30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 11

I admit it, I'm running slightly late today. It's actually 24 minutes into Day 12 - although I can persuade myself that, since it's still Day 11 in many parts of the world - I have not failed. And yes, I know, I am rather easily persuaded in such circumstances...

So, without further ado, a tiny little story that tackles today's challenge - A point in history...

A Point in History

Professor Alfred J Pollock had never been, by any stretch of the imagination, what one could call popular.

He liked to blame poor genetics for his failings; after all, nature had chosen to endow him with a squeaky voice, myopic vision, a height of 5’ 2” and, by the age of only 15, male pattern baldness. However, the truth behind Professor Alfred J Pollock’s distinct lack of popularity was actually far simpler and it was a truth that he would never ever admit to himself. The truth was, Professor Alfred J Pollock was unpopular because he was a thoroughly obnoxious individual.

The research assistants in the laboratory were all well aware of Professor Pollock’s mean streak (that could, they sniggered behind his back, be measured in parsecs) and did their level best to avoid him as much as possible. If he was in a good mood, he would attempt humour so painfully bad that it made you physically wince; if he was in a bad mood, he would make your life a living hell in ways that may have been somehow cathartic for him.

Today, the research assistants knew that Professor Pollock would be in an even more apocalyptically bad mood than ever since the Trinsmann Committee had, for the fifth year running, turned him down for their award in Applied Physics. The research assistants knew this because they had en masse, over a Bunsen burner and boiling test tube, carefully steamed the Trinsmann Committee’s letter open and read the results. Consequently, Professor Pollock arrived at the laboratory to find that all nine of his research assistants had simultaneously fallen ill with food poisoning and had to go home.

Many people might have been discouraged by this but Professor Pollock was actually rather pleased as it would give him the opportunity to try out an experiment he had been putting together in secret for the last year. An application of quantum field theories and electro magnetism, he was certain that his temporal displacement field generator would be the invention that would finally allow him to put his name on the map. His intellect would finally overcome the inadequacies of his genes and he would finally be recognised for the genius that he truly was. Popularity would, he was sure, not be far behind. All he needed to do was to use the device to travel back to a point in history where his immense knowledge would allow him to have an unfair advantage of everyone around him.

He locked the laboratory door and took the device, which to the uninitiated eye may have resembled a rather ugly automatic coffee machine, and switched it on. There was a dull hum and a crackle of static in the air. The hum began to build in strength.

Professor Pollock happened to notice the letter while the machine was warming up and, as he read it, he felt a rage gather itself in his chest, spreading upwards to pulsate in his temples. How dare they attempt to belittle his genius? How dare they be so small minded that they couldn’t realise the towering significance of his accomplishments? How could these puerile, vacuous simpletons even begin to hope to grasp the magnificence of his intellect?

He’d show them, he thought. He had enough knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology to alter the very course of civilization and that was just what he would do. He’d go back far enough that he could his extensive knowledge to establish an empire, a glittering empire that would last for millennia. The name of Alfed J Pollock would become enshrined in myth and legend. Yes, he just needed to go back far enough. The Roman Empire should do it, he thought. He had no doubt that he would seem almost godly to them

The device buzzed and hummed in readiness. Alfred J Pollock smiled as he pressed the button, let them doubt his genius now.

*            *              *

Centurion Cornelius Asiaticus was standing guard, thoughts drifting off to the gladiators he watched a few days earlier when he felt an impossibly sudden weight descend upon the spear in his hand. He stumbled to one side, letting go of the spear, which was now somehow neatly dissecting the body of a small man with no hair and ridiculous looking clothing. The man looked rather surprised, staggered two paces and fell over in a bloody heap.

*           *             *

Professor Alfred J Pollock, hands feebly scrabbling against the rough wooden shaft of the spear that was firmly embedded in his lower abdomen, lay in the dirt and had just time enough time before he died to reflect, with some irony, that this was not quite the point in history he had had in mind…

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 10

For a few hours this evening I was rather worried that I was going to be entirely too tired to write anything that anyone could possibly enjoy reading. After having a busy day yesterday, and a late night, I was up before 6am this morning and in work for 7.30am. By the end of the day, all I wanted to do was come home and crawl up in bed...

But, the 30 day writing challenge kept me going and, with the help of several cups of tea (and some rather sugary doughnuts), I mustered up enough energy to get me through Day 10's challenge - The Interview.

The Interview

“Ah, come in,” said the interviewer, looking up with the faintest hint of an almost entirely insincere smile, “please, take a seat.”

                Othrod closed the door behind him and nervously shuffled across the room before sliding himself into the large, green leather chair that lay opposite the interviewer’s oak desk. He folded his hands neatly on his lap and waited patiently while the interviewer, an old man with a scraggly grey beard, read through a sheet of paper upon which was written something in an archaic scrawl.

                “Hmm,” said the interviewer as he read his way through the notes, his long fingers steepled delicately beneath his chin.

                Othrod, remembering having once been told that the golden rule in interviews was to only talk when you were asked a direct question, stayed silent and let the interviewer read on. Finally, after a few minutes of rather awkward silence, the man put the paper to one side and looked Othrod up and down.

                “Othrod is it, eh?”

                “Yes, sir.”

                “Well Othrod, why don’t we get started with you telling me about your greatest strength.”

                “My greatest strength,” said Othrod uncertainly, “is that I am very strong.”

                “Good,” smiled the man and marked a tick on a fresh piece of paper. “And how about your greatest weakness?”

                “Umm,” said Othrod and scratched his head absently, before remembering that this was sometimes considered a rather poor exhibition of manners in an interview. “Don’t really know.”

                “No known weaknesses,” intoned the man, jotting a line of text below the initial tick. “Good, good.”

                “Now, I can see from your resume that you’ve had quite some experience but I was wondering what would you consider to be your real area of specialty?

                Othrod rocked his head from side to side in thought, “I think I would have to say my specialty is the bloodletting.”

                “Bloodletting. Right.” said the man, before looking up. “And can you perhaps narrow that down for me a little?”

                “Not really, no.”

                “I see, more of a generalist,” said the man and wrote it down on the paper, “Alright, can you tell me what the reason was for you leaving your last job?

                “Termination.”

                “You were fired?”

                “Oh no,” replied Othrod, earnestly, “My employer was terminated.”

                “Ah, of course,” smiled the man. “Agasith the Merciless – what was it?”

                “Think it was a hero.”

                “A hero? Bloody typical,” sighed the man, “always out and about doing their heroic deeds with little thought for the immense strain that they place on the livelihoods of us Dark Lords.”

                Othrod nodded in what he hoped was a sympathetic fashion.

                “And who were you working for before that?”

                “Margaath the Vile.”

                “Oh, lovely man,” smiled the interviewer, “Just lovely. It was such a shame about that whole business with the fire demon.  I assume that’s when you left his employment?”

                Othrod nodded.

                “Yes, of course,” said the man, “It does tend to be rather difficult to be an effective Evil Wizard when your arms and legs have been melted off.”

                “And I see before that, that you interned with Grabalob the Unjust.”

                “Just for six months.”

                “Still, it’s a good name to have on your resume. Grabalob might no longer be the supreme force of ungodly terror that he once was, but he’s still one of the premier employers out there.”

                The man folded the paper to one side and looked hard at Othrod.

                “Well, I think I may have an opportunity for you. It would have to be an entry position, I’m afraid – which might be off putting for an Orc with so much experience – but times are hard at the moment. Ever since the magical downturn, well we’ve been fighting for scraps frankly. Would that be a problem?”

“No, no,” said Othrod, working hard to contain a grin.

“Good, because I’m pretty sure this recession is only going to be short term. We just need to make sure, in the meantime, that we to try to fight smarter, not harder – same amount of work, less minions. Mark my word, downsizing is really going to be the way forward in this industry.”

“So, with that said, I can offer you a rank and file position, frontline battalion, probably have you using, oh, an axe. You get full accommodation in a shared employee dungeon situated directly below my Dark Tower. There’s no pension, no health care plan and no real pay to mention, but you do get all the entrails you can eat.”

“Sounds fair.”

“Excellent,” smiled the man, “Well, I think you’re going to fit in just fine here. If I could just get you to sign here in blood, we’ll go and introduce you to the rest of the team and get you issued with a company loincloth…”

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 9

I have to admit, today was disappointing for me. I worked flat out all day, plenty of manual labour, and when I came home all I could manage to do was eat and then stretch out with a cup of tea.

Despite the fact that, while working this afternoon, the seed of an idea was born for today's challenge - El Diablo - and, despite the fact that this seed germinated into a (frankly strange) story that begins with a Mexican drug lord and heads off in an altogether different direction, I just didn't have either time or energy to write it properly tonight. I finally started at about 9.30pm and, two hours later, all I've got is a 640 word snippet that barely hints at the story still to come.

So, I make a solemn (and public) promise that I will finish this strange little story when I have more time. Although, I guess I can't beat myself up too much about it - after all, managing to bang out 640 words (that I'm vaguely happy with) in two hours after a long and tiring day is pretty good. But I'm still disappointed I couldn't share the whole story with you...

El Diablo

I had queued the line at Imperial Avenue for over an hour, air con up full against the baking sun, before crossing the border into Mexicali. The border guards scarcely glanced at me as I drove past them, I guess I have that kind of face, and I headed south taking Mexico 5, the road to San Felipe. The low buildings that lay clustered beside the road in the centre of the city soon gave way to scattered housing, which then gave way to little more than scrub brush at the side of the road. Within forty minutes, I was in the desert; flat blue sky, wispy white clouds, a mountain range rising off to the west of me.

                My GPS had fallen silent once I arrived in Mexico, the voice which had, seemingly, been keen to give me directions every fifty yards was struck suddenly dumb south of the border. The screen gave me nothing more than my trip distance and longitude and latitude. Which was fine by me; I knew exactly where I was going.

                Just over an hour south of Mexicali, I turned off Mexico 5 and headed west on what counts for a road in this part of the world, little more than a dirt track marked out by some old tires and white crosses to honour those considerably less fortunate in their driving. The Cadillac I’d hired protested at my decision, juddering and creaking as it bounced from rut to rut, from pothole to pothole, and I made a note to myself to always make sure I chose something with four wheel drive in future.

                Little villages came and went; wooden houses dusted against the landscape, white satellite dishes the only real reminder that we were in the 21^st century. The dirt track would occasionally interface with a stretch of ancient, pitted asphalt before eventually blending back into the desert dirt. People would sometimes look up as I passed, the car out of place alongside the rusting pickup trucks and worn out sedans, but no one stared too long. It didn’t pay to stare too long in a place like this.

                Almost three hours since I’d crossed the border, I finally pulled into Loma Chica; driving past the white stone houses and church and up an even smaller road that led to the ranch which overlooked the village.  This was Ramiro Garcia’s fiefdom and I knew that his lookouts had likely reported my impending arrival at least an hour ago; it was therefore not a surprise to find three men with machine pistols waiting outside the large black gate that led to the interior of the ranch. I rolled down the window and ignored their macho posturing.

               “I’m Mr. Dalton, I believe I’m expected.”

               “Get of the car,” said the man nearest to my door, his black eyes boring into me, “expected or not, no one sees Senor Garcia unless I search them.”

              I smiled and opened the door, raising my hands in that universal gesture of compliance as I stepped out and let the man with the black eyes pat me down. He was fairly good at his job, to be honest; quick but conscientious and easier on me than the customs official on my last trip through LAX. I handed him my briefcase and he opened it, patting down the sides and tapping on the base to check for false compartments. Finally satisfied, he closed the case and returned it to me before stepping back and nodding to his compatriots who, in turn, radioed to the men that were behind the gate to open it.

                “This way,” said the man who had searched me, and gestured towards the open gate. He allowed me to take the lead but kept close to my shoulder, “but if you make a wrong move, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 8

I decided that, for today's challenge - A place that exists only in your mind - I would use it as an opportunity to rework a short section from the novel I have been working on for the last year. Welcome to the world that fills my head and what little spare-time I possess...

Trinity

Militza had heard it said that Trinity was the largest of the True Cities, save perhaps for Titan, and as she looked up at the wall of old, scarred metal that led eventually to the upper deck and Top Side and the Spinaccles that soared still higher, she found it hard to imagine there could be a city that was bigger. There had been a time ten cycles distant, before the War of the Rolling Plains, when Trinity had been called Iron Reach and had been no larger than its sister city, Iron Cloud; but then the city had devoured and amalgamated two of its rivals in the Great War; had shattered the city of Tard in two and bound its remains and engines to the north of the city, had wrought huge destruction upon the city of Cyan and harnessed its corpse as an extension to the city’s eastern boundary. Trinity; three cities as one, grinding their way slowly but relentlessly citywise.

Further along the city’s length, she could see a cluster of yellow coated workers busying themselves; an orange, industrial sized, traction engine matching its speed with the city in a cloud of grey steam; a network of wooden gangplanks and platforms strung across the gap between it and the city walls so that the workers could scurry to and fro, like spiders, to carry out essential maintenance on the city’s wheels. The south side of the city featured two hundred wheels, each of which stood more than four times taller than the tallest man; they were divided into groups of five that were spaced equally and encased inside huge metal belts that ensured the city could maintain traction on even the most unforgiving of surfaces. The noise of Trinity’s passage was immense, the sound almost a physical thing; metal screaming against metal as the huge and heavy plates of the wheel belts clanked and clamoured against each other.

Militza stepped tentatively off the metal ramp and onto solid ground, experiencing a slight jolt as she strived to adjust to the fact that she had stepped from a slow moving object to a static surface, and then walked away from the city with the posture of somebody who was at least thirty years older, walked away from Trinity, and into its Caravan, without even a glance back.

The Caravan that surrounded Trinity on both sides for half a league and trailed in its wake for almost two, like a pack of gulls following a fishing boat; was a ramshackle conglomeration of trading vessels and cargo transporters, mobile factories and farm units, and a thousand different craft upon which people were crammed together in tightly confined sleeping quarters. It was organic, its shape and consistency ebbing and flowing within each cycle. The Caravan would shrink when they drew near to the Dreaming Plains; the mining vessels and smelters and foundries surging ahead to make best use of the limited time that was available to them, accompanied by a retinue of City Guards to protect against raiders and enough craft to accommodate their workforce. Then, as Trinity pushed north and crossed into the Ice Wastes to bridge the frozen Boreal Ocean, the Caravan would swell in both size and population as nomadic tribes attached themselves to its flanks, craving the security the city offered in the desolate north where strange things haunted the ice.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 7

The hardest part about today's challenge - A day in the life of your favourite comic book hero - was to pick just one superhero to write about...

I admit it, I love comics. Always have. It started as a child when I started reading 2000AD and fell in love with Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog; then, as I grew older, I got into Marvel Comics; The X-Men, New Mutants and The Avengers (to name but a few!). And I still have a soft spot for them...

So, I worked through quite a few possibilities before I finally settled on the story that I finally wrote. I toyed with the idea of writing something gritty based on Judge Dredd, played with concept of something comedic (a day in the life of Galactus - I've always wondered whether he has hobbies and a social life when he's not out devouring worlds) before realising that I was going to cheat a little bit.

Cheat, because the character that follows isn't my favourite comic book character, often because he seems so flat at times; he's such a boy scout of a character that it's often hard to feel excited about him (and it doesn't help that he's ridiculously overpowered). But, I wanted to write something a bit different, something that reflects a little on how might feel to be in that position. So, a minor cheat, but I hope you'll think it was worth it...

On being a hero...

I sit on a mountain top and, as the sun begins to edge its way over the horizon, I close my eyes and listen to the world around me.

                A few hundred feet below where I sit, I can hear the soft steps of an arctic fox padding across the snow; further still, a stream flows half a mile away, waters lapping against the jagged rocks that line it; moving further and I can hear the engine of a snow mobile as it is started five miles away. I listen to the undulations in the heartbeat of a man who is standing, cooking, in his kitchen in a log cabin that stands more than twenty miles from me. I can hear a minor congenital defect in the upper left ventricle of his heart that he is, likely, totally unaware of.  More than a hundred miles away, several hundred feet beneath the steel grey surface of the Atlantic Ocean, a pod of Blue Whales signal each other, their tails sweeping them through the water with a powerful monotony.

I could go on. I could go further and further, scan the very length and breadth of this world but I have heard enough and so I consciously filter the sounds out again, return to a state of hearing more closely approximating that of this planet’s native population.

                I always try to start the day with solitude; it helps me maintain some semblance of sanity. Sometimes it’s a snow topped mountain, sometime a sun baked desert, other times the ink black abyss of an ocean trench; I just need time on my own. Time to reflect on who I am, on what I should be doing.

                More than one hundred and fifty thousand people die every single day, most of them the result of simple mortality; lives lost to a battle with time that can never be won, to sickness or old age; but thousands are the result of accidents, thousands more the result of murder. On average, there are four or five people dying as the result of an accident or murder every single minute of every single day. You might find that a hard fact to process, it’s even harder for me to live with.

                How do I weigh up the value of lives? How can I weigh the value of lives? Yet I have to do that every single day. I choose to save the fifty people whose ferry is about to capsize, save them with the knowledge that this means that I cannot save the woman whose car is dangling over a precipice, or the young boy choking on a swallowed toy, or the man who will be gunned down by fleeing bank robbers. The truth is, I have to make judgement calls every waking moment of my existence.

                And then there are the times that I am prevented from acting because of the illusion that I need to maintain. Lately, that’s something I’ve struggled to justify to myself.  The need to preserve my true identity, to protect the lives of those around me and those that I love; that’s always been the rationale for this double life I lead. But how do I balance those lives against the lives that I must sacrifice in order to maintain my true identity? How are their lives any different to the lives of the woman in her car, the choking boy, the gunshot victim?

                The guilt follows me, chokes me with indecision, and yet worse than the guilt is the ever present desire I feel to truly fix things. It would be so very easy to save this world from itself, but I cannot bring myself to do so; maybe because I know that my actions could easily see me cross the fine line from hero to despot. I could destroy the nuclear weapons stored in their subterranean vaults, I could crush armies even as they wage their petty wars, I could smite the persecutors from the very face of this planet, I could refashion this world in an image I see fit, could bring about such great changes. But I am afraid to do so.

                And so, guilty and afraid, I sit on a mountain top and reflect on who I am and what I should be.  I am a hero, if you believe the press –and I should know, I write many of the stories myself – but each day I believe it less and less myself. I am Godlike, yet I am ineffectual. I have the power to alter the world, yet I am afraid to grasp it. I am Superman. But I feel it less and less each day.