Midwasteland: Ch.1

I didn't get a ton of response when posting chapters of Echelon here, so I thought I'd throw up the prologue and first chapter of what I'm currently working on, a post-apocalyptic drama called Midwasteland. Please keep in mind that this is in the VERY rough stages and hasn't been cleaned up at all to date, but I'd appreciate any comments and criticism. Warning: the chapters in this work, particularly early on, tend to be fairly long....

Midwasteland
Prologue

In the year 2149, long after the Great Atomic War, the small shambles of American city-states that still populated the land investigated newborn children vigorously. By far most of the children tested were well within the boundaries of normal human life. Sometimes, however, the scans turned up something different.

So it was that the first thing most American children ever saw was a government technician rather than their mother or father. For years it went this way, ever since the doctors began to notice the anomalies.

These anomalies presented themselves at birth. The children gave off a heavier than normal level of radiation, often times enough to kill their human mothers. They appeared to be normal at first. But about the time they began speaking new symptoms would appear: uncontrollable rage, hair loss, and the ability to manipulate the radiation that was still in excess levels since the war. “These children, these things, are the single greatest threat to humanity as we know it,” declared Juan Nortooga, the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The world community had turned their back on the UN after the war, but to matters of international health they still took note. After all, the UN still employed more doctors than any of the countries or city-states combined. So when the UN released a report recommending that all such anomaly children be quarantined and euthanized, the governments of the world that remained agreed. Some small pockets of resistance sprang up, populated either by remote communities that endured few of the anomalies and thought they could control them, or by groups of anomalies themselves in enclaves outside major population centers. As long as these resisting communities remained small, the recognized governments of the world were reluctant to take action against them. But it was decided that the resistance could never spread beyond those small pockets. And above all else, was one law.

The anomalies must never form an autonomous government of their own.

Chapter 1

As we don't know yet what course these anomalies might ultimately take, it would be supremely foolish to allow them to propagate. As members of the human race, these nearly identical creatures that have arose from a mutation in the evolutionary path might seem like our brothers and sisters rather than rivals, and perhaps they are, but we must never find out.

They give off a high level of radiation, of that much we are certain. So high, in some cases, that they disintegrate the womb of their hosts as they are born. Imagine if this symptom of the anomalies were to proliferate throughout the entire world population. It would change the way we live, the way we function as a society. It would destroy the very concept of our family structure. Children without mothers and grandmothers. Husbands without wives. When we have to take extreme steps against these anomalies in order to preserve our way of life, it does not mean that those anomalies are victims. It means that we are.

--Michelle Arencebia, Surgeon General of the United Nations
Unknown date and location

The Church family was known to be sympathetic to the anomalies, particularly Shawn, the thirty year old that worked for the Chicago reclamation plant. He was always talking about civil rights and he did his best to tie the laws regarding the anomalies to those that persecuted other groups throughout history, such as the Jews or blacks. Shawn spoke about it often, probably too much. He was lighthearted and innocent, unaware that those around him were listening and remembering his words.

The members of the Chicago Census Board were made aware of Shawn's disposition before they were sent to his home to test his newborn child. They traveled in the company of the Chicago Security Service Guardsmen, who flipped down the visors on their helmets and drew their side arms, bracing themselves on the rundown porch of a shabby home on the outskirts of the city. The City Inspector knocked on the front door.

The sound brought Bonnie, Shawn’s wife, to answer. She looked haggard, as though she hadn’t yet cleaned up much after giving birth. After eyeing the suspiciously she called to her husband and he came to the door. “What do you gentlemen want?” he asked sharply. Several of the armed men, hearing Shawn’s tone, stiffened and slightly raised their weapons. There were metallic clicking sounds, and Shawn smiled at the Guardsmen nearest when he too snapped off the safety on his gun.

The City Inspector took a quiet step back, nearly falling off of the stoop. Then he steadied himself and silently handed over the official document authorizing the testing for any and all anomalies.

“So,” Shawn said after glancing at the paper and handing it back. “You’ve come to see if my child is a monster. Unfortunately for you, you are required to test them at the time of birthing. As you can see, my wife gave birth some time ago.”

The City Inspector stepped back up onto the stoop. As he did so, the Guardsmen raised their weapons higher and trained them squarely upon Shawn’s chest, causing tiny red dots to dance on his tattered shirt. They had dealt with men like Shawn in the past and were well trained. Years earlier parents had resisted more frequently. Since then, tales of the violence with which such resistance was met had filtered throughout the Chicago population. When it came to testing their children, people had long ago lost their sense of dignity. Still, Shawn was a powerful man.

“Monster,” the City Inspector repeated, as if saying it for the first time. “You know perfectly well why the testing must be done, just as you were aware of your obligation to inform the City once your wife had gone into labor so that an Inspector could be on hand.”

Shawn bristled visibly, even as he forced another smile. There were stiff penalties for impeding the City’s testing of newborns, another method of minimizing those inclined to resist. But these city workers seemed to constantly take advantage of their positions, walking the edge between carrying out their duties and openly provoking punishable behavior amongst non-government citizenry. This time Shawn resisted the urge to strike out at the snide City Inspector. Now and then he got into a minor bit of trouble with the City over a minor altercation or two with their employees or Guardsmen, but he was always alert to the danger of crossing the line into having a serious problem. He tried to stay even more alert now that his family was involved. In fact, his eldest son did a far better job of keeping his cool in times requiring discretion, and he wasn’t yet a teenager.

Shawn sighed. “You might find that people would be more welcoming if you left your guns at home. You can do your damned test,” he said, and then pointed to the Guardsmen. “But your soldiers are not allowed inside my home.”

“I’m sorry, but they will not allow me to enter without them,” the City Inspector said, shaking his head. “And the test must be performed.”

“We make a peaceful home here,” Shawn insisted. “I will not allow weapons past the door. If your soldiers insist on accompanying you, they must leave their guns on the porch.”

The City Inspector held a brief discussion with the nearest Guardsmen. “We’ll agree to your request if you give us your word that you will be peaceable. I do not wish for any sort of altercation, regardless the outcome of the test.”

“You have my word that I will not bring such shame upon my family,” Shawn replied. He stepped to the side to allow the City Inspector and Guardsmen through the door.

The City Inspector spoke quickly in trying to soothe Shawn as he led the group through his home. “I’m sure you having nothing to fear. There have been very few anomalies in this area recently and your first son tested normal. It is likely that your newborn will test the same.”

It appeared to work, as Shawn’s voice had less of an edge when he responded. “It is not fear of any results that causes anxiety in me. It is simple morality.” He walked them through a grungy kitchen in which dishes were strewn everywhere. “Will you sleep soundly tonight, knowing that you have helped violate people’s most basic right, the right to procreate? Some of the others at the plant don’t think you City workers have any conscience at all, but I think you do. I think that it eats at you, even if you won’t admit it.”

The Inspector refused to fall into the trap. What was he supposed to say, that he had long ago actively decided to set aside morality when it came to his duty to the Mayoral Throne? Would it be better to tell this man, this citizen, that of course he knew what he was doing was wrong, but that right and wrong had no bearing on following orders? He had seen what happened to those that questioned the Mayor, as he called himself. The only people he might be able to get away with confiding in were some of his fellow City Inspectors, but who could really tell who one could trust anymore. According to some of the surviving history books, Americans had turned the threat of communism into a witch hunt after World War Two. The Great Atomic War had produced similar results, the anomalies playing the part of the Communists. And just as in those times, everyone was suspicious of everyone else.

Shawn seemed to recognize the City Inspector's reluctance to answer.

“Now I see,” Shawn said. “It isn't that you don't have a conscience. You're just afraid to let it show.”

“What I'm afraid of, what most people are afraid of, is that allowing misguided emotions to drive our decision-making will result in the end of the human race as we know it.”

Shawn stopped in front of a closed door and turned around. “If these anomalies are so dangerous and we’re the victims, why is it that we’re the ones doing all the killing? What is it about being human that gives us a right to live while their lives are snuffed out?”

“We don’t murder the mothers that bear us.”

“In some cases we do,” Shawn persisted. “And not all anomaly births kill the mother, as you well know. If they did, you wouldn’t need to do this ridiculous test. So tell me again, what gives you the right to kill anomaly children that have done nothing wrong?”

“Our government.” The City Inspector pushed past Shawn and walked through the door.

Inside was Bonnie and a young boy, Shawn’s first born, seated upon a filthy couch. Cradled in the boy’s arms was an infant in swaddling. Bonnie rose immediately and positioned herself in between the City Inspector and her children. Within a moment Shawn moved from behind the group to stand with his wife. They had a brief whispered conversation, throughout which Bonnie appeared to become more and more upset.

The City Inspector sighed. “If you will please step aside and hand us the infant we can get underway.”

It took less than twenty minutes to complete the test, an uneasy silence surrounding them throughout. First they had to take Geiger counter readings of the entire room, to get a baseline. Then they took similar readings of the entire family, to make sure there would be no chance that any interference would create a false positive. By the time they finished scanning the child, the unfortunate reality was clear.

The child was an anomaly.

The City Inspector immediately handed the child to one of the Guardsmen, who swiftly took the child out to their vehicle in the street. Both parents made the unfortunate mistake of launching themselves at the Guardsmen in a rage. For all of his caution, Shawn Church obviously didn’t know much about the full uniform of Chicago Guardsmen. They had their secondary weapons out in an instant and had cut the couple down in a flurry of gunfire. The eldest boy had cried out, but he smartly stayed seated on the couch as he watched his parents bleed to death. The City Inspector regretted the boy being there, but what else could be done? He made a mental note to send along someone from the City Orphanage to pick up the child before turning to walk out the door.

It took a half hour to return to the inner-city where the anomaly quarantine center was located, and a downpour had begun by the time they passed through the security gate and stopped in front of the Retention Block. Retention? The City Inspector snorted inwardly as he looked at the word stenciled above the entrance. Is that the purpose of this place, to retain? If so, it does a very poor job of it. Most of the children that enter through this door don’t live another week. He thought about what Shawn Church had said about morality. This is how morals change, he mused. Something catastrophic happens that alters our way of life, creates a profound shift in our culture structure, and our definitions of right and wrong shift to catch up. If it hadn’t been for that damned nuclear war, for those madmen that had brought civilization crashing down upon us, I wouldn’t be put in the position of having to march newborn children to their deaths. It would be interesting to be able to see what Chicagoan society would have looked like at this same point in time had there been no war. Though, he supposed, we wouldn’t call ourselves Chicagoan. We’d still be calling ourselves Americans.

“Incoming?”

The City Inspector noticed that he had reached the front desk of the Retention Block. Meaningless, he thought. Thoughts about alternate realities are meaningless. I can wish all I want that I didn’t have to do this, my job. In the end, here I am, carrying this kennel with this toddler and signing him in to this place where they will catalog him, take a few bio-samples for study, and discard him like so much waste. In my position, I can’t afford to think about what ifs and why not’s. I just have to do my job and thank any God that might still be out there that my family is healthy and human.

He pressed his thumb into the fingerprint reader on the desk and signed the child in. There was a place on the screen to record the deaths of Bonnie and Shawn Church, and he filled that section out as well. It would take several more hours worth of paperwork at his computer before he’d be done with the deaths, but here he was allowed to keep the events record brief. Internal Review would look over the report and match it with the paperwork he filled out later, and then match those with the reports filed by the Guardsmen. All this was done to make sure that the anomaly testing process remained free from any corruption. There were over a thousand people working in the Anomaly Testing Department, most of them bureaucrats whose only work was checking up on the work of others. And all they had to go on were these cross-referenced reports submitted by those in the field. It’s a wonder we get anything done at all, the City Inspector thought silently. I’ll be glad when I can get this thing inside and get the hell out of here.

But once he had been waved past the desk and into the Retention Block, his hopes of escaping quickly and quietly vanished. He saw his boss, Jonathan Thorne, Director of Anomaly Affairs, walking amongst the bloc, occasionally peering into the nursery stockades. He looked up and quickly came over.

“Another one?” he asked, wrinkling his nose and peering down at the kennel in the City Inspector's hand. “The Mayor says I'm crazy, but I swear they're coming more quickly these days I keep telling people how much easier this would all be if it were some kind of disease, rather than a mutation. Diseases can be cured. Or better yet, vaccinated out of existence.”

The City Inspector didn't respond, knowing better than to interrupt Thorne when he was off on one of his rants. Thorne was likeable enough, perhaps even friendly, but he was still a high-ranking member of the government bureaucracy and one had to watch their words around any man in such a position. It would take more fingers and toes than the City Inspector had to count the number of city employees that had lost their positions after speaking out of turn in front of Thorne. Caution, as the saying went, was the better part of valor.

“Perhaps you can help me with a problem,” Thorne continued. “The Mayor's sister wants a child.”

No further explanation was necessary. Lindsay Donovan's inability to bear children was well known amongst the Chicago population. She had given birth to an anomaly only a few years previous, one with a terribly high radiation level. Her anomaly child had threatened her life until, over her screeching pretests, the Mayor had ordered the doctor to perform a Cesarian and to euthanize the anomaly as quickly as possible. In a rather sad bit of irony, the anomaly ceased to emit any radiation once it was dead and Lindsay Donovan survived but with a womb as withered as the fallout-laden countryside. Days later her husband committed suicide.

The City Inspector clearly recalled the Mayor's sister, standing alone and sobbing to herself while Cardinal Grabowski read the mass for the funeral of her husband. Well, not entirely alone the Mayor and a few other family members had been nearby, consoling her even. But he remembered clearly that the impression he was left with was that Lindsay Donovan had been isolated that day. While not officially so, it was the funeral of nearly everyone she held dear, and it might as well have been the funeral of any future children she'd planned on having as well. Yet the Cardinal refused even to acknowledge the tiny second casket resting to one side, anomalies note being human. Everyone attending the funeral considered the thing in that miniscule box to be a danger avoided. But to her, to Lindsay Donovan, not the Mayor's sister but Lindsay Donovan the mother, it was her first and only child. Anomaly or not, human or not, your grief is no different than that of any mother, but no one shares your pain and so you are indeed alone.

Remembering all this, unconsciously picturing her face as Thorne told him she wanted a child, the wall around his emotions failed him and he remembered the grief he felt at her pain and loss. He thought about his own children and what it would mean to lose them, to have them swept away before he'd even had a chance to know them. The City Inspector thought about all that, and then recalled how he'd spoken to his wife about his grief, and how she had shared hers with him. He knew that she felt as he did, and there was a similar sense throughout the community. They grieved for Lindsay Donovan as a group, and they came together to share their sadness with one another, finding loving bonds as they did so.

But not Lindsay Donovan herself. She had remained isolated, withdrawn. The grief she bore had to have been worse than theirs, left alone as she was, too high up the food chain as the Mayor's sister to have many true friends, if any, and yet just as vulnerable as anyone. As the result of her tragedy she was further isolated, while everyone else was bound closer together. She had become so thoroughly alone that it was evident even from the grainy black and white pictures in the newspaper. According to the reports on the funeral, she had slipped away from the funeral as quickly as possible. Over the next few days her tears had evaporated and by week's end she had stoically announced that she had convinced the Mayor to open up several orphanage shelters and counseling centers focusing on those who had experienced family tragedies like hers. The entire city's collective heart broke for her, but no amount of grief or support from the populace could possibly replace what she had lost. As the Mayor's sister, everyday she saw the hardliners rejoicing at the detaining and euthanizing of the anomalies. She saw that, and to her it would be an assault on her deceased child, and as the fear of anomalies deepened, it would drive her further from the community.

When the City Inspector had opened the paper the day after the funeral and had read the stories and seen the pictures, he noted sadly how many of the city's upper elite had reportedly made a point at the mass to express their condolences for the death of her husband, and how he was surely with God now. He had slammed the paper down at the breakfast table and muttered aloud, “That poor woman will hate us forever.”

His wife had looked at him confused. She meant well, but at times she couldn't quite follow him. “Hate us? But we're all mourning with her. How could she possibly hate us?”

“But we only mourn her husband, don't we? We don't even mention her child.”

“You mean the anomaly?”

“Yes, that. And because of it, she'll never forgive us.”

His wife had waved him off. “You make too much of nothing. She's the Mayor's sister. She was treated well even before this whole mess. Now, the people practically worship her.”

And that's why she hates us, he thought. Doesn't my wife realize that our reverence for Lindsay Donovan and the simultaneous dismissal of her child is the very reason she feels isolated? And now that many weeks and months had passed, they could all see that her pain had worsened when she occasionally spoke in public. The brightness in her eyes had gone, stolen away by her sadness. Yet this made the people love her all the more, to see her fighting through depression to advocate for her city projects. No one actually knew her, exchanged knowing glances with her, gossiped over a meal with her, because she refused to connect with anyone else. “She fears connection,” he had once told his wife. “She quakes at the thought of being loved, because she believes that all those whose love she accepts will be taken away from her.”

And here was Thorne, his boss, peering into the prison of infants because she wanted a child. Why an anomaly? Probably because her lost child had been one. “Sir,” he said carefully. “These children are scheduled to be euthanized. They cannot be adopted.”

“Not by common people, no,” Thorne nodded. “This has been approved by Mayor Donovan himself, just yesterday. He personally asked me to select a child for his sister to raise.”

“Mayor Donovan actually approved that?”

“Yes. God knows why. I’ve heard whispers around City Hall that the Mayor’s sister blamed him personally for the loss of her anomaly child, and that she’s been after him to let her do this for some time.” Thorne looked around quickly, as though worried that someone else might hear what he’d said. Apparently even men in such high positions had to be cautious when speaking of the Mayor. Looking satisfied, he turned back to the City Inspector and leaned in closely. “I heard she threatened to kill herself last week. It appears that now the Mayor has given in to her request.”

“I bet.”

“He’s asked that I find a suitable child. Preferably one that does not give off too strong a radiation level and whose immediate family is now deceased.” Thorne sighed. “It seems an impossible task. Most of these children are within the safety limits for radiation, but all of them have at least one parent surviving them.”

The City Inspector saw his chance to relieve the Church’s anomaly from his conscience. “Actually, sir, this child I was bringing in would probably be perfect for Ms. Donovan,” he said, holding up the kennel. “It was tested this afternoon and its radiation levels are well within the safety limits.”

“I notice you neglect to mention the anomaly’s parents,” Thorne said suspiciously.

“Shawn Church and his wife are dead, sir.”

“Christ. How did that happen?”

“They attacked the Guardsmen when the child tested as an anomaly. For our safety they had to be neutralized.”

“You would think these people would know better by now,” Thorne shook his head. “On the other hand, this may have solved my little problem. How old is the child?”

“Two days, sir.”

Thorne nodded approvingly. “It will need to be tested thoroughly and spend some time in a nursery to make sure it’s healthy.”

The City Inspector looked around the Retention Block. Glass cribs held the children in tiny rooms that were built to guard against radiation emissions. “Here, sir?”

“I suppose not,” Thorne said. “This thing, this anomaly is no longer like the rest, is it? I wonder if it has any notion of how close it came to death today.”

The City Inspector winced internally. Thorne’s words brought the stark realization that, save for this one child inside the kennel in his arms, none of the twenty or so other living beings in their cells would survive the week. “I can take it over to Northwestern Memorial, sir,” he said. It was the closest hospital to City Hall, and it had a radiation poisoning quarantine in which they could place the anomaly for testing.

“That will be fine. I’ll inform the Mayor that we have a child for his sister.” He pulled out a relay phone, the kind that operated over radio waves and were only used by the highest members of government.

With a sigh of relief, the City Inspector turned to walk out the door, but stopped as he remembered something. “Sir?” he asked, turning back and hoping that whoever Thorne was calling hadn’t yet picked up the line.

“What is it?”

“The Church’s had another child,” he said, then adding quickly, “A human child, sir. And we had to leave him at their home after the…incident.”

Thorne nodded grimly. “How unfortunate. I’ll have someone from the City Orphanage swing by to pick him up this evening.” He favored the City Inspector with a smile. “You’ve got a good heart. Not everyone would think of their child like that.”

“Yes sir, thank you sir,” the City Inspector replied. But as he left the Retention Block and drove to the hospital, all he could think of was the bullet-riddled corpses of Shawn and Bonnie Church.

***

Thorne meant to discourage her, but Lindsay Donovan knew that such discouragement was really coming from her brother, the Mayor, and so she immediately dismissed it. He told her that the child had been cleared for her to adopt, but that there was no reason to act hastily. He suggested that she spend some time with the child; make sure that she really wanted it. Of course, he didn’t refer to it as a child, he simply called it an it.

But she didn’t need any time. She had fallen in love with the child as soon as she’d laid eyes on him. “I don’t need any more time with him. That is going to be my child.”

Thorne had simply looked at her stoically, but that was alright. She could endure his obvious disapproval just as well as she could her brother’s. She could endure anything if it meant finally having this child.

“I just want to make sure really ready for this,” Thorne said.

“The only thing I’m not prepared to do is continue this conversation with you while my child still sits on the other side of this isolation window.”

He studied her face for a moment. “Why are you in such a rush?”

“Rush? I’ve waited nearly three years for this day. My brother’s exception order says I can take this child home today. That’s something he and I have agreed upon. Unless I missed the announcement, I believe you’re still his subordinate and required to follow his orders.”

“Then you didn’t read the exception order closely.”

“It said the child need only be proven healthy and of safe radiation levels. Both of those conditions are fulfilled. I don’t need anything else.”

“Not true,” Thorne shook his head. “It also said that the adoption must be certified by the Mayor himself, once the tests have been completed.”

“He’s agreed to certify the adoption!”

“Yes has, so long as you spoke with me first.”

Lindsay could see in his eyes that he was stubbornly serious. She had dealt with Thorne in the past, and so knew him somewhat, and she had yet to ever see this look in his eyes. It was the look of one with the weight of authority behind one’s actions. It was a look of dominance.

“What do you know about being a parent, Jonathan,” she spat, feeling blood rush to her face and make it hot. “You are unmarried and without children! Who do you think you are to deny this child a loving parent?”

“Ah,” Thorne replied evenly. “So your desire to adopt an anomaly stems from concern for its well being. Seeing it in need, knowing what would have happened to it had you not intervened, you selflessly sprung into action and came to its aid.”

She saw instantly how ludicrous such an argument sounded. She was also painfully aware how incongruent it was with her true motives. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that an anomaly doesn’t deserve such treatment?”

“That really isn’t for me to decide. But such a question is moot since that isn’t what’s motivating you anyway.”

“You dare call me a liar?”

“A liar to yourself perhaps. As the Mayor’s sister, and as an activist for the well-being of those who lose family members to anomalies, surely you have seen several such children before this one. And yet you have not tried to rescue all of these children. Nor do I suspect you will rescue any others after today. You’ve spent most of your life around in a position to have contact to anomalies, yet you haven’t felt spurred to save them all.”

“Why should I? I couldn’t save them all if I wanted to.”

He smiled serenely. “So who are you really trying to save today?”

Perhaps there was more to Thorne than she had thought. She was impressed by his persistence. While she had no official position within the city government, her relationship to the Mayor was usually enough to scare off anyone who might question her. “Why should anyone need saving? Perhaps I simply wish to share some of my good fortune in life with a child.”

He lost the smile. “Why an anomaly? Why not a healthy human child from one of the adoption centers you yourself helped to found?”

“There are plenty of families willing to adopt those children. I don't see anyone lining up to help the anomalies.”

“There are others who advocate for anomaly rights. The father of this child, for instance, was quite vociferous in his support for allowing anomalies to live. I hear there is even something of an enclave outside the city walls for runaway anomalies.”

“Outside the walls? They're as good as dead.”

“Perhaps. But at least they have a group, a community. There are people inside the walls putting their well-being on the line to try to change the government policy in their favor. But who is looking out for you?”

“I have people who care about me,” she said. “Family and friends.”

“None of whom really know you. You have family, but you rarely visit them. The people who you call friends hardly see you. You attend church, but you sit alone in the front pew, separate from everyone else. In fact, I can't think of a single person with whom you've had anything other than a purely superfluous relationship in the past couple of years.”

Lindsay was taken aback. He was cutting down everything she said. Even worse, he was spotlighting the real reason she wanted this adoption, whether he knew it or not. “I can take care of myself.”

“I don't doubt that,” Thorne nodded. “And it's common for people to withdraw from grief for a time. But this has been going on with you for years. And do you know why it's gone on so long?”

“I'm sure you think it's my fault.”

“No, actually. The fault lies with all of us. Everyone from the Mayor at the top to the ditch diggers at the bottom. We all saw what you were doing, how you were withdrawing further and further, yet we did nothing. And so you've remained completely alone, advocating for groups but never risking a connection with a single person. And suddenly there's this adoption request.”

“You say what a terrible thing it is that I've been alone, but today you want to deny me when I finally reach out to another person.”

He shook his head. “That's my point, Ms. Donovan, it's not a person at all. It's not human. You can argue all you like that the thing in that nursery deserves a life, love, and the right to pursue happiness, as they used to say before the war. And perhaps you're right on every point. But you have to understand that that child is not a member of the community we've been speaking about. It never will be. We are a society of human beings, and that thing is something else.”

“That's not true. The differences in them are no more than those of different races. But we don't euthanize every black child in Chicago, now do we?”

“The scientists can talk about common genetic percentages all they like,” Thorne said, a dark look crossing his face. “Maintaining that which makes us human has become very important in the years since the war. You've seen what's happened outside the walls. What the wildlife has turned into. And in my work I've seen what these anomalies do to families. I know what your pregnancy did your body. But believe me, I've seen far, far worse. These things can--”

“Rot their host mothers from the inside out, and even occasionally kill them. I help raise money for the research into these children. Do you really think I'm not familiar with the results of that research?”

“You're familiar with the research, you've experienced some of the tragedy personally, and now you want to adopt an anomaly?”

Finally she saw where he was going with this. “You think my motives are selfish,” she said. “You think I'm trying to get my dead child back.”

“To be honest, I don't really care what your motives are. The Mayor wants me to make sure you're ready to care for the anomaly. To do that, I have to know why you're suddenly so adamant in adopting this child.”

“Simple. I'm done being alone and I have a mother's instinct. This child is within the safety parameters for radiation and is without parents. We seem to be a match.”

“Perhaps,” said Thorne. “And perhaps your not accounting for all possible outcomes. Before I can allow you to complete this adoption, I have to know whether you truly want to adopt this child, or if any child would suffice.”

“How selfish you think I am.”

“Not selfish. Just consumed with a grief that has festered for three years unaddressed. If you take possession of this child, I have no doubt that you will care for it as if it were your own. But who will you be doing it for? Do you truly believe that the child deserves the life you're planning on giving it? Or will you be giving it the life your own child would have deserved if it had been human?”

“They both deserve a life. Everyone does.”

“If you truly believe that, there are plenty of human children and families in need. Why aren't you helping them?”

“Perhaps I should be. But as you said, I don't really know anyone and none of them know me. Maybe I thought I'd start with someone with whom I'd have a clean slate. Someone who not only didn't know me, but didn't know of me, either.”

“Of you?”

“You people all think you have some kind of insight into my life just because you see my picture in the paper and read what their writers say about me. But you can't know someone from a piece of paper, or simple words written about them. The admiration I receive, it is completely misplaced.”

“You think you aren't worthy of admiration.”

“Yes I am! But people don't admire me because of the good works I do. They admire me because of the deaths I've endured.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. They might think helping family members left behind by anomaly births is a good work, but they oppose the other things I try to do. My advocacy for anomaly rights goes unheard, unpublished in the papers, and unapproved by my esteemed brother. If it weren't for the coverage of my husband's funeral, I would be despised by the entire city.”

“Perhaps there is more capacity to love and accept the anomalies in this world than you think.”

Her anger flared again. “Don't make me laugh. You're the Director of Anomaly Affairs, you probably spend more time around these children and their parents than anyone else in the city, and even you can't bear to even refer them by their names. You use pronouns instead, or a demeaning usage of the word it.”

“I don't deny my view that they aren't human,” Thorne shrugged. “Seeing the damage they can cause, I also don't enjoy being around them. But don't you think that even my mind could be changed?”

“No, Jonathan. I know you well enough to know that when you believe in something as strongly as you do this, the hounds of hell couldn't change your mind. And do you know why your mind cannot be changed?”

“Tell me.”

“Because you fear these children. You fear what they might do to their mothers. You fear how they might change in some small way what it means to be human. But most of all you fear their ability to manipulate excess radiation as if it was some kind of superpower, and they super-villains. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out all fear.”

Thorne's face lit up warmly. “John, four eighteen. That is one of my Mother's favorite passages.”

“Written by a man that lived over two thousand years ago, and yet he understood people well enough that even today his words speak to us. How difficult must it have been for this imperfect man to write these perfect words? Then he was writing of the persecution of the Jews by the Romans, but even the endless struggles of the Jewish people don't compare to the global genocide we're committing against the anomalies.”

“So you're, what? The Jesus Christ of our time? Back not to bring salvation to mankind, but these other beings instead?”

“You say it as if I'm some kind of self-righteous nutcase. I don't think I'm some kind of deity. I'm just trying to do what Christ and the Apostles did once. They changed people's minds, so much so that they built a religion around their teachings. They wrote down their words in a book that is more widely read than any other in the world.”

“And who will write your book?”

She turned to look back into the nursery. “Perhaps this child will, or else those that will know him.”

He nodded. “You've already imagined his future life, haven't you? Pictured what he'll look like when he's older? Imagined what his place in the world might be?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And how does he look?”

She wiped a tear away from her eye. “He's beautiful. Strong and respected, but kind. I see him with his own children, tending to them as a good father should. I see that his wife loves him, and so do his neighbors. It sounds silly, but that's what you want. You want me to sound silly so that you can deny my application.”

“No,” Thorne said softly. “What I wanted was to know was that when you pictured your son's future, you saw in it all the things a life might mean for the child, rather than for yourself. A mother does not want her children for any reasons to do with herself. She wants to have them so that they can grow and have fulfilling lives of their own. She might become sentimental as they get older, and perhaps even wish for more time to spend together. But ultimately it is her most fulfilling moment when her children leave the nest and become independent. And because of what you told me, I know now that you are truly a mother and not just a depressed widow. Perhaps more importantly, if anyone would be successful in rearing an anomaly it would be you, as isolated from humanity as they are.”

“You say I'm adored and then tell me I'm alone? You make me cry and plead, tell me I might not be able to have this child, and now you insinuate that I don't even have a place in humanity?”

“I'm approving the adoption.”

She stared at him a moment. “Tonight?”

“Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you like. There is no longer anything standing in your way.”

In spite of herself, she leaped forward and hugged him. “I don't know what to say. Thank you, I suppose. Thank you for everything.”

He hugged her back. “Change my mind. I'm not the closed-minded fool you and others think I am. My job forbids me to treat anomalies as I would humans, and I've built my beliefs around that job so that I won't be wracked with guilt and remorse, but that doesn't preclude me from greater understanding. All the science on the matter is incomplete, because we've never had an anomaly in our community to watch as they grew up. Those who know the truth about this child will be watching very closely, and when they've watched enough to come to a conclusion, I promise that you will have your own apostles, ready to tell your story to all that will listen. But take this advise: don't let anyone know that your adopted child is an anomaly unless absolutely necessary. Don't make that information public until he's eighteen, and then only if he agrees.”

She stepped back from him and looked in his eyes. “Here you just told me you don't even think he's human, but still you're trying to protect him.”

“I read the Bible too,” he said. “Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it. That's from the Book of Ezra.”

“Did you really mean it, that I could take him home tonight?

“You don't believe me? You think I would joke about this?”

“It just seems a sudden shift in position. A moment ago you told me I might not ever get the child, and now you tell me that he'll be coming home with me this very night.”

“Well, moments ago you were hugging me, and now you're suspicious that I'm going to pull some kind of rug out from under you. So you're shifting fairly quickly as well.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“But the other thing I want you to do is to make that promise to me. Promise that you'll only tell people about the boy when absolutely necessary. Because you will only bring danger to him otherwise. Can you make me that promise? Or will you undo all the good that could come of this?”

“I promise.”

“When will you sign his discharge papers?”

“Tonight! I would sign them right now if you had them.”

Thorne smiled, and then reached into his pocket. From it he pulled out a folded piece of paper and a pen and handed both to her. She unfolded the paper and saw that it was the discharge form.

“You've already signed it! You were always going to let me take him tonight!”

“No,” he shook his head. “Though I was fairly sure you would pass the test, I still had to give it. I just trusted you to be the person I thought you were.”

“You don't know me. You even said so yourself.”

“Oh, I'm not so sure,” he smiled. “Perhaps I didn't know you. But now I find that many of my assumptions about you are proven correct, and so it is reasonable to assume my other assumptions are as well. All that's left is to pray that you can disprove my assumptions about these anomalies.” He looked her over a moment. “You know, I once spent some time with a woman when I was younger. She too had the inclination to help those around her.”

“Do I remind you of her?”

“A bit perhaps, in terms of virtues.” He paused. “She wasn't quite so good looking, though.”

She smiled and signed the discharge form. Thorne spent the next few hours with her, helping her to fill out the rest of the paperwork, putting together a supply pack for the baby and just talking her through the process. She didn't mind his company, surprisingly. Maybe it was because she was overjoyed about the adoption, but she began to consider how handsome Thorne was. So when they were done that night, and he had helped to load the child and and the care package into her car, Lindsay Donovan invited Jonathan Thorne over for dinner. He never left.

Despite the drastic move, they took things slowly at first. Her home was large, even by prewar standards, so he took the guest bedroom. He wasn't able to shed the way he felt about the child immediately. Lindsay was understanding though, and she helped to work him through it. In fact she was grateful to do so, as it meant that she had people around her home again. The house in the Loop District used to be a place of silence and solitude. Now, to her delight, it bustled and moved, constantly needing attention. It brought joy to her heart to be needed again, to have good work to do for people with whom she was intimate.

The most pleasurable part of that intimacy eventually came with Thorne as well. He was a patient man and caution came naturally to him. He enjoyed the easy times with them and was willing to do the work when things were more difficult. After a surprisingly short time had passed, Lindsay walked in on him in the baby's room where he was standing over the crib, just sort of studying the baby as it looked up at him. She immediately took him by the hand, led him to the bedroom, and showed him physically how much she had fallen in love with him.

“Nearly two months since you adopted the child,” he managed to pant out once they were done. “And you still haven't named him.”

“I just don't want him to end up with the wrong name,” she answered, equally breathless. “I've always hated my first name, like it doesn't belong to me. I don't want my child to feel the same way.”

“Do you really think a name matters that much?”

She leaned over and kissed him. “How could I answer with anything other than yes when your name rolls so sweetly off my tongue?”

He smiled, but refused to let her get away with changing the subject. “Do you at least have some ideas?”

She blushed, but answered evenly. “I was thinking of naming him after you, actually. I was going to ask you, but I kept chickening out.”

“I don't know,” he said, looking sheepish. But then he seemed to brighten. “What if he took my father's name for his first, his biological family's name for his middle, and your last name?”

She shrugged. “What's your father's name?”

“Anton.”

“Anton Church Donovan,” she said slowly, and then repeated it several times, as if she were trying it out. “It sounds perfect! Powerful, but kind. Like the column of a building.” She said the name several more times.

“I think you're right, it is perfect,” he said quietly. “But how will you explain to your brother that he has my father's name? There are very few Anton's in Chicago, you know, and the Mayor knows my father well. If you call the boy Anton, your brother will finally know about us.”

“You're right,” she said. “I suppose the only thing we can do is get married. That way the boy's name will be a sweet gesture of family loyalty rather than an indication of a sinful living situation.”

It wasn't a traditional proposal, but they were both happy and they got married a week later. The wedding melted away any remaining misgivings Thorne had for the child. They both agreed to keep their last names, so Anton was still called Donovan. But there was also no doubt who his father was, as Thorne instantly became the doting husband and father. He also began to be promoted up through the ranks personally by Mayor Patrick Donovan. There was a bit of jealousy to deal with at first, but Thorne's work was always deserving of praise, and eventually he became the Mayor's personal adviser. They both began to wonder if changing the policy on anomalies might be easier than they'd thought.

But it wasn't. Once he had gotten situated as the Mayor's adviser, and once he thought he'd proven himself in a few mildly important tasks, he tried to broach the subject of anomalies several times. For the first few weeks, the Mayor and his cabinet would rarely respond beyond politely dismissing him. Now and then one of them would take the time to patiently explain to him both why he was wrong and why the kinds of questions he was asking were dangerous. But that politeness eventually eroded once Thorne was an established part of the team. He and the Mayor began to converse on the subject openly on their walks throughout City Hall, in full view of other workers. He tried to talk science first, speculating on the implications of the newest genetic research. When that failed, Thorne tried the behavioral route, trying to rationalize some of the more obtusely bizarre symptoms that anomalies showed, and how they might actually be useful. Since there was little documented psychology on anomalies, it meant only reading a couple of logs on the matter and he was as expert as anyone else on the subject. More so, actually, since Anton was growing older quickly and had begun speaking. “Come on, Patrick,” he said one day as they were walking up the Mayor's office. “We're not just talking about a nameless, faceless group of people any longer. We're talking about your nephew.”

“That thing isn't my nephew, Jonathan,” the Mayor shook his head sadly. “It was an indulgence I took on behalf of my sister.”

“But, sir, you've spent some time with Anton. You know him well enough to see how unnecessary some of the harsher laws are.”

The Mayor studied him a moment. “Anton's life has a purpose. He was allowed to live so that my sister might not do something drastic, like kill herself. I know you're married to her now, and that you love her, but did she ever tell you that? That she threatened to kill herself if I didn't allow her to adopt Anton?”

“We've discussed it, sir, yes.”

“Well then you know the position she put me in. Thank God she's kept the whole thing quiet.” Mayor Donovan took a deep breath. “All I can do now is try to salvage the situation so that some good comes from all this.”

Thorne had known the Mayor for some time now, but for weeks after that conversation he argued with himself over what his brother-in-law might have meant in saying that Anton’s life had a purpose. His interest was magnified by the sudden uptick in time the Mayor spent with Anton over the ensuing months. He would come around for dinner once or twice a week, eat and speak with all of them, and then ask Anton to take a walk with him around the surrounding area of the city. Thorne tried to ask Anton about what they did on their walks, but all his son would tell him was that they would get candy or ice cream and talk about the city and its people. Lindsay thought that it was a sweet gesture, and took it as a sign that the Mayor might finally be coming around in his thinking about anomalies, or at least Anton. Thorne wasn’t convinced and became alarmed at the way Anton began idolizing his Uncle.

One of the evenings when the Mayor had returned Anton from one of their walks, the child, now eight years old, rushed to where he’d been reading the paper. “Father, Father!” he exclaimed. “I know what you are! I know what we are!”

Thorne put down his paper and looked quizzically at his son, who was shifting his weight from foot to foot excitedly. What was he talking about?

When he didn’t answer, Anton continued. “Or is it just Mother who can do it? Uncle said that it can be passed from parent to child, so I assume you can do it too. Uncle told me about it and said I should ask you. So? Can you do it too?”

He was speaking hurriedly, as if manic for an answer. “What are you talking about?”

“The power!” Anton cried. “You must know if you have it!”

Thorne went rigid. Anton was the right age to begin showing signs, but surely his brother-in-law wouldn’t spring this on them. “Show me what you mean,” he said.

At that moment Lindsay had come into the room, surely attracted by all the noise Anton was making. He saw instantly that she’d seen the look on his face and she rushed to his side. He didn’t know how much she’d guessed from that look, but she was already biting her lip and wringing her hands behind her back.

“I can!” Anton exclaimed. He began looking around the room. “Tell me what you want me to try it on. I’m not too good at it yet. I don’t want to break anything expensive.”

Thorne still wasn’t sure what specifically Anton was going to do, but his heart began thundering in his chest. Lindsay was standing like a statue, still looking nervous and watching her son. She was obviously too frightened to speak, let alone pick an object from the room for Anton to do whatever it was going to attempt. He wanted this whole thing, these questions, Anton himself, to just go away. But his son was still eagerly awaiting an answer.

“How about this coffee cup,” he said slowly, reaching to pick it off of the end table. “It’s nearly empty and we have a dozen more.”

Anton smiled broadly. He stepped to the other side of the room and turned to face them, his mother standing and staring anxiously and his father sitting with an empty coffee cup in his outstretched palm. “Don’t move,” he told them. Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, as he did whenever he was concentrating on something. It was one of those adult gestures he’d adopted that amazed Thorne.

Suddenly Anton opened his eyes, and Lindsay squeaked in fright. His eyes had gone a solid pale orange and the look of determination on his face was terrifying on his child face. He stretched out one hand, fingers reaching. The air between them seemed to increase in density and it looked like waves of something clear were flowing through it, the way the air above a barbecue became distorted. He was about to ask what he was doing when the coffee mug in his hand lurched unsteadily into the air. It hung there for a moment, suspended above his palm. Then, as Thorne stared open-mouthed, it slowly floated across the room and landed gently in Anton’s hand.

His eyes returned to normal. When he looked down at the mug in his hand he smiled and looked up at them. “That’s my best yet! I’m going to go practice some more. You guys can show me yours later.” And he returned the mug and rushed to his room.

“My God,” Lindsay whispered.

Thorne stood and hugged her, holding her tight. He told her that it was getting late and led her up to their bedroom. Along the way, he said, “Do you know what Anton told me? He said that your brother was the one that told him about what he was, at least partially. He said Patrick wanted him to ask us about it.”

“He wouldn’t,” she replied. “Especially not now. They’ve been getting along so well together.”

Thorne paused, trying to decide how to proceed. One of the things he loved about his wife was her ability to expect the best of people, regardless of past history. It was what gave her such an open mind regarding anomalies. But it also made it very difficult to get her to accept any reality that was different from her optimistic view. If he insisted on suggesting that her brother had overstepped his bounds and set this on them on purpose, she would likely just shut down and stonewall any attempt at rational conversation. For this reason the conversation ended, but he was silently furious.

Throughout the night they were occasionally awoken by the sounds of objects falling onto Anton’s floor. Thorne was sure that he was practicing moving other objects. As the night went on the crashes and bangs came with less frequency until, finally, there was silence. Thorne figured his son must finally have tired and gone to bed.

In the morning they walked to the kitchen together, noticing that the lights were already on. With no one else in the residence, Thorne assumed Anton must already be awake and eating. But when they walked into the room they found Anton at the table with the Mayor and William Koskie, the Mayor’s Defense Director. The man in charge of protecting the city from all threat, including the perceived danger posed by anomalies. “What are you doing here, Sir?”

Mayor Donovan looked up and smiled. “Ah, Thorne, you’re finally up.” He stood and clapped Thorne on the back, and then gave Lindsay a kiss on the cheek. “We were just speaking to Anton about his future. Sit, sit.”

Thorne looked over Anton, who was sitting quietly with the most serious look he’d ever expressed across his face. They both sat on either side of him and Mayor Donovan returned to his seat opposite them, next to Koskie.

“He is a very bright boy,” Mayor Donovan continued. Despite the smile, Thorne knew his boss was choosing his words very carefully. “Very talented. There is so much good he could do, so many options in his life. William here was just talking about some of the challenges we face in city security and how much use Anton could be in his department.”

“Perhaps we should talk about this later,” Thorne said quickly. “In private, sir.” The conversation he’d had with the Mayor rushed back to him now, and he had a feeling he was about to find out what the Mayor thought Anton’s “purpose” was.

“A boy this smart doesn’t need to be coddled, Jonathan,” the Mayor replied. “He’s perfectly capable of understanding these things. Aren’t you son?”

“I can handle it,” Anton replied, still staring ahead at his uncle, refusing to meet Thorne’s eye.

“It isn’t a matter of coddling,” Thorne said. “He’s an eight year old child and we’re his parents. If you have thoughts about his future, you should bring them to us.” He turned to Koskie. “And you aren’t friend or family, so you have no business being here at all.”

“Relax, Jonathan, I invited him,” the Mayor said. “If you want to be angry with someone, then be angry with me. He’s only here because we’re off to inspect the guardsmen on the wall in an hour.”

“I want to know what you’ve been telling my son, sir.”

“I’m not your son,” Anton murmured.

Silence penetrated the conversation for several moments before Lindsay said sharply, “What did you just say?”

“I said I’m not his son,” Anton repeated. He looked up at Thorne, not angry but upset to the point of tears. “And I’m not her son either, am I? Please just tell me the truth.”

“Yes you are,” Lindsay said sharply.

Anton regarded her critically and then turned to Thorne for confirmation.

“Your mother is right,” Thorne told him. “You may not be our biological offspring, but you’re our son. You will always be our son.”

“But, my parents—my real parents—who were they?”

“That’s a conversation for later,” Anton said firmly. He rested a hand on his son’s heaving shoulder, trying to comfort him. As he did so, he turned back to the Mayor and Koskie. “This was something to be handled within my family, sir. You had no right to intrude like that.” He was shaking with anger.

“Careful, Jonathan. You have done great work for me, but do not forget that I make the law in this city. You don’t have any rights except those that I choose to bestow upon you.”

Thorne took a deep breath. “From now on, if you want to discuss serious matters with Anton, I would like you to consult with me first. I think I’m owed that much, as your aide and his father.”

Mayor Donovan sighed. “You make too much of this, Jonathan,” he said. “What did I say but the truth? And if you’ll recall, you owe this family that you’re so protective of entirely to me.”

That should do it, Thorne thought silently. And he was right.

“You do not own us!” Lindsay erupted from the table, her chair toppling backwards. “Do you really think you control this entire city? Or the citizens within it? Even as you make your little speeches and decrees, opposition springs up from all around you. Dissenters amongst the citizens, enclaves outside the walls, news of uprisings in other cities, yet you come to our home to tell us we owe all we have to you?”

But the Mayor just laughed darkly. “You see why the boy is so tough, William? My sister and her husband have raised him in their image, and he is the better for it.”

“You’re right,” Koskie nodded. “Whatever they are doing is working, even now. Look at the boy.”

They all turned towards Anton. His eyes had dried and he was watching them argue stoically. He had the same look Thorne had seen him display in the past when he had forced himself to swallow his tears.

“He is strong,” Thorne agreed. He took a deep, measured breath. “And when he’s of age, this may be an appropriate conversation to have with him. But not now.”

The Mayor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we do not agree. It’s impossible to hold back the talent of such a child, and to attempt to do so would only frustrate him and retard his natural ability. I don’t even want to think what a lack of disciplined nurturing might mean for his other abilities.”

Thorne looked up sharply, disbelieving his ears. Surely the Mayor wouldn’t reveal what he had done so callously, particularly not in front of Koskie. But when he glanced over at the city’s chief defender, he had no look of confusion or question on his face. And it was then that Thorne noticed a motley collection of objects on the kitchen table: salt and pepper shakers, a picture frame, a wooden spoon, several crumpled up pieces of paper. He showed them, Thorne thought. I didn’t warn him, and now he’s showed them.

“Could you get me a muffin,” Mayor Donovan said with a smile, as if reading his thoughts.

Anton turned toward the kitchen counter and stretched his hand out. His eyes glowed orange in an instant and with shocking speed one of the muffins from the plate on the counter zipped into his hand, sending crumbs tumbling to the floor. He handed the muffin to the Mayor expressionlessly.

“Such a talented boy belongs in the service,” Koskie said, giving Thorne a hard look.

The truth was that this was proof of everything he and his wife stood for, that the talents of an anomaly were so useful and needed that the very government currently hunting them would employ them as well. Still, Thorne had never imagined that it would be his son that would act as that example. He knew Anton better than anyone else, better even than Lindsay, and he had no doubt that he would be an effective member of the City Security Service, but as he’d said, apt or not, that was something Anton himself to decide when he was of age. Thorne did his best to remain polite but firm as he told Mayor Donovan and Koskie that he would not allow his son to enter the service underage.

They fought and issued more threats for a while longer, but in the end gave up. Donovan was a despot, and his title of Mayor a joke, but he was still a politician. He knew that if he forced the issue and conscripted Anton against the will of his parents, word would get out and the backlash from the citizenry would be harsh. Still, the Mayor’s office suddenly seemed dangerous to Thorne and between he and his wife there was the question of exactly how much they could trust their powerful family member. Despite many attempts by Lindsay to reassure him of her brother’s good intentions, Thorne remained extremely wary.

Even though he had been upset upon hearing that he was an adopted child, Thorne was amazed at how quickly Anton recovered. He seemed to accept that they were his parents, even though he wasn’t their biological offspring. The only change in his behavior was a constant curiosity about his biological family, about which he knew only a little and Lindsay knew nothing. They had decided to tell Anton that his parents had died in an accident and that he had no surviving family left. When he would ask for details, Thorne would tell him that he didn’t have any. I think I’m doing what’s best for him, Thorne thought. But how can I know? What if I’m setting him up for some kind of breakdown?

Mayor Donovan’s visits practically ceased from then on, and after several years Thorne’s concerns faded, though he still was far more alert to what was being said and done regarding anomalies. By the time Anton had entered his teenage years, the development and control of his abilities had progressed amazingly. He was particularly pleased that his son had shown none of the feared behavioral symptoms ascribed to anomalies: no schizophrenia, no violent outbursts, no rebellion against authority. Actually, the only noticeable difference between him and their neighbor’s children was that Anton had almost no hair on his body at all, save for a tiny patch of a goatee. But they had explained that as simply a style choice, one that happened to be somewhat in vogue amongst the more accomplished academics. In fact, Anton had truly taken an interest in education, pouring over books, particularly those that had survived the war. Thorne asked him on his sixteenth birthday what he wanted to do for work and was unsurprised when Anton said he was thinking of being a teacher. Thorne couldn’t have been more proud of him.

Even the city seemed to be coming along. Donovan might rule absolutely, and the city hadn’t conducted an election since he took office all those years ago, but he worked extremely hard in cleaning up and rebuilding the city of Chicago. Within the walls there were still a great many neighborhoods that weren’t much more than bombed out rubble, but other areas had been shown a great deal of care and new buildings complete with plumbing and some amenities were sprouting. It meant a great deal of work for Thorne as well, but it was good work and he was happy. It never occurred to him that the happiness of his family would come crashing down in an event that would ignite fear and the thirst for war in Chicago as it had never had.

It had started so simply when he had brought Anton to work one day. Mayor Donovan had invited them to lunch and the topic of Anton’s future came up again, but this time Donovan had simply asked Anton what his plans were. Anton had told his uncle of his plans to teach, but Donovan had pressed him lightly to work for the government, telling him that the city would be willing to let him head a special security task force, commanding men of Anton’s own choosing. Anton had replied that he didn’t have much interest in joining the CSS, particularly as he’d rarely seen any evidence of a true security threat; even the enclaves of anomalies outside the walls rarely stirred any trouble beyond an occasional attack on someone traveling outside the city’s protection. So why should he go into the service?

Mayor Donovan asked him to just keep it in the back of his mind, in case his thoughts on the matter should change. When they got home that evening, everything seemed normal. Anton at dinner with them and then went to his room to read and practice his abilities, particularly a new one he’d discovered, being able to light a candle by surrounding the wick with concentrated radiation. Thorne told Lindsay of the conversation at lunch, but she just shrugged and said she was glad their son didn’t want to join the service. “My parents were pacifists,” she said. “If they were still alive today, I don’t think they would support the Mayor son, because of the way he uses his soldiers.”

“And now you’re married to his chief advisor,” Anton smiled.

“Yes, but the work you do, the policies you advocate, my parents would have supported those,” she responded. His relay phone chimed and she frowned at him. “I told you I don’t like them calling on you after hours. Especially during meal times.”

But he hardly heard her. The message on his phone was from Mayor Donovan, and it indicated there was an emergency. Apparently one of the anomaly enclaves outside the walls had managed to scale the walls and had attacked one of the outskirt neighborhoods. The Chicago Security Service had already responded, but the Mayor wanted to visit the site himself to console the victims, and he wanted Thorne there as well. Everyone else was already on their way, so Thorne would have to get himself to the UC neighborhood, named for a stadium that had stood there before the war.

Lindsay couldn’t see the message from her seat, but she must have seen the look on his face because she asked, “What happened?”

“An attack by an anomaly enclave,” he answered, already moving away from the table and putting on his coat. He stopped at the door and turned to her. “Don’t wait up for me, this could take a while.”

“Tell me what’s going on!”

He smiled to reassure her. “I don’t know yet. I’ll fill you in tomorrow morning.”

But he never told her. She had gone to bed shortly after and when she awoke his side of the bed was still empty. When she had gotten Anton off to school and he still wasn’t home she began to worry. She retrieved her own relay phone from a cupboard, a testament to how rarely she used it, and tried to call him. When he failed to answer, she rang her brother. Mayor Donovan’s voice was shaking when he told her a car was on its way to pick her up and bring her out to the UC neighborhood.

When she arrived, her brother took her to a grouping of rundown shacks near the city wall. Those living in the dwellings, deep in poverty, were standing in makeshift doorways and staring. Her husband’s body was sprawled on the ground, half on a concrete slab that used to be a sidewalk, and half on the grass next to it. His skin was covered with boils and welts, and there was some kind of metallic staff buried through his chest into the ground. His eyes were open and his mouth was frozen in a scream.

“Radiation burns,” her brother said solemnly. “An anomaly did this.”

Lindsay collapsed into tears at his feet.

The Importance of Words....

Part of the game in shaping public opinion hinges on controlling thought. We all think in the language of words, so shaping what words are incorporated into our thought process can go an unbelievably long way in shaping opinion. One case in point is the use of the word "piracy" to describe copyright infringement with regard to movies, music, television, and books.

It goes something like this:

1. Those who represent rights holders spit the word piracy at you over and over and over and over and over again for years.

2. As a result, those on both sides of the debate, whether they intend to or not, begin to use the word "piracy" when describing infringement, either vocally or in thought.

3. Our mind inherently associates piracy with, well, what true piracy is: theft, murder, rape, pillage. Hence, those without the necessary background and forethought tend to allow that association to influence their thought and opinions.

Two things that are instructive in examination:

First, whilst true piracy (as in, on the high seas) has little to nothing to do with monopolies, the very coining of the term for use in this alternative fashion is credited to the Stationer's Company, a British corporation that was granted a monopoly on publication. The use of the term "piracy" to describe those that violated their charter was first used in 1603, when the threat of true piracy was very real indeed. This is a clear attempt to link through words in the minds of the general public two unrelated problems, thereby damning the lesser of the issues by linking it to one that creates true fear and anger.

Second, given that historical context, the ridiculousness continues today. One of the sites I use to look up new stories regarding copyright infringement and media legal stories is www.buzztracker.com. If you search that site for the term "music piracy", you get a nice spread of stories covering both true piracy and copyright infringement. For instance, when I ran that term today, the stories that came back were:

1. Police Arrest Several In File-Sharing Swoop (copyright infringement)
2. If you cry, they want to kill you (Somalian Piracy)
3. Grandma Endures Wrongful ISP Piracy Suspension (copyright infringement)
4. EU mission alone cannot solve piracy problem, says admiral (True Piracy)

There is no conceivable reason why stories 1 & 3 should be anywhere near stories 2 & 4, either in our words and thoughts (as designed by those trying to shape public opinion), or in a search return (an unintended consequence of that shaping). To link the two is silly.

But to try and use such psychological trickery to shape the minds of the masses rather than deal with the problem proactively and honestly? That's just downright evil....

The Push And Pull Of Drama

First things first: I'm sorry. To myself, yes, but more to anyone who actually took the time to check this blog over the past month and half. Frankly, I didn't realize there was anyone who actually checked back all that often. In any case, I will continue to post thoughts and chapters I've written or am working on and, as always, criticism and comments are most appreciated.

But this isn't a chapter. It isn't one of my rants. It isn't another sad attempt at humorous observations about my home, the city I love, and the setting of most of my fiction: Chicago. No, this is a quick thought on a technique I've used to instill drama into my writing.

I've long been an avid sports fan. Some sports more than others, but really I enjoy them all. But I never really understood why I become so immersed in what a bunch of larger, more athletic men are doing on my TV screen. But one morning when I was draining my cup of coffee and working myself into a writing lather, I had Sports Center on in the background. They were detailing last year's Bulls/Celtics playoff series. If you're even a pedestrian basketball fan, you know how it went. 7 games, 4 of them in which they played overtime periods, last second shots, tight finishes, heartache, drama, the whole bit. But this segment of the show particularly took note of how many times the lead had changed hands throughout the series, some ridiculous number.

That is what builds tension, and at its heart, drama is all about tension. As a fan of either team, you never felt comfortable. Even when you had the lead, you were worried. You felt as if, should you turn your eye of from the screen for even a moment, the opposing team would snatch the game away from yours as punishment.

I now think of this segment whenever I'm writing a particularly dramatic scene, regardless of the content. Love scenes are like that: they get close to coming together, then one of them says something ignorant, but she forgives him, but he resents her forgiveness, this makes her cry, which breaks the anger within him, and so on.

I'm curious, if there are any creators of drama reading this, or even avid readers/watchers/listeners that have another example on which to base drama....

Echelon: Chapter 4

Ch. 4

Morning traffic was notoriously frustrating in Chicago. Fortunately Payton’s apartment and CUFOS headquarters were both near Western Avenue, allowing him to avoid the crowded highways and drive his Jeep Wrangler to work without too much of a hassle. Payton took a peek in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t had time to do much more than shower and throw on his clothes. His short dark hair looked disheveled and his naturally thin and angular face made the bags under his eyes look like moon craters. He used to be more active, playing volleyball at his health club, jogging after work. Lately he’d been spending more time in his apartment, trying out pricey bottles of Irish whiskey.

It wasn’t that he was depressed, and he didn’t think he was an alcoholic. But when you’re an investigator at the Center for UFO Studies, there were few people who could help from laughing at your vocation, and in modern times, your job was who you were. That made him a kook. His niece might enjoy telling people that he chased little green men, but Jennifer’s glee was everyone else’s disdain. Parents, former friends, old professors, all of them had expressed surprise when he’d left the corporate world for CUFOS.

He’d worked in human resources after graduating from Illinois Chicago. He had a BA in Psychology with a minor in Business. To make his job prospects worse, he had also chosen to pursue a focus on ancient languages, largely due to his interest in religion. His grades had been good enough that some of Chicago’s largest companies had come calling, including Leo Burnett, where he’d ended up as a recruiting executive. That had lasted a little over a year. Somewhere between growing up in a rigid Catholic family and a near obsession with his studies of human behavior, Payton had picked up a rather impressive ability to determine when people were lying. He’d long since shed his parent’s religion, but his hatred for liars had remained. That made the business world difficult to navigate, since everyone lied, particularly during the interview process. He found he had trouble recommending anyone he interviewed for hire, since he always detected a lie at some point in their interview.

He’d left Leo Burnett before they could fire him. He had briefly tried again at Prudential, but before long he gave that job up as well. He had considered going back to school, maybe getting his advanced degree and applying for a teaching job. Then he’d gotten a call from a Professor Hiroshi Mikora asking him if he believed in UFOs. He’d said no. Then the Professor had invited him to lunch.

Mikora was the director of CUFOS, a group comprised mostly of Astronomy and Physics professors from Northwestern. He said that he was friends with one of the Psych professors at UIC and that he’d heard of that special talent he had, the one that made it impossible for him to work in a corporate environment. Mikora told him that this same trait would take him far at CUFOS. Payton had argued at first, mainly because he didn’t believe in UFOs.

“That’s good,” Mikora had told him. “Most of the reports we get are fakes. You’re going to help us figure out which ones to study and which to throw away.” He’d also mentioned that the Center had moved beyond exclusively dealing with UFO reports. Now days they investigated all types of paranormal reports.

The pay wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. And the work had turned out to be interesting, though perhaps more monotonous than many would expect. Most days he spent behind a desk, armed with only a computer and a telephone. There were times when he was out in the field, and the travel was fun. But the truth was he preferred the work behind the desk. That was where most of the puzzles were, and he loved solving puzzles.

In return for solving those puzzles, he had access to virtually every level of the Center. There were a few other investigators, all of them older than Payton, but none of them was given the same amount of freedom. Records, physics, forensics: he had the run of them all.

He knew that his title of Investigator sounded more impressive than it was. It had the ring of law enforcement, with none of the authority. The few times that he’d gone in the field and been confronted by local detectives or the feds, they had snickered while treating him like a mentally disabled cousin. But CUFOS had its own following. It had been mentioned on television shows. Ufologists treated the Center with a mixture of reverence and wariness. The Center was one of the institutions that gave credence to the paranormal, though the inherent skepticism that investigators like Payton brought to the job caused flying saucer chasers to shy away from their final reports. They just couldn’t understand why he didn’t believe, and couldn’t seem to make them understand that he never believed anything.

He was still on Western, halfway to work, when Jennifer’s voice began ringing in his ears. Never keep a lady waiting.

“Shit.”

He yanked his cell phone from the charger and dialed the main number at the Center. It rang once and Carla picked up on the other end. Carla had been the Center’s secretary since its inception. Rumor had it that she was ex-CIA. Payton doubted she’d ever been a spy, but no one knew more about the inner workings of CUFOS.

“Center for UFO Studies.” She sounded bored. She always sounded bored.

“It’s Payton.”

“You better get your ass in here, Doc,” Carla said.

“What’s going on?”

“Schuda is going crazy,” she said. “No one else seems to know anything. Rumor is it’s something big, though. Did I mention Schuda is going crazy?”

Professor Michael Schuda was the head of research. He was also a notorious occultist, even by CUFOS standards. Like all the other department heads he was a professor at a local university; Columbia, in this case. Unlike the others, he taught classes in the liberal arts, specifically American History. His most popular class was called Who Killed Kennedy.

“Are you there?” Carla asked.

“I’m here.”

“What are you going to do about your new partner?”

“I wasn’t aware I needed to do anything,” he said.

“The Director wants you to pick her up and bring her in for the meeting this morning. Didn’t you get the email?”

“Uh, no.” Actually, he’d forgotten to check his laptop before leaving. It was something all investigators were supposed to do each morning, although there was rarely anything in his inbox at seven in the morning. It was just one of those bureaucratic rules that permeated all institutions, even weird ones like CUFOS. “Where does she live?”

“South Side.”

“You have to be kidding.” The Center was on Peterson. He’d been heading north on Western for the last twenty minutes. “How far south?”

“Near Midway Airport.”

“That’s forty-five minutes away. We’ll never make it on time.”

“Good thing I sent her an email asking her to meet you at your coffee place down the street.”

She was laughing, toying with him. He got coffee at the same shop every morning to supplement whatever he had managed to make for himself at home.

“When?”

“She should be there in the next ten minutes.”

He sighed. “Have you met her?”

“When she interviewed.”

“How bad is she?”

“She’s…eager.”

Christ, he thought. “UFO nut?”

“At least this one’s pretty.”

He asked her to tell Schuda that they were on their way just as he was turning into the parking lot of the coffee shop.

Craig’s Coffee was one of those special places that only remained in big cities like Chicago. It hadn’t yet been tainted by big company politics. They served strong coffee, plain bagels, and coffee cake. The kids behind the counter tended to have dark, spiky hair, regardless of their gender, and they all seemed to know his name.

Payton placed his order with a pouting teenage girl: one black coffee and one plain bagel. He paid and took his tray to the nearest window. He’d taken a brief look around the shop upon entering, looking for anyone who might be his new partner. Carla’s description didn’t give him much to work with, particularly with what appeared to be several good-looking women in the shop. Most of them looked high school or college aged, however, so he had a seat and pulled his new partner’s file from his briefcase while he waited.

At least Chanel Falasco had an impressive history jacket. She had graduated from Western Illinois with degrees in both Criminology and Forensic Science. According to the interview notes, she’d had the opportunity to do some photo modeling work, but she came from a long line of Chicago cops, and she joined up immediately after she graduated. There she progressed through the ranks with surprising quickness, particularly for a woman. She’d gone from patrol to narcotics in less than two years and had earned her detective’s badge shortly after. Then CUFOS had come calling.

When the interviewer had asked why she wanted to leave behind a successful career in law enforcement to join the Center, Chanel had revealed that she’d had an uncle growing up that used to tell her stories about his work looking for aliens for the government. He’d been part of the SETI program, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life, something of a running joke amongst the scientific community. It was a joke amongst the rest of her family too, apparently, since her father had all but barred her uncle from the family home.

“Excuse me?” came a voice from behind.

Payton turned to see a woman in suit pants and a garish button down striped shirt. It was the kind that college graduates were wearing, with vibrant colors and a wide, thick collar. Business casual clubbing gear, as he usually referred to it. She was a bit tall, and her hair was that distracting kind of dark brown that seemed to reflect every photon of light. He recalled from her file that she had gotten some modeling offers in college and he decided that she could have made a career of it if not for a slightly largish nose. Please don’t let this be her, he thought.

“You aren’t Payton Conner by chance, are you?”

So much for wishful thinking. He stood up and offered his hand, doing his best to put a smile on his face. “Call me Doc. Everyone else does.”

“Chanel,” she smiled and took his hand. “Pronounced like the perfume.”

“We don’t have long, Ms. Falasco, so have a seat.”

She pulled up a chair, looking comfortable and at ease. Payton remembered his first day at CUFOS. He had met the then ranking investigator in this very coffee shop. And he had been nervous as hell. Either this woman, this girl with the perfume name was extremely confident in herself or she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“Everyone I’ve talked to has told me about you,” she said. He noticed that she had a stylish mug in front of her instead of a paper cup like the one in his hand. Brown foam was nearly spilling over the top, one of those expensive drinks that were in vogue.

“How can you drink that swill?”

She smiled. “I’m looking forward to getting in the field with you.”

The field? “The Center’s brochure gives an inflated impression of our job, I can assure you. If you are expecting excitement at CUFOS you are going to be disappointed, even on the rare occasion that we are in the field,” he said.

“Rare? I thought you were the lead field operative for the organization.”

“I am, and even for me, field work is rare. We go out four or five times a year, on average.”

“What do we do the rest of the time,” she asked. She looked uneasy.

“Research more than anything else. Chances are you will spend the overwhelming majority of your career at a desk behind a computer.”

“Sounds boring.”

He sighed. “What is it exactly you think we do at CUFOS?”

“We investigate reports of unidentified flying objects, unless I have the acronym wrong.” She was pouting

“The acronym is right, just outdated. CUFOS was started years ago by a college professor, a man who was skeptical of reported UFO sightings and abductions. Obviously he managed to keep an open mind about the subject, but his roots in the sciences remained. Today, the Center studies a variety of unexplained phenomena, any that we deem worthy of investigation. That boils down to about five or six cases per investigator per year.”

“Yes, I was briefed, you know.”
“Then you know that nine out of ten reports we get are deemed not credible enough to investigate. The majority are hoaxes so fake that we dismiss them without going out into the field.”

She seemed to consider for a moment. “For a group created to study the occult, it seems like you are being very judgmental about what is legitimate and what isn’t.”

Payton sighed. He hadn’t meant to broach the subject this soon, but what the hell. “You’re a believer, I gather.”

She gave him a dazzling smile. “In UFO’s? Absolutely.”

He shook his head.

“Is that a problem?”

He paused a moment. “There are two types of Investigators at the Center. There are people like you, who believe in UFO’s and aliens and every other crazy little story they hear. The other type of investigator is like me.”

“Annoying?” she asked, this time her smile was wicked in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Competent,” Payton replied. He would not have his emotions played upon, certainly not by a rookie. “I don’t believe in anything when it comes to this job. There are things I can prove and there are things that I suspect. You say you believe in UFOs, but all it means is that you don’t have any proof. You just want it to be true. Which, of course, means your judgment is affected? That’s very dangerous in this line of work.”

“And if you don’t accept anything except what you can prove, then you have closed yourself off to any possibilities that might be un-provable.”

He leaned across the table to look her more closely in the eye. “My way works.”

She smiled, but did not reply.

He glanced at his watch and then quickly drained the rest of his coffee. “Let’s get moving. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” He almost left, but then turned back to where she sat. “And from now on, you dress like me. White button down or blouse, everything else in dark colors.”

She looked at him sharply. “What, like a man in black?”

Payton grinned. “Hey, you’re the believer. Get moving.”

Interesting Characters...

One thing that can be really difficult for me when I'm writing is properly creating either an evil, or at least unlikeable character. I just don't write them well. I try to take the same approach when creating any character: give them some kind of unique identifier that the reader will remember, have them take some kind of action early on that defines what type of character, and develop from there. The question for me is always the same: what is the unique identifier or action that will define an unlikeable character? Well, I've decided to highlight a few I might be using that I see nearly every day in my beloved city of Chicago.

1. The absolute jerk on the CTA -- I see this guy ALL THE TIME. Whether he's got his cheap headphones blaring rap music to everyone in the train car, or if he's working hard to avoid the gaze of the pregnant woman that is standing over where he's sitting so that he won't have to give up his seat, this guy is the worst. It's doubly annoying because there isn't much you can about it; he isn't going to hear you over that music or make eye contact with you. Your only hope is that somewhere along the way he completes the transit tool trifecta and decides to lean against the partition near the doors so that no one can get in or out at their stops. Then you just righteously bowl the idiot over on your way out with a nice forearm shiver to the gut. I'm giddy over what a opening description this guy makes for an unlikeable character....

2. CTA cell phone girl -- Sticking with the CTA theme for the moment, this girl is actually far more aggravating than absolute CTA jerk guy. She can't hear the volumed announcements that we should all refrain from talking loudly on our cell phones. Why, you might ask? Because she's too busy talking loudly on her cell phone. And wouldn't you know it, it's never about anything interesting, either. It wouldn't be so bad if she was like, "So anyway, he was fucking me in the ass and I told him to blow it in my face, but he kept slapping me". But instead we're treated to non-stop recantations of shopping experiences, or office drama complete with names we don't recognize, or her lame ass plans for that evening. I'm no killer, but this girl puts me close to the edge, making her a lovely example for a hated character....

3. Captain Slow-Walker -- These people aren't gender specific, but they never cease to amaze me. These are the morons that are meandering down the sidewalks ten minutes before you have to get to work. Sometimes they're texting away on their mediocre cell phones, sometimes they're actually trying to the pull off the read/walk combination, and sometimes they're just ignorantly looking up at the buildings around them. Look, here's the deal. If you can get wherever you're going on time moving at that speed, why wouldn't you just depart from wherever you're coming from later and walk normaly? Either way, this universally hated moron makes an interesting character description....

4. Unhappy Ultra Rich Shopping Bag Lady -- You see this lady EVERYWHERE when you're downtown. She's in her late 30's or 40's, she's wearing a perpetual frown, and she has more shopping bags than China has rice. This woman is a plethora of irreconcialable contradictions. How can you be that wealthy and still that pissed off? If you're that well off, why don't you have a nice computer where you can shop online? And for the love of God, why the hell are you on the Michigan Avenue bus?

Feel free to add your own in the comments....

Echelon: Chapter 3

“Uncle Doc, are you going to hunt aliens today?”

Payton Connor was standing in the kitchen of his apartment on the northwest side of Chicago. He hadn’t yet made it into his suit and coat, instead concentrating on the perfect over-easy flip of his niece’s eggs, getting his caffeine intake from his coffee, and watching the television on the counter. Payton was just shy of thirty, an investigator at the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. His niece, who was ten and enthusiastically told her friends that her uncle chased little green men, was waiting at the table for her breakfast.

She was staying with him for the week while his sister was away on business. He had a sneaking suspicion there was a lot less work going on than she had let on, but he liked Jennifer’s company and she seemed to enjoy her time at the small two-bedroom apartment. She was partially disabled, having had a small stroke when she was an infant. It had happened slowly, starting in her left leg before presenting in the other. Then it took the knees, the thighs, and pelvic area. The doctors never did figure out what had caused the stroke. His sister had cried in his arms when the doctors confronted her with the paralysis, but eventually she’d reverted to cold anger when she overheard one of the interns saying that all patients were puzzles to be solved. Why had they given up on her daughter’s puzzle? For whatever reason, the idea of life’s problems as a puzzle had stuck with Payton, persisting in his personal and professional life.

“Well, are you?” Jennifer asked from her wheelchair at the table. “Are you going to find flying saucers and kill the aliens?”

“You know that’s not what I do, Jenny.”

“I know. You tell people they’re crazy liars.”

Payton laughed. “Close enough.” Actually, as a senior investigator at CUFOS, his job was to respond to sightings of UFOs and other paranormal phenomena, determine the validity of the report, and catalog it. It was true that most of the time the reports were cranks and lies. Payton himself had gotten a reputation for dissecting stories like a surgeon. In fact, that was how he had earned the nickname Doc. Now everyone used it, so much so that somewhere along the line even Jennifer had picked it up.

He dropped two eggs onto her plate and pulled up a chair.

“You look tense,” Jennifer said. Despite her condition, she appeared to enjoy mothering him. This was her concerned tone. “Do you need a cigarette?”

“And what does a little girl like you know about cigarettes?”

“I know that they kill people,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I know you smoke one whenever you’re not happy.”

Such a wonderfully observant child, Payton thought. “Just finish eating so we can get you ready for sports camp. Mrs. Sloan should be here to pick you up soon.”

“Uncle,” she said severely. “I’m your niece. I have a right to know. Are you having trouble with a girl?”

Unfortunately. “Eat,” he said again, taking a seat. “You’re not going to make me late again.”

She stuck out her lip. “I hate camp. All the kids are in wheelchairs.”

Payton chuckled. “So are you.”

“I want to play with the normal kids.”

She got like this from time to time, when she would suddenly become intensely aware of her disability and want to break free from it. It was admirable, and it was sad. He was going to try and reassure her, but the reporter on the news caught his attention. Apparently there had been a crash out east. The terror alert had been issued, some kind of chemical weapons threat. The reporter breezed through the facts so fast it was hard to follow. Then the camera cut away to some FAA representative named Baez. He was explaining crash procedure, but the reporter didn’t seem interested. She kept trying to bring the conversation back to casualty numbers and the monetary value of the damage. Payton was about to give up on the report when that Baez guy mentioned something about the government napalming a beach.

“Christ,” he muttered.

“Language,” Jennifer clucked at him. “What’s the girl’s name?”

Payton thoughts returned to his niece and his coming day. “Chanel, honey.”

“Like the perfume?” Jennifer loved perfume.

“Yes, like the perfume.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“No, she’s my new partner,” Payton said, making an effort not to grimace at the word. He’d had partners in the past. It had never worked out. “And if you don’t eat your breakfast, I’m going to be late for her first day. That wouldn’t be too good, would it?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Never keep a lady waiting.” Then she broke out laughing.

Payton laughed with her. “Where do you learn this stuff?”

“Television, Uncle Doc.”

They ate in silence for a while. The anchorman back in the studio was onto a story about some kind of charitable donation to a scholarship group from Jonathan Dowd, a well-known businessman in the energy industry. Then there was the local sports scores. The Cubs had lost again, no surprise. He swore inwardly, watching the highlights as he cleared the table. He was just finishing when he heard a honk out front.

Jennifer pushed away from the table and started rolling towards the front door. “Bye Uncle Doc.”

“How about your jacket, sweetheart,” Payton called after her.

“I’ll be fine. It’s not even cold out.”

“Take it anyway.”

“But Uncle…”

“Don’t but Uncle me,” Payton said, trying to bury a laugh. Even the frustrating times with her made him smile. “Get your jacket, missy.”

He made sure that she retrieved her jacket from the front closet before she made her way out the door. Payton followed her onto the front stoop of the two flat. He shared the porch with two other apartments. He waved once at Jennifer as she was being lifted into the van. She lifted he hand briefly, but it was a halfhearted gesture. She had already switched personas to her social setting. Now she was cool, indifferent Jennifer. She had once told him that the other kids looked up to her, that she was a “queen on wheels”.

As he watched the van make for the end of the block, he saw a dark sedan sitting at the corner. It was parked on the other side of the road and he noticed that there were several cigarette butts outside the driver’s side door. This part of Wicker Park wasn’t the best neighborhood in the city, but most of the crime problems arose from nearby gang territory. For all of their menacing and posturing, gang-bangers didn’t roll around in black sedans. He thought about calling the police, or walking down the street and investigating himself. Before he could decide what to do, however, he heard the text message alert on his phone going off. He went inside and flipped the phone open.

CUFOS HQ ASAP – IFI TDAY

“Damn,” he muttered. Something must be up. It was from the director, telling him to get to the CUFOS building in a hurry. It was still almost two hours before he would normally be due at his desk. The last abbreviations told him why. He would be leaving on an IFI later. That was an in-the-field investigation.

Somebody somewhere had called in a report.

How do you write for a living in a digital world?

Over at one of my favorite blogs, TechDirt, Mike Masnick and the TechDirt community discuss eBooks and publishing works in the digital world somewhat regularly. One of the key mantras tends to be that those that intend to make money in the digital world need to incorporate new and smarter business models. For writers of fiction, as with musicians and movie-makers, this can be frightening. Some of us spent years or even decades studying not only our craft, but the traditional business world that surrounded that craft. So the question is: how does an author make a living in the digital world?

Rather than be dismayed, I see a great deal of opportunity for authors that can give away digital works for free. Below are some simple ideas, but I'd appreciate any feedback or response offered:

1. Signed books: This is the simple one. In my case, one of the things I'm going to be doing is to release chapters of Echelon on this blog, obviously for free. Around the middle of the book, I'm going to make the entire work available in PDF format via bittorrent (still looking for help on any torrent experts to learn how to upload and create a torrent link, ala on the Pirate Bay). The idea will be to gauge the response from readers. Hopefully the appreciation of the work reaches a sort of critical mass where its popularity begins to propgate itself. If that should happen, I've been working to prepare a signed hardcopy of the book along with a few extras that can be purchased as well (more on that below). My theory is that, while eBooks are wonderful when traveling, most people still enjoy a hardcopy of a book that they enjoy, and a signature from the author adds a collectorship feel to the product.

2. Fan Participation: One of the things I'd like to do for those that see enough worth in my work to purchase a hardcopy or make a donation for their eBook copy, is to allow them to be involved in small ways in the next book. My chief idea in this was to auction off character names in my next work. For instance, you can purchase a signed copy of Echelon for $X, but if you would like to buy the book AND join the Echelon Club for $Y, allong with updates and deeper access to myself, you will have the option to have me include your name as one of the minor characters in the sequel, Wunderwaffen. Assuming agreement could be reached on legal issues, I would also be open to certain extremely limited product placement type deals within the sequel. For instance, in Echelon one of the main characters drives a Toyota Prius. I see no reason why that car couldn't be another should an auto manufacturer wish to sponsor my work.

3. Write for hire: One of the criticims you hear from pro-copyright folks when they examine new business models is that artists shoudn't be focusing on business, they should be producing art. So what can we do to bring the business component closer to the artistic expression? Well, for an author that wishes to make a living writing, their artistic expression is (you guessed it) writing. So what could be more sensible than offering a kind of write for hire deal. If you like my work on Echelon, I am thinking of making myself available to write for you personally on a work for hire basis. Say you have a boyfriend/girlfriend into a subject similar to what I write. I could write a short story for you personally with you supplying the names and basic premise of what you would like written. Or say a business wanted a fun piece of fiction to go along with one of their products or services, say as a holiday message or something to liven up a newsletter. Well, here I am to write that for you. Perhaps you think I'm going to be famous someday and you would just like to give some kind of personalized short work as a Christmas gift, not unlike painters used to do during the renaissance period.

The key to all this, of course, is to first be HEARD. To build up a fan base. To become known. The most difficult hurdle a writer faces is obscurity. What better way to defeat obscurity than to give away digital works for free?