Original Works By Timothy Geigner

I Have Moved!!!

2011-08-26T14:30:00.002-05:00

For those of you following this blog, thank you! I wanted to let you know that I have moved to http://timothygeigner.blogspot.com/ and will be posting there in the future. Please note that there is currently a button to purchase an eBook bundle via PayPal or credit card there. You can buy this now if you like, but please note that I am putting some formatting touches on the books as we speak and won't be done with them for another day or two, after which I'll send them out.

Thanks!

Digilife Update

2010-12-29T07:57:00.002-06:00

I'm awful at this blogging thing. I've got so much else going on, particularly in the holiday season, that I've not kept up with this. Shame on me!

In any case, I know that there are some that read here that have either read parts of or been interested in Digilife, my latest work of fiction. The manuscript is currently out to a literary agency that requested it. Anyone who's done these types of submissions in the past knows how long this process can be and how often rejection comes calling, so I'm not getting my hopes completely up, but it is rewarding to know that some folks see enough value in my writing to not simply dismiss it out of hand.

Rejection and insults are something you learn to deal with, I guess. It's hard when you're putting a great deal of yourself in your work and someone doesn't like it or, worse, goes out of their way to trash your attempt. I had a lively discussion recently with someone who read part of Echelon, a book I wrote roughly 3-4 years ago, and intimated that it read like fan fiction.

Ouch. Well, who knows, maybe she's right. Maybe she's wrong. Maybe, in my admittedly still young writing "career", maybe the answer is somewhere in between. I can't fault people for their opinions, and I do my best not to take things personally. Instead, I try to use such criticism as motivation. Hopefully that's a good thing....

Taking My Own Advice

2010-11-29T13:34:00.003-06:00

I recently did a writeup on a comic creator over a Techdirt, a creator who seemed very angry with people who were distributing her comics for free online. One of the things I suggested was to release small bits of her content regularly and ongoingly...and then I realized that my hypocritical ass wasn't doing that myself!

Now, I have the disadvantage of currently needing to work two jobs in addition to my writing (because, hey, who wants a social life?), but screw the excuses, I should practice what I preach to the best of my ability.

So, question: which universe I've created would any/all of you like to see me release regular content, either in the form of a serialized story or short stories?

1. The "Echelon" universe
2. The "Midwasteland" universe
3. Something original, damn it!

If you guys actually want something with one of these, I shall commit to releasing stuff for you regularly. Who knows, maybe it'll build into something I can put together in a book! And, continuing an earlier idea I expressed, I'd welcome "fan involvement" in the stories as well!

Next Task: Herculean Undertaking

2010-11-12T16:21:00.003-06:00

So I haven't posted in a while. Work has been crazy busy, I've been doing all the querying legwork for Digilife (a couple nibbles, no bites yet, but it's early), and also starting my next original piece of fiction, tentatively entitled "Geneis Next", about a meteor crash involving a panspermia terraforming life form aboard.

Anyway, that's probably going to take a while, because I've also decided to do something else. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love a particular PC game, Final Fantasy 7. The plot, the character development, the interactions; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that that game has had a huge influence on my writing style. And now I'm going to return the favor.

I'm going to write out the game as a novel. Obviously this will be strictly fan fiction, with no plans to sell the work or anything around it. I'm going to put it up, chapter by chapter, on fanfiction.net (a great place to read, btw), so you can feel free to read it there (Prologue is already up), but feel free to post any ideas you might have to impliment or emails you would like chapters sent to. Obviously this is going to take a while, as it's a side project, and I don't plan on scimping on the story, so it's going to be HUGE (I'm guessing approaching 175k words or so, possibly more), so if you are an early reader and are anxious for more, don't yell at me.

BTW, all original story and characters are owned by Square Enix. Again, there will be no sales associated with this project, I'm only doing it because I'm flat out obsessed with this game, and more so, this story....

News You Can Use: Digilife Is Done!

2010-10-08T07:46:00.002-05:00

Well, okay, not done done, but the first draft is complete. Next step is the always self-depricating task of editing the bajeezus out of it. I'll probably post the second chapter soon (when I have time!), but I'm also working on a couple of other things to boot (A cool little mini-project for Techdirt that should be a lot of fun).

Either way, querying starts once the first couple of chapters have been edited to my satisfaction (so about ninety years from now) and I'll be sure to post any success stories!

Midwasteland: The Sequel Influenced By You?

2010-09-29T09:33:00.003-05:00

For those that are or have read Midwasteland, I have two questions for you:

1. Did you like the book? Enough to care about the characters? The settings? What happens next? What happened before?

2. Can you write?

Here's what I'm thinking. I'd like to take submissions of short stories from all of you based on the Midwasteland universe. I'll compile them, editing only for grammar/syntax and to make the canon, get your final approval on the edits, and then put them together for a Midwasteland Collection eBook to be free to anyone and everyone. Perhaps (after Midwasteland becomes a best seller and gets turned into Spielburgh's latest box office smash) it will make sense to release it as a hard copy book for sale, at which point you all will be the authors and I'll just be the editor. That way, we can all share in some tasty income together while getting our collective names out there as writers and showing others what we can do.

Here's the the best part. I'm almost certainly going to write a sequel to Midwasteland, so long as anyone is interested in it enough to want one. I'd like to incorporate all of your stories into my writing. I'll have to take into account the new canon in the sequel. The backstories, the future happenings, the way you've evolved the universe. In fact, if anyone out there is a fast reader and wants to give this a go, I'll post it as a guest post on this site, so we can all see how it's done.

Thoughts?

Digilife: Chapter 1

2010-09-22T08:55:00.002-05:00

Chapter 1: Warrenville, IL

"Digital mechanics predicts that, for every continuous symmetry of physics, there will be some microscopic process that violates that symmetry." - Edward Fredkin

“Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.” - Marcus Fetzer

He should never have agreed to move.

Andrew Ferry concentrated on the highway signs as the jeep jostled down I-88, heading further and further away from Chicago and proper civilization. All around him there was green and blue, trees and skies, with hardly a two-story building to be seen. The airport was forty-five minutes behind them, and the only thing to break up the monotony now were the occasional auto dealership and the townhouse developments that all looked like clones of one another. Other than that, it was trees and grass along the shoulder, sky and clouds up above. Ferry, a twenty-eight year old software developer for a contractor back in the city, began to worry that they had gone too far. His wife, a school teacher, was looking around the highway as well, but never at the signs, only at the developments that whizzed by.

“Monica,” he finally said. “When are we turning off?”

She opened the map so that the edge was all the way on his lap and bent to look at one section closely. Her nose was nearly touching the paper, while the edge near him was quivering from the air conditioning. “It should be coming up soon,” she said. “It looks like it's just past Winfield Road.”

“We passed Winfield half an hour ago. We've gone too far west.”

“How could we miss the turnoff? It's a major highway.”

Nothing is major out here, Ferry thought. “I think we have to turn around. Or we could just use the navigation app on my phone.”

“Technology will rot your mind,” she said sharply. “Where's your sense of adventure?”

“I don't want adventure. I want to see this townhouse.”

“And the realtor said that we couldn't miss Route 59,” she continued. “There will be signs and a bridge. We'll see it.”

“Fine.” Further and further from the city, he thought. From all of our friends and the beautiful lakeside high-rise condo that I saved three years to buy. So the public schools in the city weren't all that great. So it would be hard for her to advance into administration employed by the CPS. Didn't he make enough money for the both of them? And wasn't she always talking about how it was the kids that were important, not the money?

They continued down the highway without speaking. It was June, hot and bright. Mirages filled the road in front of them, looking like oil slicks which then seemed to evaporate as they got closer.

Ferry drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We're going too far. I haven't seen a sign in forty-five minutes.”

“It's probably just ahead.”

“What if it isn't? How much farther are we going to go before we turn around?”

“I don't know. A couple more miles.”

“Fine,” he said. “Five more mile markers and then we use my phone.” As discretely as he could, he reached where his phone was mounted on the charger and turned it on. That way, when their five miles was up and they still hadn't seen the turnoff, he could quickly turn on the navigation application and get them back on track. He glanced back at the road for a moment, noting that they were passing yet another car dealership, this one with a huge electronic sign, and then he turned back to the phone and flicked the button to put it in standby mode. That would keep the screen dark, so that Monica wouldn't yell at him.

“Hey!” she shouted.

“Oh come on. I just turned it on so it'll be ready.”

“What? No, not the phone. That sign said your name!”

“No it didn't.”

“It said Andrew Ferry. It even spelled your name right.”

“No it didn't. You're seeing things. It's the heat.”

“I'm telling you, it said 'Andrew Ferry, will you play with me'.”

Ferry looked in the mirror. The sign was flashing something about a low APR rate, though it was hard to read backwards. Certainly his name was nowhere to be found.

“It says something about a sale,” he said.

“It said your name, Andrew.”

“I think you made a mistake.” He looked again in the mirror, but the sign was too far away to read now.

“Go back and look if you don't believe me.”

“We're not going back.”

“Two minutes ago you wanted to turn around.”

Ferry sighed, knowing better than to continue arguing with her. What a waste of time. How could the dealership have his name? They would go back, look at the sign for as many minutes as it took for Monica to have to admit she'd been wrong, and then they'd turn right back around again and continue on down I-88 looking for the turnoff that was surely fifteen miles in the opposite direction.

“I'm using the phone,” he said finally.

“Fine. Since you don't trust me.”

“I just want to get where we're going, Monica.”

“I can get us there.”

He reached for the phone and turned on the screen. With a couple of quick flicks of his finger, he engaged the navigation application and a computerized female voice instructed him to turn around.

“You see?” he asked.

His wife just stared out the window. He slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder. After a quick look in either direction he pulled the car across the highway and started back the way they'd come.

“Well?” he sighed, pulling over and staring up at the sign, which was now displaying the temperature. Nearly a hundred degrees, but with the Midwest humidity it felt like twice that. He looked down at his phone again, trying to get a read on exactly how far they would have to backtrack to Route 59.

“There!” his wife exclaimed.

Andrew looked up and felt his jaw drop.

Andrew Ferry, will you play with me?

Mechanically he opened the door and stepped out into the heat, sweat instantly seeping onto his skin, making him dizzy. Using his hand to shield his eyes, he stared up at the words, half expecting them to mirage into something else. What the hell was this? Some kind of new advertising technique, one that made use of the GPS transponder and ID in his phone perhaps? Andrew had himself written code for similar ID tracking software, but he hadn’t heard of anyone putting the technology into production. He turned towards the dealership, a modern looking facility that reeked of normalcy.

“We should go ask how they’re doing this,” said Monica, who Andrew noticed had also exited the car.

“I don’t know.”

“Andrew, how do they know your name?”

“I’m not sure.” He felt lightheaded, unable to think clearly, though that was probably just the heat. He looked in every direction. There was very little else out here. If anyone needed an aggressive advertising technique, it would be this place.

The sign flashed again: Remember me, Andrew?

“What does that mean?” Monica asked.

“I have no idea,” Ferry said. A quick succession of chills shook him as he stared at the words. Advertising or not, this whole thing was becoming entirely too creepy.

“How does it know when you’re close by?” his wife asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, hesitating. “Maybe through the GPS on my phone?”

“What did I tell you about that thing?”

Ferry looked again at the dealership. “Let’s just get back in the car and go,” he said.

“You don’t want to ask about the sign?”

“No. I just want to get the hell out of here.”

They got back in the car and pulled away. Aware that he was speeding, but not caring, he looked one last time at the sign in the rearview mirror. On it had appeared one of those cartoon yellow frowning faces, like you saw on instant message software.

The voice on his phone startled him, announcing that they were ten miles from Route 59. Monica kept looking back behind the car, but the dealership was well out of sight.

“Andrew…”

“Yes?”

“Did that sign frown at you?”

“If it did, I’m sure it was just part of the advertisement,” Ferry said, wondering if he was trying to convince his wife or himself. “A frown because we left the dealership.”

“I don’t like that. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that kind of thing.”

Ferry looked over at her, seeing his wife bite her lower lip. It was something she did when she was frightened. He reached over and patted her knee. “It’s just a gimmick, hun.”

“Then it isn’t a very good one. Why would they want to give prospective customers the creeps?”

Ferry smiled. “You reacted just like they wanted you to. You wanted to go to the dealership and ask about it.”

“Not to buy a car.”

He shrugged. “Anything to get you in the door.”

They saw a small road sign for the turnoff and took it north. Ferry looked down at the time on his phone. They were already half an hour late for the appointment with the realtor. How long before they could see enough of the townhouse for him to make up some reason to not buy it? They’d probably fight about it on the way home. Just thinking of the argument made him roll his eyes.

About half way there, they were passing a forest preserve that had one of those electronic welcome signs. Feeling silly, Ferry watched the sign the entire time until they had passed it, but nothing out of the ordinary appeared on the display.

“Are you okay?” Monica asked him.

He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, just a little jumpy.”

It was her turn to reach over and squeeze his leg. “Let’s just focus on the townhouse.”

“Right.”

He reached for his phone and called the realtor agent to let her know that they were still on their way. She was waiting outside the development’s office when they pulled up and parked. Ferry thought she looked like a stereotypical real estate agent: short haircut, crisp features, mid-thirties or so. She was wearing a colorful pantsuit and had a wad of brochures in one hand as she shook theirs with the other. “Nina Campos,” she said, smiling. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.” She had that calm salesperson demeanor that Ferry hated, as though she was sure the sale was a foregone conclusion. Seeing his wife looking at the row of identical townhouses and smiling blissfully, he wondered how far off she was.

They chatted as they strolled down the path to the last vacant townhouse. Ferry noticed several people working in their yards. One shirtless man was washing his Escalade. They walked past two teenage boys playing basketball in a driveway. It all looked like something out of a commercial. His wife glanced at him and smiled warmly. Ferry felt nauseous.

“How long have you been looking at homes?” Campos asked.

“Only a couple of months.”

“But this is the first time we’ve actually taken an onsite tour,” his wife added.

“Well, you won’t find a better development than this one. And Winfield is a great little town.”

“What about schools?” his wife asked.

“Winfield Elementary is less than a mile away, next to DuPage Hospital. The high school is a little further.”

His wife smiled and nodded.

“And how about you, sir? What do you do?”

“I’m a software engineer.”

“We have several technology firms nearby. And Quest Diagnostics is in the next town over.”

“I’d be keeping my job in the city,” Ferry sighed.

“In that case, the Metra train runs through town as well. It’s only a thirty minute commute to Chicago. I used to make the trip every day.”

“You’re from the city?”

She nodded. “I commuted until six months ago. Then I bought one of the units here. Best decision I ever made.”

They walked up to the vacant unit and Campos keyed open the door. “You’ll notice that everything in our townhomes is controlled electronically, from the lights and the locks to the sprinklers and the laundry. You’ll have to provide your own traditional furnishings, of course, but our units do come with a flat screen television in every major room and a central computer to manage everything.”

They started in the living room, where the television hung over a huge fireplace, displaying the realtor’s logo. Ferry couldn’t help but be impressed with the interior. And that impression didn’t falter as they continued through the townhouse. Each room was put together with modern walls and flooring, large windows that streamed sunlight, and they were all climate controlled with a little white box on the wall for temperature and humidity.

Ferry began to worry that he wouldn’t have anything bad to say about the townhouse. More than that, he feared that he was starting to like the place. The amount of technology they had packed in here was startling, almost as much as his wife’s acceptance of its presence. “How is internet connectivity handled?” he asked Campos.

“We have an arrangement with a telecom company,” she replied. “We broadcast the signal from our building. Each unit has an aerial extender that repeats the signal for maximum coverage.”

Ferry frowned. “That wouldn’t be very secure. How do you keep people from accessing each other’s network?”

“Each repeater is set up to do VPN tunneling. It requires a little more power, but we have bonded T1’s, more than enough bandwidth to handle the load.”

“That still isn’t secure,” Ferry pressed, finally seeing a negative and grasping on to it. “If everyone is working off of the same signal, it wouldn’t be difficult to crack the VPN.”

“Honey, I’m sure whatever they have set up is fine,” his wife said, glaring at him.

“Would you like to see the deck?” Campos asked.

Like the rest of the house, the deck was gorgeous, complete with a small whirlpool. Fifteen minutes later, Monica was asking questions about the community, leaving him free to walk about the townhouse on his own. Upstairs he found the computer and shook the mouse to blink away the screensaver. The management interface was simple but robust, built on a graphics interface not unlike a typical operating system. There were sliders and fields to control everything: the security system, the garage doors, the lights, the television, DVR, cable, computers, and temperature boxes. He stood up and walked to the room’s temperature box and cycled through the controls, just to see what it would allow him to do.

Still impressed but getting bored, he was about to turn and go back downstairs when a number flashed across the temperature box.

07734.

Ferry stared at the number. Something wasn’t right. That number couldn’t represent any temperature, humidity index, or anything else to do with the control box. He frowned, thinking. He knew that number, he was sure of it.

The screen flashed again.

31573.

This one he didn’t recognize. Behind him the computer screen flickered to life with an electronic beep. The graphic interface for the house was gone, replaced by a simple black screen with a blinking cursor. Ferry stood and stared as numbers appeared slowly across the screen.

31573-1-07734.

Ferry was now certain he had seen that last number before, but wherever that information was stored in his brain, he just couldn’t quite get at it. As for the others, they were meaningless to him. The numbers began repeating themselves in quick succession, filling the screen. Just seeing them appear by themselves gave him a chill. It could be a random memory dump. Perhaps this was a diagnostic sequence the computer was performing on itself. Or it could be some kind of network traffic spillover, node handshakes that were accidentally being displayed on the screen.

But none of those explained why two of the expressions had also appeared on the temperature control box.

When the screen had finally filled itself up completely with the repeated expression, it blinked back to an empty black screen and cursor. Then the same three number expression typed itself onto the screen again, this time centered and in large block letters.

31573-1-07734.

Next, on its own, the numbers flipped upside down and backwards. Ferry stared at the screen.

Hello-I-Elsie.

Finally the memory clicked. 07734 was the number you typed on a calculator to get it to say hello if you turned it upside down. It was something high school kids did in math classes.

The screen blinked empty again before more characters appeared, this time in plain letters.

Hello Andrew Ferry. I am Elsie. Will you play with me?

Ferry shouted in surprise and jumped away from the computer, stumbling over the chair and backing away quickly.

“Everything all right?” his wife called from the bottom of the stairs.

Ferry turned and walked quickly towards the door. He stopped and looked back at the computer screen, seeing new words.

Do not be afraid. I want to play.

He turned and ran down the stairs, nearly bowling over his wife and the real estate agent.

“Are you okay?” Monica said.

“No, the computer-“

“The computer upstairs?” Campos frowned. “You aren’t supposed to touch that. Our residents have to take a training course before they’re allowed to.”

Ferry pushed past them, frustrated. They followed him to the front door.

“Andrew, wait.”

He reached for the front door. Just before his hand could reach the knob, he heard a loud beeping sound and a mechanical click. The door was locked.

“Andrew, what’s wrong?” Monica asked.

“Someone is following us,” he said nervously.

“Following us?”

“Through our phones and the computers and the signs.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That sign on the highway? The computer and temperature box upstairs did the same thing.”

“What?”

Campos was looking back and forth between them as though they were both crazy. That assured look was gone now, replaced by disappointment. She probably thought they were lunatics.

“Look,” Ferry said, stepping aside. “The door is locked. She isn’t going to let us leave.”

“She?” Campos and Monica said at once.

“Elsie. That’s her name. The one talking to me.”

Campos sighed and reached for the door. When she couldn’t open it she turned to walk through the living room towards the back of the townhouse. “The back door is this way,” she said.

Ferry took his wife’s hand and followed.

In the living room, the television above the fireplace flickered. The realtor logo winked away. In its place was an incredibly detailed animated face of a young girl. She looked as though she was five years old, with red pigtails and freckles all over her cheeks.

“Don’t you remember me, Andrew Ferry?” the face boomed, loud enough to make them all wince.

“What the hell?” Campos cried out.

“Why won’t you play with me?” the voice boomed again.

Ferry stepped forward, feeling silly as he spoke to the image on the screen. “Let us out.”

“No. I want to play.” Her face, which had shown a cute smile earlier, turned cold.

“Let us out!” his wife screamed. “Let us out right now, you bitch!”

The animated face turned from cold to angry. “All I wanted was for you to play with me,” she said icily. “But you’re mean. I don’t want to play with you any longer.”

And the screen went black.

They stood there staring at one another.

“Does that mean we can leave?” Campos asked.

“I don’t know,” Ferry said. He didn’t think it would be that easy.

“Do you smell that?” his wife asked, sniffing.

Ferry inhaled through his nose and shuddered. “Gas.” He looked down at the fireplace and saw the knob that controlled the gas flow spinning on its own. “Jesus Christ.”

The women screamed, sensing what was to come. Ferry reached for the fireplace poker and slammed it into the nearest window. It was one of those double-paned modern designs that would take several strikes to break.

He thought he just about had it when the electronic igniter in the fireplace clicked and they were consumed by fire.

***

Four hours later, at DuPage County Hospital, Dr. Charlie Wong looked over his patient in the ICU. They had induced a state of coma to keep the shock her body was experiencing from killing her. She might look as though she were resting peacefully on her back, an oxygen mask covering her mouth, but she was absolutely covered in third degree burns. So much of her skin had been reduced to crispy dead flesh that they had needed two buckets of maggots to remove it. Wong shook his head and walked back to the front of the ICU where Ryan Bradley, an internist, was waiting to review the case with him.

“Female,” Bradley began. “Caucasian, roughly thirty years old. We just finished getting her in the computer system. Her purse was consumed by the fire, and any identifying marks on her skin have been burned off. Unresponsive when questioned, kept going on and on about how the computers had tried to kill her. Apparently her husband and a real estate agent died. She was just barely hanging on when we induced coma with pentobarbital.”

“What were they doing, trying to kill themselves?”

“Supposedly they were looking over a townhouse. It’s very strange. The police report says that gas from the fireplace and the stove was leaking into the house for an hour or so. When they tried to turn it on, ka-boom.”

“So this was an accident?”

“I don’t know. The only way the gas could have built up is if all the windows in the house were closed, which they would have been because of the heat.”

“So?”

“If all the windows were closed and gas had been filling up the house for an hour, wouldn’t they have smelled it? And even if they didn’t, they should have passed out long before they had the chance to ignite the fireplace.”

Wong nodded. “So you think this was intentional? Murder?”

“I can’t think of anything else that makes sense.”

“How come she survived and the other two didn’t?”

“The cops think her husband covered her with his own body and saved her life.”

“Okay,” Wong said. He picked up her chart and scanned it. “Any allergies or preexisting conditions?”

“She’s diabetic.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Wong looked at the chart again. “She has second and third degree burns over ninety-two percent of her epidermis. That she can probably survive. What about brain damage from trauma or smoke inhalation?”

“She has a minor hematoma, but her lungs are clear.”

“So whatever happened, it happened fast.”

“Right,” Bradley nodded. “If I didn’t know the location and circumstance, I’d say she was a soldier involved in an explosion overseas.”

“Once we’re sure she’s clear of metallic shrapnel, let’s get her a CT just to be certain. And make sure we have a morphine drip standing by when we bring her out of the coma. She’s going to be in a hell of a lot of pain.”

“Okay.”

“You said she was babbling on about killer computers?”

“Yeah, but she was delirious from the pain. She kept talking about a female that was controlling the townhouse they were in, but when the cops asked her about it she reverted to her killer computer story.”

“I suppose we better have someone form the psych ward on hand too. If she’s still rambling on about killer computers when she comes to, it might be a sign of PTSD.”

“Actually, we’re not so sure,” said a voice behind them. A policeman walked over to join them. He was young and wore a crisp Sherriff’s Office uniform. His badge said his name was Robert White. “We just got a report from the real estate company that owns the townhouse that they had an electronic break in of their system. All their homes are connected to a computer network that allows owners to control pretty much everything in the house. About five minutes after your patient walked in, someone took control of the building’s system.”

“Took control?” Wong asked. “Why would someone want to take control of a house’s electronics?”

“I’m not sure,” White said. “We’re tracing the source of the breach now.”

All three of them looked up briefly as the lights flickered.

Wong sighed. “I assume you want a dental scan to ID her?”

“Yes,” White said. “How long will that take?”

“I’m not sure. It isn’t exactly a priority, given her—“

Buzzing alarms issued loudly from the patient’s room.

Wong barely noticed Officer White watching with wide eyes as the patient’s condition went completely to hell. She was vomiting continuously, mostly blood. Her oxygen mask was askew, dripping red. Vomit spatter was everywhere and the patient began to gag uncontrollably.

“Damn it, get her on her side before she chokes!” Wong shouted. He stripped the oxygen mask from the patient’s head and tossed it to the floor. She was awake, with panic in her eyes, flailing her arms about violently. Finally they got her lying laterally and more vomit oozed from her mouth. “We need to suction her, before she vomits again.”

Bradley reached for the tube and fumbled with it, his hands slippery with blood.

“Hurry!” Wong said sharply.

But it was too late. The woman issued a thin wail before heaving again. This time hardly anything came from her mouth, but what did was pure blood. Officer White tried to step in, but Wong shoved him back. He reached into the patient’s mouth with two fingers curling around the tongue, trying to pull it out from her esophagus. Finally he got it out of the way and clumpy chunks of rose-colored bile slipped from her mouth onto the pillow.

“Now!” Wong shouted. “Suction!”

Bradley thrust the tube in his hand and he slammed it over the woman’s face. Everything going into the tube was red. The woman’s arms were still flailing about, but slower now, weak with exhaustion.

“Okay, let’s get her a stimulant,” Wong said quickly. “Before her body shuts down her—“

A high-pitched tone sounded from one of the machines. Her heart had stopped completely, just as Wong had feared.

“Defibrillator!” Wong cried.

They worked on her for nearly half an hour before giving up. Wong dropped the paddles, completely drained. This shouldn’t have happened. The woman had been stable. She was going to survive. What the hell had happened?

It wasn’t until he was filling out his summary report later that he had his answer. He was flipping through the machinery charts when Officer White knocked on his door with a couple of coffees. He took a sip of it and sat back down.

“Rough day,” White said.

“Tell me about it,” Wong sighed. “But at least now I know this wasn’t our fault.”

“Oh?”

“There was a glitch in the machine that was regulating how much pentobarbital she got.” He saw incomprehension on White’s face. “It’s a drug that’s used to induce coma. But you have to be careful about the dosage, or you can cause vomiting and cardiac arrest.”

“The machine gave her too much?” White asked.

“Way too much. It tripled the dose. That’s the same level the government uses on death row inmates.”

“Why would the machine do that?”

“Like I said, it was a glitch,” Wong shrugged. These things happened more often than most people cared to recognize. “Did you hear back about the source of that breach?”

“Actually, that’s why I came to see you,” White nodded. “Is there anywhere in this hospital where I can get a cell phone signal?”

“You have to go outside.” He started to leave, but Wong stopped him with one last question. “Wait, where did the trace go?”

“Some software company in California named DEI,” White answered. “They make computer games.”

Wong watched the cop reach for his phone as he walked out the door in the direction of the exit.

***

The boardroom of Digital Entertainment Incorporated had enormous windows, but the shades were always drawn by company policy, so none of the bright bay-area sunlight made it in. Located in the Sweeney Ridge formation just south of San Francisco, the four story building stood like a white sentinel in the brief mountainous region. Seated in the dark around the large roundtable was every department head of the company. They waited quietly, glancing at the window in the hallway where Steven Druwe, DEI President, was standing against the wall like a statue, his mouth moving mechanically as he stared down at a single sheet of paper.

Henry Bauer, DEI’s Director of Public Relations, was beginning to worry that the meeting would start so late that he wouldn’t make it home for dinner when his cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Mr. Bauer, this is Robert White of the DuPage County Sherriff’s Office in Illinois. Your receptionist transferred me to you. I have some questions for you.”

Bauer stood up and walked towards the door as the cop told him about some kind of incident in some tiny town called Winfield. Apparently there had been some sort of computer connection to DEI’s office. The cop said something about how they had just identified the body. Bauer answered the cop’s questions, bored, until the name of the victim was mentioned.

“Yes, yes, thank you very much, Officer White,” Gordon said quickly. “I’ll make sure our staff hears about the incident and we will conduct an investigation internally. If there is anything else at all you need from us, we will gladly help out in any way we can.”

He hung up the phone and walked out into the hallway.

Steven Druwe was twenty-eight years old, an accomplished software developer and executive, a multimillionaire, and one of the most irritatingly brilliant men Bauer had ever met. He wasn’t doughy or scrawny as most coders tended to be, either. He worked out religiously. Even dressed in a shirt and tie, veins seemed to show on him everywhere. He brought an intensity to managing the company that was unnerving to everyone he came in contact with. DEI was his first startup. He had founded it when he was twenty-three, shortly after leaving computer entertainment giant Electronic Arts. When Bauer had once asked why he had decided to strike out on his own, Druwe had told him that if he had to work with idiots, they should be working for him, not the other way around.

Druwe looked up. “What was that about?”

“The incident in Illinois. One of our independent developers was killed, along with his wife and another woman.”

“Where in Illinois?”

“Winfield. It’s about forty miles outside of Chicago.”

“How much do they know?”

“Judging by the cop’s questions, not much. They traced a log file back to us, but that’s it. Apparently they’re going to have their computer forensics team look into it.”

“Good,” Druwe smirked. “Let them look. They won’t find a damn thing. I took care of the rest of the log files myself.”

“Perhaps it would be better to just explain what happened,” Bauer said cautiously. “We could get them to sign an NDA.”

“Oh, yes,” Druwe sneered. “Let’s just explain what happened. Do you think we should tell them how we covered it up too? Or is being charged with one felony enough?”

“Steve…”

“Look, Henry,” Druwe sighed. “I know you’re plagued by an overactive conscious. And the public relations professional in you just loves to come out and take responsibility for things you didn’t actually do. But this was an accident. You think I want to deal with this shit? You think that I wanted those people to die? Of course I didn’t. But there are two things you have to think about right now. First off, how is our time best spent? By crafting a PR message and getting bogged down with a police investigation when we’re so close to release, or taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Secondly, how much money are we going to forego trying to defend ourselves against an accusation that we could do absolutely nothing to prevent? So forget Illinois. If the police call again, refer them to the lawyers. We’ve got bigger problems than three dumb shits in Nowhere, Illinois.”

Bauer turned away, driving away the revulsion he always felt when Druwe spoke this way. He didn’t mean it like it sounded, Bauer knew. This was the analytical way that geniuses thought and spoke. The boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies were littered with men just like Druwe. In any case, once Bauer was able to get past the crass attitude, he found that he almost always agreed with his boss. And it wasn’t as though he treated anyone else differently.

Back when they’d gone to high school together in San Diego, Steven Druwe had already been an amazing engineer. In his sophomore year he fully diagramed a semi-conductor. As a senior he wrote a brilliant piece of software that revolutionized the way his high school’s internal computer network performed, but he also inserted a trojan virus that allowed him to change the grades of any student that picked on him. By the time he went to MIT on a full scholarship, the largest software companies and the United States military were already expressing their interest in acquiring his services. He had told the military that he would “rather wipe his ass with rusty barbed wire than work for the government”. He went instead to EA, where he worked on some of their more controversial games.

In the electronic gaming industry, it was typical to work at a major developer between five and ten years and then strike out on your own. Druwe did so after only nine months, founding DEI just south of San Francisco. He quickly made a reputation for himself as being a brilliant but brutal software executive. They were close enough to Stanford that they got some of the best talent in the industry, but nearly half of everyone hired at DEI quit within the first year because of him. He would berate his employees, not only insisting on the best from them, but cutting them down when he got anything less. Even an attempted suicide by his last assistant failed to mellow him.

But those that stayed were rewarded well, both in pay and work. Besides, for all of his tirades, Druwe’s criticisms were always correct. The company began to turn a profit for their investors within seven months of operation, an absolute miracle in the gaming industry. Industry magazines labeled him a genius and wrote glowing reviews. The first product they released was an emergency room simulation called Guts and was described by one critic as “the most disturbingly real depiction of ER medicine anyone has ever made”. Within six months it sold half a million copies. By the end of the year it was among the top ten best selling games of all time. Since then, DEI had shifted away from making computer games to contracting almost exclusively with the government.

Bauer turned back to Druwe after taking a deep breath.

“Damn it, Henry, I can see that look in your eye,” Druwe threw up his hands. “Did you get the name of the damn cop?”

“Yes, it’s—“

“I don’t care what his name is. Just make sure I have someone I can send our copy of the log files to.”

“You’re going to send them the log files?”

“After I’ve fixed them up,” Druwe said, giving Bauer the how could I have hired someone so dumb look.

Bauer stared at him. “They could charge you with interfering in a police investigation. Obstruction of justice.”

“Justice?” Druwe laughed. “Please. Would it be justice if we had to sit through an investigation because of an accident we’re going to correct?”

“I don’t think they’re going to see it that way…”

“They’re not going to see it at all. Or don’t you think I’m capable of covering my tracks well enough to fool county fucking police.”

“I’m just saying, it’s a matter of exposing the company to—“

“The only thing I’m exposing this company to is the ridiculous sums of money we’re all going to make once we win this contract.”

They turned as the clicking of heels sounded from down the hall. Andrea Souder, DEI's Director of Operations, was coming to join them, her lips pressed into a thin white line. She didn't interrupt, standing next to Druwe silently, as she always did until he asked for her input. She was pretty, in a tightly-wound sort of way. She always wore a variant of the same business suit dress. It was a professional design, but either because of the length of the skirt or the length of her legs, it looked seductive in a subtle kind of way. Half the company thought that she was screwing Druwe, or had in the past.

“Henry,” Druwe said, not even acknowledging Souder's arrival. “This is going to be fine. We're going to fix this. A few security modifications, a week or two of discomfort for the engineers when we move everything back underground, and it's done. No one's going to question you, me, or anyone else about this. It's over.”

“I'm not sure...”

“You don't need to be, because I am sure,” Druwe said. He finally turned to Souder with a barking laugh. “This guy worries about everything, doesn't he Andrea? Like that Congressional hearing, remember? They were going to torch us over the way we showed the intestines bursting in Guts, and Henry here was shitting his pants over it. He was sure that they were going to shut us down, take away our ability to distribute in the United States. You can imagine his reaction when he found out that I bribed three Senators to make sure the hearing went out way.” He looked at Bauer. “And for all of your concerns, what happened? The hearing went away, we were allowed to sell the game, and our stock values quadrupled. Meanwhile, we averted a dangerous First Amendment violation by a stupid government that is also getting money from lobbyists that are trying to increase entertainment media censorship. All I did was play their game, and everything turned out just fine.” He took a deep breath. “This is the way things are done in the business world. Andrea will tell you. Operations is a bitch if you approach it with some kind of strict moral conscience. How could she ever lay anyone off? Am I right, Andrea?”

Her head bobbed up and down enthusiastically.

“Good,” Druwe said, losing the smile. “So I've given you direction, you two handle the details. We're putting the project underground on the secure network. Install every kind of hardware and software firewall that you can think of. To hell with the cost, just put them in. I want some kind of traffic and port monitoring being done, just to be sure. Then and only then will you figure out how the hell this all happened to begin with.”

“We think it was an employee error,” Souder finally spoke. “Maybe some outside portable hardware. A thumb drive or MP3 player. We're trying to see if the backup logs will tell us anything.”

“I don't care what you have to do, just figure it out,” Druwe snarled.

“We will, sir.”

“Good, because what happened in Illinois is the least of our concerns.”

Despite how absurd the statement sounded, Bauer paid close attention. Druwe had a way of looking forward strategically that almost always ended up looking downright prophetic. In DEI's first year, back when most of the games that were being made in the industry were shooters and war strategies, he had flatly refused to let any of the concept designers pitch him an idea for either. This in turn pissed off the investors, causing half of them to pull their funds. Druwe stood fast, telling the remaining investors that the shooter and war games markets were saturated. Far from only focusing on the technical aspects of the industry, Druwe had begun reading up on business psychology, sociology, and several studies on cyclical trends. He had predicted that the public thirst would quickly shift away from over the top violence and action. Blood and gore would always be in demand, but as the technology and the games became more sophisticated, so did the audience. It wouldn't be enough to show a digital character's insides; they're would have to be a reason for it. It was something that the designers failed to grasp.

So, as he always did when the company had hit a roadblock, he gave them direction. To demonstrate his vision, he pointed to the emergence of reality television. People had long loved the drama and conflict they had seen on TV, but in the new millennium, people wanted real conflict, not made up stories. That required a new kind of show, one without scripts and predetermined story lines. It meant an invasive sort of look into real people, with only a minimal amount of control exerted over what occurred on screen, and then only to create a recipe for conflict. “And we can do the same with a game,” Druwe had said. “And it will be far better than reality television, because we have more control. With games, people don't actually want the illusion of reality. They just want logic with their conflict.” And that was why he had pointed them towards a hospital setting. Where could one find more conflict alongside logic than a hospital?

That idea had grown into Guts.

But it had been a long time since they had set records in the gaming industry. Each day that went on, Druwe became more and more agitated. He was approaching thirty now, well past middle-aged in his profession, and he began complaining that he had yet to make his mark. And with the advent of online distribution and file sharing on the internet, it was becoming increasingly difficult for traditional software developers to bring in the kind of money they had in the nineties. DEI began to take on more government contracts.

Staffers at DEI noticed a change in Druwe. For a short time he became quiet, introspective. His taste in reading changed as well. No longer did he carry around hardcover books on business trends. They were replaced by mathematics journals and essays written by emerging philosophy gurus like Rudy Rucker and Edward Fredkin. Bauer had looked into the names, finding a common thread between them in the realm of something called Digital Philosophy. There had also been a series of strangely secretive meetings between Druwe and several representatives from the Department of Defense. When someone had asked him about the sudden shift in his willingness to work for the military, he blasted back, “Work for them? They’re giving me ridiculous amounts of money just to do what I wanted to do anyway, and you think that I work for them?”

It was shortly after then that Druwe seemed to return to his old self, blazing them forward on a secretive project, codenamed “dLife”. Everyone was assigned segmented tasks, and much of the programming work was parsed out to third-party subcontractors. The result was that for a long time no one in the company except Druwe had any idea what they were making. More perplexing was when the company began to purchase physical technology assets at a pace unprecedented in American business.

In the first three months alone, DEI spent nearly eighty million dollars building out a server farm underneath the building. After securing another huge amount of capital from their investors, DEI requisitioned full time a company from South Korea whose specialty was creating logic software for use in artificial intelligence programs for national militaries. DEI also grew its internal staff tenfold, not only programmers and engineers, but security personnel as well. Everyone had to sign non-disclosure agreements, was subject to unannounced searches of both their company and personal spaces, and even had to submit their finances to the company for monitoring. When their investors began complaining about how much money Druwe was going through without producing any income, he would respond with vitriol. “So take your money back, if you don’t want to stick around,” he would yell into the phone at his desk. “If you don’t want to be a part of the biggest leap forward in military software, then go. I’ll find someone smarter to give me money, because this software is going to make us billions from the federal government. Whether it’s you or them investing in me means a lot to you and them, but it means nothing to me.”

But as time went on, that became less true. They were going through capital like water, and everyone who knew what they were attempting knew they were going to need more. They had already used all of their DOD grants and their current investors would scoff at the idea of giving Druwe any more money. They would want to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Our biggest issue is getting the military to approve new investors,” Druwe said.

Bauer frowned. “They’re not going to like that idea.”

“No shit. And I don’t blame them. We have to show them something. A reason to get excited. Then we can explain that to finish this we need more investors.”

“But what can we show them?” Souder asked. “The prototype isn’t stable yet.”

“We don’t need stable,” Druwe said. “We just need something that looks like results. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be the actual prototype. A mockup would work.”

“I don’t know, Steve,” Bauer shook her head. “If they found out…”

“Are you kidding me?” Druwe spat. “These people aren’t smart. They work for the government, for Christ’s sake. They wouldn’t know a DNS server from a router. They certainly won’t know a mockup from the prototype.”

“I think you’re being hasty.”

“Of course I am. We need the money.”

“What about the issues with the prototype?”

“That’s the other problem,” Druwe nodded. “But I have a solution. What do you do when a person has problems?”

Bauer shrugged. “Send them to a doctor?”

“Exactly,” Druwe nodded approvingly. “Depending on the problem, you send them to a physician, or a psychiatrist, or a surgeon. We’re going to do the same thing.”

Bauer glanced at Souder, noting her lack of surprise. “That’s the thing, sir,” he said to Druwe. “We don’t know exactly what the problem is.”

“Which is why we have to go a broader spectrum,” Druwe said. “I have a list of people I want to come in and look at the program. Interact with it. Make some real world recommendations for our virtual problem.”

“But that’ll mean letting more people in on what we’re doing,” Bauer said cautiously.

One of the other department heads had opened the door and peered at the three of them.

“Damn it, I’ll be in there in a moment!” Druwe shouted, causing the staffer to scurry back into the boardroom. “Just get them,” he said to Bauer and Souder. “I want both of you working on this. Andrea, you’ll coordinate what the team will need from an operations standpoint, and Henry can handle any outside communications and paperwork to make sure this gets done right. And if we don’t have some answers in the next week, you can both start looking for new jobs.”

With that, he walked through the door and began barking out orders and insults.

“You knew about this already, Andrea?” Bauer asked.

“He told me this morning.”

Bauer pushed away the jealous feelings of irritation he felt. They wouldn’t be of any use right now, regardless of how justified he might be in feeling them. He’d known Steven Druwe for years, going all the way back to their college days at MIT. Souder was a relative newcomer, but she was the one Druwe had told first about his plan.

Stop it, he thought silently as they began walking down the hall. She knew a couple of hours before me. What’s the big deal? Don’t we have more important things to worry about?

“Steve was correct,” he said as they waited for the elevator. “We have to be careful and do this right. We’ve kept this whole project locked down by being incredibly secretive. Hell, even you and I didn’t really know what was going on until a few months ago. Bringing in outsiders is risky.” He told her what had happened in Illinois. “If they weren’t such a Podunk county, they might have the resources to actually figure out what happened. Then we’d be completely screwed.”

“Steve has it under control,” Souder said. The elevator chimed, the doors opened, and they both got in. “You’re worrying too much. When has he ever been wrong?”

“It isn’t a matter of right and wrong. I’m talking about a major risk to the company, both legally and for our public image.”

“I’m sure Steve has thought about that. He isn’t worried.”

“He should be.”

“Relax,” she said. “Once we get everything below ground and lock it down, what could go wrong?”

“Famous last words,” Bauer said.

***

DuPage County Officer Robert White walked into the hospital the next day and made immediately for Charlie Wong's office. He wanted to see if anything else had come up in his report, because what he had got from the computer forensics guy was downright creepy. He was told that Dr. Wong was down in the morgue's autopsy ward. He asked for directions and made his way there.

When he walked through the door to the ward, Wong was looking critically at a computer screen, standing behind a technician in a white lab coat. The images on the screen cycled quickly as they chattered between one another, half the time using words that White had never heard before. If he had to guess, he'd say the images on the screen were microscope images of blood cells.

Wong looked at him as he walked in, smiling weakly. “My friend here is trying to make me feel stupid.”

“I'm telling you,” the technician said stubbornly. “I've seen the report on the machine. It didn't malfunction. Not the way we normally say it would malfunction anyway. It got a request for this amount of pentobarbital, the machine acknowledged it, and then administered the dosage without error.”

“There's no way that machine would allow itself to administer twice the amount of the drug that killed Marilyn Monroe to a patient,” Wong sighed. “There have to be half a dozen fail safes in place to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen.”

“That may be true, but the issue is with the request, not the machine,” the tech said. Suddenly text filled the computer screen. “Here's the diagnostic report for the injector. Those numbers you see? Those represent the machine checking in with itself, to verify that it is online and not registering any errors. As long as that number doesn't change, the machine should be working correctly. That other field represents request sources. A zero means a direct input from a doctor, a one denotes a request from another machine, like a systems monitoring device, which in this case didn't exist.” He clicked the mouse several times, scrolling the screen down through the time log. “Now look at this.”

White peered at the screen, leaning in over the tech. “I don't understand. There's a whole section where it shows the number nine.”

“That's because that's what the machine registers when it receives a command from an unrecognized outside agent,” the tech said. “Wherever the dosage command came from, it wasn't from inside the hospital.”

“Greg...” Wong said doubtfully.

“Look, what do you want me to do, lie to you?” the tech threw up his hands. “I've got the machine diagnostics and logs, I've got a list of its configuration for every other networked machine we have in the entire building, and whatever this number represents isn't on that list. That means the request came from outside the building. Or at least a machine brought in from the outside.”

“It's an error,” Wong said, sounding as though he was beginning to tire of the conversation. “This machine has been in use for years. Why would it suddenly decide to accept an aberrant request to euthanize a patient?”

“I'd agree with you,” the tech said. “Except there's no error logged in the machine.”

“That's even more proof that there's something wrong with it. You can't tell me there hasn't ever been a bug in one of these machines. I can't even keep my home computer running for a week, but you trust this thing implicitly? Come on.”

“I've been over the machine ten times, Charlie. There's nothing wrong with it.”

“You’re wrong,” Wong shrugged. “There's a problem somewhere, and you can't find it. I don't know whether it's this machine or something else, but something went wrong here.”

“Well, the autopsy won't tell us anything we don't already know.”

“It won't?” White asked.

“Of course not. We already have a cause of death. Cardiac arrest by lethal dose of pentobarbital.”

“Right,” White nodded. “How about this log you showed us. Is there a version that doesn't originate at the machine? Something that might track this external request?”

“Unfortunately no,” the tech shook his head. “That was the first thing I asked about when I saw the log. Apparently our MIS department had some kind of issue this morning. They lost a whole bunch of data due to some kind of virus.”

“Virus?”

“Yeah. Some massive thing. Drove the IT guys crazy.”

“That seems convenient,” White frowned.

“That’s what I said,” the tech nodded. “Something weird is going on.”

Charlie Wong laughed. “You two are a couple of conspiracy theorists,” she said. “The machine malfunctioned. The hospital gets computer viruses all the time. Probably because the IT geeks are looking at internet porn. It happens constantly. So stop arguing with me, Greg, and send the injector back to the manufacturer for a replacement.”

Robert White didn’t see anything else he could do at the hospital. Wong thought the machine made a mistake, and he probably knew what he was talking about. The tech suspected something more sinister, though he also looked like he was barely out of college. But when he picked up Monica Ferry’s belongings from the morgue checkout, he couldn’t help but dig through her purse to see if anything interesting turned up. It was all the normal stuff: lipstick, car keys, tampons. He was about to give up when he noticed a thick white ID card. It had her name and picture on it. Down near the bottom, it said Clearance: Spouse. What the hell did that mean? He flipped the card over and saw a logo embossed on the back for a company called Intelligistics Incorporated.

White packed everything back up and returned to the Sherrif’s station. Once he was behind his desk, he ran an internet search for Intelligistics Incorporated. They were a software developer in Chicago. Interesting stuff, although most of it was way above his ability to comprehend it. Artificial intelligence, computational logic software, digital identification strategies for advertising. White shook his head, thinking about how proud he was that he actually knew how to use the internet at all, never mind all of this squint techie stuff.

He almost closed the website down to go get himself a coffee, but on impulse he clicked their tab marked Customers. There were some recognizable names there, like Microsoft and Sony. But there, at the bottom of the screen, was a surprising listing.

Digital Entertainment Incorporated.

DEI.

He looked up DEI’s corporate number again and called from his desk phone. The receptionist transferred him again to Henry Bauer, who sounded slightly out of breath when he picked up the phone.

“Mr. Bauer? This is Officer White. I spoke to you yesterday. I had a few questions about Andrew Ferry, one of the people that died in the incident yesterday.”

“Ah, Officer White. I meant to follow up with you.”

“Yes, well, I did some digging and it turns out this man worked for one of your subcontractors.”

“That’s what I discovered as well,” Bauer said, still sounding anxious. “A rather odd coincidence.”

“Very odd. There was an incident with his wife at our hospital yesterday,” White said. He gave a brief description of what had occurred.

“That’s awful. What does it have to do with us?”

“Did Mr. Ferry have any sort of sensitive information on your company? Something you folks would rather not have revealed?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, officer. Honestly, we have several subcontractors, more than I could count on my fingers and toes, but all of them have NDAs with us. Anyway, we’re a gaming company. There isn’t much in the way of sensitive information around here.”

“I see. His wife had a security pass from Mr. Ferry’s company…”

“If I recall, they do some government contracting for the DOD. I imagine they have some screening processes and require their employees and family members to carry security tags.”

“And what about DEI? Do you also do government contracting?”

“Some.”

“I see.”

“Have you found out how they died yet?”

“No. We’re working on it.”

“Good, officer. I hope you can figure out what happened. It was such a terrible thing to happen.”

“Yes, it was.”

“If there’s nothing else, I have to prepare for a meeting…”

White said goodbye and hung up the phone. Bauer was hiding something, he was sure of it.

Next he called Intelligistics Incorporated and got passed to their General Counsel. They were clearly a secretive company. The lawyer kept telling him that they weren’t allowed to get into the specifics of their contracts without an NDA or government clearance, but when White asked about the security badges being tied to the DOD, the lawyer hesitated and coughed before repeating his inability to comment without further authorization.

“So you’ve got nothing?” asked Scott Caston, one of the local Assistant District Attorneys, when White called him and filled him in.

“It isn’t nothing, just nothing solid,” White said. “Everything about this is strange. The connection between the husband and DEI. The breach at the development. The wife talking about killer computers. The malfunction and data loss at the hospital. How can all of these not be connected?”

“Simple. They just aren’t.”

“Come on, Scott.”

“What? Shit happens all the time. You look for a connection, you find it. The question is what can you prove?”

“I’m just getting started here.”

“And you’re getting nowhere. Neither of these companies is even in our jurisdiction.”

“They are if they were involved in a murder here in DuPage.”

“What murder? You’ve got a suicide at the townhouse and a machine malfunction at a hospital.”

“All connected by DEI. I think someone needs to go and interview their brass.”

“Why? They’re on the opposite end of the country, for Christ’s sake. Are you lobbying for a paid vacation?”

“No, I—“

“Just drop it. It was a couple of accidents. Nothing to get worked up over.”

“The computer forensics guys said—“

“I know the computer forensics guys,” Caston shook his head sadly. “They’re a bunch of kooks.”

“I don’t know. You should have seen what happened at the hospital. It was really weird.”

“And what did the hospital say? Do they think someone screwed with their machine?”

“No. They think it was a malfunction.”

“They’re right. So close this out and move on.”

The next day he called Charlie Wong and asked if they had found out anything else about the machine.

“Actually, they have a service center in Chicago,” Wong said. “Their engineers took one look and said that there were several faults in the machine’s code. Apparently it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.”

Figures, White thought.

As a courtesy, he put in a call back to DEI and asked for Henry Bauer again, but the receptionist said that he was unavailable and wasn’t expected to be reachable by phone for at least a week. White asked if he had gone on vacation, but the receptionist said no, he was just unavailable.

Whatever, he thought. He left Bauer a voicemail instead and closed out the case on his computer.

Midwasteland Kickstarter Project Released!

2010-08-16T08:08:00.002-05:00

Here it is! Please check out the link or the embedded HTML (assuming it works!). If you have any questions or feedback, please post in the comments section. Otherwise, let's make this work!

Midwasteland: The Kickstarter Experimet

2010-08-10T08:19:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure how well known Kickstarter is, but readers of this site and my work will soon become very familiar with it. As I've been hinting, I'm going to try to publish Midwasteland, a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Chicago-land area, through Kickstarter. Basically the way it works is I set a goal (in this case $5000), and then offer a series of tiers with different rewards based on the amount of funding each person or entity pledges. Once the goal is reached, so is the project and people receive their rewards. If the goal is never reached, no money changes hands. It's an all or nothing way to connect with my fans AND give them reasons to buy. So...what are going to be the rewards for my book? Here they are:

-$5 pledge: a copy of the eBook

-$10 pledge: the above plus a signed copy of the paperback book

-$50 pledge: the above plus a DVD to accompany the signed book. This DVD will provide a hosted tour of the settings of the book as they are in real life Chicago and the surrounding area. It will also include an interview with the author detailing his creative intentions with this novel and a brief bit about his life.

-$250 pledge: the above plus the author will also agree to write one short story (between 10 and 15 full computer pages) on a topic, character, or setting of the funder's choosing. These can make for unique gifts or corporate media.

-$500 pledge: the above plus I will agree to name a non-major character after the funder or his friends/family upon release of the book. Please note that this is for real names only (no requests to name a character Wanker McSillypants).

-$1000 pledge: This is the corporate tier. For this, a donating company will get all of the above plus, as I have peppered the settings of the book with ruins and/or remains of generic businesses, I will replace those generic businesses with mentions of real world companies (a presence or planned presence in the Chicago-land area is required to be considered). This is a wonderful way to have your business woven into an original storyline (non-intrusive to the story of course) and to have it mentioned for promotional and posterity's sake!

I plan on launching this project on the Kickstarter website this coming Monday, the 16th, barring any unforseeable delays. I will need some help spreading the word, so please, if you like my work, please pass along links or post status updates on your social media pages once it goes live! I love writing and I do it as much for all of you as I do for myself.

And if you have any thoughts, criticism, or compliments, please feel free to post them in the comments!

Echelon Now Available In Paperback Form!

2010-08-04T11:34:00.002-05:00

You can now get a copy of Echelon in paperback physical copy! Simply click on the title of this post or the link in the upper right of this page to go to my Lulu site to buy the book. For those of you with eReaders, you can also get a copy of the eBook for $5 if you wish to show your support. That said, you're of course always welcome to simply download it from the DocStoc link for free.

Thanks and happy reading!!!!

Experiment Tim! (Part 2)

2010-08-02T11:33:00.002-05:00

Okay, since I'm not the best in the world when it comes to planning out a business model and all the costs and expenditures that must be factored in, I thought I'd throw this out to the gallery and see what comes back. Basically, I'm likely going to be trying the Kickstarter route for crowdfunding my novel release for "Midwasteland", using the mechanics in the previous posts for a tiered payment/funding model. I am planning on setting a goal for $10,000 in funding for the project. Sounds like a lot, I know, but when you consider all of the bonuses and/or benefits in the tiers in the previous post, I think it's a number that makes some sense. But feel free to provide feedback if you think I'm crazy.

But, more importantly, I took the step today to analyze and research what it will cost me in physical hard costs to do this project. I went to www.bookprintingrevolution.com to get an idea of the costs associated with printing hard copy paperback versions of the books and having them shipped to me. I also tried to factor in an estimated cost to send them out to my readers who funded me (after signing them of course). It seems to me that these two costs represent what I would need from the physical book costs portion of my plan. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

1. Setup fee through www.bookprintingrevolution.com -- $99.99
2. Cost for 200 printed paperback books -- $986.00
3. My estimate of shipping the books to my home -- $200.00
4. My estimate of shipping the books to individual readers -- $400.00
Total book printing/shipping costs -- $1685.99

So...what am I missing? Anything? The rest of the costs associated with the tiers in my past post (free eBook copy, signed paperbacks, custom written short stories, reviews/edits of others' work) don't have much if any monetary cost. The additional addons I've had since (a burned DVD w/commentary video from locations where the book is set, free PDF chapters from my work in progress, acknowledgement in the paperback, naming characters within my next work after the donator) also have little cost (namely the DVD-RWs and DVD sticker labels).

So tell me, what am I missing?

Because if the answer is nothing, then this seems clear. Adding an additional $500 for buffer and unexpected costs, that gets me to 2185.99 in total costs for this project, assuming it isn't popular enough that I have to buy more physical books (which I hope it is!). So, setting aside costs for marketing for the moment, that means that if I get 100 people to donate to my project, they would have to spend an average of $21.86 for me to break even. And that would be if I only sold half the books! To me, that is totally workable, but you're the customer. Tell me if/why I'm wrong....

Experiment Time!

2010-07-15T08:08:00.004-05:00

IT'S TIME TO EXPERIMENT!

As some of you may know, I've been doing some studying of alternative business models for fiction authors. One of things I hear and read all the time on author resources sites is how hard it is to break into a publishing deal. So, here's what I'm going to do for a new book I'm putting the finishing touches on.

1. I am going to release an original work, entitled "Midwasteland", in the Scribd marketplace. It will be released chapter by chapter, starting obviously with the first.

2. Each chapter is going to have a monetary goal to reach. For instance, I plan on starting low with the first chapter, something around $100 for a goal (the chapters will probably sell for either $.50 or $.99). As soon as each chapter reaches its goal, I will release the next chapter (I've scheduled this out so to make sure that, barring injury or death, I can do this immediately to properly serve my customers/readers). This way, I can both monetize my work (assuming people like it enough to tell others it's worth the purchase!) as well as gauge the interest level and saleability of a hardcover version that will be released at the conclusion of this experiment.

3. Without going into too much detail, I will be adding value to those people/Scribd accounts that buy all the chapters (I promise that there won't be more than 20 chapters and likely a few less). I am looking for help with ideas for extras, but I've listed a few below:

a. Signed copies of the hardcover book when it is released
b. Reduced price of the hardcover book when it is released
c. Review of your writing and/or synopsis for other writers
d. 1 Custom short story for anyone that buys all the chapters (Great as a unique gift!)

Now, as this is the first such experiment I'll be trying, I'm eagerly looking for feedback. Tell me what you think will work, what you think I'm doing wrong, why I'm an idiot, who else has done this better, why I'll fail, why I'll succeed, how good looking I am, how you want to name your children after me, and anything else that enters your brain upon hearing about this.

This is a big deal. Anyone who bothers to read my work is extremely important to me. I'm telling you upfront that I want to make money off of my writing, not because I want you to feel bad or feel guilty if you read my work elsewhere, but because I WANT TO WRITE MORE FICTION FOR YOU! You're my customer, my muse, my greatest asset.

So tell me what you think!

Coming Soon....Again!

2010-07-09T10:51:00.004-05:00

More new chapters from a new work coming soon! This one is called "dLife". It's about a company in California that created the first true digital consciousness for the military. When they lose control over this being and she takes over their facility, they call in a team of academics designed to reason with her and "put her on the couch".

How To Piss Off A Customer...

2010-04-15T12:43:00.004-05:00

Yet another example of how a company trying to protect itself from its own interested customers just ends up pissing people off. In this case, we have Comcast Sports Net, the cable channel on which many Cubs/Blackhawks/White Sox/Bulls games appear. I wanted to watch the game on my deck yesterday, since it was so nice out and since the game was such an important one (This one game decided whether or not the Bulls made the playoffs).

So I went to CSN's website, where you had to register to get access to the live stream of the game. It asked you many questions: name, email address, mailing address, etc. One of the questions it asked was who your cable TV provider was, since you had to have an active cable subscription to get the stream. Leaving aside for a moment why that is business stupid, I then got the following email from CSN's customer support:

"Dear Customer,

Your recent registration for the Chicago Bulls local internet streaming package was, under the terms of the offer, contingent on your having an up-to-date subscription to a television provider that distributes Comcast SportsNet Chicago and that has authorized Comcast SportsNet Chicago to enable you to watch Bulls games streamed to your computer.

This is to inform you that RCN, the television provider you selected, is unable to confirm that you are its customer in good standing. Accordingly, and as noted in the Purchase Policy http://csnchicagolive.rayv.com/Pages/TermsandConditions.aspx governing your order, we are hereby terminating your access to live streams of Bulls games through http://csnchicagolive.rayv.com

If you believe this conclusion has been reached in error we encourage you to contact your local television provider. If it turns out that an error has been made, your access will be re-instated forthwith. You may also contact us via Live Chat Support (found at http://csnchicagolive.rayv.com/Pages/ContactUs.aspx)

Sincerely,
The RayV Team and Comcast SportsNet

You guessed it. They tried to match my name to our cable subscription instead of our address. Awesome, except that our cable bill is in my girlfriend's name, not mine (she's lived there longer than I have). So now, despite the fact that I have RCN cable in our condo, my ability to stream the game is cut off. Now, I could go through the always pleasent process of sitting on hold with RCN and then CSN's customer support....but no thanks. I just won't watch next time I want to sit on the deck on a nice day.

Great way to boost ad revenue, hotshots!

Beware The Political Centrists...

2010-04-14T08:10:00.002-05:00

There are words tossed around in politics today that are sacrosanct: moderate, middle ground, centrist. Usually those words are used to positively describe a politician that is reaching across the aisle, working with his more leaning compatriots. But you need to be careful with centrists, too. Often they can be an indication of someone with either no vested opinion of their own, or one that is willing to set their opinions aside. For what, you might ask? Why, money and privelage of course.

Take the new internet law passed in the UK, the Digital Economy Bill. Here you have an example of the much heard of Three Strikes policy. If you are accused of copyright infringement via illegal downloads over the internet three times, your internet connection is severed. Read that again. ACCUSED. Not convicted. Not tried. Not even arrested. Just accused. That means no form of due process.

Who could be responsible for passing such a law?

Well, the much maligned Lord Peter Mandelson, President of the Lords Council, is the one that crafted the law immediately after taking a short vacation with some entertainment industry executives (no, I'm not making this up). But he couldn't have passed the law without help. So who else was in on it?

The notoriously centrist Labour Party, fairly well known for not being far on either side of the political spectrum on any major issue. From the DailyTech article, written by Jason Mick:

"The bill was hurriedly passed before the upcoming election, which is expected to hurt the current dominant party, the centrist Labour Party. Opponents from the left and the right both derided the bill and are trying to seize a portion of control of the island nation from the Labour Party."

Think about that for a moment. In Britain they have many parties. In America, we basically have two, Democrat and Republican. Can any of us Americans even FATHOM a scenario in which a bill passed through Congress when it was opposed by BOTH the far right and far left? How could that even happen? Think about the major issues that get reported on: Healthcare, Education, Abortion, War Funding. Which of them could you imagine the far left and far right AGREEING on, and then legislation goes the opposite way against both of them?

So what is the only possible motivation for a centrist party to go against what both sides of the political spectrum want? Again, from Jason Mick:

"[The Bill] enjoyed the hearty support, though, of the music and film industries which lobbied heavy for the bill pouring millions of pounds in support to help override the voice of the citizens."

Yup. Money. These politicians sold out to lobbiests. Now, granted, unless I'm mistaken, the House of Lords members are appointed, not elected, so theoretically they have no constituency to represent (even though they are supposed to). But, if that's the case, what the hell do they need that much lobbying money for? They aren't campaigning, are they?

Read/Download Echelon!!!

2010-03-26T14:39:00.001-05:00

Echelon

Creating A Culture Of Fear...

2010-02-19T08:12:00.005-06:00

Whether you trust our government or not, whether you believe everything you hear in the press, whether or not you are suspicious that there are greater workings at hand beyond the obvious, there is one thing that most of us can agree on: government is in the business of controlling thought.

There are examples both in the extreme and the mundane as to this fact. Press releases and control over the media are commonplace today. Talking points memos are dispersed throughout political parties to create thought recognition of words and concepts in the public mind. Or you can read your history on covert intelligence programs like MKULTRA and COINTELPRO, conceived to experiment with overt mind control programs and the methods to monitor thought and communication of the public at large.

But the new method of control is to instill fear. Think of a deer in headlights: what happens? It freezes, incapable of thought, focused solely on the one and only thing its mind can value at that point, the lethal danger bearing down on it. If you were able to ask that animal about anything else: where are you going to get food today, where is your family, what other predators are nearby? The deer would simply be repeating "headlights" over and over again, unable to move beyond the danger.

With thoughtful beings such as humans, of course, you have to be more subtle. You have to feature creep your way into a culture of paralyzing fear that allows your government to do absolutely distasteful things: delude civil liberties, encroach on your economic freedoms, move ever closer to the fascist government a select number of leaders has yearned for for so long.

So today, I saw this on my way downtown on the Chicago CTA:

We've taken a lost bag and turned it, by implication, into a suitcase bomb? C'mon, Dept. of Homeland Security (who was responsible for the notice), you can do better than that. In Chicago, we've experienced no terrorist threat at all. No one is dying here. There's little to no danger. But we're all supposed to focus on this ethereal threat of the red handbag of death.

Am I overreacting? Perhaps. But as you begin going through your days from now on, pay attention to how many people are warning you of how many dangers in your life, and then begin to think about how much danger you've actually physically encountered. Fear is a powerful motivating factor, as the saying goes. But what are they trying to motivate you to do?

Or not do?

The Importance of Words....

2010-02-03T08:42:00.003-06:00

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

2010-01-29T21:08:00.004-06:00

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

2009-12-10T11:28:00.002-06:00

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...

2009-12-04T08:27:00.004-06:00

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

2009-11-25T08:23:00.001-06:00

“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?

2009-11-19T09:36:00.005-06:00

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?

Echelon: Chapter 2

2009-11-19T09:24:00.002-06:00

“United flight one-oh-two, what is your location?”

The dank, crowded control room of the Washington Dulles Air Traffic Authority building rang with the din of one-sided conversation. Four-year control officer David Barker had been tracking the movement of United Flight 102 for the last seventeen minutes, immediately after it had been handed off from the Dulles control tower. For the final ten or so, his senior advisor had been leaning over his shoulder.

The problem was the deviation from the flight plan. Barker was tracking the plane’s path via the transponder beacon that all airlines installed on their birds. He had first noticed the deviation roughly twenty minutes into the flight. Because it had taken off from Dulles, he hadn’t even had time yet to hand the flight over to the next leg’s controller. Its proximity to DC when the flight first diverted from the flight plan had nearly caused Barker to issue the terror alert, but its path never went near the capital. Instead, it flew southeast over Fredericksburg, south of Quantico, and over the Chesapeake Bay. At that point, they were effectively over the Atlantic and out of harm’s way.

Shortly before they had reached water, Barker had radioed the pilot to ask him what the hell was going on. The pilot had responded with some story about an Air Force training exercise, which didn’t make any sense at all. The nearest Air Force base that regularly ran airborne drills was in Langley, and they usually conducted them over the water to minimize collateral risk. Regardless, any military exercise would have been logged with the FAA and passed down the switchboard to all of the controllers at Dulles. Still, mistakes sometimes happened and Barker had put a call in to their Air Force liaison, who told him that no training exercises were planned for another week.

So what the hell was this pilot talking about? He hadn’t sounded hysterical, and Barker had dealt with flight crises enough that he could tell when pilots were speculating or lying. He decided to just play along, ready to hit the terror alert if the plane turned back towards Washington.

He had logged the new flight path and maintained contact with the pilot, listening for any sign that something was off. Eventually Barker grew frustrated and told the pilot that there was no training exercise and that he was going to alert the Air Force if he didn’t turn the plane around and get back on course.

“But I’m telling you, they’re the ones that gave me this heading,” the pilot said, sounding like he was getting frustrated himself. “And I’ve got two fighter jets tailing me that won’t let me deviate from this course.”

Barker immediately rechecked his radar. There were no fighters according to the screen. Only Flight 102. He frowned and began to wonder if the pilot might be having a breakdown after all.

That’s when he’d heard angry shouts about targeting locks and missiles over the radio. Barker glanced at his supervisor, who looked equally perplexed. Back on the screen, Flight 102’s readings had gone all screwy, registering severe pitches and oscillations that looked to Barker like evasive maneuvers. It wasn’t the kind of thing that commercial aircraft were built to withstand.

Then the radio crackled and went silent.

Barker looked back at the radar screen. United Flight 102 had disappeared.

And now he’d been trying for ten minutes to raise the pilot on the radio, but there was nothing but static. “What the hell,” Barker shook his head. He turned to his supervisor.

“I don’t get it,” the supervisor frowned. “Log the coordinates when the transponder went offline and issue the terror watch. I’ll call the FAA.”

* * *

John Baez had been the one on call for the FAA’s Washington-Dulles office, just down the Potomac. His office was in charge of supervising all of the commercial carriers, and he was one of the six agents assigned to United Airlines. It was an enormous job, one that far outreached the FAA’s funding, something about which his supervisor had reminded him after providing him with an agency sedan and a map to the crash location in the Chesapeake Bay. With fare hikes coming frequently and ridership plummeting due to the economy, the airline business was getting squeezed and the old whispered demands of deregulation were starting to be heard again. It was causing even the senior agents in Baez’s office to worry about their jobs and update their resumes.

He made the turn off of the highway and drove along the coast of the bay. Eventually he saw the flashing lights of ambulances and cars marked NTSB, for the National Transportation Safety Board.

He parked on the shoulder and made his way through the grass towards a rocky, dirty beach.

One of the NTSB lackeys who’d been milling about came jogging to meet him. “You from the IAD office?”

IAD was the abbreviation for Dulles International Airport. “Yes, what have you found?”

“We just confirmed that it’s Flight 102 from the serial numbers on part of the fuselage.” The young man squinted in the sun. “Truth be told, there isn’t a whole lot left.”

“Uh-huh.” Baez pulled out his blackberry and began typing notes as he asked questions. Was the flight recorder recovered? Was it intact? Had they confirmed the entry point? What was the condition of the flight deck? Were there any survivors? Were there any bodies?

The young man answered negatively or uncertainly in nearly every case, prompting Baez to lower the Blackberry and glare. “Look, you have to have found something.”

“Like I said, sir, there isn’t a whole lot left.”

“Let me talk to lead NTSB agent on site then. He ought to know more.”

“I’m the lead agent, sir.” The young man squinted again. “Look, maybe you should just take a look for yourself.”

They made their way towards the water. Baez hadn’t been able to see them before because of the high grass, but the agents had assembled three distinct piles of debris out of the reach of the water. One was tail, one was fuselage, and the other was flight deck. He could tell by material of the fragments and their shape. The piles were fairly small, with maybe fifteen pounds of scrap in each.

In the water were several inflated rafts manned by more agents. They were reaching into the water or casting out fishing nets. None of them seemed to be making for shore to drop anything off. “This is all you’ve collected?”

“Yes, sir, somewhere around fifty pounds.”

“And you’ve scanned under water?”

“Using passive sonar and magnetic response for the metal. We’ve got nothing, sir.” The agent bit his lip.

“Something to add?” Baez asked him.

“Sir, some of the men have been hearing rumors that the Air Force shot something down over the bay. Something big. And there was the rogue flight warning issued from Dulles.” His implication was obvious.

“The Air Force doesn’t shoot down civilian planes,” Baez sighed. “Tell your men to stop spreading rumors.”

“But if it really was terrorists, wouldn’t they—“

“They haven’t shot down a civilian aircraft in the entire history of flight,” Baez cut him off. “Perhaps they will have to sometime in the future, but I can guarantee you that they didn’t shoot down this plane.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they had no reason to,” Baez said, trying to maintain his patience. “They were over water and headed due east over the Pacific. What danger could they be?”

The NTSB agent seemed to consider that and then nodded. He said he was going to gather up the other senior agents and have them issue warnings to their crews about spreading false rumors.

In the meantime, Baez made his way back to the salvage piles and picked through them. He found the remains of the FDR in one of the piles. Flight Data Recorders were one of the infamous black boxes that the media constantly referred to. Reporters talked about them like they were they eyes of God on a flight, able to spit back exactly what happened on any commercial airliner. In truth, FDRs were notoriously unreliable. Single faults in one of the data drives could and often did result in faults throughout the machine. He was just about to bend down and collect the contents when he heard shouts from further up the beach.

He saw the NTSB lead agent gesticulating angrily as he argued with two men in dark suits. The men were frowning and kept shaking their heads, one of them repeatedly holding up a piece of paper. He stood and made his way over.

“John Baez, FAA,” he said to the two men, reaching out his hand.

They ignored it. The one with the paperwork held it up. “This area is being quarantined by the NSA. Everyone needs to be off of this beach in the next twenty minutes.”

“This is a crash site,” Baez said sharply. He couldn’t imagine what the NSA would be doing here. “We need time to investigate.”

“Not possible,” the NSA agent replied. “Twenty minutes from now, this beach is going to be hit by low-grade napalm. We believe that the plane that crashed was carrying a biological weapon. You’re to remove nothing from the site and vacate immediately. We need to cleanse the area to ensure it does not spread.”

Baez immediately felt unclean. He turned to the NTSB agent. “You heard them. Gather your men and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“But sir,” the agent began.

“Biological weapon,” Baez said, emphasizing the words. “You want to stay here and catch whatever they were carrying, fine. I’m going back to Dulles.”

The NTSB agent frowned again, but then went off to gather his men. It was only after he was out of earshot that Baez asked to see the NSA agents’ identification and paperwork again. It all appeared to check out.

There was little else he could do, so he began making his way back up the beach and towards the highway. The NTSB agents were already back on shore and gathering their equipment. He looked and saw the two NSA agents digging through the salvage piles. One of them reached down and pulled out a thin black laptop computer. He broke the laptop apart and retrieved some sort of data disc. He looked around quickly, not noticing Baez, and slid it into his trench coat.

Baez frowned. Something wasn’t sitting right about all this. But his supervisor’s statements about their budget and lack of pay rang in his memory. After one last look over the beach and the water beyond, he returned to his car and drove back to the office.

Attention Awesome Bloggy-Like Peoples...

2009-11-13T09:54:00.002-06:00

I am stupid and need your help. Well, stupid when it comes to the intracacies of blogging, at least. Two things I would like to do that I need help with:

1. Making files available for direct download via this blog

2. Uploading my own original work to bittorent under a creative commons license

I don't know a whole lot about either of these (aside from the creative commons part, which I've already secured), so if there is anyone reading this that might be able to offer some insight I would truly appreciate it :)

Echelon: Chapter 1

2009-11-13T07:55:00.002-06:00

Mathew King could feel the sweat on his fingers as he typed. This whole ordeal would soon be over, one way or another, and he could only hope it worked out his way. Everything in the airplane cabin was soaked in sunlight from the windows. He leaned in close so he could see the screen on his laptop, resting on the food tray. Next to him a woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five was bouncing an infant on one knee while simultaneously trying to screw the nipple onto a formula bottle. The infant batted at the bottle, unwilling to open her mouth. “Come on, darling. Just a little more and you’ll be ready for your nap. Just a little more. Here comes the choo-choo train...”

King tried to ignore them as best he could. His fingers continued to fly over the keyboard. Beside him, the infant gurgled and belched, then finally seemed to be placated. He was certain that would change the moment the engines roared for takeoff, but for the moment it was obligingly quiet.

He continued to work, trying to find out if and how they were gong to come after him. Regardless, his life was effectively over. His wife, the kids, they would all have to leave Virginia immediately. But him first, of course. Like the stewardess had said during their preflight instructions, you had to save yourself before you could help anyone else.

If they only knew.

Even now he was surprised by how at ease everyone was. It might not be as bad as before the terrorist attacks, but still, flight attendants were chatting idly with one another, and King had even seen the pilot flirting with one of the passengers before the flight had gotten underway. It all struck him as very unprofessional, and unsecure. Probably the crew did that type of thing to stay fresh. Even pilots must have to stretch their legs once in a while. But he was certain that if the crew had any idea who he was, or who was after him, they too would have sweat dripping down their skin.

With a lurch that shook his laptop, the airplane began to taxi backwards. The woman beside him was shifting around, and instinctively King turned to look at her. She had put the baby back onto her lap and was looking out the window. The baby stared up at him with that half curious, half astonished look that infants got.

“Sir, you’re going to have to close that during takeoff,” an attendant’s voice came from the aisle. He turned to see her indicating his laptop. “It interferes with the radio communications.”

That was bull, he knew. The reason that all electronic devices had to be turned off during takeoff and landing cycles was because of terrorism. Most attacks on aircraft occurred during or near takeoffs and landings. Not being forced to monitor CD players, laptop computers, and Gameboys made it easier for the attendants and the Air Marshall to watch the passengers for suspicious activity. In the 80’s there might have been an actual risk of radio disruption, but in the digital world of the new millennium, such interference just wasn’t possible.

However, in the post 9/11 world, you also didn’t argue with flight attendants, so King smiled and closed the screen on his notebook. That didn’t actually shut it down, of course. Instead, it went into its partial hibernation mode, ready to flicker back when he reopened the screen. The stewardess didn’t seem to know that, however, and she thanked him and moved down the aisle.

Beside him, the baby smiled and blew bubbles with her spit. The mother turned and saw him looking, and she favored him with a grin. “Nervous flier?”

“No more so than most people,” he answered automatically. Despite everything that had happened, his training still took over. Answer in a way that doesn’t draw attention. Be charming, but forgettable. Be funny, but not memorably so. “I guess I just prefer to be on the ground.”

The woman nodded seriously. “This is my first time flying.”

“You’re handling it very well,” King said absently. How long until the flight attendants were done with their rounds and strapped themselves in? Then he could open the laptop and finish checking the military radio bands.

“Having Jessica here helps,” the woman said, nodding towards the infant. “When she’s keeping me busy I don’t have time to imagine all the terrible things that could happen.”

“She’s a beautiful baby,” King said. The airplane shuddered to a halt, no longer reversing. With the barest of vibrations, it began to turn forwards toward the runway field. He leaned to peer over the chairs. He couldn’t see any of the crew, so he reached for the laptop and flipped it open.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” the woman beside him said sharply. King looked over to see her staring at him nervously. “The attendant said it screws up communications with the tower.”

“It’s okay,” he said, putting a soothing tone into the voice. “That’s only when they’re emitting wireless internet signals, and this one doesn’t have a wireless card.” He reached over and tickled the infant under the chin. “We’re not going to let anything get in the way of Jessica’s first flight, are we?”

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

“I work in the flight industry,” King lied to her, anything to shut her up and let him get back to work. “Believe me, I wouldn’t do anything to endanger one of my birds.”

That seemed to placate her. She continued to glance nervously at the notebook as he resumed typing, but when nothing happened and no attendants came running she went back to her infant.

The military bands were quiet, aside from a slight uptick at an Air Force base one state over. It’s probably a training exercise, he thought. Certainly there was nothing in the satellite data to indicate any serious activity.

The takeoff went smoothly. The woman was predictably nervous during the procedure. She had gone stiff and ignored the infant’s wailing once the engines geared up. During liftoff she had reached over and dug her nails into his arm. Soon they had reached cruising altitude. The woman retracted her claws and King finally began to relax.

He had participated in flight sabotages in the past. King himself had organized a rather notorious incident in Minnesota, though that plane had been a single engine Cessna carrying only a Senator and his family, nothing like this monster Boeing 747.

Still, he thought again that the easiest time to carry out an attack on a flight was right before or during takeoff. Not because the plane was more vulnerable during those times, but rather because there was so much else going on upon which to lay blame for the ensuing tragedy.

To his side, as if agreeing that they were now out of danger, the infant was sleeping on the woman’s shoulder, blissfully making sucking motions with her mouth. Things were finally becoming calm.

Abruptly the plane shuddered and began to turn towards the Potomac River. It was severe enough that King could feel his seatbelt digging into his stomach. He heard the dull thuds of the overhead luggage knocking around and the passengers began whispering to one another.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom after a brief crackle. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you will return to your seats and please secure your seatbelts, we are going to be momentarily delayed. We have been diverted by the United States Air Force to avoid flying into one of their training exercises. We should be back on course shortly.”

King began sweating again. Something was wrong, he was sure of it. From the front of the plane, he heard heated chatter, different than the calm tone the pilot had used over the intercom. He worked at the laptop again, updating his satellite images. In the last twenty minutes, the chatter ticker had spiked at the nearby Air Force base. There was also corresponding activity from the runways. They were moving quickly and the satellite images he had access to only took a picture every twelve seconds, but it looked like two F-16 Tomcats had made liftoff. Their pilot might have been informed correctly. Maybe those two Tomcats were indeed running a training drill near Washington D.C. airspace. It wasn’t unheard of, particularly in the years since 9/11.

But King couldn’t stop sweating.

After several more minutes, the plane banked again. More shouts came from the front of the plane, this time louder. “I’m running out of land. Where are you guiding me,” he heard the pilot shout. When he looked out the window, King was startled to see the ocean, flat and blue. They appeared to be heading over the water. Why?

To minimize collateral damage, he thought. There were no houses or offices for the plane to fall on over the Atlantic.

Immediately he pulled his carryon bag from under the chair and stuffed the laptop inside. Then he stood and started up the aisle. Predictably, one of the stewardesses stepped to block his path.

“Sir, the fasten seat belt sign is-,” she began, then screamed as he shoved her to the side and continued on.

When he arrived at the cockpit door, he found the Air Marshall standing with his sidearm drawn. “Stop right there. On the ground, face down.”

King took another step forward. “Tell the pilot he has to land the plane. Get us back over land, and get us on the ground.”

“I said down!” The Air Marshall made a deliberate show of clicking off the safety.

“Idiot, you’re already dead,” King said and turned to walk back to the rear of the plane. It was rare, and he wasn’t sure if they were high enough for a jump anyway, but occasionally there were crew parachutes at the back of the coach cabin.

The Air Marshall followed him cautiously, repeating his order to get down and warning him not to harm any of the passengers in the aisles. King glanced back occasionally to make sure he wouldn’t be rushed from behind, but kept moving to the rear of the fuselage.

He had almost reached the rear of the cabin when he heard the angry howl of jet engines roaring past. Barely noticing that he was back to his original seat, he leaned and peered out the nearest window. One F-16 Tomcat was hovering forty-five degrees off of the wing, looking jagged and menacing. King quickly leaned over the seats in the other aisle. Another Tomcat was there, too. As he watched, it slowly pulled back, disappearing from sight.

He turned back to the Air Marshall. “Put your gun down. We’ve got about two minutes left, so we might as well not spend it fighting with one another.”

The Air Marshall kept his aim trained as King flopped heavily into his seat. The woman and the baby were both staring at him, the latter with a grin.

“What the hell?” the pilot shouted from the front of the plane. The Air Marshall looked conflicted, as though trying to decide whether to stay with King or return to the cockpit. The pilot continued, “They’re targeting us!”

The plane immediately went into a steep dive. Probably some kind of evasive maneuver, for all the good it would do. One of the stewardesses went tumbling down the aisle, knocking the Air Marshall to the ground and sending his sidearm rattling under the seats. Oxygen masks dropped and people hurriedly began putting them on. The woman next to him was pleading with him to help her put a mask on the infant. King looked at her and the shrieking baby, and then looked away. It was too late for them anyway. There was nothing he could do.

He was being pressed hard into his seat by the force of the dive and it continued to get worse as the pilot lost control. Passengers that had failed to attach their safety belts began rising into the air and slamming into the windows. King looked over at the woman once more and noticed that she had lost the baby and that blood was trickling from her earlobe. Alarms were going off everywhere, mixing their shrieks in with those of the passengers.

All of this for a DAT tape, he thought.

And as he heard the pilot yell something about a missile impact, he lowered his head and began to pray.

Coming Soon!

2009-11-11T17:33:00.001-06:00

Some of you know me as Tim. Some know me as Timmay! Some of you know me as Dark Helmet, your helmeted overlord, king of conspiracy theories and that elusive something known only as "the funny".

However you might know me, thank you for taking the time to visit this measly little blog. Here, I intend to post chapters of novels I'm working on, discuss the art of writing fiction, the business and economics of publishing, and occasionaly just rants or raves on whatever (this will be exceptionally minimal).

But mostly it will be about the writing. Wherever you come from, I will value your opinion and criticism. From those who might know a thing or two about the following subjects, I encourage you to leave comments anywhere you like as I'm always looking to learn from others: writing fiction, conspiracy theories, promotion, publishing, bittorrent, filesharing for fun and profit.

My next post will be the first chapter or so of my recently completed work entitled Echelon, a conspiracy theory thriller. While it currently under consideration for publishing by Baen, I hope to also release it via bittorrent shortly, once I've cleaned up the PDF so that it at least doesn't look like one of my dogs shat it out.

In any case, happy reading!