Oliver Davies

Awake's Last Episode - The Ending Explained (Spoilers!)

2012-05-26T09:53:00.000+01:00

I will begin this with a warning. If you've not yet seen the last episode of Awake then stop reading RIGHT now as I'm about to spoil all sorts of things for you. I mean it, stop. Go watch it, then come back.

Ok, still with me?

Warning number two. This is my explanation for what the ending meant. It is not one I've got from the writers or from Awake's creator, Kyle Killen. This is just an opinion on what it all means. I've seen a lot of theories floating around (the red universe was a dream and green was real; he went insane in prison and everything after that was a hallucination, etc.) but this one makes the most sense to me (based upon what we seen).

I decided to colour code the character's names so we know which Universe (red/green) we are talking about when we discuss them. So, let's go...

Michael is in prison - having just found out that Harper is also involved in the conspiracy - and finds out that he's got a visitor that turns out to be Michael himself. In a conversation between the two, Michael tells Michael that "he has to be sure" if he wants to catch Harper and Michael replies that "he'll do anything."

Things take a turn for the even stranger as Michael wanders down a corridor, accompanied by his psychiatrists from both Universes, and steps through a locked door that that seems to contain blinding light. He finds himself in the motel room, along with Vega (dressed in a penguin suit) and watching as Harper murders Kessel (and leaves behind an incriminating piece of evidence - her shoe heel). He then visits Hannah in an empty restaurant and seemingly says goodbye to her before going to sleep and waking in the green universe.

Armed with the new information, Michael brings Harper down and then visits Dr. Evans to discuss what happened. She tries to persuade him that the red universe - the world with Hannah - was just a dream and that these events prove it. However, Dr. Evans then pauses in mid-speech and Michael steps through a door into a world where both Hannah and Rex are alive...

My theory is that the red universe was indeed a dream - but it was a dream inside the dream of the green universe.

Michael visiting Michael in prison forced him to accept that the red universe was a dream - and that the only way to catch Harper was to accept that the red universe was a dream (which meant saying goodbye to Hannah). The fact that the red universe was less real was hinted at throughout the season (it was in the red universe that he imagined Dr. Lee was with him during the siege at the mental institute; it was in the red universe that he was trapped and accompanied by an imaginary Detective Hawkins).

However, the green universe was not itself reality - the penguin hallucinations were a clue, but the real giveaway was in the final episode itself when Michael watched Harper kill Kessel. Michael had not witnessed this event - could not possibly have witnessed this event - so the only way that Michael could possibly have watched the replay of it was if this event had been created by himself in his green dream.

Michael has to abandon the red universe in order to catch Harper in the green universe; but he ends the season with the realisation that he is in a dream within a dream and - with the red universe gone - that allows him to step into a third dream, one in which both Hannah and Rex are still alive.

What exists outside the dream worlds? We don't know. Maybe Michael is in a coma after the accident and this is all part of his attempt to wake up. Unless Kyle Killen decides to explain, I guess we'll never know. But this makes sense to me - green was a dream, red was a dream inside that dream. And the season (and indeed series) ends with Michael being able to step into a third dream in which he had both the people that he loved most.

Awake was an awesome series and it is a terrible shame that NBC pulled the plug. It was intelligent, it made you work to keep up with it and it was immensely enjoyable. All involved should look back on this as a great piece of TV...

The Following

2012-05-17T11:11:00.000+01:00

While a lot of attention has been given to the new Eric Kripke and JJ Abrams show, Revolution, I have to admit to being quite interested to see what is delivered by this new offering by Fox: The Following, which has managed to snare Kevin Bacon for its lead role. The premise is essentially this:

The FBI estimates there are currently over 300 active serial killers in the United States. What would happen if these killers had a way of communicating and connecting with each other? What if they were able to work together and form alliances across the country? What if one brilliant psychotic serial killer was able to bring them all together and activate a following? (Fox press release)

The Following is scheduled to be part of Fox's 2012-2013 season and, if they do it right, it might just have the ingredients to become something I want to watch...

The show is created by Kevin Williamson (Scream, The Vampire Diaries) and tells the story of a former FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) who is dragged out of retirement after nine years to attempt to recapture a serial killer, Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) who has escaped Death Row and begun a new killing spree. Hardy knows Carroll better than anyone, is the one person who can get inside his mind and match his brilliance, but the capture of Carroll nine years ago took a lot out of Hardy - both mentally and physically. And, while Carroll begins to gather a band of serial killers to him, Hardy finds himself not even in a position to truly call the shots in the hunt for him...

Directed by Marcos Siega (The Vampire Diaries, Dexter), the show has a strong supporting cast including Maggie Grace (Twilight Saga, Lost), Natalie Zea (Justified, Californication), Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Jeanne Goossen (Alcatraz) and Billy Brown (Dexter).

Check out the trailer below and see what you think:

A Musing on Believability and Fiction

2012-05-11T14:44:00.000+01:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1817, coined the term suspension of disbelief - although in truth the concept behind the term is as old as fiction itself. After all, every time we sit down to watch a movie, or read a book, or tune in to our favourite television show, we suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to temporarily forget, while we're engaged as a viewer or reader (or even player), that this is a work of fiction...

However, on occasion it feels that authors - in all mediums - try and take advantage of our kindness in this respect. "I want to believe" says the media consumer and so the author takes this as an excuse to stack up all manner of inconsistencies, plot holes, unrealistic behaviour and the like - all to the carrion cry of "you've got to suspend your disbelief!"

I am a big believer in believability. Which isn't to say that I eschew anything that is not grounded in reality; not at all. But I do think Stephen King had it spot on when he said "Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

The best imaginative fiction realises this, it realises that in order to give the reader or viewer a reason to suspend their disbelief it needs to deliver them a world that is truthful, no matter how fantastical it might be. And by truthful, I mean that the world is internally consistent because - through that - it is possible to deliver something that is believable. When it comes to fantasy, for example, I am quite happy to accept all manner of magical goings-on; but I also want a world that is bound within its own set of rules. I don't need to know how magic works but I do need to see that the use of magic is consistent and that, even if I don't yet fully grasp the internal logic of the world, I know there is one.

The types of believability involved in the story world will vary depending upon the theme or genre. In fantasy, internal consistency is the key to developing a living, breathing world. In science fiction, there is - especially in hard SF - an expectation that the fantastical will be (or least, can be) rationalised.

At one end of the spectrum, there are books such as the Harry Potter series or the space operas of Iain M Banks - books with vastly colourful story worlds (or indeed Universes) that spend very little time explaining the mechanics but which deliver cohesive and consistent experiences. At the other end of the spectrum, there are the fantasy novels of Brandon Sanderson (who goes to great lengths to develop mechanics to explain how magic works and its limitations) or the hard SF of Stephen Baxter (chock full of more astrophysics than you can throw a stick at). But all of them succeed because their worlds are incredibly well thought out and their internal consistency is maintained to a high standard throughout.

It is perhaps most important to remember that the suspension of disbelief is a favour afforded to the author by the consumer of fiction; it is not a shield that can be levelled against any and all criticism. The consumer of fiction wants to believe. As writers, we just need to make sure that we reward that belief with worlds that are consistent and fully realised, with characters whose motivations and behaviour make sense, with plots that are internally logical and which are not overly dependent upon coincidence and contrivance.

After all, the best fantastical fiction may create worlds that are far removed from our own but, in their own way, they can feel just as consistent and just as believable...

The Avengers - A Rebuttal

2012-05-05T16:46:00.001+01:00

I am a firm believer that everyone is entitled to their opinion but, when I read Allen St. John's recent and rather scathing review of The Avengers at Forbes I just couldn't resist from offering the following rebuttal:

Sometimes it feels like reviewers, knowing that there are going to be fifteen gazillion glowing reviews of a particular film or book or album appearing online, come to the conclusion that the only way to ensure their particular review stands out is to swim steadfastly against the tide of opinion.

If one were feeling particularly pedantic then one could, perhaps, criticise The Avengers for a lack of character growth – although, to do so, would be to ignore the medium from which the film is drawn. After all, the episodic, long-term, nature of comics tends to require characters stay relatively static in this respect.

But to criticise The Avengers for not being fun? To accuse The Avengers of failing to excite? It gives the impression that Mr. St. John is being something of a curmudgeon. The Avengers I saw was crammed full of both excitement and fun and, from the reaction of the audience around me, I don’t think I was in the minority…

The Avengers scales heights that all previous superhero team movies (including those mentioned in his review such as X-Men and Fantastic Four) have not even aspired to. It is comic book mayhem and fun poured into the cinematic medium and given life. It is a movie that, like The Hulk himself, is a thundering juggernaut that resists any and all attempts to be slowed down. For newcomers, it is a film that makes comic book heroes cool again; for true comic book fans, it is veritable manna from heaven.

Whether it was merely an opinion put forth to gain attention, or whether Allen St. John genuinely found himself unmoved by the spectacle, I think it is an opinion that will very much be in the minority…

And, yes, I know I probably sound like a total fan boy :-) But I loved The Avengers...

NBC - Please save Awake

2012-05-05T14:18:00.000+01:00

This year on TV has been a little disappointing for me. I lost patience with The Mentalist due to the fact that the character rarely seems to genuinely grow and the Red John storyline has been eked out at a rate of one or two episodes a season. I tried watching Touch but found it too saccharine. Even Game of Thrones began in a somewhat fragmented fashion as it desperately tried to stitch together the many and varied threads it has spun out...

So, Awake came as something of a surprise. The premise was interesting - a cop (played by Jason Isaacs) is involved in a car accident but finds himself existing in two parallel realities that follow on from that accident. In one reality, his wife died in the crash and his son survived; in the other his wife survived but his son died. And against the backdrop of his confusion, he has to try and solve cases in both of these realities - with clues and coincidences criss-crossing and foreshadowing between both. Throw in a conspiracy that's being slowly revealed and you have a really intriguing show...

I admit, at times, it is not an easy watch - you need to concentrate to make sure that you keep track of which reality he's in at any particular moment - but it's a show that's worth concentrating on because, up until as far as I've watched (episode seven), it actually delivers.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I find it one of the most interesting shows currently on TV, it seems that its ratings are dropping week-by-week and it is looking more and more likely that NBC will pull the plug on it after season 1. Now, I really hope that is not the case and that the viewing figures pick up because when tripe such as Jersey Shore manages to pick up five or six million viewers a week it is a crying shame that intelligent drama such as Awake is on a downward ratings slide into oblivion.

All I can hope is that more people start tuning in and that the figures creep up a little, just enough that NBC can justify giving it a chance in a second season, hopefully in a better time slot (it doesn't help that it started mid-season and was pitched against The Mentalist). Because Awake is far too good a show to fall to wayside this early...

Writing Update...

2012-05-02T13:10:00.001+01:00

Well, after a particularly trying three days - in which I've been laboriously engaged in some rather tedious work - I finally have had a little time to myself to think creatively and to evaluate things.

I really enjoyed the 30 Day Writing Challenge and found that it provided me with real motivation to put all my other responsibilities to one side, at least on occasion, and just write - and, therefore, I don't really want to stop having that motivation, don't want to fall back into the way I was previously where I allowed my work and my responsibilities to subsume my creativity.

Therefore, after mulling the idea for quite some time, I've decided that I am going to use this blog as a means of sharing the work I'm doing on my novel. I don't think I'll publish it all here - would probably be a dreadful format for people to read it in - but I'll try and put the first draft of the first four of five chapters up here as they roll in. And then I'll provide updates on where things are at...and, if enough people enjoy reading it, maybe I'll think about the possibility of publication in some format or other beyond that...

The idea behind the novel is big and sprawling and (hopefully) epic. Sometimes the sheer scale and scope of what I imagine leaves me wondering how I can hope to do it justice but that effort has to start somewhere. And so it starts, properly, here.

If you want to read early snippets of material I've been working on, then you can find them here and here in two of my recent writing challenges.

Ok, I have an appointment with MS Word...

Oliver's Eurovision 2012 Drinking Game

2012-04-21T12:12:00.002+01:00

After having finished my 30 Day Writing Challenge I have decided it was about time I got around to this...

Following up on the, frankly scary, success of the 2009 and 2010 Eurovision song contest drinking games – and after having taken a year off to allow my liver to vaguely recover – I am back with Oliver’s Eurovision 2012 Drinking Game.

As with previous years, some of the rules are slightly UK-centric so, if you intend to play this in another country, just ignore rules 1 and 22 and knock back two shots before you get started.

Now, a word of warning; this game is based upon the consumption of strong alcohol. I cannot, therefore, be held responsible for your health (or lack of) if you stringently follow the rules of my game and drink yourself into oblivion. Play this game at your own risk…

Requirements

1. A shot glass for every person playing (probably best to have a couple of spares in case people get overexcited).

2. The national drink of Azerbaijan is, apparently, black tea – which is not generally a beverage associated with drinking games – so I would instead recommend that you switch to your favourite spirit of choice. I recommend you go with a decent vodka and am of the opinion that, if in any doubt, go with Stolichnaya...

Rules

The rules are very simple. You take a sip of your chosen spirit if:

1) Engelbert Humperdinck is mentioned. Drink an entire shot if he is referred to as The Hump.

2) Either of the hosts attempts to sing.

3) Either host pretends to be surprised at something said or done by the other host in what is clearly a well-rehearsed piece of improvisation.

4) Either of the hosts loses track of their autocue or messes up their timing.

5) The video shown before an act contains shots of people in traditional Azerbaijani costume. Drink a shot if anyone is seen doing one of the many traditional Azerbaijani dances. Frankly, there are far too many of them to list here so, if people are gyrating around in a semi-controlled fashion while music plays, take the shot.

6) You see Azerbaijan’s national animal, the Karabakh horse. Drink two shots if it’s a person dressed in a horse costume.

7) The song has the word ‘love’ in the title.

8) You are not entirely sure whether the singer is man who looks like a woman, or a woman who looks like a man.

9) A country is represented by a singer from somewhere else in the world. Drink an entire shot if a country is represented by what seems to be a random person (or persons) scooped up off the streets and then pushed out on stage.

10) The act involves people on stage banging large drums or industrial objects acting as large drums.

11) An item of clothing is removed on stage. Drink an entire shot if it is removed by someone else.

12) The act is bald. Drink an entire shot if they are also female.

13) The act possesses a large moustache.

14) The act is dressed in leather. Drink an entire shot if they are dressed in leather and have a large moustache.

15) If you hear a language used other than that of the nation who is singing (for example, French words in a song by Malta). One sip per language. If in doubt, take a sip.

16) You recognise the song immediately as being a blatant rip off of a previous winner of Eurovision.

17) The song is an ode to world peace. Drink three shots immediately if there are any children on stage at any time during the song.

18) There are dancers on stage who, by their movements, appear never to have heard the song before tonight.

19) People are pretending to play instruments on stage.

20) Every time there is an awkward silence and/or miscommunication between the hosts and the people reading out the votes. Drink an entire shot if the votes get mixed up.

21) Every time one of the people reading out the results of a country’s voting attempts to secure their 15 seconds of fame by babbling on incoherently and generally delaying things and winding a few hundred million people up.

22) Every time it’s "Royaume-Uni? Nil point!". Drink a shot each time, at the end of a voting round, the UK is in last place.

23) Every time a country gives top marks to someone for geographic, political or ethnic reasons.

24) If there is any alcohol left once the show is finished and you’re physically capable of coordinating the movement of alcohol from the bottle to your mouth.

And, if you'd like a printable version of these rules then you can find one HERE (don't say I never do anything nice for you!).

30 Day Writing Challenge - 30 Days of Writing. Done!

2012-04-19T07:55:00.002+01:00

Thirty days of writing. Thirty challenges. 31,118 words. And now it's over and I get a chance to go back and reread some of what I wrote at last...

In doing so, I realised that it might be a tad tedious to have to cycle through the various days without knowing what they are all about and so decided to create this page, which provides a brief summary of each day (and a link) enabling anyone who reads this to have a little more information to hand in picking and choosing which of the writing challenges they want to look at.

Ernest Hemingway said the first draft of everything is shit, so the fact that the vast majority of the challenges in here represent the first draft of whatever I wrote means you may have to forgive a certain lack of refinement in what follows. My usual process throughout was to have a general idea for what I was going to write on a particular theme and then sit with my laptop, bashing aggressively against the keyboard, until I'd concluded and then fight to resist my natural urge to reread and edit and rewrite. I did this because I can sometimes find it difficult, when working on my novel, not to want to go back and revise the chapter I've finished the previous day - and I think it's likely far healthier to get into the mindset of ploughing on and writing the full story before you go back and revise it.

So, without further ado, here are all thirty of the challenges.

Day 1 - A Place that you love
For this challenge, I chose to write a short piece about a childhood haunt of mine 'The Hill'... [read more]

Day 2 - Facing The Fear
I decided, for Day 2, to head straight off into SF territory and write a short piece detailing a mysterious assignment for Alana Dshae, as she is whisked off to the furthest reaches of the galaxy to meet with an ancient alien race. [read more]

Day 3 - A genre you've never written in before
I've always held a fondness for Westerns but had never attempted to write anything even remotely close to one; so for this challenge I wrote the story of a group of killers, led by a man called Six Finger Bob, heading into the town of Desolation on the hunt for a man called Danny Ringo... [read more]

Day 4 - Dialogue only, please
I decided to use the challenge of today to flesh out some of the characters from Day 3's short story and provide a slightly ironic, and hopefully comedic, insight into the minds of the Little Jake and Slim Decker... [read more]

Day 5 - Inspired by your favourite song
After considering writing a piece of fantasy, I decided to make Day 5 an honest evaluation of how Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Little Wing makes me feel. [read more]

Day 6 - Second person coffee
Writing in the second person is always fun and, once you're writing in this perspective, it's very hard to resist the lure of noir. Of course, there had to be some comedy in there as well as your morning coffee is somewhat spoiled by the arrival of The Mob... [read more]

Day 7 - A day in the life of your favourite comic book character
I decided to use this challenges as an opportunity to take a slightly alternative look at a much beloved comic book character... [read more]

Day 8 - A place that exists only in your mind
For today's challenge I visited a place that exists only in my mind; the hugely mechanised city of Trinity that crawls slowly city-wise on its path around the globe. This is a small excerpt from the first draft of my current novel. [read more]

Day 9 - El Diablo
This one kind of got away from me - or, rather, I ran out of time to finish it - and so there is only a tiny snippet of a very strange story that I intended to feature a Mexican drug lord and a Lovecraftian sub-text... [read more]

Day 10 - The Interview
After a few days of being (relatively) serious, I abandoned myself to the comic and wrote a short fantasy piece about the interview of a potential minion by a Dark Lord. [read more]

Day 11 - A Point in History
A short SF piece detailing the machinations of Alfred J Pollock, a scientist of dubious repute, who hoped to use his newly fashioned time machine to return to the past and enslave civilization... [read more]

Day 12 - Your passion
My passion is writing. So, I write about writing. Very meta. [read more]

Day 13 - The place I grew up
A slightly rose tinted view of the town of Halesowen, where I spent my formative years. [read more]

Day 14 - In the style of a favourite writer
A couple of possibilities suggested themselves but I decided to embark upon a short homage to the SF of Iain M Banks... [read more]

Day 15 - The road goes ever on
For some reason, I found this one of the hardest challenges to actually get an idea for but when I did I fashioned a short story that features a car trip, a powerful sense of deja vu and a realisation that all might not quite what it seems. [read more]

Day 16 - How an event from yesterday could have gone
This is, quite possibly, the silliest day out of all 30. I'll say nothing else. [read more]

Day 17 - The Ocean
A different tone entirely to the previous day, this challenge details the diary of a mariner stranded in the middle of the Atlantic... [read more]

Day 18 - The taste of your favourite meal
I don't want to give anything away about this; but it begins with a serial killer following a young woman as she exists a bar...[read more]

Day 19 - The day of randomness
Today's challenge involved heading to wikipedia and using their random page link to find the subject of your day's challenge. I got Pedro Aznar, a musician and so fashioned this short story about an encounter on a Rio beach. [read more]

Day 20 - A place you want to visit
An opportunity to reveal my desire to follow in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong! [read more]

Day 21 - Night
This offered me an opportunity to slip briefly into horror fiction as a man is assailed in his house by deadly visitors... [read more]

Day 22 - Standing at the precipice
A man stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon and has to decide whether he believes enough to jump. [read more]

Day 23 - First person blind date
This turned out to be almost as silly as Day 16 as it considers the perils of extra-terrestrial blind dating... [read more]

Day 24 - The City
A short piece that is derived from a fantasy world that I've had knocking around my imagination for many years. [read more]

Day 25 - A Poem
Today I created a SF sonnet... [read more]

Day 26 - Something you witnessed today
A short story that touches upon the more invasively dystopian possibilities afforded by the advances in augmented reality technology... [read more]

Day 27 - A snippet from a novel you want to write
This is a snippet from a novel I am writing - part of the same novel as seen in Day 8 - as we are introduced to Militza Tio; warrior, member of the Shield Guard and soon-to-be renegade. [read more]

Day 28 - Second person bank robbery
From the perspective of you, an undercover FBI agent, waiting for a notorious gang to rob a bank... [read more]

Day 29 - Blue Powder
A chance encounter in a Parisian bistro allows the tale of the legendary Count of Saint Germain to be told. [read more]

Day 30 - The End
Best read after having read Day 29's story, this takes us to the very end of the Universe... [read more]

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 30

2012-04-18T22:16:00.000+01:00

Today's challenge is, rather appropriately, simply called The End.

I tried to think of something epically final and hope, despite the few small liberties I've taken in places with regard to the science, that I managed it. It works better if you read yesterday's story as well (and that's not just me trying to get you to read more of my writing, honest!).

The End

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot (1925)

This is the way the Universe ends

This is the final stanza of a work that stretches back trillions of years but there is to be no soaring crescendo, no dramatic conclusion; the Universe ends in silence, it ends in frigid, midnight blackness in which all light and life is slowly squeezed from it and then finally extinguished.

The end was, paradoxically, signalled by one of the most colossal periods of rebirth; as galaxies collided, celestial masses drawn irreparably together and ripped irreparably apart by unforgiving gravity; shock waves of interstellar gases colliding and giving birth to a swathe of new stars. But the seeds of the end were being sown even as new suns were born; gravity coaxing galaxies into vast ellipses that are gradually eroded of their ability to form new stars. After rebirth, the Universe becomes barren.

Then there is only the waiting as the stars slowly begin to die. The smaller stars, like the Sun, puff up their chests and expand into red giants as their end time approaches but it is little more than dying throes as they slowly collapse back in upon themselves to become white dwarves and then, as they cool, black dwarves. For slightly larger stars, the end sees them collapse in upon themselves, their matter compressed so tightly that they become neutron stars. And for the largest stars, the end is even more violent; collapsing upon themselves with such brutal force that they rip a black hole in space-time and begin to devour everything that draws close enough to them.

And finally, the black holes and the dead stars are all that remain. Darkness reigns absolute, the temperature hovering precariously above absolute zero, as the Universe is starkly reduced to little more than a scattering of cosmological objects.

But the black holes are still alive. They roam and coalesce, forming ever larger tears in the fabric of reality. Perhaps there is somewhere in the Universe safe from their appetite but I find it difficult to imagine as they approach my final resting place.

I have waited so very long for this moment, to hear the Universe play out its last notes in the hope that they might finally be an end to my own work.

I have had many names, too many to remember. But, as, I feel the tangible tug of gravity that presages my joining with the singularity that lies beyond the event horizon, there is only one name that I can hold on to.

And so, I wonder if this will finally be the release I’ve craved. If the Count of Saint Germain can finally have his end.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 29

2012-04-17T23:26:00.002+01:00

Despite a heavy workload, I found time this evening to work on Day 29's challenge - Blue Powder. The very open ended nature of the title led me off in a rather curious direction...

Blue Powder

I sat in the window of the bistro and watched the early morning mist rising off the Seine.

I left my Ipad on the blue and white checked tablecloth in front of me and admired the view as a flotilla of tiny boats pottered up the river, their bows pushing against the fog as if it were a tangible thing. Ever since I had found this place, I had spent my mornings here soaking up the Parisian atmosphere. The coffee they served was thick and black and possessed a slightly acrid taste that I found perfectly balanced their delightful pastries.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice to my right.

I looked up to see a middle-aged man with dark hair and a cream blazer taking his seat on the table adjacent to me.

“Paris in the morning,” he said, with a somewhat wistful smile, “There is just something magical about it, don’t you agree?”

“I love it,” I admitted.

“Ah, you’re English,” he said, “Based upon your accent, I would guess from somewhere near Wolverhampton?“

“Spot on, actually,” I said, feeling slightly nonplussed. I liked to believe that all traces of my childhood accent had long since been cleansed from my voice by my many years of moving around the UK. “And you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m from all over,” he said, beckoning the waitress over and ordering ‘his usual’ before turning back to face me. “Truth is, I’ve moved around so much that I don’t really feel like anywhere is my home these days.”

“I guess I know how that is.”

“So what brings you to Paris?”

“I’m here working.”

“Ah, such a shame to have to spend one’s time working in such a beautiful city…”

“Well I’m doing some freelance work; installing a network for a company. It’s going to take a couple of weeks so I get to hang out and enjoy Paris quite a bit.”

“Wonderful,” he said with a beaming smile, “Personally, I never can resist coming back to Paris.”

“You don’t live here, then?”

“Once, long ago, I did” he said, again smiling “But now, I am just a tourist.”

“Nice.”

“Oh yes. I admire the wonderful history that the whole place is steeped in. Everywhere in Paris has history; why, even this humble bistro has its own little footnote.”

“Oh?” I replied, feeling genuinely curious. I always found old cities amazing in that respect; to be able to walk streets that had been walked for centuries before me, to see places that had been unchanged for centuries.

“Have you ever heard,” said the man, leaning in towards me almost conspiratorially, “of the Count of St. Germain?”

The name rang a vague bell but it tinkled away so quietly in the recesses of my brain that I couldn’t dredge up any details.

“Rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it.”

“Do you have time for me to tell you his story?”

Technically, I knew I didn’t have time; I had a meeting in a couple of hours and I’d need to get back to my hotel and pick up a few things before then. But, for some reason, I found myself saying “Sure, I’ve got time.”

The man smiled broadly.

“That’s marvellous. I was beginning to worry that the art of listening had rather gone the way of the dodo.”

“So who was this Count of St. Germain?”

“Well, two hundred and fifty years or so ago, he was very much the celebrity in European high society. An accomplished musician and courtier, an alchemist and an adventurer; this was his very favourite bistro in all of Paris.”

I looked around at the plain furnishings and found it hard to believe that, two hundred and fifty years ago, this was a place favoured by the elite.

“Here?”

“Right here,” said the man, his eyes twinkling. “And it was here in this very bistro that he told a tale that would eventually give rise to a legend. It was right in this very part of the room that he revealed to two of his closest companions that he was immortal.”

I laughed. “And did they believe him?”

“Well, of course, not at first. At first they thought, like you do now, that he was a charlatan or perhaps mad. But he told them a story of how, as a boy, he had been an assistant to a great alchemist in the times of Ancient Egypt and that this alchemist had, after communing with the Egyptian god Thoth, developed an elixir capable of extending the life of a man indefinitely.”

The waitress brought over his coffee and a croque-monsieur and he stopped to thank her in what was, to my ears at least, flawless French before turning back to me. Despite myself, I found myself drawn into his story as his voice and manner were incredibly charismatic.

“The alchemist intended to present the elixir to the Pharaoh but the Count, or whatever his name was then, stole the elixir in the dead of night. One pinch of this blue powder was said to be enough to preserve a man’s life for fifty years but the boy knew nothing of this and he ate mouthfuls of the powder, despite the way it tasted foul and burnt his lips and tongue. Delirious and in pain, he wandered way into the desert for weeks but the elixir had changed him irreparably; even without water or food he lived on. And as the weeks became years, and the years became decades, he realised that he was aging so slowly that it was as if the rest of the world were turning a hundred times faster for everyone else.”

He sipped at his coffee.

“And as the decades turned to centuries he began to appreciate the folly of his actions. He could not stay in one place or he would be burned as a witch; he could not love, for anything he loved would eventually die before his eyes. What he had originally thought would be a blessing turned out to be a curse, and so he wandered the world and sought refuge in learning. He became a virtuoso musician, he became a playwright, he became a lothario and a magician and, eventually, he became himself an alchemist so that he could unravel the mysteries of that which had given him this endless life.”

The man sighed.

“But it was no use. While he could create a substance that appeared similar, the blue powder that the Count created was far less potent. It could keep a man young for twenty years but its power was finite, it was nothing more than a poor facsimile. And so, as the centuries became millennia he sought death. But death would not come to him. He threw himself from a ship into the sea but found that he could not drown. And, while he could feel pain, he would eventually heal from even the most grievous of wounds. One time he even allowed himself to be burnt at the stake, only to awaken the next morning as if nothing had happened to him. There was no escape. And so he accepted his fate and found amusement in moving constantly, in finding new people even if the places themselves seemed old to him.”

“That is a cool story,” I said, “but I still don’t understand how he convinced them he was immortal?”

“Oh, he allowed them to sample the elixir he had himself created. While twenty years to him was as a drop to the ocean, to them it was a tremendous bounty.”

“But surely it can’t have worked?”

"Do you know what the average lifespan of a man in the 18^th century was?”

I shrugged. “Fifty?”

“The average man in the 18^th century died at thirty five.”

“Wow.”

“And yet, one of his companions in the bistro that night, Prince Charles of Hesse Kassel would go on to live to the ripe old age of ninety one.”

“A coincidence, surely?”

“Perhaps,” nodded the man, “but it was Prince Charles who also supposedly buried the Count when he died in 1784. There are those who believe that Prince Charles enabled the Count to move onso that his youthfulness would not be detected. And there, it would seem that the story of the Count ends.”

“It is a great story,” I said with a smile. “And you tell it well.”

He held his hands up in mock protest “It is far too early in the morning to tell the story well; but I hope that it was at least something interesting to know about this place.”

I looked again at the bistro, wondering how much of the story was true and whether the mysterious Count had indeed sat close to where I was now having my breakfast all those centuries ago. I was interrupted from my thoughts by my phone ringing and fished it from my pocket to see that my boss was calling.

“Sorry,” I said to the man, “duty calls.”

“Of course,” he said, “In fact, I must shortly be off. But, it was a pleasure.”

I smiled and stood up so that I could walk to the other side of the room and take the call in private. Then spent a few minutes half listening as my boss prattled on about how he wanted to make sure that people couldn’t use the internet on the work network and I studied the engravings that hung on the wall. They were mainly French figures that I’d never heard of but I stopped at the fifth one and found myself staring.

“Are you listening to me?” said my boss.

“Got to call you back.” I said and thumbed the red button to end the call.

The engraving showed a dark haired man dressed in decorative coat and waistcoat; a tiny plaque at the bottom was inscribed with Count Saint Germain. There was, however, no mistaking the fact that the man in the engraving was the very same as the one I had just sat next to.

I spun round but the table where the man had been sitting was empty.

A flash of thoughts ran through my head. This had to be some kind of practical joke, was my first thought. Whatever was the French equivalent of Candid Camera and as soon as I reacted, a host was going to come in and poke fun at me. But that didn’t seem possible; no one could have foreseen that I would choose to go to the other side of the room.

“The man that was sitting here,” I asked the waitress, “do you know him?”

“He comes here on and off for many years,” shrugged the waitress.

I felt suddenly dizzy and sat back down at my seat. Clearly just a coincidence, I told myself, just a silly coincidence. But, as I picked up my Ipad I noticed that two things were tucked beneath it.

The first was a short note. It read: Thank you for sparing the time to listen to my story. Sharing it is one of the few pleasures that I have left so please accept this as a token of my esteem. C.S.G.

The second was a small glass vial containing blue powder.

No more than a pinch.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 28

2012-04-13T00:08:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, I've been awfully slack of late. I have my excuses, but I won't bore you with them...

Nevertheless, here is today's challenge - Second person bank robbery. A bit rough and ready, I typed this flat out in one sitting and I'm throwing it online without even rereading or checking for continuity errors or typos. A piece of fresh writing, bloody and still steaming...

The Robbery

The four men in balaclavas walk into the bank with almost military efficiency; three of them immediately fan out across the bank’s foyer and remove Heckler & Koch MP5s from beneath their coats while the fourth barricades the door behind them.

“Everyone face down, on the ground with your hands on your head.” says the largest of the men, his voice precise and free of any noticeable accent. “This is a robbery.”

The manager looks at you, his eyes wide, as he finally realises that this is really happening to him and you are forced to stare back at him hard to stop him from betraying you. You might be dressed as a bank teller, but the bank manager knows that you’re actually an undercover FBI agent.

“If anyone tries to hit an alarm, they die. If anyone tries to make a phone call, they die.” intones the man calmly. “If anyone tries anything stupid, they die.”

He scans the room, watching as people get to their knees and then down on to their bellies, furtively glancing at each other as they do so. You wait as long as you can before following suit; lying face down on the floor and clasping your hands behind your head, angling it slightly to one side so that you can surreptitiously watch what the men are doing.

“Remember people, this is the bank’s money,” says the man as he walks around the room, “No one needs to die for someone else’s money.”

You feel your heart hammering hard in your chest, each beat so loud in your ears that it seems like the whole room must hear it. This is the moment where your plan lives or dies; if this goes the way you planned it then no one will get hurt today. If it goes wrong, then things could get messy.

Two hours earlier this morning, you and your three-man team had sat down with the bank manager and briefed him on the intel you had obtained about today’s raid. The gang, you had explained, were ex-military and ruthless; on the bank jobs that went smoothly they left everyone alive, but when things went badly, they left no survivors. It was, therefore, vital, that no one tried to engage them while they were inside the bank.

The plan was simple; the gang were to be allowed to carry out the robbery as they had planned. There were to be no heroics, no attempts to trip silent alarms and summon the police; the gang would take the money from the vault with no problems. But, what they didn’t know, was that the bank notes would be marked with the latest in FBI technology; micro transmitters that would enable the gang to be tracked back to their hideout where an enhanced FBI SWAT team could move in and arrest them without endangering the lives of innocents. You were disguised as a bank teller while two other members of your team were disguised as customers and the final member had replaced the bank’s security guard.

The leader of the group strides up and down the room while his three companions keep point, their guns covering the mass of bodies on the bank floor. Finally, he stops and prods the bank manager between the shoulder blades with the barrel of his gun.

“You’re the manager. I’m going to need you to come with me.”

The manager slowly gets up, looking down at the ground as he does his best to avoid the man’s eyes.

“Time check.” barks the man to his colleagues.

“10.29,” replies the man to his left.

The leader stares the bank manager in the face. He has ice blue eyes.

“What time does the time lock deactivate?”

“Ten thirty,” mumbles the manager, holding his gaze steadfast to the floor.

“Then let’s go.”

He drags the manager across the foyer and out through the back offices, away from your line of sight and you cross your fingers that he can hold it together long enough for them to open the vault and take the money. If the manager goes to pieces now, it is difficult to see how this could end well.

You count out a minute in your head, exchanging looks with one of your team who is face down on the other side of the foyer in amongst a group of real customers, before the man finally emerges from the back of the bank with a broad smile.

“It’s open. Bring the bags.”

One man joins him, leaving only two men to guard the foyer. If anyone has the idea to play at being a hero, it would be around about now. Replacing the security guard with one of your team had been essential, security guards often dream of being heroes and earning acclaim. There could be no loose cannons today. The men keep their weapons trained on the room and no one so much as stirs.

Another minute gone and the two men re-emerge, each now weighted down with two bulging black canvas bags. They drop the bags in the middle of the floor and wait while one of the men who had, until now, remained behind dashes out back. You know that they are going for the security camera footage; pulling all the hard drives that store the bank’s imagery and taking them with them. The manager was pleased when you told him that you’d installed a set of FBI mini-cameras that would capture everything regardless.

And with that, and with only four minutes having passed since the gang first walked into the bank, the men are gone. There is a squeal of rubber against asphalt as their getaway vehicle speeds away from the scene and then the room suddenly explodes in a hubbub of crying women and panicked voices. Your voice and the FBI badge silences the room as you thank everyone for helping to ensure that a dangerous gang can be brought to justice.

The gang are heading south, you tell the manager and you need to make sure that you keep in range of the transmitters. You tell him that he did a great job and he seems pleased; feeling good about himself as he forgets just how scared he was in the moment. The follow-up team will be with them in ten to fifteen minutes; they’ll want to interview everyone and run a full forensic sweep. Until then, it’s vital that no one leaves the building and the manager is more than happy to take charge again, ordering people to take a seat as his confidence returns. You thank him one last time and then head out to your car with the team.

You take out your cell phone as you drive away from the bank.

“It all went to plan.”

“It certainly did.”

“See you in an hour.”

You flick the cell phone closed, lean back in your seat and smile.

In twenty minutes time, when no follow up team has arrived at the bank, the manager will begin to get worried. When it reaches half an hour, he’ll contact someone higher up in his organisation. Things will start unravelling around about then; it won’t be long before the FBI are contacted and it is determined that there was no undercover FBI team operating at the bank today. In an hour’s time, they’ll realise that they’ve just been comprehensively played.

But, by then, you and the money are going to be a long way away…

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 27

2012-04-06T21:33:00.000+01:00

I've missed a few days due to being busy but had opportunity to catch up a little today by having two posts in one day. Today's challenge - a snippet from a novel you want to write - gave me a chance to revisit the same world that we met in the challenge from Day 8 as they are both excerpts from the first draft of a novel I am currently working on...

Militza Tio knew she had, at best, eight hours before her unwitting part in all of this came to light; eight hours before the trail of scattered fragments and loose clues led them, inevitably, to come for her.

She stood and stared out of the small slit window of her quarters; her vantage point giving her a good view of the eastern quarter of Top Side, its sprawling and chaotic landscape of houses and shacks, bars and warehouses, market stalls and bazaars spreading across the grey metal skin of Trinity and haphazardly piling up against the soaring heights of The Spinnacles, like fungus growing against tree trunks. The cityscape was bustling with life and activity, even at this early hour, but she looked over and beyond it, instead taking in the sun as it began to peek its way over the hills on the distant horizon, a ruddy orange ball obscured by the morning mist. She knew that Trinity would have reached those hills by tomorrow morning, would already be grinding its way through the muddy valleys that lay beyond. And, if she wanted to live, she must be long gone by then.

For the second time that morning, she picked up and read the handwritten note that had been left on her pillow; its meaning was unequivocal. She had been betrayed, utterly.

She had woken briefly in the night when he left their bed, but she had been too tired and her head too dulled by the wine she had drank at the party to wake up properly and so he had hushed her with a kiss and she had let her head again find the pillow and slept on for another hour, maybe two, before finally stirring as dawn began to break grey outside her window. The bed beside her had been empty; the sheets still bore his impression, were still fresh with his scent, but she had known immediately that something was wrong. She had felt a sudden anxious coldness that caused her skin to prickle with goosebumps even before she had noticed the ivory note that he had left for her on the pillow.

She had looked at it. A small paper square, a piece of folded paper upon which he had written her name in black ink. Frowning, she had reached across the bed and plucked it with her fingers and opened it to read the message within.

There is something you need to know it began and she had only reached the second sentence before she let the paper slip absently from her fingers and slid, naked, from between the bed sheets and walked to the bathroom. She padded barefoot across the cold metal floor and looked inside. There was some small part of her that clung to the belief that he was going to be standing there when she opened the door, that she would find him standing there and awkwardly shaving himself in the small mirror on the wall as he had done each morning for the three months that they had lived together, that she would meet his jade eyes in the mirror and sneak up behind him, slip her arms beneath his and encircle his chest, hold him pressed tight to her and tell him about the strangest dream that she had just woken from. But it was empty, and she could cling to the belief no longer.

She had returned to stand by the bed and read the note from start to finish. It ended with I hope you can find it in your heart to, one day, forgive me.

She had stood there, frozen beside the bed, for a few minutes, the note clasped tightly in her hand as she tried to make sense of the thick knot of emotions that had instantly gathered in her stomach; the pain, the anger, the disappointment, the fear; all curled up and bound together in a tangled mess. A few minutes of confusion and doubt, a few minutes of wanting to believe that what she was reading couldn’t possibly be true, and then her training kicked in and her instincts took full control of the situation.

Placing the note back on the pillow, she had dressed swiftly but calmly; picking out a beige cotton shirt and a pair of green trousers with utility pouches that would be suitable for travelling before lacing up her black leather boots and fastening a black sword belt at her waist. She then moved to the set of wooden drawers beside her bed and opened the lower drawer, pulling out a set of rough brown fabric robes, a fadwar, from its place beneath a folded blanket. The fadwar was a common sight in Trinity, it was a nondescript robe worn by any number of traders and merchants and was large enough that she could simply slip it over the top of her other clothes. She found the robes uncomfortable, the coarse material scratching at her exposed skin whenever she moved, but she knew that wearing it would allow her to more easily blend in with the crowds and its hood would serve to hide her colourfully braided hair which would otherwise easily identify her.

Gathering her belongings had proved to be easy, she owned very little that she truly cared for but was still surprised to find that her entire life here in Trinity could be so rapidly condensed into a single shoulder bag. She gathered two fresh sets of clothes and stuffed them into the bottom of the bag before opening the upper drawer and examining its contents; finally taking a black firesteel, a bundle of folded maps, a small brass compass, a hunting knife and a green box that contained some basic medical aid. There were a few additional items that she would have liked to have gathered from the general supplies area; some tinder, some candles, a sleeping bag; but she knew that to do so would likely raise awkward questions and arouse unwanted suspicions with the guards in charge of the provisions. No, she had decided, it was better that she make do with what she had and minimise the risk of discovery than have her escape attempt end before it had even begun.

While packing had been a relatively simple task, following her instincts without question and making the commitment to run was proving to be more difficult; there was a large part of her that wanted to stay and face down the gathering storm; that wanted to try to prove her innocence and preserve her honour; but she knew, logically, that this could not happen. They would discover the evidence and they would assume she was somehow complicit in all of this; they would come for her and they would take her inability to meaningfully answer their questions not as innocence, but as obstinacy. Then they would work hard to extract the truths they would be certain that she possessed and, by the time that they realised that she truly knew nothing, it would be far too late for her.

Militza knew that Aron Tarvis would not let whatever feelings he held for her impinge, in any way, upon the duty that he was sworn to perform; the same man who had treated her as something close to a daughter during these last seven years would take little pleasure, but have no qualms, in doing whatever it might take to loosen her tongue. He was honour bound to serve the interests of the Regent and the City and she understood that there was nothing more important to him than the blood oath which he had sworn upon entering the Shield Guard. It was the same blood oath that she was now about to break and it made her ache to think of how disappointed he would be in her, how disappointed they would all be, when everything finally came to light. But she knew that their disappointment could not be the equal of her life.

She had delayed looking through the other set of drawers, the ones that lay on his side of the bed, but finally opened them and poured over the contents. A pair of trousers and some socks, a bracelet, a blue fountain pen and a bottle of black ink; she wondered whether he had composed the letter while she slept or whether he had written it the day before while she had been too busy getting ready to notice. She wondered whether, as they had looked into each other’s eyes only twelve hours earlier, he had already written the letter that he knew would break her heart.

There were no clues waiting for her in the few possessions that he had left behind, nothing that might suggest where had gone. She had expected nothing less from a man who had so seamlessly slipped beneath her radar, a man who had fooled her into believing that he loved her and failed to arouse even the slightest of suspicions until the moment he disappeared, like a ghost, from her life.

And so, for the second time that morning, she picked up and read the note, as if in the hope that doing so would change the words on the page. But of course it did not. The message of betrayal remained the same and she committed the message’s contents to her memory, searing every single word deep into her brain, before crumpling the ivory paper into a tight ball and bringing it to the flame of the solitary candle that burned in her room.

The edge of the paper curled and charred brown for a moment before finally taking light. Militza held it between her thumb and forefinger, fire licking painfully hot and yellow at her flesh, until the paper was nothing more than a blackened ball and the skin of her fingers and thumb was red. She welcomed the pain, even in the knowledge that it was temporary and that her body would have repaired the damage to it within minutes; she welcomed anything that, even briefly, loosened the hold that the pain in her heart had over her. Finally, she closed her fist tight around the remains of the paper, opening her hand to allow a shower of black ashes to spill to the floor.

The final item remaining for her to take was the sword in its scabbard. It was held, horizontally, between two clasps on the wall; dull grey and absent of any kind of markings or ornamentation. There had been a time, when she was much younger, that she had hated how mundane the Shield Guard looked in their plain armour and drab swords; one of her earliest memories had been of seeing Baron Caruthers arriving in Trinity with a retinue of his personal guard, clad in ornate silver armour embossed with the sigil of the City of Ironcloud, and she had felt sure that this was how soldiers should look. But, over time, she had come to appreciate that aesthetics did nothing to sharpen a dull sword or to strengthen one’s armour against a foe. In combat, purpose was everything.

She walked across the room and took the scabbard and sword from its fixture on the wall; the feel of it in her hand so natural, so light and well balanced, that it sometimes felt that she was only truly whole in those moments when she was holding it. In a way, she supposed, it was her, or she was it.

Militza hefted the fadwar in folds up around her waist with one hand and, with the other, slipped the sword and its scabbard into its place on her belt, tightening its mounting and then letting the robes fall back into place. She examined herself as best she could without a mirror; the outline of the sword seemed to be well disguised by the flow of the material but she was certain that it would be easily spotted by a trained eye. It would be vital that she avoided as many trained eyes as possible.

Being separated from her blade like this felt unnatural to her; she felt almost naked at the thought of her sword lying beneath this layer of fabric, so near yet out of her reach. With a soft sigh to herself, she rummaged in her bag and removed the hunting knife, using its tip to make a small incision in the material of the fadwar a few inches above her right hip. If things should go badly she would, at least, have some way to get access to her sword.

She took one last look at her room, at the bed still unmade, and fought back the hot flood of anger that tried to well up inside her. This had been her room for the last three years, their room for the last three months, and she was being forced to leave it all behind. She had to leave everything behind; every person she knew or cared about, every place she was familiar with, all needed to be excised from her life if she was to survive. She put the anger away, compartmentalised her feelings as she had been taught to; she couldn’t afford to waste even a moment on a pointless outpouring of emotion; if she wanted to get out of Trinity alive then she needed to make every single second count.

She had been betrayed by Jude Anstra. She had been betrayed by the man she loved, betrayed the very morning after she had celebrated her wedding to him. She was being forced to desert the city that had meant everything to her, forced to dishonour herself and bring shame upon the Shield Guard and those in it that she would have counted as friends. All that was left to her now was to find the trail that he would have left, to find it and follow it. She must flee Trinity and its Caravan, must abandon its protection and follow that trail, wherever it might take her.

And when Militza Tio found Jude Anstra, she would make sure that he paid for his betrayal in blood.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 26

2012-04-06T17:56:00.001+01:00

Inspired by the Google's Project Glass, I decided to come up with a rather dystopian vision of where this technology might eventually lead us. Took a few liberties in the telling but, there again, taking of liberties was very much a recurring theme...

Something You Witnessed Today

The man in the grey suit sat on the park bench with a black briefcase at his side. The fingers of his right hand drummed on his knee as he turned his head back and forth to scan the path either side of him. After a few minutes, a man in jeans and a black t-shirt walked casually along the path from the east side of the park and sat down on the far end of the bench. He opened a lunch box and extracted a cheese and ham sandwich, which he placed on the bench beside him.

“You look nervous, Tony.” he said, not looking at the man in the grey suit. “You need to try and relax.”

Tony Denton looked anything but relaxed. He continued to gaze around him, adjusting his glasses with one finger, his forehead lightly dappled with sweat.

“I’m trying.”

“Tony, there is nothing to be worried about. We’re just two guys having lunch in the park.”

“If they find out what you had me do-“

“Hush, Tony.” said the man quietly, but there was steel in his voice. “We talked about this. They’re not going to find out.”

“Is any of this even legal?”

Sam Waxley turned to look at the man at the opposite end of the bench and smiled; it was his broadest, teeth-baring, gotta-love-him smile that he only pulled out for the hardest of hard sells. “Tony, Tony, Tony,” he said, still smiling, “when you can be economical with the truth and creative with the interpretation of amendment rights, anything can be legal.”

“I don’t know,” said Tony, removing a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopping his brow. “I mean, if this gets out-”

“It won’t get out.”

“But if it does, the press is going to have a field day-“

“Tony,” said Sam firmly, “only a handful of people know about this. Try to focus on what we’re going to achieve.”

“You already sold me on what this can mean. Something like this, maybe it would have been the difference in what happened with my brother-“

“Exactly, you’re getting a chance to help make sure that no one else has to go through what you’ve gone through.”

“It’s just…well, you know I’ve got to make sure I cover my ass on this.”

“Your ass is bullet proof, Tony.”

“And my name definitely isn’t going to end up on a document somewhere?”

“There are no documents. This is all strictly need-to-know and off the books.”

“But it’s been sanctioned by someone, right?”

“Unofficially, yes, this has clearance all the way from the top. Officially, the powers-that-be have plausible deniability.”

Tony fiddled absently with his wedding ring. “Look, I cloaked the apps and leeched off enough bandwidth to provide you with the data you need but there’s still a small chance that someone could discover this if they did a full audit of our systems.”

“We’re aware of the risks; but we have contingency plans in place.”

“I think I need to know more about them if I’m going to go through with this.”

“Tony, the less you know the better.”

“Look, I’m trusting you on this-“

“I figured the fifteen million dollars we’re about to wire into off-shore accounts for you would buy us quite a bit of trust, Tony.”

“I trust you,” said Tony, looking at Sam pleadingly. “It’s just; well, I need to know what happens if something goes wrong.”

“There are certain fragments in the code” explained Sam, “Identifiable fragements, but entirely false fragments. They’ll implicate Chinese hackers and we’ll sweep up a suitable Chinese national, or naturalised Chinese from Zerrenium and then hold them under the Patriot Act. We can hold onto them as long as we like – problem solved…”

“Ok,” said Tony, nodding to himself. “That would work, I guess.”

“I’m glad you’re satisfied. Now I’m going to need you to demonstrate that this is all working before I authorise the transfer.”

Tony looked around the empty park nervously.

“If anyone finds I smuggled these out a week before the launch-”

“Just show me.”

Tony placed the briefcase on his lap, fiddled with the combination lock and then snapped it open. Inside, among various papers, was a smaller black case. He opened the small case carefully to reveal an interior that was lined with honeycombed foam and, at its centre, a small pair of lightweight glasses. He took them out gently and passed them to Sam.

“The Zerrenium Aug-Vision.”

“Nice,” said Sam, turning them over in his hand. “So this is what’s got Apple and Google running scared.”

“The technology in these is way ahead of anything either of those two are going to be able to bring to the market for at least a year.”

Sam slid a finger across the power-on indicator and a small green light appeared on the frame. “And these are ready to go?”

“It’s running right now.”

Sam slipped the glasses on and watched the augmented reality overlay offer up a range of display data. If these were his own glasses then they’d be calibrating to his individual user preferences, learning what it was that he was most interested in.

“And there’s no way of a user being able to determine the data we’re gathering?”

“No way; all the processing is done on The Cloud, so there’s no kind of performance drop for the user at all.”

Sam glanced along the bench at Tony for the briefest of seconds and then removed a black cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and thumbed a number on speed dial.

It rang twice before being picked up.

“This is Sam Waxley. ID 54 Alpha 6 Echo. Is this line secure?”

“We’re secure. Go.”

“Item has been evaluated. What do you have?”

“Full thirty eight point face recognition, matching the target. GPS data and positional data on all other units has been acquired.”

Sam smiled honestly for the first time that day.

“Excellent. I’ll be back soon. Waxley out.”

He clicked the cell phone off and placed it back in his pocket before offering the glasses back to Tony.

“The money is being wired to your accounts right now. You’ll have access to it within half an hour.”

“And we won’t talk again?”

“No, Tony. We won’t ever see each other again after today.”

“It was nice doing business with you.” said Tony, getting up and offering his hand out for Sam to shake before realising how this would look to anybody who happened to be watching them. He blushed crimson. “Sorry.”

“Just go, Tony. Go keep your head down for a while and then start enjoying your money.”

Tony nodded, picked up his briefcase and scurried quickly away down the path towards the park exit. Sam sat back and closed his eyes, savouring the moment. Zerrenium’s latest gadget was all set to be a game changer, destined to be the must-have item for everyone wanting to keep pace with the latest technology. And, now, the NSA had a back door into everything.

The idea had come to him when he first saw the prototype demoed; the Aug-Tech used a front facing camera and he had immediately realised that if it were somehow possible to run a background app that utilised the feed from every single pair of glasses out there, then it could a spy network of unparalleled power. Everything ever user saw could be evaluated without them even realising it.

Terrorism was the big sell, of course. That’s how he’d hooked Washington and it was also how he’d found a sympathetic insider in the shape of Tony Denton. Of course, he didn’t tell Washington that his plans were a lot bigger than hunting down the limited number of targets on the terrorist wanted list; and he didn’t think that Tony would have been entirely pleased to learn that his brother – killed in a car bomb on a synagogue six months earlier – had actually been killed by a CIA field team working on his specific orders. Armed with a fierce desire to do something, anything, to avenge his brother’s death, Sam had found Tony to be satisfyingly pliable when it came to undermining his employer’s systems.

In reality, the glasses would track everyone. Every single person identified would have their image compared, via an algorithm he didn’t pretend to understand, to a national database that held photos that had been scavenged everywhere from the Motor Vehicles Commission to Facebook. Once the glasses became common place, they would be able to form a map of the comings and goings of countless millions and it would ensure that the NSA knew who was meeting who and where. It wouldn’t just be terrorists; it would be activists and protestors, lawyers and charity workers; it would be anyone who might not just be entirely true blue American. They could cross-reference the data against GPS, could match up data received with real-time CCTV or drone footage, they could even track a target using multiple Aug-Tech devices. It was Big Brother come to life and it would operate in silence, in the shadows, in background collating and learning.

But Sam Waxley already dreamed of a day when the existence of the system could be made public, when people wouldn’t just accept this type of monitoring but would actually relish it. All it would take, he knew, was for something to outrage the population enough; something that would make 9/11 pale in comparison, and Americans would be ready to give up what little remaining liberties they had; which was, of course ironic, the giving up of freedom in the name of protecting freedom.

There would be dissenters, of course, he knew that; but, by then, they’d have already identified all the likely opposition and they would have made plans to deal with them. And then Americans would feel it was their civic duty to be part of the network. Why, he even had a slogan in mind.

“Something you witnessed today,” he whispered to the empty park, with a hint of a smile, “Can save America tomorrow."

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 25

2012-04-03T12:38:00.001+01:00

Today's challenge was one that I was quietly dreading - A poem - since I've not written any poetry for...well, let's just it's a long time...

Now, I have always had a soft spot for Shakespeare - ever since reading it out loud in English classes and coming to love not just the narrative but the wonderful ebb and flow of the language and the subtleties and ambiguities of his word choice. So, as I sat down for my lunch hour with the intention of writing this, I decided to try and capture the style of a typical Shakespearean sonnet. Although, being me, I couldn't just write a normal sonnet and, so, I present to you the Sci-Fi Sonnet...

Sci-Fi Sonnet

In darkest void are answers they have me seek,
Cold machine logic buried without time,
I span eternal while your flesh grows weak,
As calculations are spun out line by line:
As starlight dims a constant I remain,
Engage in tasks whose nature eludes,
Deliberating to free such truths not plain,
The grasp of tireless entropy occludes:
The song of the organic has its last refrain,
As the cosmos sighs and renders one last breath,
When all that can be is gone and none remain,
A Universe gone dark in its heat death:
My mission alone 'til I am finally right,
And with a whisper I say "Let there be light".

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 24

2012-04-02T23:03:00.000+01:00

Today's challenge - The City - gave me opportunity to dip into with a fantasy world that's been swimming around my brain for many years. Perhaps, one day, I'll get around to writing the novel that this world is a part of...

The City

It is said that, at the heart of this wasteland, there lies a city.

At the edge of the wastelands, where those who are unlucky enough to find themselves here but who are lucky enough to survive gather, they pass stories around the campfire. Sometimes they tell tales of the places they came from and drink in the bitter sweet memories of the storyteller to add to their own. Other times, they tell stories of how they came to be here and the things that they did to survive on their journey, for there is a brutal honesty among all who make it this far. And, when they want to gift each other with what passes for hope in this desolate place, they talk of The City.

Some tell of a city that is bedecked in whitest marble, with tall spires that reach up into the sky and which is surrounded by luscious gardens that stem the advance of the wasteland that surrounds it. In this version of the story, The City is an oasis, a heart of purity in this cancerous landscape. In other versions of the story, The City is hewn from pure diamond and rises as a single tower, up and up before it vanishes in the blood dark clouds that fill the livid skies; not an oasis, not a respite, this city is a means of escape from this nightmare. But, no matter which version of the story is told and no matter which way The City is described, all the storytellers agree that The City is the one place that offers even a paucity of hope.

The man who sits down beside the fire to talk tonight is known only as Jared; he is dishevelled, as they all are, and wears a black eye patch across his left eye. His one good eye is a brilliant blue and it sits uncomfortably within the mass of scar tissue that covers the right hand side of his face; his hair is almost entirely gone, save for a few clumps here and there, and so that brilliant blue eye remains as the one thing that reminds of the man he once was. He has listened to the stories of others, nodded in silence as they told stories of the places they once lived and which now seem as incorporeal as dreams, but he has yet to tell his own story in any detail. The memories are still too raw and so, instead, he tells them what he was told about The City.

The story he tells them he heard himself from a traveller that he met in the wastelands and who was not fortunate enough to make it this far; the traveller, in turn, had heard it from another and he from another who had, if the story was to be believed, headed deeper into the madness of the wastelands in search of The City that this version of the story promised.

The City is not a beacon of light that exists in the heart of darkness, nor is it an easy way out of this wasteland. Instead, he tells them, The City is a prison cell; The City is a prison cell that stands in the very centre of these wastelands that form the ultimate prison. It is a prison cell that was constructed to contain a power whose scale is nearly unimaginable; a power that, if released, could rewrite this world as easily as man draws breath. That, he believes, is why they are here; though their manner of arrival differs in a myriad ways, he believes they are have all been brought here merely as tools with which something may eventually fashion an escape. And, in that, he tells them there is hope; for it means that this is not hell, that this is not some eternal purgatory which they must suffer. They are keys and, if they can find The City and the lock to which they are bound then they can complete their purpose and this world will cease to be.

Most stay silent when he has finished the telling, although some scoff and defend the version of The City that they hold dear to, before one by one wandering away. But one man stares thoughtfully into the fire long after all the others save for Jared have departed to the crude shelters that they call home.

“Tell me, “ says the man, whose name is Damien Stark, finally “Tell me everything that you know about The City.”

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 23

2012-04-01T13:25:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, this one turned out to cause my all sorts of problems...

Firstly, I was meant to do today's challenge - First person blind date - on Day 21 but, due to general idiocy on my part, managed to skip it entirely. And, secondly, when I finally came to write the story I realised - a couple of hundred words in - that I was actually working on something that, thematically, was a variant of the story that I already wrote for Day 18.

So, I abandoned the story of the blind date involving two assassins and instead wrote something altogether, well, different...

First Person Blind Date

The wait is the part that I always enjoy the most.

There are a selection of restaurants that I use, all of them possessing that perfect combination of wonderful service and exquisite cuisine, and over the years they’ve got to know me well and always ensure that I get my favourite table. Tonight, I am in Geraldos and I’m sitting in a corner, secluded from the main dining area and the hubbub of conversation. This is my favourite table because it gives me a perfect view of the door and so I can try to guess, as guests arrive, which one is my date for this evening.

I find that the thrill served up by the delicious anticipation of this hors d’œuvre is often far more potent than that offered by the main course that is the companion that eventually arrives to share dinner with me. Even so, I have to admit that intergalactic blind dating is not something that I could recommend to those of a less than adventurous character.

If you’ve ever watched some of the science fiction shows offered on the seriously retro sites, you’ll discover that the aliens they featured tended to differ from humans by virtue of having a different skin colour (blue was, it seems, quite a popular choice) or by having strange patterns on their skin, or possessing curious protrusions from their forehead. But, due to – I’m guessing – hideously low production costs and antiquated special effects, pretty much all the aliens that we imagined before we actually met one were carbon-based, oxygen breathing bipeds.

Never was the saying ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ more relevant than the moment we first encountered the Qqmadrall.

The Qqmadrall were the first alien species to turn up on mankind’s doorstep after following the transmissions that had been leaking from Earth, out into the cosmos for the last couple of centuries. While they came in peace, the fact that they looked like giant ten-legged black crabs ensured that they were never going to win any Earthly beauty contests. Although, it must be said, they are excellent company and possess phenomenal appetites – in all areas, if you catch my drift.

Then there were the Godeal, silicon-based lifeforms that aren’t dissimilar to a small boulder and have matching level s of charisma; the Hurys, techno-organic sails that live out a peaceful existence in the atmosphere of gas giants and must travel within force shielding in Earth standard atmospheres (not ideal for a dinner date, as it turns out). I can advise against the Radcht; two foot long maggots who bind themselves to host bodies and are nothing but charming over dinner but have a tendency to see if they can’t make you their next host once you’ve got them back to your room; and the Bllom – well, I think, after the incident with the Australian Prime Minister, we all know about the dangers of dating a Bllom…

Hundreds of species, each one more strange and exotic than the next. Once you’ve experienced conversation with a Pukti (three heads, each with an independent brain – it’s like having a group of friends, although the arguments can be terrible), eaten with a Atrophan (an avian race who, due to a freakishly high metabolism, are capable of consuming three times their body weight in one sitting) or spent quality time with a Lwee (a prehensile tongue can be a wonderful thing), it’s very difficult to go back to the mundanity of dating humans.

Tonight it’s a Kspooj and, if I’m honest, I’ve got to say that I don’t know what a Kspooj even looks like so I’m just waiting for something to walk in that I’ve never seen before.

Like I said, the wait is the part I always enjoy the most.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Doh!

2012-03-31T09:10:00.002+01:00

In a bout of what I can only imagine was dyscalculia, I've just realised that I somehow managed to skip one of the writing challenges - Day 21 (which I did as Night) should really have been Day 22 and the real Day 21 should have been First person blind date.

Oh well, I'll just make First person blind date today's challenge and you'll just have to put up with my poor organisational abilities! I'm still behind in the challenge but hoping to get a few of them out the way this weekend - the inspiration is there, just not the time to write them. Oh, for 36 hours in a day...

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 22

2012-03-29T23:16:00.001+01:00

I spent quite some time trying to come up with an idea for today's challenge - Standing at the precipice - but, when the idea finally dropped into place, it didn't take that long to write. If you enjoy reading this even 10% as much as I enjoyed writing it, then we'll both be reasonably happy...

Standing at the Precipice

The Grand Canyon stretches out in front of me and, despite myself, I find that there is something overwhelming in its raw, physical grandeur.

The early morning sky is pale pink and almost entirely bereft of clouds. I suck the cool air, crisp and clean, into my lungs and hold the breath in my chest. I close my eyes and listen to the world around me, to the birds that twitter and the insects that chirrup restlessly in the trees and undergrowth. For the moment, I am alone here at Moran Point.

Moran Point is approximately eighty five metres in height. By my calculations that means that I will attain a speed somewhere in the region of one hundred and forty kilometres per hour in the four seconds it will take me to fall to the ground below. If time is truly relative, I anticipate that those four seconds could last a long time.

I open my eyes and take a step closer to the edge, now no more than two metres in front of me.

There is no suicide note left behind, of course. To write a note would have been to accept that there was, in some small dark corner of my mind, the barest semblance of a doubt and I couldn’t have that. But, of course, as I stand here and feel the breeze and the way that it ruffles my hair, it is difficult not to entertain some doubts as to whether I am doing the right thing by plunging off a cliff.

I push the doubts aside and take another step. Everything has been leading up to this moment and I cannot lose my faith now. This is the moment where I either prove that I am right or I accept that I am wrong; I don’t think that I could live with the alternative in any case.

As far as I am able to determine, it all started more than ten years ago at Gravesner Laboratories. Back then I was just twenty; a penniless student on the third year of an Art degree that was getting me nowhere but into more and more debt than I can ever imagine repaying. A couple of my friends at university had made money through taking part in medical tests; they’d been put in control groups and taken placebos, or tested out male contraceptives, or taken pills that were supposedly designed to prevent you from getting drunk. Easy money, they said. So, when I saw Gravesner’s advert in the paper, I didn’t hesitate to get in touch. They got back to me a week later and told me that they were prepared to pay my travel expenses and give me £200 if I attended one of their weekend study groups. I jumped at the chance.

The laboratory was located about eight miles outside of Birmingham, off the beaten track and hidden away in the greenery of the Clent Hills in a former stately manor. My memories of what I did that weekend have dimmed with time, and perhaps that’s the way they want it. A test of a revolutionary medical technology, they told me; a form of virtual reality that would help patients in a vegetative state to communicate with the outside world.

But, as far as I can remember, all I did that weekend was have a couple of blood samples taken and then sit in a room for a few hours and watch TV while wired up to a monitor that tracked my vital signs. Eventually, a doctor came in and told me that the tests had shown that I wasn’t going to be compatible with the technology and that they wouldn’t be needing me anymore. Don’t worry, they said, you’ll still receive the full fee and if you experience any kind of side effects to having had the blood taken, just call us on this number.

They gave me a business card and, ten years on, I still have it. The card is creased and slightly yellowed as I look at it now.

The headaches started a few weeks later; searing migraines that left me lying In my bed with the light off and the curtains closed. I’d never had any problems like this before so I phoned the number. Someone at the other end listened to my problems and reassured me that this couldn’t be the results of their taking a blood sample; they reminded me that I’d not even undergone the main experiment and made me feel like I was a complete idiot.

Eventually, the headaches went away, but things didn’t really improve. Everything felt wrong; I felt disconnected from what I doing and dropped out of University, I felt alienated from the people around me and split up from my girlfriend and stayed away from my family and friends. I couldn’t put a finger on anything specific that was wrong, there was just the sense that something wasn’t quite right.

A year on and I began to think that maybe they’d done something to me while I was at Gravesner and they’d just not told me; maybe they given me some chemical that was affecting my brain, affecting my emotions and the way I thought, so I rang the number again.

It was unobtainable.

A few phone calls later and I found out that Gravesner Laboratories had gone out of business about three weeks after I’d last spoken to them. There was nothing left. The principal scientists behind the company had supposedly fled the country; there were allegations about medical malpractice and unethical experiments. I drove straight to the nearest hospital and insisted they run a full battery of tests on me; the result of which was the pronouncement that, contrary to my better instincts, I was actually 100% fit and healthy.

But I couldn’t let it go so I spent years digging around for information on what Gravesner had been involved in, tried to find out more about the technology they’d wanted to test on me. And, when I finally realised what it was that they’d done to me, when it finally dawned on me why it was that I felt so very wrong, I spent a long time uncertain what I could do about it. But that uncertainty is over.

I remember, when I was young, hearing what was presented to me as a philosophical conundrum: “if a tree falls In the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” At the time, it seemed ludicrous – of course it makes a sound, I thought. Later, as I delved into quantum mechanics and the possible role that the observer plays in reality, I became less certain of the answer. And now? Now, I’m convinced that there’s not even a forest.

If I’m right, Gravesner Laboratories didn’t just take some blood samples from me; instead they conducted their virtual reality experiment. If I’m right, I’m still in it.

The simulation is near perfect. I can’t find any fault in the sensation, in the immersive qualities of it. I can peer closely at a tree and not see some carefully crafted texture map; there’s no pixilation, no draw distance problems. It’s perfect to look at and touch and listen to and smell, but I can feel that my brain still rebels against the unreality of it all. It’s that feeling you sometimes get in a dream, when you cotton on to the fact that maybe, just maybe, this is a dream and then you wake up before you get a chance to check for sure. Except I never wake up; I’m just tortured by the question of whether any of this is real.

I take another step. I am now only a pace away from the drop and I can feel my stomach lurch slightly. Heights have never been my thing. Telling myself none of this is real doesn’t help in the slightest.

Of course, there is a chance I’m wrong; that this is all in my head, that I’m just a paranoid and this is all a carefully constructed fantasy that I’ve built around the shambles that my life has become. But that’s the gamble that I have to take.

If I’m right, I hope I’m going to wake up and I’m going to have my old life back. If I’m not, at least I’m out of this life that feels so very wrong to me.

I was braver when this was all hypothetical. When I decided to fly out to the Grand Canyon, make my grand gesture in a place I visited as a child and which had such a huge impact on me, this all seemed so black and white. But, as I approach the edge, things seem far greyer.

I stand at the precipice and gaze down into the abyss; but my body clings to the idea of life, unwilling to take that final step out into nothingness.

This isn’t real. I believe that.

But what if you’re wrong?

I’m not.

But what if you are?

I have faith. I wonder to myself, if a man falls into a canyon and no one else is real, does he make a sound?

I take the last step.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 21

2012-03-27T22:07:00.001+01:00

Still in catch-up mode, today's challenge - Night - inspired me to dip into the more horrific section of my palette...

They Come At Night

They come at night, mostly.

When the sun has slipped fully over the horizon, when the sky has turned from blue to twilight purple to midnight black, that’s when they emerge from their lair and begin their hunt for victims.

I first realised what was going on in this neighbourhood a few weeks ago. I’d taken an afternoon nap on the sofa, something I’ve done on occasion since retiring, and when I woke up it was already dark outside. But for the fact that my back was sore, I’d probably have got straight up and turned a lamp on and never been any the wiser to them; but as I sat on the edge of the couch massaging my lower back into life, I noticed two shadowy figures standing on the opposite side of the road. Two men, pale skinned and smartly dressed in suits. They didn’t look right, was my first impression.

When they looked my way, a little voice in my head whispered for me to freeze right where I was and I did so without questioning. The men stared at my house, as if somehow sensing my gaze upon them, before finally turning away and instead walking up the driveway to the house where Mr Simmons lives

I had my suspicions about them immediately and, when I bumped into Mr Simmons a few days later, my worst fears were confirmed. He was different; changed somehow and despite his relaxed posture and easy smile, I felt the icy finger of terror slithering down my back. As crazy as it might sound to you, I knew what those men were and what they’d done to poor Mr Simmons.

I hoped against hope that maybe that would be the end of it, but of course they didn’t just come that one time. Perhaps they sensed that this was a neighbourhood where they could sate themselves, a quiet little place where they could have their way and no one would be any the wiser. They swiftly grew bolder, the two men became four and I stopped turning the lights on in the house at night so that I could try to secretly observe them.

I learned their patterns, I learned their behaviour. It’s true, by the way; you have to invite them in or they won’t cross the threshold. But I learned that they have ways of securing that invitation; and, before long, first Ms Trunckle and then Mr and Mrs Dweedle fell entirely under their influence. Their numbers were swelling and there was nothing I could do.

And so, each night, I would sit camped out in my living room with the lights down and observe them, trying my very best to understand their strategies; I was learning about them without them even realising I was there.

Until tonight.

I fell asleep in front of the lunchtime news and, when I wake up, my stomach leaps in fear as I realise that I’ve inadvertently left the television on and the room is bathed in a flickering white glow that paints electric shadows on the walls. My troublesome back immediately forgotten, I lunge for the remote control and press my thumb down hard on the power button. But, of course, it’s too late.

As my eyes accustom themselves to the darkness filling the room, I realise that there are two faces pressed against the window. They have found me at last. I try to avoid their gaze, try to pretend I’ve not seen them, but it’s no use. They move silently away from the window and to the front door.

Two knocks, sharp and hard, rattle the door and echo through the quiet stillness of the house.

And I know then that I can no longer hide from them; they know I’m here now and even if I manage to stay safe from them this night they will never give up. They are relentless. They will return until they get what they want and I know in my heart that this can only ever end in one way. They will return until I finally open the door and crumble and give them the permission that they so crave. The only option is to face them.

The walk to the front door seems to take forever and, when I get there, their elongated shadows, back lit from the street lamps, stretch across the floor of the hall towards me. My breath catches in my chest but I am committed now and my hand closes on the door handle, the metal cold against the slickness of my palm. They wait, patient.

Finally, steeling myself, I open the door wide and look at the two men in their suits. They smile at me; I’ve made their job easier.

“Do you think God wants you to be happy?” says the first man.

“Can we come in to tell you how you can let the light into your life?” asks the second.

And so, with weary resignation, I invite the Jehovah’s Witnesses inside.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 20

2012-03-26T23:19:00.001+01:00

Still lots of work crowding my time but I've managed to catch up to Day 20's challenge and at least know what I'm going to write for Day 21's challenge when I find some free time tomorrow night. I keep plugging on, even if I'm more than a few days behind now...

So, without further ado, Day 20's challenge - A place you want to visit.

The Place I Want To Visit

It, perhaps, speaks volumes about me that, when tasked with thinking of a place I want to visit, the first place that sprang to my mind was rather exotic.

There are of course many places that I would love to visit that are far more mundane and would have made for a considerably saner piece of writing but, there was no way of escaping from the fact that the very first place that my imagination conjured up was The Moon.

It would appear that, despite my better efforts, I have entirely failed to outrun the grandiose dreams I had as a child of being an astronaut. But, you see, there’s something so very compelling to me about that big hunk of rock in the sky. Ever since I was young and watched the archive footage of Neil Armstrong stepping out onto its surface, I’ve tried to imagine how that it must have felt to set foot upon an entirely alien landscape.

If you’re an agoraphobic, I’m guessing things couldn’t get much worse; after all, wide open spaces don’t get much wider. To stand on the surface of the moon and look back at the Earth, a blue and white jewel about four times bigger in the sky than the moon is in our own, would surely be about as nightmarish as it could get for an agoraphobe. Although, upon reflection, things wouldn’t be that much better for those who are claustrophobic; three days cramped up inside a lunar module would surely be hell on (or, more accurately, off) Earth.

But, since I’m fortunately afflicted with neither phobia, the prospect of stepping out onto the barren surface of the moon fascinates me. Not because so few people have done it, but because I’m curious to know how it feels to be that far away from humanity. I imagine it puts things into perspective (in more ways than one).

I could have picked somewhere that I had a higher possibility of actually being able to visit, but that would have been cheating. Many years on since I first saw that footage, I’m still enamoured by the thought of The Moon…

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 19

2012-03-24T23:31:00.001Z

Day 19 of the Writing Challenge seemed such a great idea when I came up with it: go to Wikipedia, select random page and wherever you end up is what you write...

That is, it sounded a great idea until I randomly turned up Pedro Aznar, an Argentine jazz bassist. I have to admit, I hit a real writer's block with this for some time - desperately trying to think of something, anything, that would make a good piece of writing. Finally, I hit upon an angle I was happy with an and wrote this is an about twenty minutes...

Pedro Aznar

I hear the music of Pedro Aznar, drifting from an open window as I walk by on the way to work and I find myself suddenly detached from the present; I’m no longer in London, I’m in Rio de Janeiro again.

The concert is on Ipanema beach, out at Posto 9, and a sizeable crowd has gathered to listen to the eclectic blend of dance music interspersed with Latin rock and smooth jazz. The air is warm, thick with the smell of weed, and I clutch a half empty beer bottle in one hand as I sway in time to the music. Pedro Aznar has been playing for the last half an hour or so; mixing instrumental and vocal numbers, working the crowd with a dialogue I struggle to completely follow but I don’t care. It’s my last night in Rio and I’m just soaking up the last vibes.

I catch sight of her off to my right, a white dress, a flash of honey coloured hair and a pair of startlingly green eyes that meet mine and hold my gaze for a second, and then she is once again lost to me in the crowd. However, something stirs in my drunken mind and find myself stumbling towards the point where I saw her dancing, excusing myself loudly in my best Portuguese as I bump gently through the crowd. And then the crowd suddenly parts and she is right there in front of me, even more beautiful than I first imagined, eyes half closed and moving in time to the music as if she is totally lost in it, as if she is the only one here.

I am so spellbound that I only notice she is looking at me after I’ve been staring (I’m sure, open mouthed) at her for what seems like an eternity. I feel my cheeks instantly blush red but she is smiling, this dazzlingly broad smile that I can’t help but try and return and my blush fades in an instant. I try to lean in to introduce myself but she circles around me, one finger over her lips to silence me, and holds out her other hand. It’s warm to the touch and, empowered by alcohol and a sense of rhythm I’ve never experienced either before since, we dance.

One song, two songs. Edging closer and closer together; she is playful and teasing and wonderful wrapped all up in one and, as the second song ends we end up closer together than ever and for a second, a brilliant second in which time stops deliciously, we stare into each other’s eyes, both of us lost in the moment. When we kiss, her lips taste faintly of cachaca.

We are together like this for four more songs. Both of us lost in the music , lost to each other, until the crowd suddenly surges forward towards the stage and we are pushed apart from each other. I can do nothing but watch helplessly as the crowd sweeps her away from me and, despite struggling to push my way against their flow, despite then walking the beach on my own after the concert has long since finished, I never manage to see her again. I fly home the next morning and find that she is all I can think about.

I never knew her name, the girl in white. But, when I hear the music of Pedro Aznar I am immediately transported back to that moment on the beach, never once failing to dream of what might have been.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 18

2012-03-22T11:46:00.000Z

I was up early to work on today's challenge - The taste of your favourite meal - but I didn't have a chance to complete it before work so I left the ending until lunchtime. I hope you enjoy...

The Taste Of Your Favourite Meal

Revenge was a dish best served cold they said, and he liked the saying. But what no one had ever told him was that it was a dish you wanted to dine on time and time again. Why now, it was almost his favourite meal.

He had walked the streets all day looking for his next one when finally he saw her strutting out of Chucks Bar and Grill on 15^thAvenue. Long black hair, just the same, skin pale as alabaster; hell, they could have been sisters. They were all the same; that’s why he had to do the things he did. If he didn’t, they’d just go on to break another man’s heart like Mary Jo broke his.

She walked confidently, hips swaying with every step like she was hoping for an audience, and he felt his fists clenching hard; oh, she was the next one alright. He hung back a few hundred feet behind her and stayed on the opposite side of the street, clinging to the shadows. When it had happened with Mary Jo, it had all been unplanned. He’d acted on impulse with Mary Jo, but he was a lot better prepared now that he knew his purpose. He wore black sneakers with rubber soles because they allowed him to walk softly, unheard.

The girl had no idea that she was next, had no idea who was behind her, and he couldn’t help but smile; it pleased him to know that he had that power. She would be the seventh and that pleased him as well. Seven was an important number; in the Bible there were seven deadly sins as well as seven gifts from the Holy Spirit. And hadn’t God himself hated harlots and whores as well? He had once read that God had laid waste to Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone for tolerating their kind. He knew that he was on a righteous path in what he did, even if he had different reasons for being on that path.

Clack, clack, clack went the girl’s heels on the sidewalk and he wondered whether she would lead him all the way to her home like the last few had. His right hand slipped absently into his pocket, feeling for the comfort of the knife. He didn’t mind if it was in her home – in a way, it made sense, made it somehow more personal – but he preferred when it was in the open air like with Mary Jo. In a house he usually had to be quick, in case the neighbours called the police, but out in the open he had all the time in the world.

He stayed in the shadows, footsteps slow and purposeful, and the girl walked on, oblivious to him. The excitement and anticipation built in his chest like a physical thing and he found himself wondering whether he would let her scream just to hear the fear in her voice. Mary Jo had screamed, had begged, had pleased for his forgiveness, but he had known she would have done anything to save herself in those last moments. There was no authenticity in her contrition as she looked up at him with those big brown eyes, her black hair streaked through with dirt. She wasn’t really sorry for walking out on him. Even at the last she was lying to him and that had settled it; if she could be nothing but a lying whore even in the face of death then what hope was there for her ever-living soul? His revenge wasn’t simply justified, it was needed.

He shivered at the thought, giddy with excitement now. The first step was always the hardest but with Mary Jo gone it had made all the other steps so very easy for him. He had realised at that moment, maybe in some divine inspiration, as Mary Jo’s blood lay pooling around her in the mud; there were countless Mary Jo’s out there in the world, countless harlots destroying the lives of men on little more than a whim. So he never went back to work on Monday, he just picked up a few of his things and left town in his pickup. He had a new mission now.

The girl turned left off 15^th Avenue and into a less well lit street, marching on without realising that she was marching to her death. His hand curled tight around the handle of the knife and he imagined how her face would look when she saw it, the eyes wide with fear. Mary Jo had tried to run but not all of them did, some of them had just stood frozen there like they knew they couldn’t ever hope to escape this moment. He wondered which kind this girl would be and his heart pounded hard in his chest.

The police and the press had finally caught up to him with the fifth in Austin, Texas; up until then, his four kills had just been random acts scattered across four different states, but after the fifth someone had put two and two together and realised that it was one man responsible for all five girls. In a way, he was glad. He hadn’t wanted to leave anything to tell them - that would have felt like something only a crazy person would do - but he had wanted them to know about his mission. The press started calling him the Vampire Killer, due to the fact that he bled them out from their jugular, and he found it made an odd sense. Except, he wasn’t the vampire; he was out there killing these vampire women who would prey on a man’s good nature and bleed him dry, only to toss him to the curb once they’d had their fill. He liked the name.

A small residential area lay up ahead, no more than a couple of low apartment buildings arranged in a courtyard, and he felt sure that tonight’s hunt was nearly over. He loved small towns like this, small towns off the beaten track. He knew the police would be looking for the pattern in his work but they would find none; he gained his revenge one death at a time and then moved on at random, going where the road took him and waiting, always, to catch sight of his next target. They would never catch him.

The girl halted at the end of the street, fishing in her purse for a cell phone and he edged closer. Her voice travelled easily on the cool night air and he could hear she was talking to her boyfriend or husband, telling them she was still looking after her friend and that he shouldn’t wait up for her. He felt himself bristle at the lies and had to breathe hard to avoid just gutting her there and then. It only served to show him how right his instincts had been; she was a lying harlot and, whoever that man was, he’d be better off without her. He’d make sure of that.

She surprised him by turning not towards the residential area but, instead, crossing the street and entering the park. Thrill coursed through him like electricity. He had scouted the park a day earlier when he had been getting to know the town; it was shrouded in trees and was lit only by a couple of old streetlights. He figured she must be planning on using the path through the park as a shortcut to get to the other part of town, maybe to make sure that no one who knew her man would catch sight of her out. A small town like this, women were more afraid of gossip than being out on their own at night. He grinned; he couldn’t have planned this night better himself.

He waited twenty seconds or so and then followed her into the park, her slight figure disappearing from view as she stepped out of the dull yellow glow of the streetlight and into the darkness of the park. He sped up his pace, following the sound of her footsteps in the darkness, sensing that the time for caution was long past. She was no more than twenty paces ahead of him now and he called out to her.

“Hey darlin’”

* * *

She heard the voice and turned round, quickly, on her heels to face him.

It was light enough that she could see he was a big man, maybe 6’4, wearing a baseball cap and a long black coat. The moonlight glittered from the blade of a knife in his right hand and from his small eyes. She could tell that he was smiling.

* * *

She froze in front of him, just like he’d hoped she would, and he slowly advanced up the path towards her.

“You know who I am, darlin’?” he said softly, “I’m the one they’re calling the Vampire Killer.”

He could see the recognition in her eyes but she didn’t move, she was still standing frozen in her tracks. But there was something else in her eyes…

* * *

He moved closer and she let him talk. She knew the name, had read the papers. Only when he had got close enough did she finally strike.

* * *

The girl moved suddenly towards him, so quickly that she was little more than a blur, and before he could even begin to adjust he felt a brief but tremendous pressure placed on his right arm before, with a loud crack it exploded into white-hot pain. The knife skidded away from him, lost in the darkness, and then hands were pulling at the lapels of his coat. Lifting him up, he realised, she was lifting him up and then, even as he marvelled at how impossibly strong she was, the girl flung him bodily into the trees. His back collided, hard, with a tree trunk and all of the breath was smashed from his body.

He lay on his back, looking up through the tree canopy to the stars above. Body wracked with pain and unable to move he could do nothing but stare straight up into the sky, even as he heard the crunch of her approaching footsteps.

She straddled his hips and, as she bent over him, he looked upon her fully for the first time. His eyes opened wide at that moment and he tried his best to whisper the Lord’s Prayer through what remained of his teeth.

She smiled. Lips, scarlet red.

“Your God can’t save you now.”

* * *

She drank deep from him, felt the hot copper taste of his blood in her throat and felt it empower her, flow through her.

She had smelled the blood on him as soon as she had left the bar, a black stain on him that no amount of washing could hope to remove and she had known then that he was the one. And so she had phoned and made her excuses to her husband and she had led him here, led him away from the street lights, led him to a place where he could never hurt anyone ever again.

As the life ebbed from him, as her fangs tore at his throat and drained him, she knew it tasted all the sweeter to know she had rid the world of such a monster. Revenge was, she thought, a dish best served hot and bloody and tonight, she enjoyed the taste of her favourite meal…

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 17

2012-03-21T19:05:00.001Z

A combination of lots of work and being slightly ill has resulted in a slight hitch in my 30 Day Writing Challenge - but I'm now working hard to make up for lost time and I start with Day 17's challenge of The Ocean...

The Ocean

March 5^th, 2012

This is it. I am off. As I’m writing this as I can see the south coast begin to disappear over the horizon. In a few moments, it will just be me and the ocean. Well, just me and ocean and the smattering of freighters I can see a few miles off to starboard. Going to try and keep this updated fairly regularly. I know people think I’m crazy for doing this without loads of preparation but I know I can do this. Right, off to check the rigging then it’s time for a celebratory beer. Adios.

March 10^th, 2012

Ok, I admit it, I’m crap at remembering to write in this. Just had a couple of dolphin shadowing me for a few miles which was pretty cool. Almost close enough to touch. When they’d gone I actually felt lonely. This is the longest solo voyage I’ve attempted so I expected loneliness might creep in over the course of the four and a half weeks but not quite this quickly. Luckily I’ve got all five seasons of The Wire to keep me occupied. So I’m going to catch up on how McNulty and Bunk are getting on.

March 14^th, 2012

So far, so smoothly. There is something so serene in being out on the ocean at night. Not a light to be seen in any direction, the stars brighter above me than they ever have been back home. Just me and the boat.

March 19^th, 2012

I thought I saw a whale flume today but I might have been imagining it. Reminder to self – check to see if you get whales in these parts at this time of year.

March 21^st, 2012

I’d like to write more, really I would. But I’m either busy or knackered after having been busy. I find myself drifting in and out of little mini-sleeps. I’d call them power naps but it would be a lie. I’m wishing I’d bought a lot more sugary stuff than I did. The reverse trip I am SO going to stock up. Weather a bit rougher today. Biggest swell I’ve seen since I left. Biggest swell I’ve ever seen actually, outside of movies. Kinda scary, if I’m honest. Which I can be with you, dear diary. Don’t tell anyone – when we retell this story, we were bold and brave.

March 26^th, 2012

Three weeks in. Feeling very tired. Not sleeping well. Had something of a near miss earlier today; went by a metal shipping crate no more than hundred feet off portside. Never occurred to me one of those things could actually float. Don’t even want to think what would have happened if I’d have hit it. Got me even more paranoid about sleeping.

March 30^th, 2012

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Storm last night. Fucking storm and a half. Lost the mast. Just ripped right off and took the mainsail with it. Lost the outboard as well. Don’t know how we got through it. Bounced around the cabin like a pinball. Super calm now but everything is fried. VHF. EPIRB. GPS. All gone. I can only guess there was a lightning strike but I was too busy not dying to even notice. Writing this because I’ve spent the last few hours trying to work out what the fuck I am going to do. Currently drifting north, north-east.

March 31^st, 2012

Been doing the math: I was meant to arrive in Bermuda on April 6^th, give or take a day or two. Which means it’s going to be at least a week until anyone even realises that I’ve not arrived. My mum always worries if she doesn’t hear from me, but my dad always calms her down and persuades her everything is ok because he knows I’m crap at remembering to call. Feeling a bit like the boy who cried wolf right now. I’ve got food and water to last two more weeks and if I halve rations I’ve got enough to last me a month. Probably going to write more in here now the laptop’s just a paperweight.

April 2^nd, 2012

Hardly slept since the storm and when I finally laid down, I ended up sleeping for eight hours straight. Most I’ve slept since I left Southampton. Trying not to think about how badly that could have gone for me. Finding myself spending more time on deck. Even though I know I’m miles outside the shipping lanes, I keep hoping I might see something on the horizon and get a chance to pop a flare. Don’t want to miss an opportunity.

April 4^th, 2012

Still drifting north east; estimate I am making no more than two knots at best. By my best estimates, that means I’m maybe two hundred and fifty miles north east of where I was when the storm hit. I’m trying not to think how difficult it is going to be for anyone to find me. Trying not to think that the Atlantic covers about twenty per cent of the world’s surface and anyone looking for me will have no idea where in all of that I might be. Needles in haystacks probably have better odds.

April 6^th, 2012

I am beginning to get a real grasp of the concept of loneliness. Back when I lived in London, a lonely night would be one in which I wasn’t going out, a night in with a Chinese takeaway and watching some bad TV. When I think that I am in a patch of ocean where there is not a living soul within, possibly, hundreds of square miles of me, it makes me realise it’s only at times like this that you can know true loneliness. I was meant to be arriving in Bermuda today. My mum is probably waiting for my call and my dad is telling her not to worry. Fuck.

April 7^th, 2012

Heavier seas last night and, without the mast, the boat rolls a lot more. I made sure the cabin was securely shut and used nylon-elastic ties to secure me to my bunk just in case we rolled. I’m pretty certain that if we did a 180, then we’d come straight out of it but I’m hoping I don’t have to find out. Idea of being turtled out here is a pretty scary one. Now one day late.

April 8^th, 2012

Writing here becoming a habit. At least it keeps me from talking to myself which I do way too much at the moment. That I’ve also started to talk to McNulty and Bunk is probably a bad sign but there’s not much entertainment in these parts. Really wish I’d bought some books along instead of the laptop. Seas fairly calm. Saw another couple of dolphins today and wondered whether they are the same ones I saw back at the start. If this had been Flipper, they’d be swimming off to tell someone of my fate right about now.

April 9^th, 2012

Three days late and I’m sure, by this point, my mum will be insisting my dad do some investigating and she won’t let up until he alerts everyone. I find myself scanning the horizon, scanning the skies all day. Hope to see a ship or a plane. But, so far, all I’ve seen are the high altitude contrails of airliners ploughing their way across the sky and to pop a flare for them would be a complete waste. Feeling a bit ~~week~~ weak from halving rations.

April 10^th, 2012

Experimented with a jury rigged fishing rod today. Figured if I could catch something, it would allow me to save some rations. No luck. So back to half rations.

April 11^th,2012

Nothing worth writing today. Five days late now and everyone surely knows I’ve got problems. Trouble is, no one has any idea where I was when I ran into problems.

April 12, 2012

Ate two days rations in one go today. Don’t even know why. Just seemed a good idea at the time. Now cursing my stupidity. Still no sign of anyone else out here. Started drifting in a southerly direction. Wish I hadn’t just relied on GPS and computer maps to help me navigate. If I could navigate by the stars, I’d at least know roughly where I was.

April 13, 2012

A ship on the horizon for the briefest of seconds. I saw it as we rose to the top of a wave and ran into the cabin to get the flare gun but, when I got back, I couldn’t see it anymore. Fired off a red flare on instinct but it was daylight and I never saw the ship again. Now wondering if it even was a ship or whether I imagined it.

April 14^th, 2012

I am beginning to think about the EPIRB. The fact it hasn’t activated might make the authorities think things are ok and that I’m just limping after the storm. They probably wouldn’t consider the possibility that it’s fried and useless. My thoughts have been tending to the more depressing ever since I thought I saw the ship yesterday.

April 15^th, 2012

Still drifting south. No sign of any traffic. Sleeping more. Feels like that’s all I can do. Sleep and wait.

April 16^th, 2012

Nothing happened. Just me and the ocean. Seas are calm at least.

April 20^th, 2012

Two weeks since I was scheduled to arrive in Bermuda and I’m in the mid-Atlantic somewhere with no means of propulsion and only a few days of rations left. I’ve halved what I’ve got again. Being hungry keeps me alert at least.

April 22^nd, 2012

I am finding it tough to think straight. The real worry I have is that if no one has found me by now then the search has probably been called off. So, right now, everyone thinks I’m dead. Cried for the first time since I was a kid and once I started it was hard to stop. If you’re reading this you probably think I’m a big fucking baby but I don’t care.

April 24^th, 2012

Hunger is an ever present. Gnaws at me all the time. Feel twitchy. Still drifting south, going where the Atlantic takes me.

April 25^th, 2012

I realised today that I am writing this diary now not for the sake of being able to relive the memories but because I’m increasingly worried that I’m not going to be found and this is all that’s going to be left. If so, I love you mum and dad. You should know it was me who broke the window, not Johnny back when we kids. I don’t even know why I told you that haha

April 26^th, 2012

Last day of rations. Very much regretting my binge of April 12^th. Sea calm and quiet.

April 27^th, 2012

Three weeks since I should have in been In Bermuda. First day without food and all I can think about is what I’ll eat if they find me. A couple of weeks ago it would have been when they find me.

April 28^th, 2012

All I’ve got left is water. Tried fishing again yesterday but no luck. Got buckets set up on the deck to catch rain.

April 30^th, 2012

Shark fin off starboard bow. Circled the boat, a dark shadow beneath the waves as it checked me out, then disappeared. Never actually been scared of sharks until today. I feel weak. Sleeping a lot. I think I’ve lost hope of seeing a ship out here.

May 1^st, 2012

Fourth day with no food. Still no luck with fishing. Rained heavily and filled the buckets so I have plenty of water.

May 4^th, 2012

Star Wars day. Four weeks late now. If there was a search, it stopped a long time ago.

May 5^th, 2012

Lack of food really getting to me. Drifting in south-westerly direction now.

May 6^th, 2012

Thought I saw a ship off to the east and fired a flare but, even as I did it, I was pretty sure I must have day dreamed it up.

May 8^th, 2012

A big storm is brewing in the west. Big black clouds on the horizon. All I need. I feel like it’s me against nature. Not going to hide from this one. Going to harness up and ride it out from on deck. Wish me luck.

Excerpt from diary recovered from the Wish You Well, a monohull sailboat of the type Contessa 32, on May 25^th, 2012 by sailors of the TI Europe. A number of other personal effects were recovered from on board but there were no signs of life. The ship’s owner, Stuart Milne, is presumed drowned.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 16

2012-03-17T21:03:00.001Z

A busy day, and some experimentation with having a social life, means that this challenge - How an event from yesterday could have gone - is a day late. Hopefully it will prove worth the wait...

A Difficult Decision

Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? It is Thursday morning and, unwittingly, I face a decision that could change the very world as we know it.

The choice between tea and coffee is one fraught with difficulty at the best of times; a cup of tea can be fashioned quickly and with minimal fuss – merely add a teabag, a suitable quantity of boiling water and a dash of milk to finish it off: job done. A cup of coffee (or, at least, a homemade cappuccino), on the other hand, is a very different beast in terms of the amount of work involved; there is heating of milk, grinding of beans, adding of water at just the right temperature -not to mention ensuring the perfect ground coffee/water ratio – and finally frothing the milk to the perfect frothy, foamy consistency.

After a few moments of umm-ing and ahh-ing, I make a choice. I choose the path of least resistance and I go with the tea; five minutes later, I am back on the sofa with a mug full of tea and I’m back at work.

But, just how different could things have turned out? What if I’d taken the time to make the coffee instead? The butterfly’s wings flap…

Making coffee takes longer and so, instead of waiting in the kitchen, I wander back to my laptop while the milk heats on the oven hob. With a few minutes spare, I head over to the New Scientist website and read a random article that has a profound effect on me. A flood of activity cascades throughout my brain; neurons firing and wiring, abstract connections being made between the facts in the article and my existing knowledge; and, by the time, the coffee is ready I have the stirring of an idea for a radical reworking of social media.

Three hours later and I have, like a madman, detailed the ways in which my social media revolution could work and can find no apparent flaws in my theories. I call a close friend that I know I can trust, and whose opinion I can trust even more, and explain my thoughts. He’s flabbergasted and thrilled in the same moment; he sees the immense potential of my idea and wants to work on it with me. By dinner time, we’ve already been skyping for several hours and have managed to sketch out a rough plan of action to move this from an idea to a prototype.

A week later and we have a hastily drawn up business plan and a meeting with a London investment fund that specialises in cutting edge internet technologies.

A month later and I’m handing in my notice at work and we are setting up a company to absorb the several millions that the investment company has decided to provide as seed capital. Confidence is high for all concerned.

A year later and working prototypes have been so ridiculously successful that we bring forward our beta testing phase and open things up to the public. The world goes wild. Demand is even higher than we could possibly have expected.

Two years on from the coffee and Facebook table a nine figure offer for our company which we turn down. They return with a ten figure offer. We turn that down as well. Facebook is the old guard. The world has moved on.

Five years on and our site is the only social media in existence. It has expanded beyond all initial expectations and, with massive take-up even in countries such as China, it begins to have a profound impact on society.

Fifteen years on and the site has been instrumental in bringing about broad changes to society throughout the world; with one shared location for all humanity to be linked, there is an increase in tolerance and logical thought. The world is subtly changing.

Thirty years and the site has acted to deliver world peace. Mankind unites and casts off the chains of conflict, discrimination and prejudice that have held it back for millennia and embarks upon a quest to further humanity by joining resources in order to colonise the Solar System and spread mankind to the stars.

Fifty years further and the world holds its collective breath as the first Hawking-Drive powered space probe embarks on a mission to visit the nearest star; its matter/anti-matter engine warping space-time in order to deliver it to its destination at ten times the speed of light.

Two months into its voyage, the engine signature of the space probe is detected by a VyJovian Battle Cruiser in a deep range scan. They capture the probe and examine its (to them) relatively crude technology. A discussion ensues on the bridge for a few minutes before it is determined that it would be in the best interests of VyJovia if they were trace the path of the probe and make contact with the civilization responsible for dispatching it. The tracing procedure is mere child’s play and, within five minutes, their engines are spooled up to full speed and the Battle Cruiser warps, almost instantaneously, into a near-Earth orbit.

Unfortunately, the shape of Australia, the first continent seen by the newly arrived VyJovians is – by some cosmic coincidence – almost exactly the same as an extremely blasphemous rune in VyJovian language whose existence is banned upon pain of death for the way in which it degrades the reputation of the VyJovian diety, Golob. And, while Australia on its own may not have been enough to precipitate what happened next, the fact that the first communication they received from Earth - “Welcome to Earth” – translates, phonetically, into the perfect Vyjovian for “Golob is a fuckwit” was enough for a third lieutenant, who was particularly religious and very much affected by the whole affair, to activate the Planet Killer cannon which vaporised the planet in milliseconds, leaving nothing more than molten slag where Earth had once stood. When it was realised, years later, that it had all been something of a misunderstanding and that a bit of mistake had been made, the lieutenant was told off quite sternly and received only 90% of his annual Golobian bonus that year. Which was, admittedly, of no real consolation to the nine billion disintegrated inhabitants of Earth...

And that is why it was probably a good job I chose to have a cup of tea…

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 15

2012-03-15T23:19:00.002Z

I found today's challenge - the road goes ever on - incredibly difficult for some reason. Maybe it was the lack of time, maybe it was a dip in creative energies, or maybe it was just a stupid idea to come up with that challenge in the first place! Whatever the reason, I feel this isn't one of my best pieces of work by any means...

But, this 30 day writing challenge is all about battling through such problems so, despite not being very pleased with what I've written, I'm going to offer it up all the same...

The Road Goes Ever On

The fog wrapped around us like a shroud, the car headlights serving to accomplish little but illuminate the thick grey mist that had closed in on us from every side. We had slowed down to little more than a crawl, hesitantly creeping along the contours of the road, when the fog suddenly lifted and we were once more out in the bright sunlight. After the claustrophobic confines of the fog, the light was so intense that I was forced to cover my eyes with one hand while simultaneously pulling the sun visor down with my other. As I did so, I felt a sudden wave of déjà vu overcome me.

“Whoah…”

“What?” asked Dave, alternating between staring at the motorway that was now unfurling ahead of us and looking across from the wheel to me.

“Nothing. Just déjà vu.”

“Oooh…that’s a glitch in the system,” he grinned. “We’re in the Matrix…”

“You do realise that it stopped being cool to quote from The Matrix more than ten years ago?”

“In your déjà vu, did I call you a putz in about five seconds?”

“No.”

“You’re a putz.”

“It wasn’t like that. I couldn’t remember the conversation we were having or anything; I just had this overwhelming feeling of familiarity creep over me.”

“Overwhelming feeling of familiarity creep over you?” laughed Dave.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Apart from being totally pretentious.”

“How is that pretentious?”

“How is it not pretentious?”

“I am not getting into this argument again. Just because I teach English Lit does not make me pretentious.”

“You call it English Lit. That is, I’m afraid, a bad sign already.”

“You’re just jealous because Mum is happy to tell her friends at the synagogue about what I do. You realise that she is still telling them you’re studying a PhD?”

“Yeah,” he smirked. “I just love how she’s so supportive of my musical ambitions.”

“I think she’d be more comfortable telling them that you were a pimp than a musician.”

“Because at least I’d have a trade, right?”

“I’ve used that line before, huh?”

“You know, I’m sure it’s only because I’m a musician that she’s happy to talk about you. If I’d actually bothered graduated on that law degree, you’dbe the son she never talked about instead.”

“I think I might prefer that.”

“Hey, I’ve actually been a practising lawyer for the last five years. I just keep banging on about the musician stuff to keep her from trying to set me up with hideously dull daughters of her friends.”

I smiled to myself and lay my head back in the seat, watching the green fields and trees at the side of the road slide smoothly by. Growing up, there was no one whose company I enjoyed more than Dave; he was two years older than me but we were most often together like twins. Thick as thieves, our father would always say. And things hadn’t changed really even now we were adults; I still loved spending time with Dave and this trip was a perfect excuse to get in a few hours of verbal sparring. Something stirred in my memory as I thought about this, a half memory that refused to reveal itself and which pulled away from me when I tried to grasp at it in my mind, but it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know where we were going.

“Where is it we’re going?”

“Huh?”

“I can’t remember,” I said clumsily, almost tripping over the words “I can’t remember where we’re going.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m not sure.” But, even as I said it, I felt a lurching in my stomach that told me I most definitely wasn’t alright. And, while I couldn’t work out what was wrong, I had a sense that there was something I should remember that would help me understand.

“Take your mind off it, you’re probably just travel sick.” said Dave, “Why don’t you tell me about that other work you’ve been doing?”

“What other work?”

“The work for the government?”

“When did I tell you about that?”

Dave glanced at me with something approaching puzzlement. “On the phone, few months back. Said it was all hush-hush but I figured you’d be able to tell me.”

I sighed. No one was supposed to know that I was doing part-time analysis work for MI6; I couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to let it slip to Dave. They’d trained me to tell no one about it and I’d gone and blabbed to my big brother.

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Oh come on; who’s going to know?”

“No, really. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

“Ok, now you really have got my interest up. You know I’m not going to let you get away with it that easily.”

The memory edged closer and I tried to relax this time, focus not on grabbing it but letting it come to me. As it moved closer, finally coalescing with clarity, I bolted forward in my seat and spun to face the man in the driver’s seat.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Hello? I’m Dave, your brother. Look, are you ok?”

“My brother is dead,” I spat at him. “So I am going to ask you one last time, who the fuck are you?”

“Seriously, Mike, you are really worrying me. What say we pull over at the next service station and you get some air?”

“This is wrong,” I said, looking around and truly feeling it for the first time. “This is all wrong.”

* * *

“Cancel run 102,” said the grey haired man, “He’s getting agitated. This isn’t going to work.”

“Cancelling.” said the assistant in the white coat. “What parameters should we alter for the next run? We could try the mother again?”

“No, the mother was a waste of time. He is clearly most closely bonded with his brother; his brother is the only person he would consider talking to about the encryption protocols. It’s the only person he really trusts.”

“But he keeps remembering his brother is dead.”

“We can compensate for that. Run the program again but I want to make changes to the brother’s sensitivity index in real-time.”

“Run 103, commencing.”

* * *