresses.

A panicked and afraid Darla can’t turn her head more than a few inches or move any of her limbs at all, the tight straps are biting into her flesh sharply with every twitch and tug. Her heart is thumping in her chest, and her breaths come in ragged bursts. “Well aren’t you the excitable type.” Quips the doctor as he turns away from his notes, pushing his glasses up his nose with a single finger. “Not to worry Darla. I’m not going to operate, but you see I have other needs of you. No- no, not those kind either, I’m afraid.” He chuckles leering over Darla’s nude figure writhing on the gurney. Leaning towards her he picks up a needle from a tray covered by a blue cloth. “No, even I have my limits. Apparently I can’t just kill all of my Risk Assessors in one fell swoop. Your friend Trevor is quite right, I do need the processing power which the Oracle network soaks up.” He says jovially. With a quick and practiced motion he swabs her arm and plunges in a syringe attached to a tube and collection bag. ” I need it to feed my babies. I know everyone thinks I’m mental and that I don’t believe it Nanobots or Nanotech, but the truth is, those are artificial. More machine dependencies. No!” He shouts angrily.”Here, with what I’ve learned, with the experiments I’ve cultivated. I have harnessed uniquely natural energies to power my beasties. My darlings, my lovelies. No-no, for you I just need plasma, some platelets, and various other minor ingredients which my standing army has trouble processing in abundance. I had hoped i would have the time to help them so that they could synthesize the remaining items better, but not to worry! A little prick, a pinch and a squeeze and you’ll be back to your desk in no time.” Laughs doctor Jang heartily. Pulling his mask down around his chin, he circles the gurney to stand at Darla’s head. Bending at the hip he Whispers into her ears, so softly she can barely hear him. “Do you want to know why I’ve exposed you? Left you nothing to hide behind? Showing me just how afraid of me you are?” His breath a soft caress of her cheek. “Because I get off on it.”

“Come on Darla, are you being serious right now? We’ve all had to take turns donating blood, why would he put you in the surgical bay naked for what amounts to a blood drive. That’s insane. Just tell us where you were, and why you’re three hours late for your shift?” Quips the short, fat man with a ridiculous moustache. “I just fucking told you why, Ricky!” Screams Darla as she shakes and trembles at her desk. “Yeah, well… un-fucking-likely, am I right!?” Snivels Ricky in response. “Oh, your buddy Trevor left you a note on your desk. He wouldn’t let me read it, said it was for your eyes only. Technically I’m not your boss per se, but I’ve been here like three weeks more than you, so… you know. I kinda am.” He trills weakly turning back to his own work station, leaving a very upset Darla sitting alone in her cramped office. Slamming the door shut after Ricky leaves, Darla crumples into her chair with hot salty tears streaming down her cheeks. After a brief period of tremors she sniffles, rubs her eyes with her palms and finds a small envelope sealed with black wax tucked in beside her computer terminal. “Where does he get all this shit?” Darla mumbles to herself, looking over the black wax seal, and the rough off white paper envelope. Using her finger nail to pick the wax seal off whole, she pulls out the slip of folded paper and unfurls it. The rough hand made paper smells like lavender, and is rough to the touch under her fingers. Her fingers make an audible scrape as she runs her nail over the textured paper. Two words are scribbled in the center of the slip of paper, along with a red blob. Pulling her desk lamp over towards her, she flips on the dim bulb to reveal what it says.

The blob at the center looks like a bloody finger print, and the note reads “We’re fucked!”.

Part Twenty Six: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Here, on Route 66, we talk about Bruno-no-no-no.

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Have you ever done the route 66 drive from Nevada through Arizona to get to the Grand Canyon, talk about a whole lot of nothing. I get where Radiator Springs got its art direction from, because in mid August it was all a ghost town. Oh and the asphalt melts and ruins your tires in the heat, so there’s that to look forward to. What a waste of time that was. I think we stopped for gas at one point and it felt like The Hills Have Eyes out there. One Yike! Awarded. Zero stars do not reccomend. Grand Canyon on the other hand, giant hole in the ground. Absolutely lovely. Managed to capture some incredible photos. Which isn’t hard because of the scale and the depth of field in your photos. No fog banks to ruin your visit. My wife went to Machu Pichu in Peru many, many years ago, and did that hill climb and the fog was so thick she couldn’t see anything. Had to go back the next day, climb it all over again to get a photo that had any depth to it.

So Encanto is making the rounds at our house these days, out performing Moana, Frozen and Frozen Two by an order of magnitude. I must just be getting old as I find the sound mixing on the dialogue to be dog shit. I have to turn on the closed captioning, because it’s all just a thick mumble to me. I am, to be honest, hard of hearing from childhood, so that plays a role, I’m sure. But come on! Why have the music blaring, if people talk in a growled mumble even in childrens movies. The people are animated, shouldn’t they talk animatedly (not cartoonish but excitedly and with Em-pha-sis) enunciate more for those of us in the back. Probably why theater folks don’t do movies, they talk to reach the back of the room, which was how I was taught. So the moody, growler gets lost in my ear.

I’m a big fan of Luisa and her song, it’s a real banger. They all have lovely songs. Didn’t realize Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99! Was Mirabel. It’s rather lovely, if hard to follow because I can’t hear Abuela talk at the beginning, and through other parts of the film. A good time had by all otherwise.

We just had another 9 or 10 inches of snow after yesterday’s rains. We lost power at 2:00am on Thursday morning and didn’t get it back until just before 5:00pm, so that was fun. School cancelled due to inclement weather, and a portion of our town, us included with no power for nearly 15 hrs. It was a day. Kids took it well considering. But the fireplace came to our rescue yet again, so glad we put that in when we renovated nearly a decade ago. Well worth the footprint it takes up in the room. So I have spent another seventy five minutes shoveling snow again today. Next year, my Christmas/birthday present to myself will be a new to me, used snowblower. I broke my favourite shovel this morning, so I’m without proper tools if we get even more this month or next. Gah! Sick of the snow by now. It was eight degrees above zero yesterday, and kinda nice (even if rainy) and now we are twenty degrees or more colder today, plus the bitter wind chill.

Need to rest my shoulder, and I hope to start a new chapter in my ongoing series today. Still dealing with the loss of my Expanse series.

I keep thinking I want to read the grapes of wrath, which I opted not to read in high school, because I read of mice and men, and the odyssey and the iliad instead. I think I might have missed out on something there. It’s not what I usually read (science fiction or fantasy) but I think it has something to say that I want to hear. One thing I did do when I was out of Artschool and went to university, was I went to the campus book store and found all the sci-fi that was part of a Lit course, bought and read those when I found my Business admin or Sociology texts too dry. Although the abnormal behaviour Sociology stuff was entertaining and enriching. I found De Bono’s six hats to be kind of a pseudo science take on common sense. But whatever. There was considerable overlap between the two subjects. Time studies on manufacturing factors heavily in both streams. So I could use texts for one stream as sources for papers in the other. Less reading for info, more sci-fi reading for fun! Go me!

And on the sixty fifth day, He said, Oh – Lord, I have finished reading the last book in the series, and was at once, both elated, and forlorn.

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For it was a good series, of both length and depth, but now it is over, and where there used to stand a long winding road full of opportunities there is now only the hard cold truth of the back cover, closed and defined. Like a stone rolled over the door to seal in the freshness. I am sad. I do however have a new book to read, a part of another series I enjoy, plus next month John Scalzi’s new book will drop and I’ll likely enjoy that one too.

I wasn’t going to talk about books, I had something else on my mind which I was gearing up for today, but now that the power has been out since 2:00am, school is cancelled, it’s going to rain like cats and dogs all day, I had to change gear. I imagine power will be back some time between 9:00am and 12:00pm, so it won’t be an entirely lost work day, but with the kiddos home it’ll be a wash. No tv, no microwave, no toaster or fridge, no dvd player, and no furnace. Could potentially be a trying day for us. Oh joy.

Happy I managed to get through so much work on Monday through Wednesday. Could have been a disaster if I’d left it until later in the week.

Now that I think on it, I can’t recall – at all, what I was going to lead with today. Not even a scintilla of an idea of what it was. I know that yesterday afternoon I thought it was funny. But it totally escapes me now.

Oh, to be fair I was reading the Expanse book series, if anyone wanted to know. Book nine finished it all off. Although I did see that they have collected some peripheral short stories from the universe into a book, so perhaps we’re not quite done yet. We’ll see. I liked how it came together, so maybe I’ll leave well enough alone? Or not. I don’t have any other science fiction series that I have been following along with besides Matha Wells’ Murder Bot Diaries (which is also fantastic) oh and Mary Robinette Kowals alternate history A Lady Astronaut Novel series.

I have done some considerable thinking about my next few chapters. Was planning to write one today, but – kids home all day due to inclement weather. Stay tuned, things should get interesting!

“Hey! Shush… keep it down…”

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“I can’t hear what’s coming in over the radio.” Fusses the plump man in yellow coveralls. “Jimmy? Jimmy Wu is that you in there? Why is it so dark? What are you talking about?” Whispers the petite woman crouched down at the door beside Jimmy, in a the dark broom closet in an unused portion of the HR office on deck 19 of The Dirty Starling. Jimmy is hunched over his wrist communicator trying to dial in the frequency of his remote audio transmitter. “I told you Janice, I hid my negotiators recorder and broadcaster in the specialist communications bay after that mechanic got cut in half from the containment breach. The place was a mess, and had some seriously weird activity going on. Plus I heard from Jones, the director that they had an actual ghost in their department. I took a nose around but didn’t see one though.” He pouted. “Oh, that’s a shame. I’d have loved to have met one.” She too scrunched up her face in disappointment. Her heavy lids almost closed with the contortion of her lips. “Well, as I was meandering around I deployed my audio unit and have been surreptitiously recording the conversations from inside, over the last few months. It’s getting wild Janice! Bonkers even.” He shuffles from his squat position to instead sit directly on the floor and place his back against the cool wall. Taking the hint that they’ll be there for a while Janice sits down on the opposite wall. Their feet overlap in the middle of the small unused supply closet, littered with brooms and empty musty boxes. Jimmy cranks up the volume so they can both hear it. Janice says “Why don’t you just broadcast the signal to my communicator?” Looking aghast Jimmy says “Don’t be a silly goose – Janice, if I broadcast it there will be an official log of the recording. I’ve got to do this on the down low, otherwise it’ll be re-education for the both of us.” Janice smirks at Jimmy and waves the comment off. They both readjust themselves and wait while the audio begins to build again. At first there is only a smattering of small talk, and some quick bursts of spoken activity. The line eventually goes dead. “Don’t worry about that.” Says Jimmy. “It can be hit or miss. But the reason I called you here was I had an Omega level code orange flagged to my attention regarding a debrief with the ghost. It’s here! Today. Supposed to happen any minute now.” He gesticulates wildly and his ankles knock against Janice’s. “Ouch, watch it Wu!” Janice exclaims.

A kilometer down the hallway, on deck 19 of The Dirty Starling a gaunt and exhausted skeleton of a man in fresh beige coveralls is lumbering towards his debrief in the cavernous communications terminal. The massive doors are closed tightly, there is no one to be seen in the halls within several hundred meters. The lights are a startlingly bright blue white. The cables and pipes that run under the floor grates are the only colorful things in sight. It’s all very drab and serious, and grey. With a loud thunk, and a ratcheting click the doors peel open slowly. With a thud they come to rest about eighteen inches apart. The ghost must squeeze through the large metal teeth that maintain the registration of the doors. It is an awkward and claustrophobic fit. The three foot thick doors are icy cold to the touch. The interior of the room is near black, the only source of illumination are the buttons and dials from the control boards. All over head lights are off. With a loud click one lone spotlight shines down in a white yellow cone on the floor. “Step into the light please Mark.” A bodiless voice commands from the darkness.

Stirring from their sleep Jimmy Wu and his pal Janice sit bolt upright, their hearts are pounding. “Did you hear that? Whose voice is that? I don’t recognize it, do you?” Whispers Janice. “Oh I heard it all right. Now be quiet, this is going to get interesting!” Chuckles Jimmy. Tapping a few buttons on his HR select wrist communicator, he runs some diagnostics on the voice from the audio broadcast. On his blue green LED screen a whirling pattern appears. The machine is searching and the app is thinking.

“I have it on good authority Mark that you were successful in locating my asset. But, you sent a message. What was it?” Growls the heavily modulated voice from the dark. “I’m sorry, sir or Madam. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The quiet response is mumbled. “Of course you know! Tell me, what did you send? Was it a warning, an alert? Answer me before I put you through a recycler!” Shouts the voice in a terse response. “I’m sorry sir, I’m just a generalist, I haven’t spoken to anyone, or sent any messages, covert or otherwise – sir.” The meek voice wavers, whether from fatigue or otherwise is not immediately discernible. “He’s got an Ultima level cognitive block in place – very useful in these covert operations. Give him the key word and his subconscious will spill it’s data core openly. You can cross reference any multitude of points of information. It’s a nifty bit of engineering.” Speaks a second deeper voice. Although given the modulation used it could be anybody on the other end of the line. “I don’t have a key? What key? I was told the ghost would search my coordinates, locate the assets and report back. I said to specifically not send any messages have any type of communications with it. That was of the utmost importance!” Shouts the original, now maniacal voice. “How’d you do it without a key? That’s not possible.” Responds the second lower voice in a breathy tone. “I commandeered his time and sent him the quadrant to look through, same as I would for any duty roster change!” Screams the first speaker. “Wait – you didn’t use encryption or a key word? Oh fuck!” The voice cuts away to a gurgle, there are sounds of gunshots and bones crunching broadcasting over the line.

“Sir – we have at least two more listeners on the line.” Says a soft but firm voice over the audio broadcast. “Uh. Find them and eliminate them please. Are we on Vox? For fuck’s sake turn that shit of…..” The line goes dead a second time that day in the HR broom closet on deck 19. Janice and Jimmy are frozen in place. “They don’t mean us do they?” Asks Janice. “They couldn’t possibly. I used a remote audio broadcaster. They’re a dime a dozen onboard this ship. It’s not registered to me specifically, just our department.” Shrugs Jimmy. “Maybe they could trace the outgoing signal of the broadcast unit, not that they know it’s us?” A heartbeat later a quiet peep chimes in from Jimmy’s wrist communicator. The voice diagnostics are complete, and a red flashing flag is present on Jimmy’s LED screen. Before he can cancel it, a matching beacon pops up on Janice’s wrist communicator too. Sitting so close together for so long the HR consultants private chat app has linked them together. In the green blue glow of their wrist communicators the two share an ashen grimace.

In the bright yellow halls of the HR department on deck 19, loud boots and the metallic clink of assault rifles can be heard.

Part Twelve: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

I had an interesting thought about a character yesterday.

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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.

“You dirty, dirty bastard. What have you done!”

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Bellows the navigator aboard team Theta’s modest search and rescue vessel The Mangelo. She is furiously toggling switches and flipping frantically through a cluttered control board of dials and buttons. An ear splitting siren is screaming over the ships pa system. The pilot, now missing, went to the restroom and just vanished off of the ship. But not before dumping the ships fuel, and tainting all of the rations. The oil canister he must have secreted aboard the ship is lying overturned next to the now ocher coloured water cistern. It’s green label is well worn, and partially fading. It sits stark against the rust brown floor grates in the cargo compartments yellow overhead light. “Richard’s! Did you have any part in this – you slick silver fox fuck. You greasy – gods be damned bell end!” Roars the navigator as she continues to arrest the vessels endless supply of alarm bells and warning klaxons. Constantly shifting between control boards, the captains chair terminal and the read outs situated at her own post. As far as she can tell they are still on course, the trajectory she plotted out is perfect, though now with the loss of fuel and the weight of the propellant missing it could turn too steep an insertion to Lagrange point 5 out beyond Pluto and Charon’s gravitational pull. That’s an awfully dark and remote place to float with no fuel and tainted, spoiled rations. The course called for several corrections over the coming weeks as they waited for further instructions and a final destination. Unforgiving is an understatement, untenable an apt description- suicide more like it. “That thick fuck. What was he thinking?” She has begun to mutter vehement curses under her breath as she works expertly to stave off the flow of fuel pellets and propellant leaking out of the containment tanks on the exterior of The Mangelo.

Rustling in the rear of the cargo bay brings the navigator, Racquelle to a standstill. The clear ring of aluminium piping falling onto the metal floor grates is unmistakable. Followed by the sounds of heavy food bins tumbling and the muffled shout of someone swearing magnificently. More bangs, pings and thumps can be heard in the now cluttered cockpit. Racquelle had to pull a bunch of the main bus wiring out of the panels in order to reroute power and environmental functions around the alarms triggered by faulty equipment. Seems Theta’s flight commander had a nefarious plot to hatch as he had taken it upon himself to cut cables and conduit in a seemingly random fashion.

Racquelle couldn’t make head nor tails of what he’d cut or why. There wasn’t much about what he was planning that made any sense at all. We all knew what failing Dr. Jang would do for us, we’d end up spending the rest of our miserable lives kept prisoner in the doctor’s grotesque surgical bay, being eviscerated via needless surgery and bouts of straight up torture. The man’s eyes gleamed as he poured over the mangled lumps of his favourite specimens, still somehow alive, as he gave his orientation speeches to the newly initiated at UB313.

The sound of somebody clumsy waddling through the central gangway of The Mangelo, clumping along like a cunting great Clydesdale with lead weights for shoes brings Racquelle up short as she catches her breath while staring out the cockpits view port. Standing slouched over her NAV terminal is a man in black shiny coveralls. His face is burgundy and his grin is lopsided. Breathing heavily he mumbles and his face goes slack. He topples over the radar – Lidar view finder lands face first upon the ground. A two inch pipe poking out of the back of his head. The fracture surrounding the wound leaking brain matter and copious amounts of blood mingled with wiry grey hair. His name tag reads Richards. He was the medic and second in command aboard The Mangelo.

“What the fuck is going on here!” Racquelle leans her head against the view port, feeling the icy chill of the concrete glass cool her forehead. The empty black void outside hides a great deal. Many people in better situations than this have succumbed to the siren song of betrayal and intrigue.

Part nine : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.