Scribbles From An Abstract Mind

[D20 Modern] Twitch Reflex

2012-01-30T20:43:00.001-05:00

There was a stranger sitting in the living room when he got home. He thought about going for the gun in his waistband, hesitated. The stranger already had his out, sitting in his lap, one hand resting casually on the butt. Glock service pistol, old style; looked like a custom barrel, nickle silver instead of the usual black. Weird looking writing all over it, too, like somebody's kid had tried to decorate it with red nail polish.

"Sit." The stranger gestured at the couch with two fingers, not moving the hand with the gun. A professional; not what he'd expected. Matsumi had indicated that there were strangers sniffing around the operation, but he'd been expecting Scoobies. A bunch of teenaged punks, more bravado than brains, who had stumbled across something they didn't understand, and couldn't realize they were in over their heads. The stranger looked like a punk, but more like a street bum than a super sleuth; he was pale and skinny, drowning in an old Army jacket at least two sizes too big for him. The old woodland style camouflage, two or three uniform changes ago - before they started going to chameleon cloth. Olive green cargo pants peeked out from underneath the jacket, the black of the Glock very stark against the faded canvas. Probably not a very tall man. The face could be young or old, not wrinkled by worn - like the owner had been awake too long, seen too much. The dark hair was lightened in streaks, sun bleaching or premature aging he couldn't tell in the light. But the hand on the gun didn't look particularly old, and it was steady as a rock.

"You're James St.Maarten," he said calmly as James settled into the couch, folded one leg across the other, and rested one hand in his lap. He let the other fall to his side, where it was hidden by his leg and close to the partition between the cushions. He kept an antique Smith & Wesson in the couch, a 5 shot J-frame revolver loaded with .38 frangible rounds. They wouldn't do much good if the kid was wearing armor; if he wasn't, they'd make a gaping hole out of his chest. Khorvath had given it some of his own "special" modifications, as well; concealment, silence, speed. The kid would never know what hit him. Oblivious, he kept talking. "By day, you're a mild mannered middle manager for a minor manufacturing concern. You have a good relationship with your workers, you get decent but not outstanding evaluations from your supervisors, and in ten more years your retirement will be vested - if you live to see retirement, at any rate." That sounded uncomfortably like a threat, and James shifted uneasily using the fidgeting to disguise his hand feeling for the gun. The damn thing had shifted since the last time he'd checked it, the downside to hiding something where there was movement and activity. A cop would have produced a warrant by now, and a gangbanger wouldn't be making veiled threats; he would have started off the conversation by taking out his knees with a tire iron as he walked in the door. Gangers lacked subtlety. "After all, your night life is certainly riskier than the average person's. Night time, that's your secret time, for your whole other life. You like to think of yourself as a criminal mastermind, and you call yourself 'Purple Haze' or some such to deal your drugs, but the sad fact of the matter is that you're a very tiny fish in a very large pond." The stranger looked off into the distance, as though staring straight through the wall, and then shrugged. James gritted his teeth as he tried to remember if he'd moved the revolver or not. Maybe he'd tucked it under his pillow after he had to ditch the derringer... "You think you're a bad man because you've had to kill one or two people and you keep a gun in your couch, but really you're just small potatoes."

James stiffened slightly. The stranger smiled slightly and slipped his free hand into an inside pocket, pulling out the revolver by the butt with two fingers. "Looking for this?" He dropped it back into the pocket and continued his monologue without a pause. "Matsumi, Khorvath, Belegenn - these are bigger fish, but they're still pretty tiny, still just local. But they work with big fish, world shakers, and they're the ones I'm interested in."

"Who are you?" James asked quietly. It was the first thing he'd said since he'd gotten home.

"They call me Twitch," the stranger said, as though it were of no account. You could tell a lot by someone from their nickname, though; that sounded like a drug handle, the sort of name junkies called each other by. Short, few syllables, descriptive. He wasn't twitching now, though; he was staring at James as though if he wrinkled his brow a bit, squinted his eyes, he could see inside the drug peddler's head; he just wasn't sure if he wanted to. "I'm here because they figured I could do this with the least amount of mess. Kinnan is scarier and Tyson is tougher, but I'm the one who knows the scene the best, so I'm the one who got the job. They could have asked Eris, of course, but she spends enough time swimming in scummy pools as it is. She's got morals, too. Might have wanted to call the cops after she saw your file, we couldn't have that. So, the way this is going to go, Jimmy boy, is I'm going to ask you some very specific questions concerning your activities and your friends, and you're going to give me some very specific answers. After that, you're going to go legitimate. Don't worry about cutting off contact with your circle, we're going to do that for you. You're going to focus on your day job, you're going to be a constructive citizen, and you're going to live until you see retirement age."

"And if I fail to give you those specific answers?" James asked, quietly filing away those names for later. He wasn't entirely sure what conclusions these clues were leading him to; the stranger talked like a spook, but made amateur errors like a Scooby. He thought James was small time, but he was making small time mistakes left and right.

"Then obviously, none of what I just said is going to happen." Twitch smiled gently, as though seeing something very pleasant through the wall past James' head. "We'll have to pick up another little fish who can lead us to the big fish. We have plenty of hooks, after all. Let's start with the name of the club you've been meeting at, and go from there."

James shrugged, and complied. There weren't very many questions; most of the answers, he knew by heart. The rest, he didn't bother to lie about. After perhaps half an hour of the terse exchange, Twitch stood up without warning. "I guess that about does it. Imagine I won't be seeing you again, Mr. St.Maarten." He slipped the Glock into a coat pocket; James stared at him, dumbfounded. The punk had just given up whatever advantage he had, in that baggy coat. A full size service pistol, even in a pocket as baggy as that of the fatigue jacket, would hang up if he tried to quick draw it. He slid a hand to his waistband, feeling the butt of his carry gun stabbing into his side; only a .380, but it carried some of the new Velicitor bullets, and Khorvath had done his magic on them, too. Literally, in this case. He tensed his muscles as Twitch walked towards the door, and raised his hand to touch the latch. One quick move, and then all he'd have to do is make some phone calls to get rid of the body.

"Mr. St.Maarten?" Twitch asked, his voice slightly amused.

"Yes?" James tried to keep the wide rictus of the smile from his face, but it was hard - so hard. His fingers brushed the pistol butt, and he leaned forward to draw and empty the magazine into the idiot's back.

"You never asked why they call me 'Twitch.'"

He pulled the pistol free, focusing on the needle thin front sight, finger tensing on the trigger. Time froze; Twitch was no longer standing with his back to him, hand on the latch. Instead, he had half turned, and the Glock had appeared in his hand as though by magic. It roared, just once, and the world went black.

Twitch whistled softly to himself as he stepped outside. Kinnan's Hummer growled as he brought it up to the curb; Eris was sitting shotgun, so Twitch got in the back. "Tyson still following Matsumi?" he asked cheerfully.

"Yeah," Kinnan said. "You get anything out of that St.Maarten prick?"

"Just confirmed what we already knew," Twitch shrugged. "Nothing really important, but I wasn't expecting much. He was just a little fish."

"So what was the point of this? Let's just call the cops on his ass and call it a night." Eris huffed, folding her arms across her ample bosom.

Twitch shrugged. "Nah, guy like that's got a short lifespan. He's going to draw down on the wrong person one day, find himself on the bad end of a gun. Learn he's not as slick, or as fast, as he thought he was." He looked out the window as the Hummer started to pull away from the curb, then brightened. "Oh! I gotcha a present." He pulled the .38 out of his pocket and passed it up to Eris, who took it gingerly and looked at it as thought it were a dead fish.

"Thanks," she said in a tone that indicated anything but. Kinnan scowled over his shoulder at the smaller man.

"What, you didn't get me anything?"

"Next thug we beat up, promise," Twitch said with a smile.

A Day In The Life Of Writer Maureen Johnson

2012-01-27T21:03:00.004-05:00

(Thanks to a suggestion by my friend Joanna.)

It's quiet in the New York apartment, too quiet. Once upon a time, this was a charming little walk up, three rooms that might make good closets in more sensible cities, but are considered stunningly spacious by the standards of the Big Apple - with a price to match. Nowadays, though, it's a churning jungle - so many plants packed so closely together that the walls and even the ceiling can barely be seen through their leafy fronds. It's sweltering in here, the heavy oppressive weight of thousands of living things crammed into so tight a space, helped along by pots of water kept ever boiling on little hot plates in the corners; what the landlord might say of this tropical paradise will never be known, for he vanished into the green the last time he did an apartment inspection, never to be seen again. This is the domain of the Maurcat, a fierce and solitary jungle predator. As footsteps echo through the foliage, the heavy plodding tread of one full of foreboding, the solitary inhabitant of the jungle stirs, slits open her eyes. Prey approaches; in response to the sound, her stomach growls softly, echoed by a low rumbling purr deep in her throat. Like Pavlov's dog, she begins to drool, letting her jaw unhinge and fall open, spilling ropy strands out onto the thick loam that covers the remains of the shag carpet. She slides out from under the giant, prehistoric fern that shields her from the morning light streaming through the high, slightly fogged windows that look out on a busy New York street, ignoring the glare that threatens to penetrate her skull with stabbing spears of radiance. There's no time to flinch from the sun when there's food in the offering. She low crawls through the undergrowth, moving in time with the plodding footsteps that bring her meal ever closer to her, silent as the grave. The steps grow louder as they draw nearer, but slower; their owner dreading the ordeal he knows is coming. She continues to slink along the undergrowth, peering through the tangles of wild hair that hide her face; at long last, she sits in front of the door, ears perked, jaw still hanging loose in blissful anticipation. She knows he stands on the other side of the thick door, hand raised to knock, frozen in terror; she knows she can outwait him, even though her stomach is twisted in knots and the hunger courses through her veins like a living thing, urging her to pounce, urging her to spring.

At long last, after a lifetime of waiting, comes the soft, hesitant tap at the door. She lunges, whipping free the chain and the locks in a single, practiced motion, flinging open the heavy door. Despite knowing it's coming and anticipating, the delivery man still flinches as the wild eyed monster tears the bag from his hands, snarling and snapping. The door slams shut again before he can step back, leaving his hands empty and trembling. The call to this apartment comes perhaps once a week; it's always paid in advance by credit card, usually with a healthy tip. The corporate account of some publishing company across town; the boss didn't ask questions. He was starting to wonder if the tip was really worth going through this ordeal once a week. Sooner or later, someone was going to forget an egg roll or the dumplings were going to be cold, and then he could kiss his life goodbye.

A terrible growl came from behind the door, and he almost fell over himself scrambling backwards and away. Busy stuffing her mouth with vegetables and tofu chunks, styrofoam containers and all, Maureen Johnson - infamous young adult author - smiles as she hears the footsteps pounding away down the hall, much faster than they had arrived.

Fast food and terror. Breakfast of champions.

Hunger momentarily sated, she pushes aside a clump of poisonous brambles to expose the low, hulking form of a computer - if it were developed by Nikola Tesla on one of his notorious beer and opium binges. The case is made of brass and copper, green with verdigris in the humid air of the apartment, the monitor case is wood - decorated with various colorful fungi - while the screen is an uncut crystal that buzzes with the hum of ten thousand killer bees. The computer only has two purposes; to assist her in producing the novels that are an almost unwilling side effect of her demented genius, and trolling Twitter. She types as her eyes scan the screen, back and forth, as fast as a dreamer rapt in sleep; taking in everything, feeding as surely from the words on the screen as she had from the delivered food, sating deeper and darker hungers in the wellsprings of information. Her fingers dance across the keyboard, deftly stroking the carved knucklebones; they wail softly as she taps them, as though pained by her touch, and each tweet enters the world with a sob like a newborn ripped from its warm, comforting womb. Soon, she will turn from the nest of social media and begin stalking another story, her mind already feeling its way through the labyrinthine patterns, testing its twisted, intricate skeins. First, though... her ears twitch lightly as she recognizes the sound of something rustling through the underbrush, the skittery, chitinous sound so sweetly familiar... she leaps from her computer as Four Questions burst out of the foliage, their claws clip-clapping menacingly. They thought they had her at bay; more fools, they. She lands full on the back of the first one, crushing it under her despite its heavy, gnarled shell. "What crayon would you be, if you were trapped in a box of Crayolas?" it moans as it expires. "Cerulean orange, with polka dot stripes." She replies absently, ducking under the slashing talons of the next. Rather than the lobster claws of the first, this one has twin blades like an oversized praying mantis, mounted on the legs of a spider. She does a backflip, kicking its mandibles off, and following it up with a crushing axe kick that smashes its abdomen. The mandibles chitter, "where do my socks keep disappearing off to?" as they fly into the underbrush.

"The sock gnomes emerge from their hiding places beneath the cupboards and eat them, a cannibalistic sacrifice to Bhaal-Ahriman," she spits. The third wraps its centipede body around her, trying to crush her like an anaconda would; she flexes her arms, and it tears into gossamer shreds, shrieking "Do you know where your towel is?" Maureen stands on its tattered carcass and raises her arms triumphantly to the sky.

"It sent me a postcard after it conquered Gaul, but I haven't heard from it since."

The last Question rolls itself up into a tight ball, as if hoping to hide from her - or, worst to worst, keep her at bay with its armored carapace. She leaped forward and punted it, reliving her glory days as the lead kicker for the Denver Broncos, before Tim Tebow broke the gem of worlds and rewrote reality. She liked things better this day, but sometimes she missed the smell of the locker rooms. The Question smashes into one of the apartment walls, and slowly slides to the ground, now mostly flat. It whispers, "Was it always like this?" before it expires.

"Only on Tuesdays," Maureen says, and sits down at her computer to spend the rest of the day writing.

A white blank page...

2012-01-23T18:49:00.001-05:00

And a swelling ra~ge

Ra~ge

Or, to be more accurate, discomfort. I hate empty pages; they mock me, they taunt me, they toy with me. "Nothing you can ever write," they say, "will be good enough for our limitless potential." This is why I end up with so many empty notebooks, or worse, notebook with but one page filled.

I've been pretty good about keeping up my daily 1K; it's surely premature to go patting myself on the back for it just yet, seeing how we're not even a full month into 2012, but I can't remember the last time (other than NaNoWriMo) that I've managed to keep up that kind of word output. Previous attempts to institute a daily writing regimen have failed, somewhat miserably; thus far, I've managed to average a grand a day. "Average" wasn't the intention, lo those twenty three days ago; it was supposed to be one thousand, no exceptions, with anything over that goal point surplus and discarded in the great scheme of things. But life does what life does, and given the days I've felt like crap from long work hours or fighting a cold that keeps migrating back and forth between chest and sinuses, there have been times that I've only been able to manage 800, or thereabouts. But usually, if I can scramble out that many, I can manage the full thousand. There are a couple of completed stories under the belt, more blog posts than I'd originally conceived, even a long e-mail to my wife one day when I was caught up playing Morrowind and rolled my daily communication and daily writing project into one, while we were out to sea this past week.

I'm not entirely sure why today is so lacking in inspiration; work wasn't particularly stressful, with the day spent cleaning up my shop or doing SAMMS (Safety Afloat Management System... or something along those lines) checks on various firefighting appliances around the ship, most notably the fire dampers on the deep fryers. Nothing particularly stressful. I've been re-reading David Weber and John Ringo's "Prince Roger" series, and I'm about halfway through the last novel, "We Few" (and quietly mourning the fact that the series has been declared done by its creators, with no more to be had). There's a subgenre of military sci-fi that involves the heroes, working from a base of higher technological/strategic knowledge than their foe, proceeding to mop the floor with a numerically superior enemy; the Prince Roger novels, Eric Flint's "Belisarius" series, David Weber and S.M. Stirling's "Conqueror" series, and so on. I'm unsure whether it's the military adventurism aspect that appeals to me, or the element of building, improvisation, and creation necessary; perhaps, as with so many things, it's all of the above. My wife, bless her, purchased new undergarments for me, as all of mine seem to be mysteriously vanishing down the rabbit hole somewhere in the depths of the house. She then proceeded to cook an amazing dinner of slow cooked pork tenderloin and roasted new potatoes, both of them wonderfully seasoned; even the Squeakermonster ate her entire meal, although she did have to be coaxed along at one point when she thought she could skip straight to dessert. Five year olds, gods love 'em.

Lord knows, I have plenty of writing projects to take my attention. I'm a goodly ways stuck into my first entry for the Spire shared world project, and I'm finding trouble fitting the next scene together. Because it's so exposition-riffic - a necessary flaw or feature, depending on your view, when you're the lead creator on the team - I'm tempted to go ahead and slap it up for group review unfinished, but that violates one of the few group rules - namely, that we're not posting serial fiction here. Completed works only, please. Which, of course, means I should really be focusing on that, rather than this. Similarly, I've gotten very little progress written on my, um, "special" project - I haven't gotten any further reader/reviewer offers on it, so it's not like I'm keeping an audience waiting, but it's still an ambitious enough project that, if I'm going to do it, I should really get moving on it in order to accomplish, well, anything.

And, not at all least, my friend Joanna has suggested that I write an adventure story about a day in the life of possibly/probably insane young adult author and prolific tweeter Maureen Johnson - a deliciously madcap idea, but one that unfortunately didn't come until after I'd shut down Twitter and started working on this (and that I only noticed at all because my phone chimed at me when I got the tweet, and I'm willing to accept just about any distraction if it'll keep me from working).

Speaking of distractions, I just raided the pork loin again. SO. TASTY. It's so good, in fact, that I'm going to ignore all the dirty connotations of "pork loin" and take the high road of OMNOMNOM.

I kind of want to work OMNOMNOM into a fantasy or sci fi story somewhere, maybe as a monastery or something similar. I think it would be amusing... but perhaps a touch too obvious. Internet memes are everywhere, and even people who've never even heard of Zero Wing can recognize phrases like "All your base".

And on that note, I think I'm off to give someone an arrow to the knee.

Oh, oh Switzerland...

2012-01-20T22:02:00.002-05:00

I never thought I'd have you as a friend

I'm praying it was not at all pretend

I need you now

To help pick me up from off the ground...

So, lo I have returned again, in accordance with the prophecies. If you didn't miss me - or even note my absence - don't feel too bad; it was just a quick jaunt out to sea, less than a full calendar week in length, down off the coast of La Florida for fun and games with the Navy. We did very little, for all our time out to sea; not many customers, and not much fuel given to those we did see. It was, in summary, pretty ridiculous.

But ridiculous is what they pay us for, so off we went, and did what we must do. There are a number of things I hate about going out to sea, especially for such a short time and for such little reason; leaving my wife and daughter, sleeping on the narrow, uncomfortable Navy bunks (even if we do have better mattresses on them - and I use the term "better" with slightly cavalierly), my snoring roommate. My wife occasionally snores. I occasionally snore, and receive my wife's elbow of death for it. My brother and my dad both had issues with snoring, and both have submitted to sleep studies and been equipped with CPAP machines. My cubemate, herein dubbed The Bear in any further blog posts, puts all of the above to shame - and then some. And for any of my family members reading this, YES. He is actually louder and more obnoxious than DAD. The noises the man makes when he sleeps are almost terrifying - I've given him the nickname "Bear" because that's what he sounds like, an angry bear.

Going to sea is a matter of giving up the little things, the things one takes for granted. For example, without fail, the moment the ship gets underway I want a drink. I drink very seldomly when I'm home, which is pretty amusing for a home brewer; I give away more of my product than I consume myself, and even then the stuff that I keep for myself often ends up going to waste, simply because it goes off before I get around to drinking it. One of the reasons I switched from brewing beer to making wine and mead; they last longer, sitting in their bottles waiting for me to get into the mood to drink them. Likewise, I have more than a few bottles of harder beverages sitting on top of my fridge, and filling one of the upstairs closets; I simply don't drink very often, and when I do, it's seldom more than a couple fingers of whisk(e)y. And yet, the moment the ship gets underway, I find myself longing for a tall and frothy mug. Is it the increased stress of being out to sea, or just because I want what I can't have? I may never know. I've been home a little over an hour as I type this, and I have yet to have anything stronger than a Vernor's ginger ale and a mug of tea. I'm still working on the tea. Hole Mole, if you're interested. Mmm, chocolate and spices.

One of those little things is Skyrim. I play on PS3; sure, I could drag it back and forth to the ship with me, but I don't have a TV really worth playing it on (the one in my Fire Marshal shop is incredibly small, and so far from HD you can't see it from there), and running off with it would deprive my wife of half of her Blu-Ray capabilities. Most of them, really, since we haven't gotten around to hooking the Blu-Ray player back up since we got the PS3, but that could be arranged. It would be a temporary joy, anyway, as I can't bring it on deployment with me; I'm planning on leaving the ship mid deployment, and flying it home would be... problematic. Ship it? Risk the baggage handlers smashing as they carelessly fling luggage about? Risk it getting stolen? All of this assumes, of course, that She Who Must Be Obeyed would allow it to wander off on high seas adventures with me; she doesn't have many PS3 games, but she does have a couple and, sooner or later, will want to play them. Getting it for PC would involve getting a much more powerful laptop than my little Eee; expensive, heavy, and other than Skyrim, I can't think of too many PC games out there that I would be interested in. Besides, it would involve starting all over again, and at level 60 (or damn near), that's not something I'm looking forward to.

So, I endure. It occurred to me, just before this last trip, that I could maybe replace the urge to play Skyrim with something else, something similar. And it occurred to me, that my Eee has specs actually slightly superior - in some ways - than my first laptop, the one that I used to play Morrowind for hours on. So... one thing led to another, and I found myself once again firing up The Elder Scrolls III, and wandering about the island of Vvardenfell. It's not a perfect experience - I have to keep the view distance and several other graphics options dialed down, for starters, and I'm not sure if I can take a Solstheim snowstorm yet, although rain and duststorms seem to process just fine - but it's enough to scratch the itch, just a little.

It did lead to a list of various things that Skyrim lacks that Morrowind has, and vice versa. Most of these involve around various methods of fast travel; playing Morrowind is not unlike watching the extended cuts of The Lord of the Rings, it's about a hundred hours of walking. Vvardenfell may be a small island, but without horses, or the ability to return directly to a location once you've visited it, it takes forever to get around on. Worse, when you find yourself lost in the middle of the wilderness, there's very little alternative other than continuing to walk. One thing it does have, though, are the Mark/Recall spells that allow you to return to one predetermined location, and the Almsivi/Divine Intervention spells that allow you to teleport to the nearest temple of whatever flavor; Tribunal or Imperial. These are godsends for overburdened adventurers who want to haul back as much loot as (in)humanly possible. On the flip side, I prefer Skyrim's overburdening system; sure, you can't fast travel, run, or jump when you're overburdened, but at least you can move. And in Skyrim, there are no Burden spells - so you don't have to worry about an opponent dumping a bajillion pounds on you and freezing you in place.

I've run slightly over wordcount for this entry, and the wife is looking to fire up Sherlock season 2, so I'll condense the rest of these down into a quick and dirty list, and maybe elucidate on them at a later time.

THINGS I WISH SKYRIM HAD (FROM MORROWIND):

*Weaponry: Crossbows, spears, daikatana, throwing items, sabres

*Medium armour

*ability to fight underwater ('cause, seriously, screw slaughterfish.)

*breath monitor (how long do I have until I start taking damage? Guess I'll find out when I DIE!)

*Open spells ('cause locks you can't open suck. On the other hand, I prefer Skyrim's lock minigame).

*Shops open at all hours: This is more of a stylistic thing, I just hate constantly having to wait around for the shop owner to appear and open the doors so I can sell off my tons of loot. On the other hand, as a thief, I kinda like them going home for the night and leaving all their valuables around for me to plunder...

*Levitate spells

*Guild halls in different cities: Skyrim moots this, a little, with the ability to buy houses in every city, but I kinda miss being able to pick up different quests and sleep in a faction bed in different cities. It also added a bit of verisimilitude to the world, I felt. On the other hand, since the Fighters Guild has been replaced with the Companions, and the Mages Guild with the College at Winterhold... again, a stylistic thing, I suppose.

*Unlimited training per level: If I have a million gold pieces, I should be able to go up a million gold in levels. For one thing, maybe I'd have a decent spellcaster...

THINGS I WISH MORROWIND HAD THAT SKYRIM DOES:

*HUD for destinations/places of interest

*dual wielding/spellcasting

*sneak attacks! Sneaking, period, is so much better handled in Skyrim that there's almost no comparison.

*Simpler armour (Not having to wear a million different pieces.)

*Simpler alchemy

*Arrows are weightless

*NO CLIFF RACERS ('cause seriously, FUCK cliff racers).

[Cooperative Writing Project][Spire]Notes & Rules (Three Years Too Late)

2012-01-09T20:13:00.001-05:00

This is a continuation from this note, lo those many moons agone. If you're wondering why I've tagged you, it's because you either expressed interest in it before, or you're someone I've shared cooperative writing projects (RP) with before and I thought you might be interested.

Well, first of all, I should probably apologize to everyone for the length of time it's taken me to produce this. For one thing, I have no experience in this kind of grand project; I'm sloppy, disorganized, and more absent-minded than the Nutty Professor, with Alzheimer's, chowing down on a panfull of hash brownies. Still, delaying a post like this for the better part of three years is a little much, even for me.

I'm going to tacitly ignore the sound of people still waiting for updates on previous writing projects (West End Blues, Twilight Exile), even though I can feel their burny gazes of hate stabbing through my soul even as I type. Ow. Ow. Ow.

The way I picture this working (and I am very open to suggestions, by the by) is thusly; all stories take place in Spire, at least in part. Perhaps the protagonists will go adventuring in other parts of the Empire, perhaps the story takes place on the outskirts of the city, or the farmlands around, or even in one of the little villages that cling to the big city's skirts, but the Spire should be a focal point, the common weft that binds our writerly world together.

There is no limit on how long or short a story should be, only that it must contain a clearly delineated beginning, middle, and end. If you can tell a complete story in six words, as Ernest Hemingway once did, it counts. The catch here is that it sharply precludes "serial" fiction; you're writing complete short stories, rather than the little snippets of story that usually dominate online shared writer worlds (likeRDI).

At a predetermined, agreed upon time (perhaps every month, or every six weeks), a new event or theme will rock the city, and stories can/should revolve around those. Events might include: the death of a noble, a citywide festival, a serial killer stalks the streets, a great storm hits the town. We could include different genre styles in with the themes, so that they might include: write a romance story, a detective story, a horror tale. One month's determination might be "arc words" - at some point in your story, you should include a phrase of significance that would pop up throughout the story. "Who is John Galt?" from Atlas Shrugged, or "Give me back my Hat!" from The Midnight Mayor both come to mind (or "Bad Wolf" from Dr. Who). There are quite a number of Urban Fantasy anthologies running around that seem to run on this principal, and they make for good reading (as well as common ground between otherwise quite different authors).

Characters: You're not required to use the same character for every story, but neither are you discouraged from doing so. One of joys of a shared world is the verisimilitude that comes from seeing familiar faces in new ground; thusly, we should be open to sharing our characters with others. If @Chris wants to use my hero Cromley the Fool in a tavern scene, this would be encouraged. On the other hand, nobody likes it when control of their character is taken from them, or when their character is shown acting "out of character," so where possible communication between authors is to be encouraged, and no permanent harm or effects should be done to another author's character (unless they expressly authorize it, of course).

Story submissions; I think we'll need a forum, or perhaps a blog. I'd like both; a blog to post the stories on, and a forum in which we can discuss story arcs, event ideas, and share information on the world and on our characters. This will take some discussion and work. In the mean time, though, we can probably get started using Facebook, e-mail, and instant messengers.

As stated above, stories have no minimum or maximum length; they are required only to start and stop in a reasonable manner. Also as stated above, the events and themes for that month should probably be considered guidelines; if you've got an idea for a story that doesn't take place during that month's "theme," then roll it out anyway - there's no reason to hide it away until it's appropriate. We should agree on some sort of calendar for the world, though, so that we can synchronize our stories. If Writer A is writing tales set in the "now", and Writer B wants to set stories a hundred years prior, then that's okay - as long as both writers and readers are aware of the dichotomy.

Likewise, I've deliberately left all but the barest strokes of the setting open because I want to encourage people to come up with their own creations, rather than trying to impose limits on the project newly formed. I picture Spire as being set on something like the Cornish coast, if England were still attached to continental Europe. It's an independent city that survives mostly by being too valuable to its neighbors to quash, without being quite valuable enough to subsume - the goose that lays golden eggs, but only if it's left free.

I see the world of Spire as being a very Dungeons & Dragons inspired world, as many fantasy settings seem to be these days. There are many races living together, sometimes in harmony, sometimes not so much. Magic exists, and even flourishes - some folk have more of an aptitude for it than others, of course. Technology would probably be close to the late Middle Ages, or the early Renaissance. There are sophisticated trade networks, so we're likely to see a vast variety of products that, in our own world, might seem slightly anachronistic - likewise, occupations and professions.

I think the first theme should be "Introductions." I hope to have my entry up in a few days, hopefully hashing some more of this out. :)

So... that's what I've got, guys. Your thoughts?

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin...

2012-01-08T14:09:00.004-05:00

Skyrim is fucking depressing. (There are spoilers ahead, so those of you who haven't played but intend to - or those who aren't too far into the game - or those who just hate the thought of things being, even mildly, revealed before their time may not want to stick around for this. Just a head's up.)

Don't misunderstand me; I am so in love with this game that I occasionally have to deliberately ignore it, take breaks, lest my gaming widow wife grow irate enough to light my PS3 on fire. I'm helped along, a bit, by the fact that she's recently discovered (rediscovered?) her own avid gamer side; it's a lot easier to justify spending hours wandering through Tamriel when she's spending her own hours playing Disney Universe and Skylanders. Helps to have the upstairs TV working again, too, so that we can each do our own thing without interfering with the other.

Skyrim is a beautiful, engaging, fun game to play - despite its bugs (there's nothing quite like getting stuck in a crack in the ground hours from the last time you saved to make you want to scream and break things), and despite the occasional repetitiveness of the quests and the random chatter (just how many guards out there have taken arrows to the knee? How are the still able to move so damn fast when they spot me botching a pickpocket attempt?) It's also, quite frankly, saddening and occasionally even discouraging to play.

Tamriel is a Crapsack World. I haven't been playing The Elder Scrolls very long, as these things go - I started when Morrowind got big, played Oblivion but was horrendously disappointed, and after hearing the great reviews of Skyrim knew I would have to jump into this one, too. Well, let's be honest - I was standing in a Gamestop, heard the choral version of the Elder Scrolls theme, and immediately knew I was going to be playing this one, too. Obsessively, more than likely, which is not far from the truth. The whole point of Morrowind was that, as the reincarnation of Saint Nerevar, the prophecied Nerevarine, you were to save the island of Vvardenfell and the province of Morrowind from the release of the ancient foe, Dagoth Ur, who lived beneath the volcanic Red Mountain. You succeed, and yay! The mountain doesn't erupt, and the province isn't destroyed!

Only, we learn in Skyrim, it does. Destroys most of the island, makes the Dunmer people into refugees in the lands of their ancient enemies. Right about the time you were winning the last game, apparently.

Speaking of Oblivion, you spend the whole game there fighting to protect the last emperor of the line, keep the Daedric hordes bottled up in their bleak hell pit dimension of blood fountains, lava rivers, and miscellaneous spiky hooked decorations, and keep the Empire together. At the end of the game, Martin sacrifices himself, but hurray, the Empire is saved. Except, wait, Skyrim tells us that 200 years later, the Empire has gotten its arse whupped soundly by a bunch of pointy-eared freaks, has given up its religion, and is now embroiled in civil wars that threaten to tear what fragile shell remains asunder. Also that said pointy-eared freaks are plotting to grind humanity under their pointy-toed boots. (You want to know what the elven future looks like? Picture a pointy-toed, jingle belled boot stamping on a human face... forever.)

Hey, I get it - these conflicts are what drive the game, they're part of what provides the drama that keeps things flowing. Without conflict, after all, it's just you walking the neat, clean streets of a tidy Imperial province. Considering how boring Oblivion was after you finished the main quest and closed all the gates, well, we can all figure how well that game pitch would have gone over. But still, having the point of the first two games invalidated like that - especially Vvardenfell blowing up, as you have to play for a goodly while before you get that particular revelation - was a bit of a kick in the teeth. I feel like a veteran of the "War to end all wars," returning home in triumph pleased to have bought, with blood and sweat, a peace for all time... only to watch World War II break out a scant two decades later. And after that one was settled with a few million lives, the Cold War and its threat of nuclear armageddon.

(Yes, I recognize I'm being hyperbolic here. That's half the point of a blog.)

Chris reminds me of a bit from the Incredibles, where Mr. Incredible is being interviewed. "No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!"

But that's not why Skyrim is depressing.

What's depressing, is you never seem to be able to save anyone. About all you can do is avenge their death, or inform their loved ones that, yes, they've died. Bear witness to a thousand horrors. I'm on the main quest right now, having finally grown tired enough of watching dragons fly away merrily when I'm gaining the upper hand in a fight (but before that magic moment when they crashland because I've damaged them enough) to make some serious efforts towards getting the Dragonrend shout (and, may I say, it's nice to actually see an Elder Scroll in one of The Elder Scroll games. Not that I've gotten that far, but again, digression). To get to Blackreach, I have to go through Alftland, another Dwemer ruin, this one half swallowed up by a glacier. All well and good. Only, as I enter, I find the remains of a research camp that had been trapped inside by a storm. As I go along, I find notes from the team - Falmer had been picking them off one by one, and eventually took the whole party for their larder. On one dead man, tucked away in a hidden corner, I found a note talking about how he and a companion had been trapped by a broken ramp during their escape - his companion, without hesitation, had thrown him up the incline onto the next platform before turning back to fight for her life. He had fled, and eventually, died here in this forgotten little corner. Going along, I find the broken ramp - and the dead orc who had sacrificed her own chance of escape to save her companion. She resembled Boromir from the end of Fellowship, a pincushion of goblin arrows. Continuing, I find the Falmer camp - complete with the remains of their "meals". The rest of the research team, all but the leader and his bodyguard.

No, the leader had fled in a different direction upon release, deeper into the complex, seeking "what he had come for". I find him just before the entrance to Blackreach, where he (and his bodyguard) immediately attack me as a thief, come to steal the fruits of his labors. Ah, megalomaniacal insanity.

But Yag - the orc, killed after throwing her companion to all too temporary safety - got me thinking about how many situations like this there were in the game. Ranmir's wife, in Winterhold - turned to thieving to help support the two of them, killed in a Nord tomb on her first outing, the note she'd meant to leave behind to ease his mind never delivered. He thinks she's left him, and turns to drink. Narfi the beggar, living in the ruins - literally - of his family's farmhouse, pining for his missing sister. You can go look for her - she's in the river, near the bridge. Lie to the man and tell her she'll be back one day, or give him her ring and your sympathies, both endings leave a taste in the mouth worse than one of Namira's feasts. A farmer held prisoner in Mistwatch begs you to save his wife - turns out she's the bandit leader. Oops.

Occasionally, you get to save people. There was a prisoner in the Thalmor Embassy when I snuck in there; I got him out alive, and he now hangs around the Thieves Guild. Where he spits every time I approach and accuses me of causing "enough trouble." There's Malborn, the elf who helped me and whom I, in return, rescued in that same quest... he's hiding out in Windhelm, getting ready to run for Morrowind if I can ever find the assassin he's terrified of. Oh, yes, he's stalked by assassins now.

Every victory is its own punishment, apparently.

But I'll keep on fighting, despite all of these little victories that cut like knife wounds, for much the same reason that investigators keep investigating in Call of Cthulhu - because, for all that the world is doomed to be an Elder God's snack cake, here and now we're alive and what we do matters.

Also, because it's so much fun to sneak up on a dragon and smack it between the eyes with a Legendary Blades katana. FORS RO DAH!

A Fairytale

2012-01-04T21:38:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time in a kingdom by the sea there lived a young woman as fair as the moon and as warm as the sun. The people of her village were poor but honest folk, in that quaint poor but honest way that only fisherfolk and herderfolk can ever seem to manage; entirely different from the poverty or the honesty of city dwellers, and as different as the day from the night as the deception and wealth of the merchants who followed the caravan routes and sailed the salt seas. The woman was called Rose by all who knew her, not because this was her name, but because she had blossomed - as if overnight - into a creature of delicate beauty, quite unlike the fishwives and salt stained girls that lived in her village. She worked just as hard as any of the women and harder than some of the men, preparing her father's catch for market, repairing the fish nets, helping her mother keep the house and manage her many brothers, and helping keep her father's boat in order so that he could go out onto the salt sea and catch the fish; despite this, she grew only more beautiful day by day, and all the boys in the village loved her and feared her for her beauty. It was a cold, lonely existence for a young woman, for no matter how hard she worked and how much she tried, she could not fit in with those poor but honest folk; and because they /were/ honest folk, they could not hide their awe and apprehension from her, and she grew up, not hated, but shunned nonetheless.

Her brothers could see that she was hurting, and though they loved her just as much as any other in the village, they too felt awkward and clumsy next to her grace and beauty; and so it was decided that though it killed them to live without her, she did not belong in such a little fishing village, but should instead live in a palace, surrounded by servants and jewels and riches to rival her beauty. It was decided, under council of night when all the house was sleeping, as such conspiracies so often are, that she must be given to a prince; but what prince could do? The kingdom by the sea had no princes, and only one princess; and while stories of her grace and beauty were also told, far and wide, it was well regarded in that little village that their Rose would easily put her to shame, should the two ever met, and since it was not good to bring shame to royalty unless you happen to have a larger army on your side, it would be best for all involved if they did not bring Rose to the capital city, where she might act as a rival to the princess. After all, as their father had often warned them, beauty saw like beauty as competition, and there could only be one queen in the hive.

So the brothers decided amongst themselves that they would have to seek a worthy husband for their sister in the wide world around them. One of them would have to stay with their father, mother, and sister; one of them was too young to venture out into the world alone, for it was a dangerous place in those days (as in many ways it still is), and so he would have to stay home and tend the nets with the women, as much as this displeased him (and his brothers had to gag him to keep him from voicing his displeasure loudly and long, and possibly waking the rest of the household with the strength of his ire). This left five of them to venture out into the world, one to go north and one to go south, one to go east and one to go west, and the last brother to seek what worthiness he could find in the world beyond the veil, across the borders between shadow and light where the wild things play.

The brother who went to the north found only cold and frost at first, for the northern lands are frozen much of the year and snow covers the ground even at high summer. But if the land is cold, the people are not; when he would have frozen, they took him in and kept him warm, and when he told them of his quest and of his sister's beauty, they took him to where their prince lived in an icy palace. The prince was a man of frost and ice, whose skin was as pale as the newfallen snow and whose eyes were as blue as frozen rivers; when he heard of the Rose's beauty, though, he thawed just a touch, and warmth and kindness showed in his eyes. He agreed to come with the brother back to the kingdom by the sea, there to meet the Rose.

The brother who went to the south had to take a caravan across the endless sands of the southern desert, far beyond the borders of the kingdom by the sea. He had many adventures with the caravaneers, and even fell in love himself, but the caravan was attacked by bandits and all were slain - save the brother, who was left for dead in the burning sands. He was rescued by servants of the djinn of that place, who took him to their prince; a man of flame and heat, whose eyes flashed with quick anger and lips smiled with quick humor, a prince who was as restless as flame and just as powerful. When the brother, restored to health, told this prince of the Rose, his quick anger soothed, and his fickle attention stilled. He, too, agreed to come with the brother back to the kingdom by the sea, there to meet the Rose.

The third brother went to the east, and he too had to take a caravan to get there; through mountains and forests, along the great Spice Road that wended halfway around the world, to the kingdoms of jade and diamond. Here the people dressed in long flowing robes of strange colors, and the food was flavored with strange spices, and they spoke in music and made art of battle. They were a strange people, and their leader was as strange; he was golden as a statue, and seemed as cold and lifeless as he sat on his jade throne and looked down at the brother who had come to plead for the Rose. But when he heard the third brother's tale, his mask crumbled and he agreed to come to the kingdom by the sea, there to meet the Rose.

The fourth brother took ship to the west, and the seas were terrible with storms and pirates and great serpents that came up from the deep and tried to drink the ship down to the deeps. But somehow they managed to survive all of these perils, until the ship came at last to an island far across the sea, where mermaids sang on the rocky shore to entice the sailors to their doom. The ship was lost against the reefs, and many were the souls that drowned, but the brother was washed up safe upon the beach and taken to the palace of the prince, a man of coral and pearl, whose eyes shown sea green and whose hair was the color of kelp. This prince, like the others, was interested in the tale of the Rose, and agreed to take the brother back to the kingdom by the sea, there to meet the girl who had won his heart - without ever having seen her.

As for the fifth brother, he went to the quiet place in the woods in the hills in a cave where the setting sun never touched, and there he sat in the dark and the quiet and focused on the barrier between the worlds. While his elder brothers sailed and caravanned, and had many adventures, he sat in the cave and focused, slowly growing gaunter and more withered as he stared through the veil between the worlds, reaching out for something that was never quite there. And then one day, as his brothers reached their princes of the north and south and east and west, he found that shining thing he had searched for; and from between the veil of worlds stepped a prince of midnight and sable, whose skin was the blue black of a moonless night and whose eyes were the silver of the shining stars, whose hair was the shimmering radiance of the galaxy colors, burning bright in a cold winter night. He had sensed the brother searching for him, and curious had looked closer; and fallen in love with the vision of the Rose, a princess without a kingdom, the flower growing amongst the weeds.

And so the brothers returned home, carried by djinn and winged horse, by dragon and gryphon, and walking down the mountainside with shadow trailing behind. Their family was overjoyed to see them again, for years had passed in their absence, and their father was ill and their youngest brother was of an age now where he, too, could have joined their quest - if only they had left a direction for him to search. Their eldest brother had started a family of his own, but still watched over their delicate Rose, who had - if it were possible - grown only more beautiful in their absence, and now shone like the sun and and burned like the stars, and none of the villagers could look upon her without weeping, and who was so desperately lonesome in return that she felt like weeping herself.

And all of the princes looked upon her, and loved her, and promised her their kingdoms - if only she would be theirs. The prince of the north offered her diamonds, and the prince of the south rubies; the prince of the east offered gold and jade, sacks of tea and pouches of precious saffron and coriander. The prince of the west offered sapphires and coral, pearls and amber; he had the treasure of all the world to offer, for every nation of every land sailed ships, and all those ships were his, if he so willed it, and all the precious cargoes that grew therein.

And the prince who came from the worlds between merely smiled, and told her that he offered but himself - and all eternity. For if she came with him through the veil, she could never return to this world - but all the others, across the ten billion billion billion dimensions, and beyond, would all lie at her feet, for her to choose from.

And that is the prince she chose; and if she lived happily ever after, we may only hope, for in a heartbeat they had stepped from our world, and they were gone beyond the curtain between the worlds, past where mortal men can see, and into infinity. And the four princes, spurned, wept bitter tears and went back to their kingdoms, where they ruled long and well but never happily, for the memory of the woman called Rose was always with them, and they longed for her.

And her family could only hope that she was happy, and settled down into their lives, and lived them as long and well as they could; and if the sixth brother was satisfied with the prince he had brought home, he never said, but went and sat in that cave in the mountains, and hoped to see his sister one day again.

And that was the tale of the Rose who bloomed in the night.

365/1K (And Other Strangeness)

2012-01-01T21:33:00.001-05:00

So, I've never been a big fan of New Year's Resolutions. To be honest, I've found them kinda tacky; a list of things you probably should have been doing well before New Year's, and you're throwing it out there with the intention of doing them this year, instead. Most people fail to follow them; they're kind of the epitome of failure.

It's probably a little hypocritical to start out a note on my New Year's Resolutions this year by bashing the entire concept of New Years Resolutions, but let's be honest; consistency has never been my strong suit.

Which is probably the best reason I can give for putting forth a list of "New Year's Resolutions" (at least one of which is an ongoing thing continuing from November/December of last year, anyway).

First of all, I resolve to weigh 250 pounds, or as close to it as I can come, by this date, 2013. I've been well embroiled in the process of losing weight since my early birthday party, when my parents were kind enough to give me a Utilikilt that, sadly, was just a size or so too small - at the biggest size they offer. Turns out a kilt size 44 is a pants size 42, who knew? I have an odd relationship with size 42 pants; some of them fit me fine, if a little tightly, and others haven't a chance in hell of fitting my fat arse (two pairs of 5.11 tactical jeans sit on the top shelf of my closet, as a matter of fact, hoping and wishing for the day when I can squeeze into them. I'm such a girl.) My utilikilt, sadly, is in this latter category.

And let's face it, I am fat. I may not be the waddling mountain of blubber we can all point a finger at, but I've got a beer belly, my arms and legs are getting beyond their fair share of flabby, and I'm well overweight for my height and build, even as lush as they are. I'm fat, and I bitch about it - maybe not constantly, but certainly often enough. I need to change, and this was just the right impetus for it. I hope.

It's not the first time I've made this promise, but I'm off to a good start (*knock on wood*) and with any luck, putting this out where everyone can razz me if I fail, encourage me as I succeed, and otherwise help to keep me motivated, is my way of keeping myself in the game.

Resolution numero dos, I resolve to write one thousand words - 1,000, 1K, a grand, ten centuries, however you'd like it - each and every day for the next year, from now until December 31, 2012. This is where our title comes from, "365/1K" - although we must not forget that this is a leap year, and therefore it's actually a 366/1K. I'm hoping that, by sheer volume of output, I can force myself to finish the stories I've begun, continue to tell stories I imagine, and generally work on getting myself into some sort of competent writerhood stage. A writer, afterall, is one who writes. And with very rare exceptions (like the first two weeks of November), I don't often do that. That needs to change.

My safety switch for this is that it can be any sort of writing, so long as it's done in my voice, not even necessarily hitting the protocols for "creative writing". Story? Oh hell yeah. Blog entry? Sure, why not? Notes for a story? You betcha. Copying a recipe in a cookbook, data entry for work, writing down "ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JEREMY WANNNA MURDER A BITCH" one thousand times? Nope, doesn't hit the criteria.

(What you're reading right now, by the way, is 642 words - and counting - of today's quota. Happy New Year.)

On this front, I'd like to make the announcement that I'm starting a new series, one I'm hoping to actually send out into the wild for public dissemination, and I need pre-readers, editors, and reviewers. The catch is that it's being done in a couple of genres that I don't have very much experience with, which could very well be offensive to quite a few of you. What is it? Well, to quote Orgazmo, "It's an action-adventure... porno." Or, as I'm calling it, "Fantasy Horror Erotica". As originally envisioned, it was going to be porn - there's no point in sugarcoating this - but it's turned into something about as steamy as your average romance bodice ripper or Laurell K. Hamilton novel. (In other words, porn... with plot.) So, if you enjoy my writing and you don't mind graphic depictions of things that should really be best left in the bedroom (or, in our case, the dungeon, the ruined castle, the catacombs, etc. etc.), drop me a line.

I expect all of my immediate family members have probably fled the blog post screaming, about three lines ago.

Resolution three, I swear, has nothing to do with porn. I resolve to take four camping trips this year; I'd love for it to be one a season, but sadly that's not going to happen with the ship's deployment schedule. I don't plan on being overseas for three quarters of 2012 (like the ship), but I'll be riding it through pretty much all of spring, so that leaves that month out. I may have to get over my distaste of heat, bugs, and summer crowds and go camping in the hot months, or maybe I can cram it all into weekends in the fall, but one way or another, I'm getting my arse out in the woods with a tent and a pack at least four times this year. You're welcome to come along, but I'll go alone if I have to. (Speaking of, I'm also taking steps to begin backpacking in seriousness. I've got a long ways to go; my first sojourn, a three hour hike to my mother-in-law's house with a half weight pack, has my legs aching like I'd run up and down a mountain rather than walked a couple of miles of easy, paved ground at a reasonable pace. It's kind of pathetic.)

Resolution four is an add-on, almost a throwaway; I resolve to read one nonfiction book a month. I'm leaving the definition of "book" open, save that it must be obviously more than a pamphlet. I read a crap load of fiction, I don't read quite as much non; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, per se, but I could do with expanding my horizons. It's almost ironic that I make this vow here at the beginning of 2012, because December 2011 actually saw me read a number of nonfiction; but this was an exception to my usual diet of scifi, fantasy, and horror, and so I'm making the promise. I've got a couple of books lined up, including a pair of Carl Sagan titles my wife got me a couple Christmases ago, so I'm rather looking forward to it.

So, there you have it. Four resolutions from a guy who hates resolutions, four promises to change my life in some way that, hopefully, I'll follow through on. Hope you'll join me. Happy New Year; however good your 2011 may have been, may 2012 be better still.

Ah but don't, no don't sink the boat...

2010-05-05T15:23:00.006-04:00

...that you built, you built to keep afloat...

This is a post I just made to a forum I frequent, concerning today's adventures. I'll come back and clean it up when I have a real computer to play with.

"I bet you have seen some crazy things at sea."

Oh, pretty crazy. :) I seem to have some time on my hands, so let me tell you about today.

So, we're having a Coast Guard inspection today. This is a routine thing; the vessel is coming out of the shipyard after a pretty long overhaul, there's a lot of new crew aboard, the Coasties wanna know that we're up to par. Fire and boat drill, all hands. I'm on the gangway watch, so this is just a break from my regular workday - I get to mill around smartly instead of standing on the quarterdeck all day. What the hey, they're paying me my daily wage - as opposed to the poor schmucks on the other two watch sections, who get to do their 8 and get up on their off-time for this. (One watch section should get OT for it, one might not. Not my issue.)

Fire drill went smooth, simulated fire in the paint locker. Wasn't even my DC locker involved, so again - mill around smartly. Shot the breeze about e-book readers for a bit. Secure from drill, stand by for abandon ship drill.

(Someone pull up a pint of home-brew, something robust and flavorful. I desperately want one right now, and for reasons that are about to become clear can't have it. Besides the fact that I'm two states away from my homebrews, that is...)

Abandon ship drill. I wrap my sweatshirt around my waist to satisfy the long sleeves requirement, don my lifejacket and floppy hat, wait around my rack long enough to make sure they're not going to require us to bring our Gumby (immersion) suits with us, then I haul ass to the bridge to get the emergency radio and SART (search and rescue transponder - JFGI if you're curious) for my lifeboat. The bridge is five decks up from my rack, I'm swaddled up in my emergency gear, and the boat is four decks back down once I've got the electronics. I'm pretty winded when I get there just in time to say "yo" to the roll call.

Now the fun begins.

The boat commander orders the necessary people to man the boat - I hop in for the ride. There's the commander - my watch officer - and two other ABs whose responsibility it is to handle the lines to release us from the ship, and me. We begin to lower the boat - I say "we", I really mean "they", 'cause I'm strapping myself into the prow - the boat swings as it descends, kind of a herky-jerky motion. I'm starting to feel seasick.

Look, you would, too. These things aren't meant for comfort, and in a real abandon ship situation, the first thing we'd do is pop sea-sickness pills. Doesn't matter how old a salt you are, these things roll in any sea, and the ride down sucks.

There's a loud noise - hard to describe, kind of a crunch mixed with a crack - and the ride down sucks worse. The boat is hanging by one gripe, so instead of being parallel to the water, we're perpendicular. And swinging on it. That takes maybe a second.

Then the other line lets go.

We slam into the water. The side hatches are open, water in the boat. The hatch and windows in the rear of the boat give way, water in the boat. I'm hanging upside down - there's water in the boat. Fuckme, I'm drowning. The boat is upside down, resting on its top in the water, water's rushing in, I'm strapped in with my head in the water-

I get loose from my straps and breathe. The other guys are moving around, and after laughing like a loon for a sec, I try to see if people are alright. Water's rushing in through the side hatches, and I watch one of the other ABs launch himself out before the boat sinks. "Good idea! I need to get the hell out of this boat!"

These lifeboats are self-righting. The boat, upside down... rights itself.

With the three of us inside unsecured.

I see the bench on the other side coming at my noggin as I'm scrambling for something, anything, to hang onto. No dice, I'm hitting it. Best I can do is roll myself in the air - and lemme just point out that I am Large, I Contain Multitudes, so the fact that I pull this off is nothing short of miraculous - and take it on my shoulder. More deltoid, but that's beside the fact 'cause fuckingow I just broke my arm.

Didn't, but that's besides the fact.

Boat's upright and no longer pouring in water. I'm... alive? I'm alive. Buddha on a pogo stick I thought I was a goner. Like, there were three separate occasions in the last twenty seconds, I thought I was dead. Look around - one AB gone out the door, one AB in the hatch swearing and holding his arm (not me), one 3rd officer swearing and holding his face. The mate's bleeding from the head and seems shocky. The other AB's in pain. Me, I'm just swearing The people on the ship are yelling down at us, and - poking my head out the hatch - the other-other AB is treading water and hollering. Thank God for life jackets.

He doggypaddles back to the boat and I get M - the AB with the wounded wing - to help me pull him aboard. He seems unhurt - got out while the getting was good. My left wing's sore, but I can move it, so no break. The ship throws a couple of lines down and we make the boat fast so that it doesn't drift off down the river - a work boat comes along and picks us up and transports us to the dock. EMS shows up a few minutes later.

The mate's gotta nice gash on the head and issues walking - possibly damaged something in his hip. M, the AB with the busted wing, is complaining about back pain, and of course his wing is busted - possibly strained, possibly broken, I haven't heard. He had some really pretty bruises shaping up around his elbow. I've got a bruised shoulder and I'm a little shaky as the adrenaline wears off, but feeling no pain once I got a Motrin. C, the AB what bailed out before the boat went rightside up, is totally fine. All of us are alive and, hopefully, sustained no permanent injuries.

I'm writing this on my cell phone at the hospital (gogo Sidekick 2008!) as I'm waiting to be discharged. Hour and a half left in my workday.

I love my job.

PS: I blame this on you, Wheeledgoat.

--lastknight

[Cooperative Writing Project] Spire

2009-05-17T19:22:00.003-04:00

The city thrusts out of the pounding sea like a line of jutting fangs, the low terraces and thatched roofs of its many buildings decorating the black cliffs like skeins of pearls against the ebony skin of some Bezhaari princess. Tallest of its towering structures is the central prominence of the Grand Palace, the steeple that gives the city its name. The Grand Palace sits in the center of Oldtown, on the island in the middle of the roaring river Shere, that rushes down to the sun dappled waves of the Veil. Once, Oldtown was all there was to the city - little more than a cluster of fisherman's cottages, and the brooding keep that kept them safe from the raids of seaborne barbarians.

That was centuries ago, and like most sedentary organisms, the city has grown broad and fat with age. The fisherman's cottages on Oldtown have long since given way to nobleman's houses and merchant's vaults, just as the motte-and-bailey of the keep have turned into the sprawling, labyrinthine Grand Palace - more than half its winding halls abandoned, its rotting wings spacious enough for thousands, but home only to the handful that rule the city.

The Shere runs north to south, with Oldtown's island clogging its throat like a fishbone. Bridges chain the island to each bank, from the solid stones of the Beggar's Gate connecting to the Shambles on the east to the dainty, ethereal span of Kolgard's Folly to the west. They are heavily trafficked, even in the midnight hours, save when a dreaded Hellstorm descends on the city as summer dies and winter rears its ugly head.

There are many who call this the City of Storms. They're not far wrong.

Parts of the Shambles were once affluent and prosperous. Most of it never tried to be. Walled ghettos, shantytown slums, the fisherman's community of Wavetown, the tanners and the smelters and the sootstacks of a thousand various industries - all of these find their place in the Shambles, a dark and rotten cancer that has long since outgrown the skin of the city and now threatens to tilt it over and drown it in filth. The Shambles is a place from which everyone is trying to escape, but they have a way of claiming people and dragging them back, no matter how hard they might kick and scream. Some parts - especially those with walls - could be considered decent enough places to live, but by and large their lights are lost in the gloom cast by neighborhoods where a man's life is worth less than a mug of ale, or a hit of sah.

The west bank of the river is where the noble retreated when Oldtown grew too crowded for their diversions. Wealthy merchants and others attracted to prosperity soon followed, building neat and tidy neighborhoods that soon fell into the same barely reigned chaos that plagues all grown cities. Ordered streets and blocks turn into a tangled and confused maze of cul de sacs, parks, ornamental ponds and memorials, all crammed together with no room for rhyme or reason. It's as though the builders were seized with a sudden madness, an urge to mash all the culture missing from the Shambles into the far side of the city to redress some sort of cosmic balance. The wags and the broadsheets call it the Gilded Labyrinth, and even the locals require guides when they venture beyond their home street.

The Veil brings many things to the city shores, wonders and horrors both, from lands more distant than most could imagine. The ships of a hundred nations dock in the harbor, and the city streets buzz with a thousand different languages. To the east, the Akheri Empire, monolithic and strong, its knights and legions crushing all who oppose it with merciless precision. Once, not so very long ago, the city belonged to the Empire. Akheri has not forgotten. To the west, the allied nations of the Free Republic bicker and squabble, their only common bond their steadfast opposition to the Empire. They've pleaded with the Governor-General to join them, and he's diplomatically refused. With rumors of war growing stronger by the day, neutrality may soon be no option.

This is a city caught between the extremes of the Shambles and the Gilded Labyrinth, between the shackles of the past and the winds of an uncertain future, were a thousand cultures merge into a hodgepodge gumbo uniquely its own. Madness stalks the twisting tunnels beneath the city, and revolution haunts the streets. On every lip, there's a rumor of coming change - but none can agree just what. This is the City of Storms, and a great storm is coming.

Welcome to Spire.

Craft Swap!

2009-03-02T18:48:00.002-05:00

I'm leaping at the opportunity for Jessica Christian's craft-swap, so here's my part of the bargain. :) I'm putting this on my blog and it'll RSS feed to Facebook - so remember, yours may not be the only comments I've received!

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice.
For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year. (ha! 10 whole months :)
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog or Facebook and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog or Facebook.

My new writing journal...

2009-02-28T03:57:00.002-05:00

...can be found here! New stuff as I write it, and older things as it occurs to me to put them up. You should bookmark it!

...I know, two months without a blog update and all I post is this lame plug. There might be more soon. No promises.

So no one told you life was gonna be this way...

2008-12-07T00:38:00.003-05:00

...your job's a joke, you're broke
Your love life's DOA -
Seems like you're always stuck in second gear...

So, here I am again. Things... have been better. But they've also been worse.

Just wrapped up almost two months on leave; did a little bit of this and a little bit of that, it was fairly productive as far as my vacations go (ie, I didn't spend the entire thing dozing on my couch playing video games, surfing the internet, or watching junk movies/anime/television), although I didn't do anything particularly earth shattering. NaNoWriMo went well; I reached 50,000 words, the story (almost) has a satisfactory conclusion, although it is a 'to be continued' bit, and I've spent a lot of quality time with friends.

On the other hand, I'm incredibly broke (my last paycheck wasn't deposited, thanks to a SNAFU where the base assumed I was AWOL and stopped paying me - things have been cleared up, but I'm empty until Friday), and my Coast Guard documentation has expired - meaning that I'll be in the pool (and possibly some schools) until the New Year, and then I'll be back on leave (regular or Without Pay, depending on how much I've got in the leave bank) until I have my new MMD.

So, things aren't bleak, per se, but they are looking a bit gloomy.

Not a lot else to say for me, though; I had a rather nice, although incredibly cold, camping trip up to the Blue Ridge Mountains a few weeks back. I've made a number of new friends thanks to actually being able to attend the local write-ins during NaNo. I've learned a new 'sport' (frisbee golfing), and I play whenever I can get a friend and some daylight together in the same spot. I had Korean for lunch today, and it was incredibly tasty.

Mind Your OPSEC...

2008-10-04T10:26:00.006-04:00

...so, I forgot the key rule of the internet; nothing you write is ever really private. I'm always surprised when friends read whatever I put up here, so the thought that total strangers - probably arriving via the miracle of Google - might find what I wrote was laughable. I also thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping operational security in mind, and that I was keeping any references to our schedule or operations discreet and vague enough to be safe.

Apparently, not so much.

So, my apologies to all those concerned, and please note that the offending entry has been deleted. I won't make such a lapse again.

And the thunder rolls...

2008-10-03T20:24:00.003-04:00

...and the lightning strikes
Another love gone cold
In the sleepless night
The storm raged on out of control
And deep in her heart
The thunder rolled...

So, no sooner than I post an update than something comes along to contradict it. The most exciting thing to happen to me lately has definitely been the hellacious squall we went through on watch tonight, a sight I was lucky enough to be on lookout for. Some of the sweetest lightning I've seen, ranging from yellow-white to violet, and with a nice cameo appearance from a pair of waterspouts - the first I've seen, although I've certainly heard plenty about them. Very cool!

That was about it. Just thought I'd share. ^_^

And did he ever return...?

2008-10-03T14:49:00.002-04:00

...no, he never returned
And his fate is still unlearned -
He could be riding forever 'neath the streets of Boston -
He's the man who never returned!

Well, hopefully things won't get that bad for me. Actually, according to a conversation I had yesterday with the ship's purser, the end could very well be in sight; I should be go for departure the next time the ship pulls into port. When that will be is a matter of debate (and, when final word does come down, OPSEC), but with any luck I'll be headed for home pretty soon. Can't wait!

Things here on the ship continue much as they have been; we're through the Straits of Gibraltar and in the Mediterranean Sea now, the calm waves a startling contrast to the stormy Atlantic. The weather has been warmer, too, since we came into the Med - not my favorite thing, I'm definitely ready for cooler temperatures and looking forward to fall weather at home.

I've been having trouble sleeping again, most likely thanks to our changing hours - we're about six hours ahead of EST right now - and when I do get to sleep, it's often broken up as I wake at random hours, blink wearily at the clock, and try to get back to sleep. My dreams have been vivid and lifelike, fever bright, their subject matter strangely coherent and at the same time, almost too bizarre for words. Last night's had me as an immortal Roman soldier, sleeping for 2000 years, waking up in the modern age. One a few nights before that involved a vain house that wanted someone to care for it and keep it pretty, but hated children and women... so it ate my ex-wife when she showed up and started making noise about taking it from me (leaving me with the smaller, more comfortable house that had been ours until the divorce and which, in the subsequent time, she had pretty thoroughly trashed with partying and neglect).

Odd enough just on the face of it, nevermind the fact that I've never been married. O_o

Other than my dream life, things have been pretty quiet around here - just steaming steadily east, on our way to fuel up the Navies, US and NATO fleets alike. Today's moment of excitement came when a small bird flew into one of the bridge wings and knocked itself silly - dazed enough that my watch partners were able to pick it up and move it out of the way of traffic, and set up food and water nearby. By the time we were relieved of watch, it was recovered enough to hop around the wing and fly short distances, although still out of things enough for me to sit a few feet away and make a rough sketch in my Moleskine. It's not particularly good, but perhaps I'll post a picture at some point when I get back to the World.

I've been juggling a couple of books lately - M. John Harrison's "Light", a scifi novel about alternate dimensions, an anthology of travel stories for various destinations around the world, and most movingly, the first collection of Doonesbury's "The Sandbox", a collection of mil-blog short stories from Doonesbury's mil-blog of the same name. With a friend of mine getting ready to deploy back Down Range pretty soon - yes, I'm talking about you again, Alyson - the stories hit that much closer to home. It's a weird feeling, about to return from a deployment (however abbreviated) only to have a friend about to head out on one - one that will be much longr, and more involved, than this little vacation at sea has been. I can't help but worry for her, no matter how much I try to tell myself that everything will be fine. About all I can do, really, is enjoy the time I have, send her letters, stories, and encouragement while she's gone, and pray for her safe return.

Speaking of stories, I've taken a break from Twilight Exile - stuck banging my head against the walls of a fortified city - to pick up West End Blues again, which - perhaps unsurprisingly - flows much quicker and easier. Four pages, almost 2,000 words, over the last day and a half - not quite NaNoWriMo levels, but pretty respectable still. I may have mentioned a few entries ago that I was starting to get a grasp on the overall plot - what started out as an insight into the main character, Grey, and an overview of his life in the urban wasteland of Rhydin's West End is slowly shaping into a real story. That's definitely a positive.

So, tl;dr version: home soon, writing good, reading good, sleep intermittent and sanity bending, friend deploying, bird amusing. Also, I'm out of SmartWater and forced to return to the ship's desalinated, overbrominated potable water system. And that's terrible.

You load sixteen tons and what do you get...?

2008-09-09T12:41:00.001-04:00

...another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't call me 'cause I can't go
I sold my soul to the company store...

I think I've mentioned in the past, probably more than once, how much I hate the day watch. You're not allowed to sit down, nor to read, no matter how boring it might be - the summer heat in Virginia hasn't yet bled away to winter chill, so this tiny gangway hallway is one of the more uncomfortable places on the ship, and there's apparently no 'dimmer' switch to the flow of people streaming through the door, so things are either 'shoot me in the head' dead slow, or 'ohmigod I'm gonna die' fast.

This is one of the slow periods, hence my ability to update my blog. I love my Sidekick... even though it sucks as a phone, it's internet capability has saved my sanity more times than I can count.

Usually, the way things work, there's three people on watch - two on the gangway and one roaming. Two people on the gangway means that, no matter how busy it gets, there's enough people to deal with it. One person roaming gives you a chance to recharge your batteries, get some head space back after the mindless tedium of standing at a podium, sweating your brains out. Today... there's just me. I've been shackled to this frigging podium going on six hours now, save a half hour meal break and a ten minute water break. It's getting to me.

On the other hand, I've gotten a couple of pages written for my new 'series', West End Blues, so at least there's an occasional silver lining. Knock on wood, this month has shown some promise for my writing - Twilight Exile proceeds apace, WEB has already netted some positive remarks from my peers on RDI, and I'm keeping up decent word counts on each (which will hopefully keep the hungry wielders [not members] of my 'fan club' at bay). All in all, I don't have much in the way of complaining to do.

My brother asked me last night how I was doing. I had to think about it; my usual answer is that I'm "holding a turn". I'm not really going anywhere, or doing anything, I'm just in a kind of pleasant limbo... making good money, home most nights (at least until the ship deploys), I've got a good bunch of friends, a very caring, loving family... I can't really complain. I'm tired all the time, maybe because of the fluctuating work hours, maybe because of the medication I'm on to control my blood pressure, and I wish I had more time to do stuff, but over all, I'm doing well.

He also brought up the possibility of me going through the hoops necessary to publish, and actually try to make a living as an author. It's a conversation he and I have every so often, mainly because he wants to make sure I don't grow too satisfied, or despairing, and give up on my dreams, and it's a conversation I appreciate. It's one I've had with other friends, too, and it's one for which my answer is always the same.

"I'm not ready."

It could be considered a cop-out answer... after all, if you leave it up to the engineers, the project's never ready. Eventually, you have to take it away from them and send it to market. But I still feel that my writing is rough and unready for a mass audience (despite Aly's support that she's read published authors much worse than I), and I haven't completed what I would consider the most basic hurdle - I haven't actually finished something that could be satisfactorily published. I have one (1) completed short story to my name, and a handful of teeny fic... a pair of half finished novels, and some works in progress. Nothing that would make a publisher, or even an agent, sit up and take notice.

But I'm workin' on it. I'm inching for daylight.

What being an author means to me, most of all, is freedom. Not from work; as any writer, even an amateur, would be quick to tell you, an author puts in just as many grueling hours a day as anyone in an office. Not from want, because unless you're Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or John Grisham, chances are you won't make it big in the business. But freedom none the less - freedom to tell the stories I choose to, rather than listening to someone else's. Freedom to travel, because with today's communications, you can send your work in from damn near anywhere.

Freedom to be myself.

Which raises the question... who am I now?

Holding a turn...

Time is like broken glass...

2008-09-04T10:58:00.003-04:00

cuts you down to size
Jagged edge, cuts both ways
I'm a diamond...
...in disguise...

So, at some point in this life or a past one, my brother seems to have irritated a minor water deity. His apartment has been flooded, from one appliance failure or another, no less than three times over the past six months, and each time this happens, I end up taking care of his cats until the problem is remedied.

Now, don't get me wrong - I adore his cats, little hellions that they are, and I don't even mind the 8 AM furry rump against my face wakeup calls. Usually, I end up blindly, blearily, reaching out and hugging them until they go away and let me go back to sleep.

I've tried this on girlfriends in the past, too, but it never seems to work properly.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up - besides the fact that this is a blog, and therefore a reasonably-up-to-date guide to the minutiae of my life - is because when I came downstairs ungodly early this morning, I found that the downstairs toilet had overflowed, leaving my front hallway - already littered with junk mail that I hadn't bothered to pick up for the last, oh, month or so - a minor swamp.

Which leads me to believe that it's the cats, not my brother, laboring under the curse.

Anyway, minor problem soon remedied with a plunger and a mop... for now. Here's hoping my brother gets his floor and plumbing repaired before my water heater decides to go... or my pipes... or, well, anything else.

So, my life continues very much as it has before - we're in port, have been for some time, will be for most of the month. The ship is scheduled for a nearly year long deployment, starting at the end of September; I don't plan on sticking around for it, having put in for a relief date of October 2nd. Whether I'll actually get said relief date is up to the whim of the gods and MSC detailers, neither of whom are very much known for their common sense or rationality; sure, the company could save roughly 2 grand in plane tickets by simply sending my relief over a day or two before the ship deploys, but more likely I'll find myself flying home from Spain or Crete. Hardly the first time I've done so, and what the hell - I like flying.

Robin Williams once said, "Cocaine is God's way of telling you that you make too much money." Me, well, I'm pretty straight edge - not to mention that my job conducts random drug testing. So, instead of narcotics, I blow incredibly stupid amounts of money on toys and hobbies. The latest fascination? Airsoft, a game in which grown men dress up like soldiers and run around the woods shooting each other with plastic BBs. After a failed expedition to Ebay proved the truism "you get what you pay for," my brother and I absconded to our local airsoft store - Poseidon Airsoft Group Armory and picked out our favorites from the, sadly limited after a major blowout sale, selection. Fortunately, everything we wanted was there - James ended up with a Classic Army G36, I picked up a CA M-14 and a pair of KWA M1911 pistols. Everything is incredibly shiny, and I've been forcibly restraining myself from bouncing back and purchasing more - despite the hefty price tags, despite the fact that I haven't yet had a chance to play with the ones I already have, my work schedule as draconian as it is.

I know, somebody should really hold me down and take my credit card away from me.

Twilight Exile continues along, steady enough although progress has been slower than I'd like; it doesn't help that I'm as easily distracted as a ferret in a room full of mirrors, and whenever I embroil myself in a major project I inevitably seem to find other story ideas boiling up out of the back forty of my creative subconscious. I've been giving thought to NaNoWriMo this year as the fall draws closer; for a while there, I was pretty sure I was going to do a Rifts novel, probably focused around a burned out ex-CS Juicer who was dishonorably discharged and forced through detox, but now I'm not so sure. Of course, if previous NaNoWriMos have taught me anything, it's that I'm going to be unsure and waffling about the novel right up to November 1st - and afterwards too, most likely.

I pitched an idea to my friend Brian, involving a shared universe and a common starter scene, as seen from the POVs of everyone's characters - he took to the idea enthusiastically, and that enthusiasm is one of the reasons I'm second guessing my idea to do any sort of genre-fic this year. But hey, the Event itself is still almost sixty days away, and a lot can happen in that time.

Light, I hope I can stay in the area for it this year.

Update

2008-09-03T23:48:00.002-04:00

I obey the letter of the whipping, if not the spirit.

2 AM and I'm still awake...

2008-07-28T02:21:00.003-04:00

...writing a song,
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to

2 AM, and I've got work at 8. Well, 0745, to be exact, but what's fifeen minutes but half a lifetime? 2 AM, and I'm still awake, writing a blog, 'cause I can't think of what else to do in these post-midnight hours when sleep is a fickle, fickly butterfly. I don't know where this insomnia comes from; my coffee addiction, perhaps, although I've gone 'light' on the caffeine today, or maybe just that my body can never quite figure out what time it's supposed to be, thanks to my ever-changing hours. I've been up until 4 AM every night for the last week or so, after all; my sea watch schedule is midnight to 4 AM, and then noon to 4 PM. The port watch, for the last three days, has been 4 PM to midnight. I've been sleeping until noon the last couple of days, and why wouldn't I?

So, why should my body shut down on demand, just because my watch schedule rolls over?

I'm still looking at taking October off, although after looking at my accrued leave and realizing that I have about two months on the book, I have to confess that I gave some serious thought to taking November and December both off, and to hell with it.

But I'd probably be stir crazy after a month off, and not having work or other things to occupy my time during NaNoWriMo would probably be a deathblow for my chances this year, seeing how little I get written on weekends off during that time, so I might as well just suck it up.

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940), "The Crack-Up" (1936)

I've got about half an hour until I hit that long dark teatime of the soul (to steal a phrase). I haven't written anything on Twilight Exile lately, although I confess that laying in bed, staring at a darkened ceiling, I find my mind running over the story again and again. With bon chance I'll get back to the grindstone come day watch today, although I know it's stupid to keep waiting for extreme boredom to drive me back to the pen. I've been reading a lot, lately - a good thing, although (like Oblivion last month) I've let it distract me from other things I should be doing. Funny, how things so easily glossed over and cast aside during the minutiae of the day nag at you in the middle of the night.

I hate insomnia.

Scribbles Gone Mobile

2008-07-11T00:23:00.000-04:00

So, here's a new thing for me - an entry completely written on my mobile phone, taking advantage of its web browser. I have absolutely no idea if this will work, but it's just after midnight, I'm exhausted, and I've got nothing else to look forward to the next three plus hours but standing my gangway watch... so here goes nothing.

It's only been a day since my last entry, and I really don't have much to report - I updated my Flickr account with some new photos, mostly of the 'squats' - practice unreps - we did with the USNS Laramie the other day. The Laramie was my first ship, so it's a nice mix of the past and the present... and, oddly enough, even though I got off the ship two years ago, a lot of the same people are still there. Laramie encourages homesteaders, so I guess it's no big surprise.

Stood my watch today... napped afterwards, then went home. Forgot my guitar... I haven't been practicing lately, so I was kinda planning on using this underway period to get back into the swing of things. I'm kicking myself, but I suppose it's just as well... I can use the extra time to work on Twilight Exile.

And... I guess that's about all for me. 'Threshold' is pretty good so far, although the plot hasn't really started rolling yet. Kiernan's writing is very poetic, deep, and descriptive - a good thing, but as dozy as I've been lately, it's taking me longer to get through than normal. Think I'll stick with it, though.

Why~, is Superman dead?

2008-07-09T23:41:00.002-04:00

(Eee aaah eee aah, yeah)
Is it in my head?
We'll just laugh instead
You worry about the weather and
Whether or not you should hate...

So... the Rebecca is telling me I should update again. I'm not entirely sure why - I can only imagine that she's so mind-numbingly bored right now that she needs something to read. Or, perhaps she has an RSS subscription up for all of her subscribed blogs, and mine is lagging behind the rest of the bunch.

Whatever the case, here it is - my first update for July, 2008. This time last year, I was on my way to the Persian Gulf... not much fun. Right now, I'm sitting in my living room... much more fun, but not particularly exciting. It's a quarter 'till midnight, and pretty soon, I'll be headed back to the ship to sleep - back to the ship, rather than upstairs to my bedroom, because the Virginia Beach to Norfolk traffic, especially to the Naval base, is incredibly heinous in the mornings, and finding a parking spot is like searching for an honest man in the wilds of D.C... risky, futile, and fraught with delusional optimism.

So, I sleep on the ship. Better for my sanity, really.

We're out to sea on Friday... not sure for how long. It's a bummer, since that means we'll be setting sea watches at midnight, which is (gasp) eight hours after I get off the day watch (I hate those eight hour turnarounds) and the same time all my friends are going to see Hellboy II... which I'm pumped about, want to see, and sadly won't get an opportunity to, probably until it comes out on DVD.

Sad fugee face.

Lessee... um... some friends are talking about taking a hiking/camping trip next weekend... not sure if I'll be in town for it, but I'll see if I can't get the time off, anyway. Wish me luck, they usually frown on Able Seamen (and especially watch standers) taking off when we're due out to sea... and as I might have mentioned (and might have neglected) some genius decided that I would make a great unrep helmsman. Not my idea of fun, although I suppose the overtime will be good... anyway, means my chances of bailing are pretty slim. But there shouldn't be any harm in asking.

Been reading a bit, lately - over the course of the last four or five days, I've read Robin Hobbs' "Soldier Son" trilogy, Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Silk", and reread the entirety of "Dance Till Tomorrow". Also, finally got ahold of the first trade paperback for Transmetropolitan; I found it a little weak, but the rest of the series more than made up for it. Currently reading Caitlin Kiernan's "Threshold", but I'm thinking about putting it aside and reading some hardboiled detective stories, instead - I picked up, well, pretty much all (if not actually all) of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. Classics.

I've started a new Paladin serial over on my folder at RDI; I said I might, and so I did. It's called "Twilight Exile"; the name took me forever to hash out, and may still be subject to change. The first two parts are up (plus the teaser/prequel, "Echoes of Absence". I'm pounding away at the third part right now, which will hopefully round out the first chapter of a speculated four plus epilogue. I've gotten a little bit of feedback so far, and it's all been positive, so here's hoping that I can keep it up.

My brother's been having some flooding difficulties over at his apartment lately, so he's got me keeping an eye on his cats. They're not so bad - a little messy, but no worse than, well, any of the roommates I've had. I'd forgotten just how much I liked having a cat around the house - coming up on my second year of living on my own, now.

I dreamed of Joe the other day. I don't know if it's because the anniversary of his death is fast approaching, or what. Just like always, I immediately recognize that he's dead. I wish to god I could forget, at least in my dreams, and not have to deal with that same old question - do I tell him? Or just enjoy his company while I can?

And... that's about it for me. I probably shouldn't give in to the Rebecca's demands so compliantly, because it just encourages her... but I've been meaning to post at least something here for a while, so I guess she's more or less pushing me along the path that I would have chosen eventually anyway. That's what I tell myself, at least.

Wanderer and Neverborn

2008-06-21T01:32:00.002-04:00

...Shadow knight from Shadows torn
Your cause your life, the quest is all
Run hard enough you'll never fall
Your past is Not and haunts you still
Your screams held back with iron will
And though you tear and shred the skin
You're terrified to look within
For hidden there, a Prince of Death
Awaits your life with bated breath...

Paladin, of course. Rewritten by memory from something years old.

It's been awhile...

2008-06-19T13:42:00.002-04:00

...since I could hold my head up high
And it's been awhile, since I first saw you.
And it's been awhile, since I could stand on my own two feet again
And it's been awhile, since I could call you...

And it's been awhile since I could write. I'm not sure what the reason is; a lot's been happening, yes, but it's not like I've been too busy. It's not laziness, precisely, either, because I've been surprisingly productive over the last few months (though noticeably less so in the past couple of days) just... not when it comes to writing, any sort of writing.

It's pretty ironic, I guess; I look back two entries before this one, and find myself all happy poingy to be writing again. Note to self; life runs on irony. Do not cheer about how well things are going, or she'll kick you in the teeth.

But anyway, here I am on the day watch, scribbling away in my Moleskine, and with any luck this entry will find itself typed up and blogged. And, if you're reading it, I guess it is.

So, how to summarize the last two months of my life... well, in brief, it's gone by smoothly enough. I'll try to hit the highlights as best I can. For starters, our much vaunted shipyard period was not in Norfolk, as I was expecting, but instead in Charleston, South Carolina. Remember what I said about irony? Anyway, that's where I stand now - Detyen's Shipyard, North Charleston. The shipyard used to be the old Navy Yard, and many of the buildings around have that beautiful, slightly baroque architecture from the early part of the last century, although in many cases, the years have not been kind. It's warm, as one might expect from South Carolina in June - warm enough for me to start wearing shorts, which is adamantly not a pretty sight. The heat hasn't bothered me quite as badly as I figured it would; I guess there's one positive to having spent last summer in the molten hell that is the Persian Gulf, everything under 110* (F) feels uncomfortably warm rather than blisteringly hot.

My friend Jason has gotten me interested in a couple of new hobbies; I know, not like I didn't have enough already, right? But I think, overall, these two are a net positive. The first is guitar playing. Back in late March/early April (around the time of my last entry, amusingly enough) Jason gave me a battered six-string acoustic that had been kicking around his house for an untold number of months or years. It was beat to hell and someone had drawn all sorts of crude, hippie rainbows and unicorns and sunsets on it (fortunately in a washable marker), but with a little cleaning and some new strings, she sounds okay. I didn't get much practice on it until the ship went out for about a month of straight sea time, doing exercises with the Navy off the coast of Florida - I've been trying to average thirty minutes or better of practice time every day since, although the last two weeks have seen me slacking off overmuchly.

The other hobby I've gotten interested in is backpacking. It's one of those things I flirt with, every now and then; I've been talking about hiking at least some of the Appalachian Train since I was in high school, and I always enjoyed camping when I was younger, although it's been a number of years since I've been out to the wilderness. Unlike guitar playing, most of my efforts to pursue this hobby have so far been planning and theory; I've purchased a number of hiking books and trail guides, and I'm trying to put together an exercise regime so that I'll be fit enough to hike trails and carry a decent sized pack without embarrassing myself horribly. I've been shopping around for equipment, too, but I've yet to commit to anything.

I've got a strange love/hate relationship with exercise. Once I get started, I enjoy it - but starting a routine, and maintaining one, well, for whatever reason that's always been tricky. I had a pretty good run last year, in the Gulf, but eventually lost the flow of things. Laziness - apathy - I don't really have any excuses. Last deployment sucked.

Anyway, those are the big things for me: shipyard, guitar, and exercising. Amusingly enough, being in the yard has been really good for those latter two. Since I'm not going home every night, hanging out with friends, or being distracted by the internet, I have more time to devote to other things. I fall out of routines much easier than I can work myself into them. This last week, for example, was spent at home, on leave - during that time, I completely failed at either working out or practicing my guitar, and I haven't quite gotten back into the rhythm of either, now that I'm back to work.

On the other hand, I cleaned up my house while I was home, completely rearranged my bedroom, bought and built a futon and four bookshelves for my library, hung out with friends, played D&D 4th Edition, went to a beer tasting, saw "The Happening" (short review: it sucked. Longer review: it sucked hard), went to an anime convention, and bouht some incredibly sweet new swords (which can be seen on my Flickr account)... so, I have to say that it was a pretty nice, productive, but far too short leave period.

One thing that I haven't done lately is write. I've been taking an extended hiatus from RDI lately, which means's Paladin's been MIA... there's a number of reasons for my absence, but what it mostly boils down to is that the chat just wasn't fun for me anymore, and I lost interest in keeping up with the forums. Lately I've been getting that grumbling in the back of my head, that tension that means I've got the urge to write, but no outlet... so, I think I might be making a return to the RDI forums, at least, pretty soon.

We've got about a week left in Charleston. My "to-do" list for that time period consists of:
*work (8-hours daily)
*sleep (as needed)
*write (as able)
*play guitar (30 minutes - 1 hour daily)
*exercise (30 minutes - 1 hour daily)
*see the city and take pictures (remaining time)

There's a lot of cool things to see, even in the limited environs of the shipyard; I haven't gotten out much while I've been here, mainly because I didn't bring my car down when the ship first sailed. This time, however, I have - a little mobility goes a long way.

So, what else is new in my life? Um... finally got my car paid off. Five years now I've been making monthly payments on my PT Cruiser, and now I finally own the damn thing. The funny thing, it's only recently gone over 50,000 miles... a side effect of never being home to drive it. I've been thinking about trading in - the car du jour changes with my mood, but the Jeep Wrangler and Toyota Prius have both come up as candidates, for very different reasons - but in a rare fit of sensibility, I think I'll keep my Cruiser. The only real reason for a trade-in would be that "newer, shinier toy" complex, and that's a pretty damn silly reason to take on debt now that I'm clear of it.

My little sister's back from England; she had a great time, but really missed people and things here in the States, so she's glad to be back. She's slowly moving into her first apartment, with some friends, a decent looking place in Norfolk converted from an old knitting mill. Looks pretty cool, although some things - like the lack of openable windows - would drive me batty.

My motorcycle's been down for the count lately - probably just a bad battery, but getting her into the shop for a tune-up and a thorough inspection is the next best thing to impossible, thanks to her age. It's sad, because as the weather gets warmer, I find myself wanting to ride more and more. I've thought about buying a new bike a couple of times - I'm sure I've mentioned that here before - and so far there's been no resolution. Oddly enough, my dad's stopped encouraging me to buy a Harley (has actively begun discouraging the idea) and is instead bugging me to look into Victories and Triumphs. Which, I confess, look like really sweet bikes. So... round and round I go on the subject, with no end in sight.

I finally bought my Eee, and it's just as tiny and cute as I imagined. Ended up going for one of the low end models because, honestly, I already have two laptops and didn't need another "I can do anything!" machine, I needed something to replace my MobilePro, that I could carry around with me without thinking about it and use to spring into writing action at any time, any place. The tiny keyboard is frustrating and taking some adjustment, but she (I haven't named her yet, but I'm leaning towards 'Alice') has Open Office and Mozilla, so she does everything I require of her. Also bought a new camera, a Nikon Coolpix L16 to take the place of my defunct Kodak; I still need to fix or replace the flash on my Canon, though.

Speaking of pictures, my parents finally got a Flickr account. They don't seem to have done much with it yet, but hopefully soon. Still working on talking my siblings into getting one, but forecasts there seem doubtful - James doesn't take many pictures (with his camera, at least; he rather likes mine) and Jess usually puts hers up on her facebook account.

Script Frenzy: bombed it. I'm 0-2, and thinking screenwriting may just not be my forte. I'm not quite ready to give up on it altogether, but it definitely cements my determination to not fail NaNoWriMo this year. I'm going to start my planning earlier than usual (that is, before October) so that I'm ready to hit things hard come November 1st. I'm thinking about doing a fantasy this year, but we'll see if that changes; something I've learned over the last three years, you're never really sure just what story you're writing until you're in the middle of it, and even then things are subject to change without warning.

It's just after noon now, and the storm that's been threatening all morning has finally delivered its contents on our heads; torrential rain, yellow lightning bolts, and haze thick enough to conceal the bridge just down the river from us in a black fogbank. Yet, even at its peak, we can still see shreds of blue skies through the black overcast - and even as I write this, the winds still and the rain slacks to a steady drizzle. Pretty soon, things will calm and the still heat will once again dominate the day... but for now, it's cooler, and pleasant.

The Rebecca has just IMed me; it was her acerbic comments last night that prompted me to start writing this update, and she's just chimed in her disappointment that I haven't posted it yet. So, here you are, Rebecca - this one's because of you. Thanks for the kick in the rear.

And... I guess that's it, for now. More updates forthcoming soon, hopefully, along with some creative writing. Wish me luck.

[teeny fiction] The Library of Statues

2008-03-24T02:32:00.004-04:00

The statues talk to me. The statues sing to me.

The room is tall and tall and tall. The hallway runs for miles. I cannot see the ceiling; it all fades away into blue. It is not the sky, for it never changes. Always blue, never gray. Never white. Just blue. Cerulean blue.

The hall. And stairs, leading to the next level up... and up... and up. Balconies overlooking balconies over looking balconies, on up into the cerulean blue, on down into the abyssal black. And the endless, endless alcoves.

And the statues.

The statues talk to me. The statues sing to me.

There are a billion of them, or more. I cannot remember when I came here, or how I got here, or from whence I came. I have wandered until my feet bled, and sat until they stopped, and wandered again. The hall. The stairs. The statues.

I need not eat. I need not drink. Sleep brings no respite because the statues speak when I draw near, and I am always near to them.

Each hall has rows of alcove, each alcove holds a statue, each statue unique. The world's population, writ permanently in marble, in granite, in bronze and wood and clay and diamond. Each has a story to tell, but I do not always know the words. Some tell fables. Some sing ballads. Some teach lessons in mathematics, or science, or theology. They speak a thousand languages, and when I hear one I recognize, I stay awhile and listen.

Sometimes I learn.

I do not know this place, but I know that I am welcome.

The statues talk to me. The statues sing to me.
-----

Something I wrote two years ago for the Libraries of Faerie on RPG.net's Tangency forum. Registration is required to view Tangency, unfortunately, but I would highly recommend it to... well, pretty much anyone. It's one of the friendliest, freakiest, most intelligent (and yet, most inane) forums I've seen on this great world wide Interweb.

If for no other reason, the thread linked has some of the best teenyfic I've read, and it's well worth a read.

Life continues much the same as before, standing watches, drinking too much coffee, and trying to keep up with my writing. Did the family dinner thing for Easter; it was fun. Nothing new, really.

I burn, burn like a wicker cabinet...

2008-03-20T22:30:00.005-04:00

...chalk white and oh so frail,
I see our time has gotten stale.
The tick tock of the clock is painful
All sane and logical
I want to tear it off the wall...

Standing the watch. Most days, I don't have a lot of room to complain about my job; especially when the ship is sitting in Norfolk like this, and I get to go home most nights. Eight hours of alternately standing at the gangway to prevent intruders and roaming the ship to watch for fires, floods, and other catastrophes; it's mostly lots of standing, sitting, and walking as I watch the world go by and cling desperately to my last vestiges of sanity. Boredom is an ever present danger - but I get a lot of writing done. Note the previous entry, my short story "Bowels of the City"; note the current entry, 'anablogged' on the gangway and (one must assume, since you're reading it) later typed up and posted here for all to see.

It's a wonderful feeling, to be writing again, and I can lay most of the credit at the proverbial feet of the RP site I've taken up with recently. I'd forgotten just how much fun it can be to spend a night in a chatroom, pretending to be a fictional character. I've made some new friends; RDI has quite a pool of talented writers, and several of them have been generous enough to share encouragement and advice with me. So, if any of you are reading this - hello, new friends!

Ship's schedule - well, OPSEC always, so I can't mention places or dates. I don't think I'll be out of line to say that the ship will be out to sea for a spell at the end of this month/beginning of the next. Other than that, it looks like we're in port pretty much the entire spring, heading into the yards sometime around mid-May, here in Hampton Roads, and not coming out again until mid-June. I'm hoping to stick around through most of the yard period and then take a portion of the summer off. Maybe I'll finally do some of that traveling I always seem to be talking about doing for fun, and never quite get around to.

April's coming up, bringing its own set of headaches with it. Both of my siblings have their birthdays in April, for one; James and I are still observing a civil but stony silence between each other and Jessica's at university overseas, but it seems only polite to get something shiny for each. I'll not go into too many details here since I'd hate to spoil the surprise (and I know you're reading this, Jesy, seeing how I tagged it with your name), but it'll probably involve Amazon for the one, and the ABC store for the other.

Or both for both, maybe; even considering that we are siblings, we have eerily similar tastes in a lot of things. It's probably the reason we drive each other so crazy when we're together for too long; we're similar enough that we get on each other's nerves, but just different enough that we can argue, viciously and at length, about it.

Ah, well.

As most people who know me IRL (and not a few of my OL only friends) are aware, I'm something of a caffeine fanatic - a caffiend, if you will, although I can't take credit for the term. I've gained something of a reputation among the watch teams as the man who makes good coffee - probably because I'm not adverse to making a pot of Starbucks or other decent coffee rather than rely on the Maxwell House or Butter Nut the ship stocks. I'm more than willing to share - as long as I get my cuppa, first.

I raise the subject because one of the watch members, Mickey, recently gave me a can of Cafe Du Monde, a rather nice French Roast from New Orleans. I liked it enough that I've ordered a couple of tins from their website, including their signature blend with chicory. I've never had coffee with chicory, before - I've heard it's something of an acquired taste, so while I have high hopes that the two cans of it I've ordered will be excellent, I can't really say that I have too much in the way of expectations. With any luck, the case has arrived at my parent's house by now and I can stop by after work and take delivery.

((Addendum to the above; it did. I gave a tin each of the French Roast and the chicory to my parents, and I owe a tin of the French Roast to a watch partner. The rest are mine.))

My watch partner, Frost, has similar tastes in music to mine (not hard; my musical interests are notoriously eclectic) and a similar penchant for getting songs stuck in his head. As a result, one of us will be humming or singing a song and soon have the other joining in. It leads to some humorous situations - singing the chorus to "Sloop John B." during night watch on the bridge, for example, or serenading JB - our ordinary seaman, and not the brightest bulb in the bunch - with "Ode to Joy" whenever he says something stupid in his "be proud and give me a cookie" voice. Whatever helps time go by, eh?

It occurs to me that I need to make a shopping trip soon; I find myself in need of groceries. I'm a little leery about buying food for home, since our schedule is so erratic. I'd hate to buy, say, eggs and milk right before we put out to sea for three weeks. I hate having to throw food away. Even if I don't get anything for home, though, I could still use coffee and breakfast bars for the ship - I should stop by Farm Fresh on my way back tonight - or maybe Fresh Market on my way home, and get some sushi for dinner. Mmm... sushi. I could use some more SmartWater, too.

There was a time when I thought people paying for bottled water was silly. There was a time when I thought cell phones were silly, too, though. Nowadays, it's difficult to imagine life without my electronic leash. While it's rare that I call anyone - and let's face it, the Sidekick is a large mass of failure as a phone - I love its web connectivity wherever I go. And most especially on these long day watches.

I don't know why the day watch always seems at least twice as long as either the dog or the grave. Maybe it's because I can't crack open a novel when the boredom starts getting to me. Maybe it's because there are more people coming through the gangway, thus requiring that I pay closer attention to what's going on in my immediate surroundings, and less time inside my head. Hell, maybe it's just because I'm a night owl, and I'm inevitably overtired and undercaffeinated during these watches. Any or all of the above, I guess.

Still no real ideas as far as Script Frenzy's concerned; eleven more days until the event begins. If I don't come up with it at least a vague idea soon then the next month may well be... interesting. I'd hate to be a nonstarter again, this year - I didn't get word one last year, which is odd when you consider how excited I was in the months leading up to it. Maybe that was the problem - I burned out all my enthusiasm in the month leading up to it.

Even with the format change this year - 100 pages instead of 30,000 words - I'm a little nervous about the whole thing. I couldn't ask for much more in the way of time in which to write; plenty of time on watch in which to spin ideas and scratch notes to myself, after all. It's just thinking up an idea... a plot, a story, some sort of visual tale to tell. Maybe a comic. Maybe a TV series. There's an idea floating around in my head, I just need to grab it...

Meh. Almost done with today. Two more day watches, and then we go to the graveyard shift again - unless we sail. Or they change our watch schedule again. Or any number of a thousand other, equally entertaining prospects. Every day's an adventure, right?

(Short Story) The Bowels of the City

2008-03-20T09:03:00.002-04:00

Part One

Five kids had disappeared from the WestEnd over the last week. It wasn't so high a number, maybe. Not for the district that had more violent crimes, per capita, than the entire rest of the city combined. The Guard and SPI were still looking for the 'WestEnd Killer'; there were routine gang wars more violent than a day in Khe Sanh; and the events of a certain shadow and walking-corpse filled night not so very long ago had been enough to make hardened warriors quail and sob. Death was a way of life, on these streets.

But still, even in the WestEnd, there was little tolerance for those monsters - human and not - who preyed on children. Which was why, when a pack of Makos saw a little boy get dragged, screaming, into a storm drain, they contacted their most hated nemesis. Broke the unwritten code among the criminal underworld. They went to the Guard.

Not immediately, of course. No, first they tried going after the kid themselves. Six rough-and-tough street knights, thug born, gangbanger raised, went down the sewers of the WestEnd. One - well, most of one - came back out, shaking and bleeding.

So they went to the Watch. The lieutenant at the WestEnd said the sewers were Public Works' problem, and kicked it over there. Public Works chipped in a map of the sewers that was at least a century out of date and kicked it back to the Watch. The lieutenant asked for volunteers.

You'd think I have enough on my plate already, Paladin thought ruefully, checking his pistols. Seven in the magazine and one in the chamber, Federal Hydra-Shoks guaranteed to put a gruesome hole in any tissue they hit. They were less effective against armour, which was why he had additional magazines of teflon-coated AP and standard ball rounds tucked away in the harness loosely strapped over his coat. The right tool for the right job. Like his swords and fighting knives, he'd had the bullets thrice-blessed. Charms had been placed on the guns to ensure they'd shoot true. They should be effective, even on targets that sneered at mortal weapons - like the surviving Mako indicated this one had.

He was going in alone, though - nobody else had been brave, or foolhardy, enough to volunteer. Not even after he'd raised his hand. He'd picked up a reputation for being where the fire was hottest, after all, and that had the inevitable result of getting the people around him burned. Usually, he preferred to work alone - it gave him more freedom to move when he didn't have to worry about protecting anyone else when the feces hit the fan. And they almost always did.

This, though, this made him nervous. Rumour - never the most reliable resource, but the only one he had in this case - had a lot to say about the city underside. There were miles of tunnels under the city, everything from sewer piping and subway tunnels (from back in the day when the city had a working Metro) to ancient ruins that had been built over and forgotten as the city grew larger. There were demons caged beneath the city, they said, much like they'd wanted to cage Renna the Betrayer - wrapped up in unbreakable chains and bound in spell-circles, the secret prisons bricked over and left. There were dark things, lurking in the endless night.

About the only thing that could reliably expected, really, were rats, darkness, and a foul smell that was slowly choking the Public Works workers as they laboriously lifted the steel manhole cover free of the cobbles. Paladin took a look around the narrow alley and had to laugh. How amusing to think that this dead-end might be his last sight of the surface world. Bags of trash, plastic and burlap both, heaped up against the building walls. The graffiti splashed board fence that tried gamely to keep the alley from being used as a shortcut between two busy thoroughfares. The clotheslines strung between the buildings like the web of some demented spider, festooned with clothes like festive streamers. And, of course, the manhole; a gaping black orifice expelling the fetid breath of Hell itself.

"You're taking this awfully calmly," Guard-Sergeant Remington Abigail Lee said in her rough, bulldog voice. Remmie - woe to the person who called her Abigail, or worse, 'Abby' - was a huge, gruff, bear of a woman, perfectly capable of holding her own - and then some - in any bar brawl or riot. The Guard was a family career for the Lees, and Remmie had brought pride to the tradition. But even she drew the line at plunging into the dank, black underbelly of the city.

Paladin shrugged, glad she couldn't read the morbid poetry of his thoughts. "I've seen worse," he said glibly. It even had the luxury of being true. "Smelled worse, too, come to that."

Remmie wrinkled her nose. "Remind me never to take a slash at your place, then," she said. She was holding the Geordie lamp the Guard had reluctantly issued Paladin when he'd volunteered. He didn't really want it, but the nature of the WestEnd made electric lanterns, flashlights, and even chemical glowsticks unreliable. The last thing he wanted was to be alone in the dark, deep below the city streets.

"You sure about this?"Remmie asked, stepping close and lowering her voice. "Nobody's going to think you a coward if you change your mind, you know. There's some jobs they don't pay us enough for."

Paladin gave her a long, measuring look, and answered just as quietly. "This isn't about the money, Rem. It never was." And then, louder. "So, what do you think about the new duds? Am I still drop dead sex-ay?" He was decked out in protective coveralls, thigh high rubber wader boots, latex gloves and shielding goggles. As Remmie watched, trying not to laugh at his ridiculous question, he pulled an air filter over his mouth, adding to his outrageous appearance. He still wore his long, black coat, trusting to its many enchantments to keep it safe and clean.

"Oh, yeah," she snickered. "You're pretty damn 'sex-ay' all right - for a crazy person." He looked at her and held out one hand menacingly.

"Remmie," He intoned, voice muffled and distorted by the air filter. "I am your father."

She snorted rudely. "I'd like to see a skinny twig like you be my father," she said with a smothered laugh. "You come along home when you get out of that hole and get cleaned up, though. We'll see if we can put some meat on those bones."

"Thanks," he said ruefully, stepping over to the manhole. "But I doubt I'll be in the mood to eat anything for a while, after this excursion." He saluted her jauntily and dropped into the manhole, catching the ladder at the last possible second and lowering himself gently into the darkness.

Remmie carefully lowered the Geordie lantern on its line down after him. "Godspeed, Guardsman," she said softly. Even though she knew that he'd been through worse - or at least, claimed to have been through worse - she couldn't help but worry that this was going to be the last time she saw the pale young man in his long black coat.

~End Part One~

----

Part Two

Down he went, hand over hand on the rusting ladder. Down, into the darkness. Down into the murk. Down into foulness.

Even through the air filter, the tunnels stunk like ten thousand corpses. This section was relatively dry; the muck only came up to his ankles. Every squelching step emitted a fresh addition to the suphuric salt marsh stench.

"This was not one of my brightest ideas," he said, looking around. Even after Remmie lowered the Geordie lamp, there wasn't much to see; the brick walls of the vaulted tunnel were caked with muck and grime, save where rivulets of mousture cut their way down. Over the years, the trails of running water had carved grooves in the face of bricks softened by their exposure to the corrosive air.

Out of curiousity, Paladin jabbed a gloved finger into one of the walls. The brick crumbled like wet chalk.

I better watch my step down here, he thought grimly. This whole place might come down around my head... and take most of the WestEnd with it.

The circle of light from above vanished as the Public Works men closed the manhole. Paladin and Remmie had argued long and hard for them to keep it open, but they'd refused - for much the same reason as they'd refused to provide any sort of guide to the labrynthine tunnels beneath the city.

There were dark things, beneath Rhydin. The main job of Public Works was to keep them there, down in the deeps, where they wouldn't bother decent people. Leaving an opening to the surface world went against that job - so, while they'd stand a guard over the manhole and refrain from cementing it back up, they wouldn't leave it standing open.

"Some of those critters down there are quick," one of the men had grumbled. His tone said that he clearly felt Paladin a fool for even considering venturing into the darkness alone. "They'll have your throat out before you can blink."

So the hole was sealed, and Paladin was locked alone in the dark, save for the dim light of the safety lantern. Firedamp was a constant danger in the methane rich sewer tunnels, and even with his pyrokinetic gift, Paladin didn't want to risk his luck with an explosion. He waited for several long minutes in the gloom until his eyes had adjusted; he knew from experience that an outside observer seeing him now would be shocked, watching his pupils expand until they swallowed his irises, leaving his eyes as black as night. "Good genes," he usually joked when someone inquired about his keen senses, superhuman strength and reflexes, or apparent immunity to the ravages of age. With luck, nobody would ever know how true that was.

When he could see clearly again, he tugged the crude map out of his pocket and looked it over. It showed a majority of those tunnels closest to the surface - storm drains and sewer channels, emptying out into the Rhydin River, or to various holding facilities around the city. The storm drain the Makos had gone chasing down wasn't too far away - the main reason he and Remmie had chosen this route for his entrance.

Although the tunnels were noticeably warmer than the frigid outside air, thick and muggy, Paladin felt a distinct chill run down his spine as he looked down the tunnel.

Enough wasting time, he told himself firmly. Let's get a move on.

Even with the muck, even with the murk, even with the stench and darkness, it was enough to find the site where five Makos had been killed and a sixth one crippled. For one thing, they were still there. Most of them, at any rate.

The holding chamber was almost perfectly spherical, with a catwalk running around its rim and four tunnels leading off. The center was an oily black pool, its surface only a few inches beneath Paladin's rubber booted feet, glistening viscously in the lantern light. Bit and pieces of dead men were scattered around the room; torsos bobbing in the water, limbs strewn about the catwalk, weapons scattered about higgledy-piggledy like a child's discarded toys. The room's walls had been chewed on raggedly by automatic weapons fire, the brick torn and pulped and splintered.

Paladin leaned over interestedly to investigate the remains of a Kalashnikov. The weapon's composite stock had been painted Mako gray, the butt wrapped in dragon's hide. The barrel and bolt assembly were mostly missing, what was left raggedly twisted and melted. A hand was still tightly clenched around the grip, "LOVE" tattooed across the pale knuckles, a twisting dragon on the back of the hand, terminating at the ragged stump of the absent wrist.

Paladin chewed his lip under the mask and crouched, studying the scene intently. The bodies were scattered all around the chamber, but most of the gunfire was concentrated on one section of the wall, with only a few craters on the others. So... the gangers entered the chamber, spotted their target, and opened up. One good burst, and then they didn't have much more chance for shooting.

He made his way along the catwalk gingerly until he'd reached the far side. Even in the softened brick, the bullets hadn't penetrated very far. 7.62, .45, a lot of 9-mm... none of them more than an inch or two into the brick. As if they'd been slowed. As if they'd passed through something first.

The surviving Mako had said something about their bullets not working. It was hard to get any sense out of him - he'd spent most of his time gibbering. Or screaming.

They came, they shot - and it killed them. But what was it? The remains showed signs of scorching and melting... Paladin frowned, examining a severed leg. The Mako's gray dragon-hide uniform was scorched and pitted, bone-deep craters scattered apparently at random up and down its length. He hissed breath through clenched teeth, and instantly regretted it with the foul, accompanying smell.

Acid. Well, that was probably to be expected. What else kind of creature could live down here, in the corrosive atmosphere of the sewers? He looked at the torn-up wall again. Acid spitting, bullet proof... well, not exactly 'proof'. Just 'less than effected by.'

He shook his head. From bad to worse... but other than confirming some of his darker suspicions, there really wasn't any new information. How big was it? How did it move? And most importantly - what did it look like?

He looked at the nearest tunnel, next to the bullet holes. It had been going into or coming out of this one, presumably, when the Makos caught up to it. Going to its lair, maybe? Did this thing have a lair? He paused, examining the tunnel walls. Grooves, eaten into the brick work, right about his shoulder height. He brushed them lightly with a gloved hand, frowning. Fairly fresh, or they would have been covered up by muck and grime.

There wasn't necessarily a connection, but it was the closest thing to a lead he had. He took it.

Unknown hours later, he had to admit that he was lost. It wasn't an unusual experience for him; he'd spent most of his life lost, to one degree or another. Very rarely, though, did it come with the ominous, menacing feeling that being lost deep in the bowels of Rhydin City carried.

He'd discovered some new information about the grooves he'd been following. For one thing, he was more positive than ever that they were tracks. They had seemed intermittent at first, disappearing every few feet only to reappear a few feet further down the tunnel. Eventually, he'd gotten the bright idea to check the opposite side of the tunnel. Bingo; more marks, their patterning opposite. It looked like something large, swaying back and forth as it moved, brushing the sides of the tunnel as it - what, walked? Slithered? Crawled?

Impossible to tell, in the mostly liquid muck that covered the ground. Paladin's own shuffling footsteps were soon lost as the ooze filled in behind him. Not for the first time, he wished he'd brought a staff or something similar with him - something that would allow him to probe ahead, seek out any hidden pitfalls. Every slow, creeping step brought new worry that the ground would give out beneath him, drop him into some flooded, subterannean chamber where he'd drown in the filthy, stinking waters...

Stop it, he chided himself. That's not going to help anything. Think of the kid, lost down here, scared. Think of the monster. Keep your mind on the job. Although, honestly, he didn't have much hope of finding the kid - not alive, at any rate. Not since he found the acid-scarred bodies of those Makos. If the thing that grabbed him was the same as the one that had dismembered the thugs, then odds were the kid was just a snack in this thing's gullet.

If it has a gullet.

The rushing of water dragged his attention further ahead. Sloshing forward, he found that his tunnel ended in another collection chamber - or something like one. His tunnel actually ended several meters above the chamber, but a rusty ladder was bolted to the brickwork, and led down to an observation catwalk.

This chamber was much larger than the last, and from the roaring sound, several tunnels came together here - most of them with much greater waterflow than his. The cataract noise was deafening, but little could be seen in the dim light of the Geordie lamp.

The air through his filter seemed fresher here, and he could feel a slight breeze on his face. He raised the lantern as high as he could, but still the catwalk below was barely visible - forget the roof, high overhead.

Enough airflow here. Worth a risk. A flicker of thought was all it took to form a will o'the wisp light, barely more than a spark. At his guidance, it flittered out into the chamber and began to expand - now grapefruit sized, now watermelon, slowly bringing illumination to the room. His eyebrows raised as great, rusted machines came into view.

Once, the thunder of their mighty pistons and the churning of their water wheels must have drowned out the roar of the cataracts. Now, they were still and silent, shrouded with green growths and algae, stained dark by time and the tidals flows of sludge and sewage.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...No indication of their purpose, but their scale and that of the room, hinted at their importance, the grandeur they must once have held. He must have come further, and deeper, than he'd thought.

He shook himself out of his silent reverie. He wasn't tomb raiding or dungeon crawling today, seeking ancient relics and forgotten knowledge. He had a job to do, and time wasn't on his side. The size of the chamber made tracking the monster impossible, but with luck he could pick up its trail again on the far side. Climbing one-handed down the slippery, corroded ladder wasn't an easy task, but he'd managed worse.

Funny; as much as he was sure the creature had passed through the chamber, he'd never considered that it might still be there...

It boiled up out of the murky water when he was halfway across the chamber, moving faster than anything of its bulk had a right to. Even with his incredible reflexes, Paladin had no time to react - a pseudopod, mostly transparent but shot through with pale red veins, wrapped around his leg and jerked, hard.

He hit the deck, choking off a scream as his heavy coveralls began to smolder in the thing's clenching grip. One of his pistols was in his hand, blazing away as the tentacle tried to drag him into the water. The bullets splashed into the 'flesh' as though it were made of Jell-o, the heavy Hydro Shoks tearing gaping holes that almost instantly mended. The thing seemed to flinch, once, then whipped and sent him flying.

Paladin lost his grip on pistol and lantern as he impacted with the far wall, barely rolling into the blow to keep his spine from breaking, his ribs from shattering. The both fell away into the gloom as his foxfire light went out, one falling into the water with an inaudible splash, the other crashing onto a stone ledge and shattering, the oil splattering, igniting.

He staggered upright, his leg a blazing knot of pain that could barely hold his weight. He managed to roll under a spray of water, washing the acid off before it could chew through the muscle - fresh water, hopefully, not that there was time to worry about that. Barely visible in the bonfire of lantern oil, the monster came on - its form morphous, shifting. He could barely make out a large body and a spray of tentacles - something like an anemone, or an upside down jellyfish. Or maybe that was just his pain-fogged mind trying its damndest to fill in the blanks.

It was on him again, now, lashing with its tentacles. He ducked the first blow, snapping one of his fighting dirks to hand and severing the next pseudopod as it came for him. The third and fourth wrapped around and slapped him from behind, sizzling as they connected with his impenetrable coat, knocking him forward. He rolled with the blow, lashed out with a kick. Cried out in pain and horror as his boot sank into the soft, gelatinous surface of the thing. He jerked back, leaving the rubbed boot behind, and tried to parry with his knife as the tentacles struck. Again and again, with brutal, bone-bruising blows that even his coat had difficulty deflecting.

He howled as one lashed him across the face, disorienting him, the skin immediately blistering at the contact. Blistering, but not dissolving... it was hard to think as he writhed under the furious beating, feeling his arms go numb, his ribs creak and crack. Maybe some tentacles were more acidic than others. Maybe it had wasted most of its acid on its earliest attacks, used it up on his coat. Maybe... maybe...

He lashed out, severing another tentacle, grabbed and squeezed as yet another made a grab for him - the runny flesh squishing like gelatin between his fingers, the leather glove charring and smoldering. He pulled, and it stretched like taffy, tore apart. Another one struck him hard across the side, launching him into a roll. The knife spun off into the darkness, almost instantly replaced with his remaining pistol. The muzzle flash strobed as the thing lurched and followed him, lighting up its misshapen, blobbish body, revealing the screaming heads sealed within its rubbery form, slowly dissolving, digesting. Some were fresh, some were bare skulls. Some of them were child-sized.

He could barely hear himself screaming as the gun emptied, Hydro Shoks tearing huge, gaping, useless holes in his enemy. No eyes, no mouth, no discernable anatomy at all. Wordless imprecations of rage and pain tearing his throat, drowned out as it fell on him like a tidal wave, pseudopods bludgeoning madly.

He barely felt it when one of those tentacles lifted him up and threw him again, barely noticed the world become brighter as he landed in the burning pool of oil.

Flames. Flames around him, licking at him. His body, a mass of pain. Bones cracked, flesh torn and blistered from the brutal punishment, the acidic touch. But not burning - even in the heart of the fire, he was untouched, shielded by his pyrokinetic gift. Even with his brain so fogged from pain that he couldn't remember his name, his Gift still protected him.

And something more; through eyes nearly sealed shut with swelling, he saw the thing slide towards him, then hesitate. It extended one tentacle, but flinched it back before it reached the flames.

It's scared, he realized dimly. Scared of the fire... Scared for a reason. It's vulnerable... He tried to reach out, to lash it with flame, ignite with the power of his mind. Burn it where it stood. He couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate enough to raise the fire; could only watch through graying vision as it gave up and slithered away, deciding that this meal was just too much effort. Watched it slide into a hole in the wall, compressing its bulk - disappearing.

And then he knew no more.

~End Part Two~

----

Part Three

He woke up, kicking and screaming.

The first thing he noticed was that he wasn't in the sewers anymore. The room was dimly lit by a glow lamp on one wall, windowless but homey. The bed beneath him was soft, the blankets wrapped around his sweat-soaked body warm. They would no doubt be comfortable, if he weren't tangled and bound by them.

The second thing he noticed was that the pain was mostly gone. His right leg still ached and burned, his face felt stiff and sore, his arms weaker than they should - but he felt worlds better than the nightmare storm of agony that was the last thing he recalled.

The third thing he noticed was that he was naked. He didn't realize that until the nearly-hidden door on the wall opened and a young woman poked her head in.

"Faith," she said with some amusement as he grabbed at the blankets he'd just untangled himself from and covered up. "The way you were carrying on, we thought you were being murdered again."

"Not quite," he said, struggling to maintain his modesty - whatever might be left of it, seeing as how someone had to have stripped him in the first place - and control his reaction. Blushing made his face hurt more. "Where am I? Back in the City?"

"Not quite," she echoed him with a slight grin, entering the room fully. She moved like a dancer, all quiet, unassuming grace. "You're in Undertown."

"I'm still in the sewers?" He blinked, surprised. This didn't look anything like the catacombs of stench and foulness he'd descended into.

"Hardly," she sniffed, seemingly insulted. "Undertown has nothing to do with the sewers, save a few common passages. It's like saying Rhydin City is in the forest, because they're both at the same altitude and the King's Highway runs through each."

"I didn't mean any offense," he said cautiously. "But I'm still underground? Still beneath the City?"

"Well, of course," She smiled at him, mood suddenly merry. She was mercurial, strangely flighty, but radiated dependability like a rock. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be Undertown."

"Thank you." He looked around the room again, then back to her. "Who brought me here? And who healed me?" Healing magics usually didn't work on him, and when they did work properly, they took a terrible toll. Yet someone had clearly repaired the extensive injuries to his body - as powerful as his natural recuperative ability was, he had been far too wounded to be back on his feet so quickly. Which reminded him... "And how long have I been out?"

"A lot less than I thought you would," she answered his last question first. "About ten hours or so, probably more - we don't know how long you were out before Jack found you. He said you were laying in a puddle of burning oil, it's amazing you weren't burned to death. Of course, by the looks of all those scars on you, it seems like people've tried just about every other way possible to kill you." He opened his mouth to reply, but she carried on. "So, probably not too much longer than that. Jack found you, he's always been something of a ranger, roaming the tunnels and caverns under the city as he wills. Though it's getting more dangerous to do that, these days. Witnessing what happened to yourself, for example.

"Sylvia's the one what healed you, and it wasn't easy, believe me. She's been abed almost as long as you have, and she's likely to stay there longer; it took near everything she had to put you back together, and it was a pretty close thing at that.

And to answer the rest of the questions you no doubt have coming, I'm Maria, and this is my house you've been sleeping in. I had a spare room, so I volunteered to take you in. Now, no doubt you're pretty hungry with all you've been through, so I'll get you some breakfast, even though it's closer to dinnertime."

"Thank you," he said again, a little dazed, but he said it to the closing door as she bustled back out of the room as quickly as she'd come, suiting action to words immediately. He looked around the room once more, trying to process the information. Undertown. You heard rumors of people living in the caverns under the city, but they never made the inhabitants out to be so... normal. His coat was folded neatly on a table across the room, as immaculate as ever - even the WestEnd hadn't managed to break down the layer upon layer of protective enchantments woven into its leather and silk. Not yet, at any rate. There was no sign of the rest of his clothes - they'd probably been burned.

Well, easily handled. His backpack was, as always, right where he needed it to be, and a moment after Maria left the room he was off the bed, legs a little shaky and achey but otherwise holding fine. Other than some slight dizziness and his sore muscles, he felt pretty well. It was a thing to marvel at, and he resolved to speak to this 'Sylvia', as soon as he could. He shrugged into clean clothes and was just buckling up his tanker boots when Maria reentered the room with a large, steaming bowl of soup.

"Well, you're a resourceful fellow," she commented, not batting an eye. She did give the backpack a suspicious glance as she set the food down on the table. Paladin shrugged slightly. The backpack did that to everyone. "I was wondering what we had that would fit a skinny fellow like you. Glad to see you won't be walking around in one of my old skirts."

"I'm sure it would have looked quite lovely on me," Paladin replied with a faint smile, bowing slightly. He glanced longingly at the soup, then back to her. "Will you be joining me, miss?"

"Maria," she chided lightly. "And no, thank you, dear. I've eaten. Although, a cup of coffee would go down a treat; a pity, as we're all out. Our last surface-world supplier seems to have run afoul of some of the trouble you folk keep having up there, and we haven't gotten any of our regular shipments in a month."

Paladin nodded and began to rummage in his pack again, emerging in short order with his canteen, French press, a hand-powered coffee grinder, and a bag of coffee beans. That, at least, got a bit of a reaction.

"You really are a resourceful fellow," she murmured, eyes wide, as he quickly made coffee and set the French press up to brew.

"I try," he said with a larger smile, sitting down at the table and tucking into the soup. It really was quite good.

After soup and coffee, Maria offered to show him around the Underside. Although his legs were still a touch wobbly, Paladin eagerly agreed. Undertown was smaller than he might have expected, little more than a few city blocks - although he shouldn't have been surprised. It wasn't like they could be expected to keep a huge community hidden for very long, could they?

Maria lived in "Northside", what looked like an old warehouse district. The warehouses had been converted into homes and apartments, and the area was better lit than its counterpart in Rhydin Above was - street lamps never lasted very long in either the Dockside or the WestEnd, after all, and even when they were present they were seldom quite so bright and cheery as the magically powered glowstones scattered about the area. Still, despite the touches of color on the alley walls and the decorations the citizens had hung up from place to place, there was no mistaking Undertown for any surface community. The air was too still, for one thing - although there was the faintest trace of a fresh breeze when Paladin stopped and concentrated, and no taste of stagnation in the air. And, of course, one could feel the weight of the unseen roof over their heads - the cold, pressing certainty of stone, lingering, waiting, endless and patient.

Or maybe that was just him.

Maria had insisted on saving the rest of the coffee in a thermos before she and Paladin had left her house, even though he could make more easily enough - a 'waste not, want not' policy that he recognized from other subsistence-level communities, and had to respect. When they stopped at a fountain in what for all the world looked like the town square - an area Maria referred to as 'Central' - he had to wonder aloud at how few people there were roaming about, and at how much Undertown resembled the surface world.

"I suppose it would," Maria shrugged. "All of this - and most of us - came from up there, you know." She toyed with the thermos for a moment, looking pensive. "Most folks here are former slaves, escaped or freed. The others... well, everyone's got some demons in their past, some things they don't want to talk about, or they're running from. There wasn't a life for us up there... so we came down here. As above, so below." She shrugged again, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

"Everybody's looking for a piece of their own peace of mind," Paladin said, understanding. It sounded like a song lyric, or a quote. Maybe it was; his mind was a library of pop culture references and trivia, all scattered about without rhyme or reason. It wasn't uncommon for him to start singing a song, letter perfect line for line, and be unable to remember where he'd first heard it. Things like that happened when you lived your life on the road, always a stranger, always a visitor.

"Something like that, I guess." She looked away for a minute, still toying with the thermos, and then back at him. "You know, when you go back to Rhydin City, you can't tell anyone about us, right?"

He nodded, looking down into the fountain waters. Pure and clean, they showed no sign of ever having been spoiled by wish-carrying coins, or swam through by fish. The flowing waters were soothing, and he felt himself relax a little more. "I'd figured as much, seeing how I hadn't heard anything solid about you folks before. No tales from people returning from excursions to the scenic suburbs below the city." He smiled, a little crooked. "Appreciate hearing you folks will be kind enough to let me go on my way when I'm done down here, and not try to hold me."

"We're not jailers," Maria said, looking away again. "Just... people who want to live our own lives, without the world up above always telling us what to do, or how to live." She smiled then, matching his. "Besides... I saw what you looked like, when Rambling Jack brought you in. I'm not so sure we could hold you here, unless you let us."

"Probably not," he said softly. "Believe me when I say I'd never want to harm you, though. I owe you folks a lot." He chuckled, shook his head. "Owe you my life. I'll carry your secret to the grave and back, if need be." He looked up, found her staring back at him - violet irises meeting his storm gray eyes levelly.

"I hope it doesn't come to that," she said. "But thank you." She stood up and brushed her skirt off, fixing a smile on her face. "But I should probably stop monopolizing you. You should meet Siegfried, and after that, you'll probably want to meet Rambling Jack. I'm sure you and he have a lot to talk about."

Paladin thought of the twisting form of the creature that had brought him down here, all oozing body and flailing tentacles, and nodded. "I'm sure we do." he said softly, and rose to his feet.

Siegfried's place was, predictably enough, another warehouse. Decorated with blue dreamcatchers, and painted with a pleasing mural of field and forest, but a warehouse nevertheless. It seemed to be par for the course, here in Undertown, and Paladin was forming a theory on the district's origin. At some point in the past, some disaster - natural or otherwise, one must remember that this was Rhydin, after all - had dropped a goodly section of the city's shipping district underground and buried it, to be lost and forgotten. Paladin had seen similar occurences before; Seattle, in Earth's United States, for example, or Il Ruene in Tella's Caerlyn.

The real question in his mind was how many of the current inhabitants were descendants of people who'd been buried here, and how many were later arrivals. That didn't seem a question he was likely to get an answer to, however. Maria was quiet on the way to Siegfried's, caught up in her own concerns. Paladin noticed her watching him, a time or two. He tried not let it worry him.

The inside of the warehouse had been converted into living quarters, making a large, roomy house of the former storage space. That was the intention, at least - the place reminded Paladin a bit of a cubicle farm, if a large and homey one. The smell of tea and the unconventional furniture, mostly beanbags, did a bit to alleviate the feeling.

Maria introduced Siegfried as the 'Mayor of Undertown'. From the man's sheepish grin, Paladin got the feeling it was more of an affectionate title than a formal one. The Undertowners seemed fairly self-sufficient. He was an older fellow, his salt-and-pepper hair cropped short, his body lean and fit; the calloused hand hard and scarred in Paladin's when they shook. A working man, a far cry from some sweet-talking, backroom deal-making politician; not that Paladin had expected someone like that. He had watchful eyes, and the wanderer reminded himself that 'real' Mayor or not, this was a man to be taken seriously.

The conversation was a bit stilted at first as introductions were made and everyone settled themselves as best they could on the furniture. Siegfried offered tea and Paladin, remembering what Maria had said about shortages lately and their contacts in the city above vanishing in the troubles, politely refused. Then Maria surprised them both by raising her thermos of coffee and offering it.

Siegfried smiled, a little grimly. "I've never been much of a coffee drinker," he said. "Still, it's been a bit since I've had my caffeine fix." He fetched cups for all three of them, a comfortable mismatch, and Maria poured them all full with an air of self-satisfaction. "I suppose Maria's mentioned the... difficulties... we've had lately to you," he said, holding his cup close to his chest. Paladin pulled his mug towards him, smiling a little at its proclamation of 'World's Best Aunt'.

"She has," he said, cupping his mug between his hands much like Siegfried had. "If I may, I'd like to help. I carry a bit more supplies than your average traveler..." An understatement if ever there was one, but he didn't really feel the need to go into detail about his backpack. The look Maria had given him when he pulled a jug of fresh milk and a jar of sugar out had been more than enough. "And when I get back to the surface world, I'll be more than happy to arrange some sort of supply drop, as well. Someplace where you folks can pick it up without having to expose yourself any, get some sundries and groceries."

"That's very generous of you, Mister Paladin," Siegfried said when the wanderer had finished speaking. "But that presupposes you're going to make it back to the surface world." He held up a hand at Paladin's raised eyebrows and half-glance towards Maria, recognizing the thought even as it formed. "Don't get me wrong, nobody's going to hold you here. Hell, I'll show you the tunnel back to Rhydin City myself. But you came down here looking for something, and from the condition ol' Jack found you in, I'm guessing you didn't quite find it, did you? So, I doubt you'll be heading back to the city straightaway."

Paladin took a sip of his coffee and considered his response. "You're right," he said. "I came down here looking for that thing that's been snatching kids, up top. I don't intend to go back until it's dead."

Siegfried leaned back in his chair. "I can't say it wouldn't do my worries a world of good to see that thing dead. It's caused its share of troubles down here with us, too, since it popped up. Can't say that things are getting any better, either; it's bigger, these days, nastier too. Jack's the only one who will venture outside the city limits anymore, and he's had some pretty close calls." Siegfried rubbed his eyes. "But I saw the condition you were in when you came here, Mister Paladin, and I can't say I much like the thought of you going back out there and wasting so much of Sylvia's work and energy. Maybe you should just head back topside, wait for this thing to show its head again."

Paladin grit his teeth and hissed softly, biting back on his initial angry reply. He'd never been very good at arguing, preferring to bull through whatever difficulties were in his path, or slide around them. Debating wasn't his forte. "I understand where you're coming from, Mayor Baasch," he said instead, smiling a little inside at the man's wince. Two could play at the formality game. "And believe me when I say that I take your suggestion in the friendly spirit intended. But respectfully, sir, that's flat out not going to happen. I came down here to kill that thing, and I know that I can do it. I'll need a little help from your scout-" It was his turn to hold up his hand, now, forestalling the the reaction from both Undertowners. "I'm not going to put him in any danger. Or the rest of you, either, for that matter. I just need some information, about the creature if he knows it, and about the local geography." His knuckles went white on the coffee mug as he let some of the anger bleed through. It had been pooling since that thing had jumped him from ambush. "But there's no way in Hell I'm going to go back to town with my tail between my legs to sit and wait until that thing feels like coming back up and taking another Mina Beckett, or Toby Flynn, or Jonny Squall-" He stopped at the startled look on both of the Undertowner's expressions. "What?"

"You came down here looking for Toby Flynn?" Maria asked carefully.

"He was the last one taken," Paladin nodded warily. "I was afraid the creature may have already eaten him, since there was no sign of the boy when I fought it. Why? Do you know something?"

Maria nodded, slowly, and stood up. "Maybe we should take you to Rambling Jack sooner, rather than later," she said.

"I found him in the tunnels," Rambling Jack said, nodding at the lanky boy playing quietly with several Undertown children. "Not too far from where I found you, as a matter of fact."

The scout was the spitting image of a grizzled frontiersman, from his doeskin leathers to his coonskin cap. Even in the presumably safe zone of Undertown's Central district, he still wore a long flintlock rifle slung across his back and a short, stubby crossbow at his side, and the hilts and handles of knives and tomahawks protruded from sheaths and holders all around his body, sticking out like wood and bone thorns from the many pouches slung from belts and bandoliers.

About the only thing that spoiled the impression was that he was about four feet tall, and his skin an ugly puke green. "Yassir," the Goblin said, putting the stem of his long pipe back in his mouth and nibbling at it with yellowed fangs. "He was pretty dazed, as you might imagine, and one of his legs was burnt up pretty badly. Sylvia put it all to rights, though, just like she did with you."

Paladin nodded slowly. "I'll need to talk to him," he said, voice low to keep from disturbing either the playing children or the handful of adults keeping an eye on them. From their uneasy demeanor, he could tell that keeping a watch like this wasn't normal for them; even in the safeness of Undertown, fear had struck home.

Jack scowled. "What fer? I kin tell ya what ya wanna know. He said he got loose of that thing by giving it a hot foot with his lighter, and runnin' off down the tunnel when it dropped him. He heard shootin', and it never followed. Them gang boys did a bit of good, God rest their souls."

"Guess they did," Paladin nodded. "But I still need to have some words with him. About going home, if nothing else."

"Home, Hell!" Rambling Jack roared, nearly losing his pipe. The people nearby studiously ignored the outburst. "I've seen the WestEnd, boy, and those slums up there ain't a home to nobody. Why, anyplace where a boy can just get snatched down a sewer like he was-" He cut off abruptly at the look on Paladin's face.

"I know the WestEnd, and I agree with you." He said coldly. "But slum or not, Toby's got family up there, and whether he stays or goes is not your decision to make. Stick around," he added. "I need some information from you after I've finished talking to him."

Jack could only nod. He'd seen a helluva lot in his wanderings through the world, both above and below Rhydin. But there was something of the cold implacability of a storm in the stranger's rain gray eyes, something that screamed louder than words that he was no man to be trifled with. Paladin walked over to the playing children, and sensing why he was there, the native Undertowners quietly withdrew. He took a knee not far from Toby and waited for the boy to stop staring at the dirt and meet his gaze before he spoke.

"Mister Toby Flynn?" He said gravely, when the boy finally looked up. He held out his hand to shake. "My name is Paladin. I've come from up above to see you safe."

"I've seen you before," the boy said softly, staring at the hand before reluctantly reaching out and shaking it. He was a scrawny thing, like most slum kids, and his hand was tiny in Paladin's as the wanderer shook it and released. Paladin wouldn't have guessed him to be more than eight or nine, although he spoke with a maturity and intelligence that belied his age, and his eyes were much older than the face they peered from. "You're that Guardsman. The one that patrols the WestEnd on his own. The one the gangers are scared of."

Paladin nodded. "I'm in the Guard. I came down here to make sure you're okay, and to kill the monster that took you."

Toby flinched when Paladin mentioned the monster. "Don't wanna talk about it," he said sullenly.

"Alright," Paladin said soothingly. "We won't talk about the creature if you don't want to." He waited for the boy to nod in acknowledgement before he continued. "But there is a question I'm going to need answered before I can let you get back to playing, okay?" The boy nodded again, and Paladin considered how he was going to phrase it.

"Look, Toby..." he said at last. "There's some folks here that think you're going to stay with them, instead of going back to the WestEnd. I want you to know, that what you do and where you go is up to you. Nobody's going to keep you here if you want to leave, and nobody's going to drag you up to the City if you want to stay. The choice is yours, okay? But I need to know where you want to be, before I can leave Undertown and go after this thing."

Toby looked up and met Paladin's eyes squarely. "I want to stay." he said clearly. "There's nothing back in the WestEnd for me bit the streets and becoming a Mako. I didn't want - I don't want that." He looked away again. "My brothers are all Makos. My dad was one, too, I think. Linda - my mom, she doesn't care about much except the next hit, she's always strung out on something, and there's never anybody home, amd when you go out on the streets there's always people being hurt, and it's always so fething cold, except when it's too fething hot, and everything stinks, and you can't sleep 'cause there's guns popping off all the time-" He was red-faced, almost crying. "I don't want to go back. Don't make me go back!"

Paladin nodded, once, letting the boy run down. "Okay. But remember - this place is secret, hidden. I can't tell your mother, or your brothers, or anyone else that you're doing okay down here. They're going to think you're dead, that the monster ate you."

Toby rubbed his eyes with a hand, snorting. "They don't care, not really. My brother, Billy, maybe... he was nearby with his friends when that thing grabbed me. But he's about it... even he thought I was just a crybaby pest. My oldest brother, Viper, he won't even talk to me except when he's drunk, and he's tellin' me how great it'll be when I'm a big, tough Mako like him... Nobody cares about me, up there. Nobody'll miss me."

Paladin's gaze locked on the tattoo on Toby's hand. LOVE, printed across the knuckles of his right hand. "That's an interesting marking, Toby," He said quietly. "What's it for?" Toby looked at it and shook his head.

"It's something my brothers did. See, when you're a kid, all you got is love in your heart. Then, when you grow up, that love grows hard, turns to hate. Viper says that's what a man is, love and hate. We've all got 'em... when I turn sixteen, and they make me a Mako, they were gonna put HATE on my left hand. I told them I didn't want it, but they said I would, once I was old enough, once I learned what hate means. When I got tired of being weak, and I'm ready to be strong. Well, I think I'm strong enough right now, Mister Paladin, and I don't need Hate for that."

Paladin nodded again and stood up. "I reckon you are, at that, Mister Flynn." He smiled, a little sadly, and turned away. "These people will treat you right. Make sure you treat them the same."

"I will, Mister Paladin." The boy ran over to the other children, and they all resumed their game. Rambling Jack was waiting for Paladin when he returned.

"Notice ya didn' tell th' boy about his brudder," the Goblin said quietly.

"Notice you didn't, either," Paladin replied. "The boy's trying to build a new life for himself down here, just like everybody else. Let him think his family's all safe, upstairs. Let the dead bury the dead."

Rambling Jack nodded, a touch impressed despite himself. "Not somethin' I expected out of a guardsman. You're a strange fella, Mister Paladin."

"So they tell me," he said dryly. "And it's just Paladin. I'm getting awfully damn tired of people calling me 'mister'. And now, a word with you, Rambling Jack. About the tunnels around here, and just where I might find that monstrosity."

Jack sucked on his pipe speculatively. "Ya didn't come off ta well th' last time th' two of ya tangled, and I'll bet ya found weapons don't seem to bother it much. Mind tellin' me how ya plan on fixin' that thing?"

Paladin told him. Jack dropped his pipe and, after a moment of dumbfounded shock, began to laugh like a loon.

~End Part 3~

----

Part Four

The leather and glass gas-mask looked like a relic from the first World War. Not far from the truth; he'd had it since the third Siege of Richmond, when the enemy started hurling mustard gas shells at the battered defenders. Another world, another time. It took a while to dig it out of the neglected corner of his pack, but once he had it on he kicked himself for not taking the time and effort earlier. Federation enchanters had given the simple looking mask a connection to the Elemental Plane of Air, so he never had to worry about falling afoul of a gas pocket - or worse, of smelling the hideous stench of the sewers - again.

Rambling Jack had given him two locations most vital; where the monster might be found, and where it might be lead to be dispatched. Now that he knew its vulnerability - or, at least, a vulnerability - he could make an end to it.

But like the saying said, 'there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip', and the truth was no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. The ugly pile of crap had gotten the drop on him, once before - he had no intentions of letting it do so again.

So it was back into the tunnels he went, with his gas mask donned and a glowstone the people of Undertown had been kind enough to donate held high. His sword swung easily on its baldric at his side, and an Evermyst crossbow was tucked under his free arm, one bolt already locked and loaded and two others clipped to its polished wood butt. He hoped he didn't run into anything more mundane on his way to meet the monster. He had plans for those bolts.

His missing pistols and knife gnawed at him; he had, of course, had them bespelled to return if lost or stolen, like most of his important belongings, but how well that enchantment would work in - or below - the WestEnd, only time would show. They always took their time returning, anyway. Like most archmages, Harukai had a whimsical sense of humor. It was one of the reasons he took most of his magic business to Corwin, nowadays. The Shadowkill's products worked, and the lad, undeniably powerful, had yet to develop that twisted sense of humor to go with it.

Rambling Jack had said the blobbish thing - Paladin was still working on a name for it - could often be found in the crossroads or holding areas, where several tunnels connected. Typical predator behavior; go where the prey was most likely to pass. Paladin had been worried that there was more than one of the amorphous, betentacled nightmares wriggling around the sewers, but the Goblin had been quick to put his mind at ease. One was certainly trouble enough.

The ranger showed him the way out of town, the grizzled Goblin shaking his head as they stood next to the concealed entrance to Undertown. "You might well be the bravest man I've ever met," he had said. "Definitely the craziest, but just maybe the ballsiest, too."

"Maybe," Paladin had replied, smiling thinly. "Make sure you close this place up tight when I'm gone," he said, turning away. "When it's dead... well, you'll know."

"I suppose we will," The Goblin murmured, watching until the wanderer's light had faded into the shadows of the sewers. "Godspeed, Guardsman..."

So here he was, perched on a corroded pipe above a stinking morass of sludge and muck. The room was not unlike the one he'd so nearly lost his life in, save even deeper and in even worse condition. The ancient machinery was so corroded as to be unrecognizable, and rather than roaring cataracts the sewer falls here were mere trickles of ooze. It was thoroughly unpleasant. A pity there was more airflow here than he liked, for his plan, and too many ways for the thing to escape by if things went wrong.

Still, you rolled the dice and you took your chances. The perfect location to spring his trap wasn't far away, but Rambling Jack said the thing never went that way, and Paladin hadn't found any marks of its passing around, either. He was going to have to lead it there, and there was no guarantee that it would follow him to its doom. But nothing less than its complete and utter destruction would do, and Paladin wasn't planning on leaving these tunnels until he'd made sure of that.

Preparations complete, he settled in to wait, crossbow held loosely in his hands. He dimmed the glowstone as much as he could, not wanting the light to warn the creature. How long he waited, he couldn't say. He'd squirreled his pocket watch away in his backpack before entering the sewers, and he knew from experience that whatever time it showed now would have only the vaguest correlation with what time it was in the sunlit world. He wondered, idly, if Remmie had given him up for dead yet. He wondered how bad things had gotten in the WestEnd while he was gone. He wondered if anyone missed him.

And then he stilled his mind and concentrated on his senses, letting his hearing paint a world for him that his eyes couldn't see through the gloom. Rats scurried; not many of them, not this deep, too far from their symbiotic brothers, humanity. He'd seen a couple of them, big as terriers, fur pale white under its soaking of filth, eyes blindly staring. They'd felt his light more than seen it, and stayed away. Somewhere further away, an insect scuttling, hard legs clicking on brick and stone. A carrion crawler, probably, another rare thing this deep - not too many bodies found their way this far beneath the city.

Well, not until recently, at any rate.

Finally, the trickling of ooze was interrupted by a louder sound; the sliding noise of a large body, slithering through one of the tunnels. His eyes snapped open, the dimness of the chamber as bright as daylight to him now that his eyes had adjusted. His head swiveled like a turret, tracking. His lips twisted in a grimace only superficially resembling a smile.

Of course, he thought resignedly. Silly me, thinking things might go smooth for once. Things never went smooth. Murphy's Law ruled supreme, especially during combat operations. Still, things weren't lost, not yet. The creature was coming through the tunnel he'd most hoped it wouldn't, right next to the one he planned to lead it down. He'd have to dodge by it, risk those bludgeoning tentacles, in order to lead it to its doom.

He grimaced again, teeth bare, and nodded once.

Fair exchange.

It started into the room slowly, cautiously. Maybe it sensed his light; maybe it could hear his heart beat, or feel the change in the currents of air in the room as they flowed around him. Who knew how an amorphous blob of protoplasm the size of a warhorse saw the world?

In it came, tentacles groping the ground around it defensively, like a blind man tapping his cane. Maybe he'd wounded it more than he'd thought during their last encounter. It had certainly hurt him plenty. He thrust the thought from his mind; he couldn't count on it being injured. He had to assume it was just as fast, just as strong, as it had been last time.

It came on another step, then another. Hesitated, the tentacles waving frantically. Paladin grit his teeth. He'd prefer to wait until it was closer, further from the tunnel, but there was too high a chance that it would simply disappear into the pool. The heads trapped in its amorphous body, their mouths locked in silent screams, stared at Paladin. Wordless voices howled at him.

Do it.

The blob leaped forward, quick as a fleeing hare, darting for the water. In the same motion Paladin raised his crossbow and let fly. The steel dart dove like a striking hawk, swift and true. It sank into the gelatinous mass, momentum abruptly halted, but that hardly mattered. It was blunt-headed, aluminum cased; designed as a vehicle taser, the moment it stopped moving it released its 100,000 volt payload.

"How do you like me now, you sucker-punching pile o' crap?" Paladin jeered as the creature convulsed and danced. He locked another bolt into place and dropped from his perch. The thing shivered, and its tentacles waved weakly. Paladin waited until it started to move again before giving it the second shot. One of the psuedopods whipped up quickly and snatched the bolt out of the air, only to be rewarded with another jolt. "I hope I don't shock you with the vehemence of my quarrel," he smirked. "But perhaps you'll get my point when I say- whoa, herewego!" He ducked as the tentacles whipped at him in a sudden flurry, stretching obscenely to cover the distance between them. The thing had shaken off the effects of being electrocuted much faster than he'd hoped. "Wossamatter, you can't take any punishment?"

He backflipped as it lunged for him, letting the crossbow swing loose from its sling, drawing his sword. The blade blazed like a beacon in the gloom, nearly blinding him - he severed the first tentacle to strike at him but had to roll with the next several, swearing sulphurously.

Note to self, he thought. Next time, avoid dazzling yourself with your own damn weapon! The thrice-blessed blade only reacted like that in the presence of purest evil...

He came to his feet in a spinning whirl of feet and blade, far closer to the edge of the murky pool than he liked. The creature sprang for him and he slid deftly to the side, as graceful as any matador. He managed to outrun the splash as it slid into the water, cracking the crust with its bulk.

He could hear it splashing around and lunging out of the pool behind him as he ran, flat-out, towards the tunnel he'd earlier marked. Operation 'Get it to Chase Me' was a success. Operation 'Survive the Experience'... well, he'd have to see about that. The thing sounded like an angry freight-train hauling a flatbed of fully loaded children's wading pools as it sloshed in his wake.

"Temper, temper," he called over his shoulder mockingly. It was closer than he liked, and he picked up the pace - leaping, spinning, and slashing as he felt the air pressure from another tentacle strike bearing in on him. He dimly glimpsed the appendage fall away, only to be absorbed back into the monster as it passed. Another was already forming to take its place.

He jumped, grabbed a pipe in the overhead, and flattened himself against the ceiling as the thing shot past beneath. It corrected quickly, reversing back at him - aided by the fact that it didn't actually need to turn around. He'd already doubled back and launched himself down a side passage, leading it deeper still into the labyrinthine complex beneath the city.

I'm spending entirely too much time running away from things, lately, he thought absently, diving sideways into another branch-off tunnel. The creature was more on the ball this time, following closely. I need to buy some breathing room, or I'll never pull this off. It's entirely too-

"WAGH!"

The ground gave way beneath his feet, and down he plunged.

The hidden chamber was about twenty feet all around; worked stone walls thick with shrouds of dust and cobwebs, floor thick with bones, scattered helter-skelter around a large stone bier in the center. It might have been an altar, a sarcophagus, or something else entirely. Paladin wasn't quite sure, despite the close look he got as he landed on it. Stone crunched as he hit, and a sharp shock ran up his leg. He rolled desperately to the side on impact, barely avoiding the monster as it plummeted after him. He half expected it to splash; instead it bounced, pulverizing the stone bier on its first impact, scattering the rubble about like shrapnel on the second. Paladin surged to his feet as it shook itself like a wet dog, biting his tongue in pain as agony shot up his leg. It had been a rough week for the wanderer.

This is not going according to plan. Resignation filled Paladin's thoughts as he brought his blade up to high guard next to his head, planted his feet. The creature hissed - or maybe it was just acid dripping off the poised tentacles, burning into the stone - and tensed itself, ready to spring.

And both combatants froze as dry clicking filled the air. Paladin shifted his eyes from one side to the other, unwilling to turn away from the monster in front of him. Though the creature had no eyes, he got the distinct impression that it was doing the same, its tentacles twitching. The clicking grew louder, was joined by a rustling, then a steely grate of metal being dragged across stone.

Horror slowly dawned as Paladin realized the bones around his feet were moving. He spun before he'd even consciously recognized the movement at the corner of his eye, deftly reflecting the sword blow intended for his head. The skeleton kept up its horrible grin, even as his return blow separated skull from vertebrae. Headless it continued striking. He shattered it with a series of kicks and sword blows, injured leg protesting as he hacked it to pieces. More bones were coming together, completed skeletons rising from the heap with weapons in hand - rusted swords, dented shields, hooked axes. There were a lot of them. A fething lot.

"Frak, frak, frak!" Paladin swore desperately, heaving his sword into the air. The heavy Calico submachineguns filled his hands instantly as his contingency charm took effect, responding to his words and the frantic tone of voice. His fingers jammed hard on the triggers as the undead lunged for him. The guns were loaded for bear - depleted uranium bullets fired from Ramjet cartridges, powerful enough to chew holes through tank armour. Dry bone and rusted steel were no match for them, and the skeletons fell away as he spun, clearing a circle around him. Even then, the undead kept coming until every scrap of bone was blasted loose from one another - and even then, Paladin got the feeling the shattered splinters were still dragging themselves back together.

The barrels melted down before the guns had the chance to run dry, but he'd bought himself enough breathing room. He dropped the ruined weapons and kicked one of the discarded shields into the air, ignoring the bullet holes riddling its stained surface. A flashy roundhouse spun it across the chamber, until it slapped into the monster's gelatinous flesh. The creature had held its own, mainly be swallowing the skeletons that got too close; still, it was surrounded, its attention absorbed by the the mass of bones trying determinedly to hack it to death. It barely had time to react as Paladin rushed it, jumped, and planted his feet on the shield - using the footing and the creature's rubbery surface as a springboard to propel himself out of the sinkhole.

"Nyeah!" He called back over his shoulder, scooping up his sword. "Gonna stay down there and rot, slowpoke?"

Tentacles shot out of the hole, latching onto the sides. Slowly, laboriously - widening the hole as the edges crumbled further, but eventually finding solid ground to brace itself against - the creature pulled itself out of the crypt, writhing skeletons protruding from its body like bizarre, wriggling horns. Paladin was already off and running, his injured leg hardly slowing him as he strove to put as much distance between himself and the monster as he could, while still keeping within its sight.

The tunnel ended in a narrow metal arch, something like a hatch on a steamship. The heavy door lay under a pile of debris nearby, torn loose from its hinges by some long ago calamity. Paladin darted through without hesitation. The creature followed, bare seconds behind and closing fast.

It froze once through the door, sensing the trap too late as Paladin sprung it. The room was a large metal vault, sides gently curving away from the ground to rise to the ceiling, twenty feet overhead. Pipes protruded jaggedly from the overhead, and the far doorway - near which Paladin stood, sword still in hand - was an identical arch, its metal hatch intact. Before the monster could move to withdraw, Paladin's sword swung - severing a rope on the wall, releasing a heavy stone block to seal its escape, locking it inside.

"And here we find ourselves at last," Paladin said quietly. "Just you and I, at the end. You smell it, don't you? Feth if I know how, but you do." So many years ago, the vault had been a holding tank for volatile gases from all over the underside, methane and hydrogen sulfide most predominantly. The fumes were still drawn to the room, funneled in by the network of pipes in the ceiling. Maybe it had been a fuel tank for the ancient machinery scattered around the sewers, maybe its purpose was more inscrutable still, but it had been the first place Rambling Jack had suggested, when Paladin told the Goblin what he was looking for. The perfect fire trap, with Paladin himself for the bait - and the trigger.

"Get ready to burn, you ugly son of a bitch." Paladin stepped back and tugged the safety flare from its hiding place. The safety plastic had already been removed, and it needed only a hard blow to the ignition cap to bring forth its flame.

I DID ONLY WHAT I MUST TO LIVE, the thing protested. It was the first time Paladin had heard it 'speak', though he'd suspected it was intelligent. His sword wouldn't have reacted to some dumb beast or mindless abomination. Even the writhing skeletons couldn't conceal his view of the trapped skulls floating like flies in amber in its massive body.

"Your life's not worth the death of children," Paladin said, voice hard, and lit the flare.

~End Part Four~

----

Epilogue

"My god, you're still alive." It was a common refrain to his ears, since killing the monster beneath the streets of Rhydin City. The people of Undertown, especially Rambling Jack, had said it when he staggered in with his injured leg and bloodstained clothes, half-blind and reeling. The Guardsmen at the WestEnd chapterhouse had said it, when he limped in to give his report, returned to the city via one of the Undertowners' secret tunnels. And now, Remmie said it, dropping her helmet at the sight of the wanderer kicked back in his chair, drinking coffee and wrapping up the paperwork his latest adventure had produced.

"You say that like it's some kind of surprise," he said dryly, capping his pen. "Why does nobody ever have confidence in me?"

She stormed over to him, leaving her helmet on the ground, and gave him a solid punch to the shoulder. "You've been gone a fething week, you bastard!" she snarled. "What did you do, take a fething vacation while you were down there? Some people were worried about you, you jerk!"

"Hey, take it easy," he said, holding his shoulder and laughing. "I bruise easy, you know."

She started to say something, hesitated. "Hey... where's your coat?" It was the first time she'd seen Paladin without his long black coat; inside or out, he wore the leather armor like a second skin, a shield held fast against the outside world.

Paladin nodded at a nearby chair, where his coat lay neatly folded. His sword rested on top of it. "Over there," he said casually. "Got a little warm in here, yanno? Temperature's gone up a bit while I've been gone, looks like spring's taking a chance on us."

Remmie tilted her head and regarded him closely. He looked... well, like he always did. Maybe not as skinny as she'd thought, more the rangy, leanness of a wolf. The coat did a lot to hide him.

He noticed her look and raised his eyebrows behind the gold glasses. Those were new - round lenses about the size of an old American silver dollar in a skeletal wire frame. The gold, reflective lenses concealed his eyes like mirrors, giving him an uncomfortably insectile appearance, making him seem oddly cold and distant. She frowned at her reflection. "What's with the specs?"

He grinned, maybe a little ruefully, and rubbed the back of his head. "Hurt my eyes a bit. Stared too long into bright light after too long in darkness, and now I'm a little sensitive to the light." He shrugged and spun his pen lightly around his fingers. "They'll heal, soon enough."

She nodded, slowly. "That explosion, under the WestEnd... that was you?"

"That was the monster." His smile seemed cold and hard, though maybe that was just a false impression from the glasses. "I stood there and watched the fether burn, just to make sure it didn't pull a vanishing act. Nothing left but ashes. I made sure." He'd kept watching even after the creature lit up like a magnesium torch, burning bright as a sun. He probably hadn't needed the elaborate trap, leading it into a gas chamber to burn - could probably have gotten the same result from a thrown match. Better safe than sorry, though, and he'd stood there until even the wriggling skeletons from the crypt had finally given up the struggle and collapsed into ash. Until every scrap of the monster was gone. "[color=darkblue]Anyone get hurt up here?"

"Nope. No more than usual, at least." Remmie looked away from the uncomfortable stare, then back. "Did... did you find the boy?"

It was Paladin's turn to look away. He set his pen down, stood, picked up his coat and sword. "The boy's in a better place, now," he said quietly. Remmie nodded again, too jaded from life in the WestEnd to let herself get choked up.

"So, what's next for you?" She asked, rallying her usual jovial mood as best she could. "You're not going back to the beat right away, are you?"

Paladin shook his head. "Nah, lieutenant's put me on convalescent leave for a week or so. Just until my eyes get better." He looped the baldric across his body so that his sword hung at his side and hooked his coat over his shoulder. "I'm sure you'll see me around plenty, though. Gods know, it's not like I've got anything better to do than pester you guys."

Remmie laughed at that. "I'll have to drag you home one of these nights, see if my mom's cooking will get some meat on those bones." She teased. "Gotta be careful my brothers don't get the wrong idea, though."

"I'll look forward to it," he replied with a jaunty salute. "I'll see you around, Guardsman. Have a good watch!"

She watched as he left the building, her smile worried. He seemed okay, but... it was hard to tell, with Paladin. She'd realized a while ago that his cheery disposition hid some deep sadness, and she knew he had to be taking the boy's death pretty hard. She shook her head again and went to retrieve her helmet. Life in the WestEnd being what it was, chances were she was going to need it.

He wasn't more than a block from the Watch House when a voice from the shadows hailed him. He turned slowly, left hand still hooked in his draped coat, right hand resting on the hilt of his sword. The Mako stepped out of the alley, hands up defensively.

"Easy, easy," he said, wheedling. "Not looking for trouble." He was skinny, pale, huddled in his greasy gray leathers. His eyes were fever-bright as they fixed on Paladin's mirrored glasses. "You're the one that killed the thing in the sewers, right? Big damn hero of the WestEnd, right?"

"You could say that," Paladin said cautiously, not releasing his grip on his sword. Junkies were notoriously erratic, and the way this man's hands weere shaking, his body trembling, odds were he was craving something. "Who's asking?"

"A concerned citizen," the ganger said, sneering, and coughed. Or maybe it was a laugh; the sound was hard to tell, choked with phlegm as it was. He made a gurgly sound in his chest and cleared his throat, spat. Paladin's concern shifted. Maybe the Mako wasn't tripping, maybe he was sick. That happened plenty, too, down in the WestEnd. "So, you killed it? It's really dead?"

"It's dead," Paladin said. "Are you okay? Do you need some help?"

The Mako shook. "It's really dead? You're sure?"

Paladin reached up and removed his glasses. The skin around his eyes was puffy, red with burns. His irises had faded from storm gray to a pale color that more closely resembled silver. He winced, even in the fading, bloody light of a WestEnd dusk. "I'm sure. It's not coming back." They traded stares for a minute, before the Mako finally, reluctantly, nodded. Paladin put his glasses back on.

"That thing," the Mako whispered. "Took my sister. Poor Mindy... snatched her right out of the street. She was seven. Picked her like a flower... a bright, happy flower. Prime of her youth, man. She was... she was something special, you know? Everybody says that, but Mindy... she was different, man. Cared about people. Had this glow about her... just talkin' to her, made ya day better. Brighter. She was gonna be somethin', get the hell outta the stinkin' WestEnd..." Paladin shifted his feet uneasily, his strained knee bothering him. It was always hard, dealing with survivor's guilt. He should know. He'd done a lot of surviving.

"Owe you," the Mako said at last, swiping unshed tears from his eyes. He was shaking harder now, although whether from emotion or unfulfilled craving, Paladin couldn't tell. "For avenging my sis. For killin' her killer, when I was too weak to. Gotta do ya a solid."

"Look, neighbor-" Paladin started to step forward, stopped when the ganger snarled at him like a rabid dog.

"Owe you, man. Gotta pay ya debts. Ya ain't nothin' if ya owe people. Means they own ya." The junkie rubbed at his streaming eyes, looked at Paladin. Grinned wolfishly. An 'I've got a secret' grin. Paladin's interest sharpened. "Got somethin' for ya."

"I'm all ears," Paladin said quietly, shifting his feet again.

"Fire, down the Dockside. Bit less than a month ago. Guard says that lady carpenter did it, one what's been fixin' crap down there since the zombies." The junkie shook again, like a leaf in a gale. "She didn't."

"Who did?" Paladin came back quickly. He knew the case. He'd already taken steps to involve himself, but this was the first real lead he'd had. Too many other footsteps in the Guard had already muddled the trail, stampeding towards the answer they wanted to hear.

The junkie shook his head. "Wheels within wheels, man. Connections from the street to the Hall. Some of the killers, they're wearin' the gray dragonskin, but they're hidin' behind a silver shield." He didn't need to point at Paladin's chest to make his meaning plain. "Get yoursel' down to the Docks on a moonless night, you see Sugar movin' goods through the streets. Sometimes, people talk too much about cleanin' up their neighborhood, makin' things safe for kids. Sometimes, people get turned into examples." He shook again, so bad Paladin thought he might just shake himself apart and fall to pieces. "I can't say anythin' else. Gotta pay ya debts, but ya gotta have honor, too. Silence is the code." He spits. "Anyone sees me talkin' to a cop, my life ain't worth spit. But... ya did me solid. I did ya one. We're square, 'kay? The Brotherhood couldn't do anythin' for Mindy, or them other kids... even Viper's brothers got taken. But ya did it. So we're square." He stumbled into the alley, wailing softly, shaking. Paladin didn't try to follow him, just stood there listening as the cries faded away, drowned out in the normal night time noises of the WestEnd.

Laughter, screaming. Music, gunfire. Dogs howled at an unseen moon, and people howled right back at the dogs. Paladin rubbed his burned eyes, behind the golden glasses and swung his coat flamboyantly around himself as he put it back on. Convalescent leave... seemed a good time to start beating the pavement, tracking down some leads. He had information he hadn't had before, confirmation to some suspicions. More than that, he had a name.

Sugar, huh? He shook his head, grinning a little despite the turmoil of feelings inside. One adventure ends... the next one begins.

Paladin walked alone through the WestEnd night, and even the shadows gave way before him.

~Fin~

So, tell me boy-

2008-03-14T03:00:00.003-04:00

How much for your body?
An' how much for your soul?
How much to take your bleedin' heart
An' burn it down to coal?

I'll give you everything you want
If you'll just pay in kind
I'll sell you every dream you've had
An' all I'll take's your mind

An' maybe all your freedom
An' maybe all that's good
But let's be fair, it's just my share
An' it's always understood-

That everything I offer you,
Well it's all just glint and lies
We dance with smoke and mirrors
But there's really no disguise

Yes I am the Beast of legend
I'm the ancient Enemy
But what you want is what I've got,
So come on down and see.

All the ancient treasures
All the secrets ne'er tol';
So how much for your body, boy
An' how much for your soul?

...I'm not entirely sure where this came from. The first two verses popped into my head while I was eating dinner a few days ago; the rest of it appeared from the ether while I was typing up said first two verses to show them to my friend K.

I offer neither excuses nor apologies. Poetry has always been an odd thing for me... now it's here, now it's not, and I always have a love/hate relationship with it. Take it as it comes, I guess.

Life continues much as before; on watch, home in Hampton Roads. Our watch sections rotate every three days, so I'm always punch-drunk and reeling. I'm getting by, though, making money and keeping my head above water; and probably best of all, I've been getting quite a bit of writing done while I'm on watch. Finished a short story centered around my longest running roleplaying character; 13,000 words, not quite NaNoWriMo length, but shiny nonetheless. It's the longest thing I've written that's actually ended. I am inordinately proud of myself.

And... I guess that's about it. Script Frenzy has been bumped from June to April this year, and after some discussions on the subject of screenplays/scripts with a friend of mine, I think I'm going to give it another crack. No idea, as of yet, just what I'll do, but... well, take each story as it comes, hey?

A day late...

2008-02-06T18:54:00.001-05:00

...a buck short
I'm writing the report
I'm losing, and failing
When I move, I'm flailing now...

So, since I did indeed make it out to a wifi cafe with a few friends off the Supply, I thought I'd go ahead and put up those pictures I failed to do last night.

Sure, I could edit my previous entry rather than make a new one, but it's easier this way.

The old church, across from MSC's CSU-East, at Naval Station Norfolk.

Me at small arms class.

My little sister leaves for England.

Me in my suit and topcoat. Don't get used to seeing me like this.

My stateroom on the USNS Lewis & Clark.

And since I've negligently failed to mention her before now, here's a few shots of my new computer - a Dell Inspiron 1420 I've named "Elora".

And I Don't Know Where I'm Going...

2008-02-06T04:52:00.002-05:00

I just want to be left alone
Well, when this train ends
I'll try again
But I'm leaving my woman at home...
Tuesday's gone with the wind.
Tuesday's gone with the wind.
Tuesday's gone with the wind.
My woman's gone with the wind...

So, it's been a month since I've written, and a pretty eventful one, too. A lot has happened, so I might as well start with the beginning and move on from there.

Went into CSU-East ('the pool') the day after my last entry; I knew they moved the building, and I had a vague idea and some rough instructions on where it was now, so I left with plenty of time (I hoped) to search the base for it. And search I did, finally managing to find it quite by accident - right across the street from the old church, which is where I ended up parking for most of my time there.

Went into small arms training the next week, four days at the local gun store - no new material, but I enjoy shooting, and my quals had expired, so it was definitely due. The enjoyment of the class was immediately dampened my first day in when I received word that my grandfather had died. My family advised me to stick it out until the end of the day, as there wasn't anything I could do to help out at home, and if I left the class I would be out for good and have to reschedule, so stick it out I did, then went over to my grandmother's house to supply sympathy and motive power for furniture rearrangement.

I passed all three weapons - my favorite, of course, being the shotgun, although I think I scored best overall on the pistol. My last day of class (that Thursday) was also the day my little sister flew out to England for school, and I was able to get out of class early enough to see her off at the airport (along with my parents). I took off the next Friday, and the first few days of the next week, for bereavement - my grandfather's funeral was on the Monday following. I was asked to be a pallbearer for him - there were only six male relatives attending, so it worked out pretty well. For the first time ever, I wore a suit - my parents were kind enough to pick one up for my brother and I. Mine required very little tailoring, and I picked up a rather dashing topcoat to go along with it - and the weather was actually cool enough to warrant wearing it.

My brother, my friends, and I had an unofficial wake that night, a pretty decent party - the rest of the week was mostly uneventful, with Jason, myself, and Jason's friend Sara making it to DoomGloom at the Wave that Tuesday. We had a birthday party for Mike over the weekend that went mostly well (barring a major disagreement between my brother and I that still has a stony silence reigning supreme), and I was back in the pool on Monday. Tuesday brought some noise that I might be flying to Oman to join the USNS John Lenthall, but this proved to be unfounded; instead, Friday morning I walked into the pool to be greeted with the announcement that I would be bound for the USNS Lewis & Clark on the 'Magic Bus' the next day.

Well... joy.

Saturday's long bus trip (and many irritating hijinks therein) left me sitting in New Jersey, once again back in Earle, at the end of the looooong ammo pier... this time on the opposite side of what I'm used to. The Supply is here as well, which is fortunate - I took advantage of this to move the stuff I left behind there across to the my new room, here on the L&C.

They've got me on watch - I'm on the midnight to 8 watch right now, as I write this. It's kinda strange, being a watchstander again after over a year as a dayworker - it's not too hard to get into the old rhythm and rotation, but the rotating schedule annoys me more than it used to, probably because I'm no longer used to it. The L&C is... well, I guess strange is the only way to put it, and I'm not sure how much of that is because I'm not used to her, and how much of that is because she really is a strange ship. Her deck layout is different from any of my past ships, and a lot of things on board just don't seem quite right to my experience... for example, to reach after steering, or the fantail, you either need to go outside the skin of the ship (through a hatch on the flight deck, or a door on RAS station 8), or else you need to go through the engine room. Things like that... the ship just seems very oddly put together.

Also, the library is entirely too small and bare - although I foresee myself changing that, as I read books and discard them there. :)

So, I guess that's about it. I'd intended to add illustrative pictures from my Flickr account where applicable, but I unfortunately can't sign into it on the ship's computers - no commercial e-mail sites, like GMail or Yahoo allowed. Oddly enough, I can sign into my Gmail stuff - like my blog here - and unlike on the Supply I can log into my blog and write an entry.

Eh, whatever.

It's damn near 5:30 in the AM out here, and I've still got over 2 hours left on watch. Man, I'm ready for bed.

It's always better on holiday...

2008-01-06T15:02:00.001-05:00

...so much better on holiday
It's always better on holiday -
That's why we only work when
We need the money!

I hate that feeling, when you want to write something, but you can't think of anything to write. Is there a word for that? It's like wanting to scream, but having no voice... and it just keeps building and building and building, until I feel like my head's going to burst.

So, it's another lazy Sunday here... got up earlier than I would have liked after going to bed later than I should have. The intention was to go see Juno with my boy Mark, but he overslept... rescheduled for early afternoon and went to hang out in Barnes & Noble for a while. Made a lunch date with Cat, came back to the mall, sat around Starbucks reading and drinking chai (I'm so hip, lulz [/irony]), movie time comes around - and still no Mark. Called him up, after getting his voicemail repeatedly I finally learn that he's gotten caught up in the terrible web that is household chores. Eh, screw it.

So, now I'm back at home - stretched out on my couch, absently staring at the Warmachine miniatures I started painting last night and should really finish. I go back to work tomorrow... well, 'work', the pool can hardly be considered actual work... sit in a room for god knows how long until I get a ship assignment. I'm still amazed at how fast this month went by... it feels like yesterday I was stepping off a plane to greet my father and brother. I hate relative Time.

Not a whole lot of interest since my last entry - I've been hanging out with Jason a lot, mainly 'cause my schedule's been empty all the time, and his is pretty much blank the first four days of every week. Hope I'll be able to continue doing so, it'll depend on what happens with work. Haven't seen Cat as much as I'd like, she's been really busy with work and her boyfriend... them's the breaks, I guess. Tijuana Flats is my official burrito place of choice, and I've managed to get several of my friends hooked on it, as well - they also have delicious margaritas. Tentative plans for this evening involve margaritas and possibly bowling, we'll see how that goes - I need to crash fairly early, at least for me, since I'll have to get up incredibly early (for me) to go to work. Gah, I hate the Virginia Beach/Norfolk commute... it's relatively short, and pretty easy, but the rush hour traffic is a major pain in my nuts.

Jason and I attended a local club, "The Wave" last Tuesday for their weekly Goth night - not my usual scene, this was the first time I've been to a club in the States. Other than everyone speaking English, it wasn't noticeably different from a club overseas... well, except for the fact that I drove, so I couldn't drink particularly heavily, which is a disappointment. I don't drink as often when I'm in the States, although you wouldn't know it to have seen me at the last couple of parties I've held - New Year's was pretty quiet, just five of us, but we still managed to get up to some unusual hijinks - but what else is new.

Anyway, I'm digressing. Reason I bring up the Wave is because, a while back, I decided I was getting really tired of writing my contact information down on bar napkins and scraps of paper whenever I met someone who seemed pretty interesting. When I bought my Pro Flickr account, it came with an offer for 10 free MoO photo contact cards - pretty nifty little things. I liked them enough where I went ahead and sprang for a hundred, since they were only $20. Mostly, I've just given them to friends - people who already have my contact information, if they so choose to look on any of the websites we both frequent, but generally don't. I don't really think they'll use them, but I figured they might like them. At the Wave, I gave one to a stranger for the first time - and she actually contacted me after. Mission = success! Sure, it was through MySpace - which I dislike - and she's contacting me for friendly reasons solamente, but a success nonetheless.

Anyway, Laurel, if you're reading this - Hello! Thanks again for the glow-ring!

But Mark has just appeared at my house, so I suppose I should wrap this up. Maybe we'll go see that movie after all? We'll see!

Bleah. Work tomorrow...

A Long December...

2007-12-28T11:03:00.001-05:00

...and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
And these days go by so fast...
And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
And if you think that I could be forgiven...
...well, I wish you would...

Letters To Nobody - Page 1
Originally uploaded by wandererchronicles

Since I posted the front page of my current Moleskine to my Flickr account, I thought I might as well go ahead and post it here. Oh, when my weblog and anablog collide!

I got into the habit of keeping something of a journal - the term 'anablog' came up in a conversation with some shipmates, for 'analog blog' - during this last deployment. I mentioned my love of the Moleskine way back in October; I filled the Pocket Ruled mentioned in that entry, started on a Pocket Squared, lost it shortly after arriving back in the World, started another Pocket Ruled (as seen here), and then found my Pocket Squared again. It wouldn't be so funny if I hadn't predicted it happening in my first entry for this notebook.

Oh life, how you do love irony.

I've been calling my anablogs 'Letters to Nobody' because, frankly, that's what they are - letter or conversational format ramblings on whatever's taken my fancy at the moment, interspersed between collected quotes, notes to myself, reminders, shopping/to-do lists... all the usual minutiae, I suppose.

So, last night was Jason's birthday, and I had graciously volunteered my place for the festivities - drinking and playing Twilight Imperium, we geeks being such a wild and crazy bunch of guys. I then promptly forgot about the whole matter until people appeared on my doorstep. Since they brought beer (and Mike brought Sailor Jerry's rum, a heavenly booze indeed), I let 'em in. There was quite a bit of drinking, not so much the Twilight, and somehow things degenerated into drunken cosplaying. Well, you can see the pictures on the Wanderer Chronicles, but I warn you, they're not a very pretty sight.

I suppose I should also confess that all the goofy coats, hats, and weapons wielded are mine.

O Come, All Ye Faithful...

2007-12-25T00:40:00.000-05:00

....joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, o come ye,
To Bethlehem...
Sing, choirs of angels -
Sing in exaltation,
Sing all ye citizens of Heaven above!

Twisted Sister version, of course.

Wishing you all a merry Christmas, and more to come. Still not a lot going on with me; I've finished Christmas shopping for my family (and a good thing, too), but still have a bit to do for friends. Fortunately, I'm not likely to see too many of them before New Year's - grants me a bit of time. ^_^ Looking forward to spending Christmas Day with the family, if I can ever get to sleep tonight - my sleep patterns are all sorts of FUBAR at this point, which is less than good.

When I awoke today...

2007-12-17T04:22:00.000-05:00

...suddenly, nothing happened
But in my dreams I slew the dragon
And down this beaten path
And up this cobbled lane
I'm walking in my own footsteps once again...

The downside of being on leave, relaxing at home, is that there really isn't anything to blog about. The party went well, much booze was drank, much laughter was laughed, much conversation was conversed, and a good time was had by all. The Rifts game I'd been hoping to run for a while went much, much less well - problems with the system, difficulties between people, and a grumpy, grumpy me led to an early end and drinking. I've been staying up all night and sleeping all day - par for the course for me when I'm on leave, I've always been more of a night owl. I've pretty much finished all my Christmas shopping, with my brother being the only sticking point - I've been playing a lot of Red, Dead Revolver - I'm trying to restart Sorrowfell, although that's going to depend on whether or not my players bite.

I haven't left the area since I came home, although I'm starting to feel itchy feet - when the Supply gets back to the World, I'll probably wander up to New Jersey with Blue and pay it a visit, not least 'cause I left things behind that I'd like to get back, but also 'cause it'll be cool to see Wally again. I'd like to make a weekend of it and get into New York, but we'll have to see how things roll. Cat and I are talking about heading out to western Virginia or West Virginia to snowboard/ski/tube sometime in the early New Year; and I'd kinda like to pay Dani a visit out in the wilds of Indiana. It's my turn, after all.

So, that's about it for me. Nothing new, nothing wrong, just relaxing and taking life day by day. It's kinda nice.

My life has been extraordinary....

2007-12-08T16:22:00.000-05:00

Blessed and cursed and won
Time heals but I'm forever broken
By and by the way...

So, I'm home. The flight from Greece was uneventful, and far more comfortable than I'd imagined; the Delta transAtlantic was almost half empty (half full?), and Delta seats, while a little cramped in the shoulders for me, had plenty of leg room - something I almost never have, whether I'm flying, on a train, or even in a bus or car. So, it was a pleasant trip. My mom was out of town when my flight got in late that evening, but my brother and father met me at the airport; we dropped Blue off at his home, picked up my car from my parent's home, and then finally, I got to go home. Cat was waiting at my house, and we spent several hours talking and catching up on all the things that had happened while I was gone.

Wednesday was a lazy day, mostly spent recovering from jet lag, poking at the mess of a house I left behind when I deployed, and catching up with some friends; Thursday, my dad and I ran errands, picked up my mom from the airport, had lunch with my little sister, and then culminated the whole thing by buying one of my birthday presents, a very shiny new motorcycle jacket (pictures possibly forthcoming, but don't hold your breath). Friday the whole family got together to decorate the Christmas tree, indulge in some light bickering (hey, 'tis the season), and celebrate my mother's and my birthday - yes, they're the same day. My mom continues to refer to me as her best birthday present, which after 16 hours of labor and then 26 years of actually living with me really does say something about her generosity of spirit.

Which brings us to today; I slept in for the first time in forever, waking around noon with the nagging feeling that my house is a wreck, and yet I'm having virtually all of my local friends over this evening for a welcome home party. So, I've spent the last several hours desultorily straightening up the living room; the dining room is next, as well as vacuuming all the leaves out of the entrance hall; at least that should go quicker, as it's mainly a case of cleaning the books, mail, and other junk off the dining room table. After that, I should hit an ABC store - while my alcohol inventory is disgustingly broad (I have a liquor closet, since I didn't need the space for linen. Says something.), I am missing a few necessities - Jack Daniels, for instance, and Bailey's. I'll probably get some peppermint schnapps, as well, and another bottle of Panama Jack - the one goes wonderful with hot chocolate, the other with hot apple cider. Mmmm.

So I should probably stop procrastinating, and get on with it...

Addendum...

2007-12-03T07:41:00.000-05:00

Also, Happy Birthday to me. I turned 21 in Souda Bay, now I’m turning 26… wonder if I’ll turn 31 here, as well? Going out tonight with a bunch of shippies, for a combination going-away and happy birthday party. Should be fun, although I can’t indulge too much, for fear of missing my flight in the morning.

The thundering waves are calling me home...

2007-12-03T06:32:00.000-05:00

...home to you.
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you...
The thundering waves are calling me home, home to you
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you.

I'm coming home.

It's been a somewhat momentous couple of weeks since last I wrote; we've visited Dubai again and left, for the last time. We visited Djibouti again, and left, for the last time; and it was a much more pleasant stay than the first time, probably because I wasn't involved with cargo operations, and actually had a chance to see the place a little more. I put in a leave slip on our departure day, visited Camp Lemonier - the American Joint Task Force Anti-Terrorism Base - wandered around downtown Djibouti for a little while, and all in all had a rather enjoyable time. Of course, a few days later I came down horribly ill - despite having neither eaten nor drank (other than bottled alcoholic beverages) anything out in town. C'est la vie...

We transited the Suez Canal without incident while I was preoccupied transforming my insides into my outsides. The Mediterannean is delightfully cooler than the Gulf, or the Arabian Sea, or any of the other southern climes we've been lingering in since summer; it's strange, to walk outside and feel chilly, or to have to wear a sweatshirt in the open air rather than the frigid confines of berthing, but I like it. I've always been a creature of winter and autumn, rather than sun and summer.

And, of course, most importantly - I'm coming home. Tomorrow morning I leave the USNS Supply, possibly for good (who can tell? It's a small fleet, after all...), board a big silver freedom bird, and wing my way west, slowly going backwards in time as I go. Tomorrow night, I hope to be in the arms of my loved ones again. It's been almost six months since I've seen them; it's hard to say just how much I've missed them.

I'm coming home.

A Quick Update...

2007-11-11T05:19:00.000-05:00

Blogger is also on the list of websites not allowed on Navy computers, apparently; at least, when I tried to log in to remedy the odd HTML-like code e-mailing the last entry in added to it, not to mention all the random extra line breaks, I got the dreaded Webwasher page. Sigh… looks like e-mail will be my only means of blogging (not, I confess, that I do so as often as I should) until I can either reach an internet café again, or – more likely, given our schedule – get home, and back to my own internet connection.

So, now you know.

It's an angry sea but there is no doubt...

2007-11-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

That the lighthouse will keep shining out
To warn the lonely sailor –
The lightning strikes and the wind cuts cold
Through the sailor's bones, to the sailor's soul
'Till there's nothing left that he can hold
Except the roaring ocean

But I am ready for the storm, yes oh ready I'm
I'm ready for the storm, I'm ready for the storm

So here we are, week two of NaNoWriMo. I've been falling a bit behind lately – I was consistently ahead of schedule the first few days, and then we stopped in Djibouti, Africa, and I got a bit delayed. No chance to write that day; working cargo all day long, quite a bit of pallets to load and not much space on the tiny, dirty pier to load it in; and then went out that night, to see if the town really was as bad as everyone had been saying. It was dirty, stinking, and full of people asking for money or aggressively trying to sell you things, but no worse than Marmaris, Turkey had been – or for that matter Tijuana, Mexico. Just goes to show, no matter where you go… there you are.

That said, I was still rather happy to leave Africa; the humidity, dust, and malaria prophylaxis were hell on me, and I was still fighting a pretty vicious head cold. I’m also not particularly happy to learn that we’re going back. Bah.

But getting back to NaNo, I’m about 14,000 words to the good – still about 2,000 behind schedule, despite taking today off and having little time but to write. Truthfully, I’ve had little to do all week but write – there’s a great picture on my Flickr account of Madb and I getting our wordcount on at flight quarters, helicopter taking off in the background. That pictures is also featured in the NaNoWriMo blog at blog.nanowrimo.org . I’d love to post it in here, but Blogger’s refusing to load for me again, and I’m actually mailing this entry in off from my ship’s e-mail account. I really hope this works properly…

Speaking of e-mail, the Navy finally got around to fulfilling their dire warning of no more commercial e-mail access on government computers; I haven’t been able to access my Gmail, AOL, or even Facebook inboxes for some time now. I have other e-mail to keep in contact with home and friends, but if you’re on Facebook and are tempted to send me a message… write on my wall instead, I’ll be able to read that sometime before December.

Speaking of, still looks like I’ll be home sometime between the first week of December, and the third. This is good… I’m definitely hoping for the first, despite the inconvenience involved in flying home, and despite the fact that getting paid off in Earle would actually pay me better – being overdue for relief nets you $25 per diem for every day overdue, and were I to be paid off in Earle, I’d also get about $300 travel money to get me back to Norfolk, VA. Still, every day on here seems to drag just a little bit longer, wear on my nerves just a little bit further, and make me miss home just that little bit more. It’s time to go.

So, that looks like about all the latest from me; merrily writing away on my novel, out of Africa, soon to go back to. Which, unfortunately, means that I’m going to be taking this freaking malaria pills that much longer… ;_; My dreams, never ‘normal’ even in the best of times, have taken on all kinds of freakiness. I was dreaming about WarMachine last night… well, amongst other things.

Where I stand with Toy Soldier’s War: our hero Chase has just been shot down on the pavement by the cruel alien invaders, after bravely fighting in defense of his school and city. I was originally planning on starting Act 2 with him waking up in his cryogenic tube, but I think instead I’m going to cut to the Lancer squadron he will soon be joining, as a routine day goes ugly for them – and they discover the laboratory Chase is in. After that, we’ll cut to the Ranger squadron that finds Chase, and our Hero in a Bottle… and carry on from there

Ja ne!

I can see the lights in the distance...

2007-10-31T01:59:00.000-04:00

...trembling in the dark cloak of night.
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Soul's night...

So, Happy All Hallows, All Saints, All Souls, Samhain, Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, or holiday of choice to you. ^_^

We're back at sea again after a grueling sprint in Jebel Ali; we pulled in Wednesday last for a light load of cargo, planning on pulling out Saturday. Thursday we loaded more than we'd expected, working steadily throughout the day; Thursday night, some shipmates and I went out on the town, hitting various clubs until eventually ending up at a place called the Seaview, known for its live music. The band was decent, not as good as The Rock Spiders (see my entries for November of last year), but they knew how to jam. The bass player was especially good, switching instruments to the lead guitar for an excellent cover of Guns 'N Rose's "Sweet Child of Mine" as the finale. Friday was a lazy day; I'd put in a leave chit, hoping to finally drag Wally off to the indoor ski ramp at the Mall of the Emirates, but unfortunately we were both well burdened with hangovers. Ended up spending the entire day at Elmondo Internet Cafe, a good eight or nine hours stuck in the Wired - I regret nothing. While we were chilling at the cafe, one of our shipmates came by and mentioned that the sailing board had changed - rather than sail Saturday, we were now sailing Sunday, as the USNS Lewis & Clark wasn't going to make it into port.

At first blush, this sounded like an invitation to roll out and drink heavily again that night; but we were both still a bit hungover, and at any rate, I had duty the next day, and I'd been taking too many weekends off lately anyway. So, the next morning I woke up and headed out to work. Good thing, as I was on the cargo POD - doing a BS job, namely netting cargo. Unfortunately, at 6'3" with dirty blonde hair and a copper red beard, I stick out pretty well on deck - so when the bosun assigned all the otherwise unassigned dayworkers to go back and net cargo, the unrep bosun grabbed me out of the crowd to run elevator 6. Running the cargo elevators on deck is a boring, tedious, and pretty undemanding job; the elevator comes up, you flick the switch to 'stop', lower the safety net, and move it out of the way. The forktruck driver loads cargo onto the elevator, the operator replaces the safety net, switches the elevator to 'run', and pushes the button for the destination. Then you sit back and wait until the elevator comes back up, at which point the cycle repeats.

What was supposed to be a fairly light cargo load, a liberty port stop, suddenly turned into a marathon sprint, loading hundreds of pallets of cargo - everything we were originally scheduled for, everything the Lewis & Clark was scheduled for, and a good deal of other items besides. Scuttlebutt whispered that the security situation in the UAE was about to blow up on us, and all American ships were pulling out; discreet inquiries to the mildet, or to the security detachment, were met with a flat "I'm not at liberty to discuss that". Around 7:30 at night, they called deck department fore and aft - we were shifting berths from Shed 66, cargo loading, across the river to Star Energy - fuel loading. I'd been running the elevator all night, with a quick break when our fork truck died to grab some food - one of the steward utilities had ordered pizza. When I came up out of berthing, the bosun stopped me and said that he needed me to remain behind.

Remain behind?

Apparently, several people hadn't made it back to the ship yet - the sailing board had changed while they were out in town, and they weren't aware that the ship was shifting to Star Energy tonight, or leaving early the next morning. So, in case they made it back before we left, the ship was leaving a couple of people behind at Shed 66, along with the ship's agent, and a hired van and driver. I was volunteered as one of the stay-behinds.

It's a peculiarly lonely feeling, watching your ship pull away without you. Sure, the van was right there - and they were only going across the river, at any rate, so it wasn't like I was lost. Shed 66 has hordes of security - Navy MAs, hired Gurkhas, and probably layers of defense I'm not entitled to see - so it's not even like I was anything less than completely safe. Still, a lonely feeling...

Round about midnight, the guard at the gate paged me over his PA, asked me to stand by. Well, I'd been 'standing by' for the last four hours. No skin off my nose. Turns out the ship had called the pier guards, and asked them to send me home. Well, 'send me home' apparently got turned into 'bring me home', 'cause the next thing I know they're escorting me back onto the pier, giving me a safety briefing, taking down my personal information for their records, and slapping a life jacket on me. I rode across the river on one of the Navy security boats, climbed a short ladder up to the pier at Star Energy, and strode down the sandy stretch to the gangway. The watch looked at me, slightly goggle eyed, not expecting anyone to come aboard at half past midnight at a pier with restricted liberty. I shrugged as I walked on.

So, to wrap up a long story - that was my weekend. I slept in, Sunday - Monday and yesterday both have been a long stream of unreps and moving cargo around, and today promises to be more of the same. All well and good, keeping busy makes the time go by - unfortunately, I seem to have picked up one hellacious head cold somewhere, and my foggy sinuses and fuzzy head are making me pretty miserable. It looks like a busy week, more underway replenishments in the offing, culminating with a stopover in Djibouti, Africa, to pick up cargo. I spent last summer in West Africa (Liberia and Ghana); I can't say I was expecting to go back to the continent, but at least it's East Africa, something new, this time. The schedule still seems pretty torn on whether or not we'll be returning to Jebel Ali, or the UAE at all, this deployment, but they still seem pretty firm on our return to the World this December. I have in for the first of the month off, although it looks like my earliest opportunity to leave would actually be sometime later that week, and things aren't really clear as to whether they'll spend the money necessary to fly me home, or merely pay me the (much cheaper) overdue for relief fee upon putting into Earle around the late middle of the month. Either way, I should be home in time for Christmas - I'm keeping my fingers crossed. >_<

Midnight tonight marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, and I am well and truly pumped for it. Finally settled (somewhat) on a title; the tenative working title is going to be "Toy Soldier's War", sticking with the same story I was thinking of for WANI and have spoken of here before. I have plans to either stay up until or wake up at midnight tonight to write; probably not too much, given how sleep has been a fairly elusive partner for me lately, and my dreams have been troubled and disturbed. I don't have nightmares - haven't since I was five years old, and had one so horrible it burned the terror out of my night time excursions since - but I've been known to wake up in the morning with a groggy, "What the hell was that all about?"

But I suppose I've rambled on enough for one entry, and although I'm on the most private computer in our little library, I can still see people peeking over at me as if wondering just how much longer I'm going to monopolize the internet.

Happy Writing to everyone engaging in the great adventure this November. ^_^

It's easier to believe in this sweet madness...

2007-10-10T10:35:00.000-04:00

...oh, this glorious sadness, that brings me to my knees...

Elmondo internet cafe again. It's only been a couple of weeks since last I was here, but it feels like months - I've been puttering around on the internet for a while now, not being too particularly productive but enjoying myself thoroughly. I'm in the middle of a large upload to The Wanderer Chronicles - older photos of Souda Bay, from February of last year. I've been meaning to upload them for a while, but every time I sit down in front of an internet connection, it slips my mind. Figure that I might as well make good use of my Pro account's unlimited upload, and start clearing away some of the back log. ^_^ Not too many new photos, unfortunately, there just hasn't been quite as many exciting things going on aboard - just the same old routine. I can't really complain, but it does make for a less than amazing Flickr page. >_< Ah, well, maybe this next underway will bring more photo opportunities...

I was kind of surprised to find a comment from my mom on the entry before last, and two comments - one from my friend Lyn, the other from my friend Mark - on my last entry. I mean, wow... people actually read my blog. >_< But then, that's why it's public, and why I give people the address... and for that matter, why I have an RSS feed running to my notes on Facebook, so people can read it easier. So, hi mom! Hope I haven't been swearing too much on here. >_< Foul language, I've found, is quite the occupational hazard for a sailor...

My iPod, Molly, has begun giving me trouble again - it's been about a year now without any serious problems from her, so I suppose I can't really complain. That said, with the new iPods rolling out in 80 and 160 gig video - not to mention the iPod Touch - I think the time has come to look at upgrading. I took the first step today, buying a 4 gig Nano ('Jacqueline') to listen to while I work and work out - anyplace where its smaller size might be an advantage, and its smaller capacity less of a limitation. When I get home in the winter, or maybe around the new year, I'll take the next step and pick up one of the larger iPod classics, along with the requisite new FM transmitter - the perfect tool for road tripping.

And speaking of road tripping, I find myself possessed of the strangest urge to wander when I get home. I've always had rambling feet, so I guess it's not too odd, but one might think that after six months away from home my primary concern would be being home. For the most part, it is - I'm fairly proud of the fact that I've only missed one Christmas at home over the course of my life (2005), and I'm in no hurry to repeat that... the holidays have always been a time for family and friends, as far as I'm concerned, and like the song says, home is where the heart is. That aside, I've been plotting various trips for the otherwise unoccupied weeks and weekends around the holiday itself, and thinking of friends who could give otherwise pointless wanderings an end result... namely, my friend Billy in Florida, my friend Danielle in Indiana, and my friend John in Texas/Kansas (school/home). Of course, a lot will depend on their schedules as well as mine, not to mention weather and road conditions around that time of year... but I have hopes, especially since I haven't seen any of the three for over a year now, and I miss their company.

Speaking of travels, my little sister is getting ready to wander off to the wilds of Jolly Olde England come the new year. I confess to a horrendous sense of jealousy, but also a sense of anticipation - she's been planning this scholarly voyage abroad for some time now, and it certainly gives me the perfect excuse to visit the British Isles when I get off my next ship, hopefully sometime before she returns home in June. Not too mention a near-native guide, if I can manage my time off to coincide with some of hers. We've been talking it over on Facebook lately, and I confess to being somewhat stoked over the possibility.

It's an amusing contradiction, given how much time I spend away from home, but I really don't travel all that much - MSC ships generally stick to the same familiar ports, after all, whether that be the Holy Trinity of Roda (Spain), Souda Bay (Crete), and Augusta Bay (Sicily) for tankers, or the much less holy Jebel Ali and Fujiara here on an ammo ship. Admittedly, West Coast ships get a much more delightful list to choose from - it's one of the best reasons for switching coasts, although I have too much waiting for me in Virginia to willingly take that step right now - but to a greater or lesser degree, it's true whichever ship you sail. MSC goes where the Navy goes, and where it's safe for us to go, and where our cargo is waiting for us... and with few exceptions, that's about it. I've seen a lot of amazing places in the past few years, but it seems to me that it's not enough... and I want to see more.

So, maybe it's not that I don't travel all that much, but rather that I'm just not satisfied with the traveling I do. One of the reasons I've aspired to be a writer is that with that profession, a man can write anywhere - I wouldn't be tied to any one city, or country, or continent. And, as the years pass by like shooting stars and I find more and more gray hairs on my head every day, maybe it's time I stopped talking about it, prodding the idea like a new tooth that I can't quite decide fits or not yet, and start doing something about it.

November's coming... I've already proven that I can write a novel, if I sit down and try. I think the time might have come to write something that I can publish.

Of course, going into NaNoWriMo with such lofty goals is pretty damn silly - after all, the point of November is to write, and not to worry about things like publishing, literary quality, or even coherence. But, come December (and the much more informal 'National Novel Editing Month') I might just have the time to ponder these subjects...

Yay, my Flickr upload is completed! Went off a lot smoother than I expected, actually. ^_^

So, NaNoWriMo; I think I'm going to go with an idea I originally had for a novel-in-a-year club my friend Danielle envisioned. The club sadly seems to have died a lonely death, but the idea has spent the last year or so ricocheting around the inside of my skull like a Flubber pinball, and I think it might have distilled down enough to finally be written. The idea had its genesis after watching Rahxephon on my journey home from the Gulf last year - I'd been thinking about doing a mecha story for a while (Snow Patrol's song "Run" stuck in my mind as being perfect for a slow motion, overly dramatic mecha fight scene when I began working on a [now defunct, big surprise] web comic a couple years back), so it's not surprising that watching a big-mecha anime would give me an extra boost of inspiration.

I have yet to come up with a title; it's possible that I've been thinking about it too long, and something might very well suggest itself to me when I actually get into the thick of things and start writing. It's a little frustrating, as both 2005 and 2006's NaNovels were well named going in.

The story revolves around a young military student (Jason "Chase" Barret) who, after a devastating attack on his academy by unknown enemies, wakes up in a cryogenic tank surrounded by soldiers. Over a century has passed since he was frozen, and Earth is under siege by an alien invader - the Rivari. Most of humanity has perished in the hellish war, and only a few fortress cities - megacities, for lack of a better name - remain, fighting desperately to survive. Jason's profile matches that required to pilot the fabled Lancer, humanity's last, best weapon against the alien; and against his will, for the survival of his race, he's thrown into battle. Lost in time and meaning, what will become of our hero?

I like the concept of the temporally displaced protagonist; Lancer pilots are usually determined long before they reach adolescence, and are purpose-trained for their eventual roles. Because they're incredibly rare - a mere handful among the millions of humans left in the megacities - they're incredibly valuable, and in many ways are treated more like prisoners than soldiers - their movement and activities tightly controlled, never allowed to risk themselves off the field of battle. For most of the Lancers, these tight controls are accepted - after all, that's the way it's always been. How is a 21st century teenager likely to react to this, however? Especially when he's been ripped from his home and family and thrown into a war he can barely comprehend?

A couple of scenes have already all but written themselves in my head, and I've been busying myself over the last week or so jotting down other notes as they come to me - the other Lancer pilots of his squadrons, details of the Lancer itself, thoughts about the Rivari and the megacities. I can barely wait for November. ^_^

Now there's an ocean between...

2007-10-03T21:45:00.000-04:00

...where I am and where I want to be
So you prayers in doubt, doubt not for me.

Ugh, it's about 5:30 in the morning out here, and here I am - perched in the library, typing away. Recent activities had me wiped enough where I crashed out just after dinnertime last night (not that I went... ship's food seems to be on a downward spiral the longer this cruise goes on, and I really hate to see how bad it's going to be come December), and after eleven or so hours of sleep my body decided it had enough. So here I am, marveling at how many other people are awake this morning... we were supposed to have call outs for an unrep pretty soon, but times have changed and now everyone's awake for no reason.

Not that it affected me one way or the other, since my team wasn't getting called out until later anyway.

I'm happy to see that Blogger seems to be working on the ship's computers again, because my plan to get into an internet cafe this last time in port ran afoul of the shoals of a major cargo operation; we were in for an overnight, and I got stuck working until midnight. >_<

My latest addiction is the Moleskine , a charming little notebook with hard covers and an elastic band to keep everything all together. I purchased several from a bookstore in Emirates Mall the last time I went ashore, but so far I've only used one of the pocket-sized ones. I have hopes for the others, with NaNoWriMo 2007 fast approaching, but my pocket 'skine has been my constant companion since I purchased it, great for writing down just about anything that crosses my mind. I'm not sure what it is about Moleskines, but they have quite the cult following - and mine, at least, really do make me want to write. Which is good, 'cause God knows I can use all the encouragement I can get... as if the sad lapse in this journal wasn't proof enough.

I recent upgraded my Flickr account to Pro, meaning I get unlimited storage space and unlimited uploads per month - I figured it was about time, especially with the new camera and all the pictures I've been uploading lately. Unfortunately, the ship's internet connection is too slow to upload them the normal way on here, and when I e-mail them in, some of them seem to be going astray... I'm watching and waiting right now to see if the latest three I've sent in will load, but I'm not seeing much activity.

Whoops! Spoke too soon, the first picture seems to have loaded, and I have hopes that the other two will quickly follow. ^_^ This just seems to be the day for things to work properly... but here's hoping I'm not jinxing myself by saying that.

National Novel Writing Month is fast coming upon us again, and again, I'm tangled up in the idea of what to write. I've wanted to do an anime-mecha type story for over a year now, but I'm also getting an idea for a sort of horror story... and another one that involves the undead, but is more of an action story, ala Underworld. Ah, decisions, decisions... No matter which story I settle on, though, I think I'm about as adequately prepared as I'm ever going to be.

So, I guess that about does it for now. There are some other things I've been thinking about, but the line for the computer is growing, and I should probably save something for my (hopefully soon) next entry. Ciao.

So many people have come and gone...

2007-08-24T09:36:00.000-04:00

...Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky

Its more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
till I see Marianne walk away...
I see my Marianne walkin away...

I freaking love the guitar in that song, and no mistake. One of my favorites.

So, I'm sitting in a little courtyard in Ibn Batutta Mall, using an internet cafe's wifi. I'm so metro it hurts, sometimes. This also marks the first time I've made back-to-back blog posts, other than updating Yon Lonesome Road - which reminds me, I should put up 2006's NaNovel, Searching For Avalon. Well, the completed parts of it, anyway. >_<

Seems I was mistaken about the UAE shutting out Flickr - despite all the warning signs I received when trying to access it on the USO wireless last night, I'm getting through just fine now. Weird! Updated, although most of the pictures I've taken (and I've been snapping away like a fiend lately) are fairly bland, and probably not of much interest.

Friday night (late afternoon/early evening, actually) - I'm planning on hitting the clubs tonight, or at least the bar at the Seaman's Center, and getting fairly well ripped. Tomorrow being Saturday, I've traded away my duty and have absolutely nothing on my plate except for coming back out this way and spending more time bumming around on the intarwebs. I'm fairly caught up on my comics and forums by now, so maybe I'll get some writing or some such done tomorrow.

Or, more likely, I'll be lazy and enjoy the time off. ^_^

Whoa whoa da di da dam dam baby...

2007-08-23T12:21:00.000-04:00

...whoa whoa da di da dam dam baby,
I close my eyes
I tell you how much I care
then you smile and say to me 'let me be your destiny'

Latest music addiction is techno - managed to score several gigs of music(and more pr0n than I care to discuss in a public venue) from a friend on the ship, and I've been rocking out on a regular basis lately.

So, here's a new milestone in my blogging 'career' - I'm sitting on the signal bridge, the second highest deck of the ship, in what is easily ninety degree heat, never mind the fact that it's 8:30 at night out here. I'm hooked into the local USO wifi net, which despite being at Shed 66, probably a quarter mile from where I'm sitting, still reaches us. The connection's a bit wonky, unfortunately, which means the fistful of vouchers in my pocket, each supposed to last an hour, probably won't get me through the next forty minutes... but I'm online, on my own computer, with a decent connection rather than the snail-like ship's comp.

The UAE apparently has a bias against Flickr - I can't access the site, instead getting bright red warning labels telling me to turn back, for the love of Allah.

Okay, I'm being hyperbolic - but man, am I happy the ship lets me e-mail photos in, 'cause otherwise you happy people would be without visual reference on my oh so exciting journey.

So, as you can probably tell from the context clues, we're back in Jebel Ali... just another sprint of loading cargo and carrying it back to the fleet. I'm still waiting on a couple of packages, one from home and one from ThinkGeek, but I highly doubt I'll see hide nor hair from either before September... the fleet Postal Service just doesn't move that quickly. Funny, how I can beat a package across the Atlantic, even though I'm on a ship and it's (presumably) being flown.

Was contacted by an old friend on Facebook, a school chum I haven't talked to since she moved to Hawaii our junior year (Hi, Laura!)... hopefully she'll still be in the area when I make it home, I remember her being pretty fun. Admittedly, my exposure was sitting next to her in Oceanography class, so I might simply be remembering everyone who wasn't the teacher (with his Ben Stein monotone) as being bright and entertaining. Speaking of Facebook and old friends, another person I haven't talked to in forever tracked me down, presumably by looking for old classmates - Micki, my friend(?) Rob's ex-girlfriend. Haven't talked to her since she and he called it quits, which made seeing the friend request an odd thing - but since Rob and I haven't talked to each other in almost a year, now, I guess there's no reason not to.

A year ago. Last time I talked to Rob was when I moved into my 'new' place, living on my own for the first time...

A year ago today, I was on the USNS Apache, somewhere off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia. We'd recently put out a fire on the MV Tahoma Reefer, rescued a half dozen Liberian fishermen who'd capsized in rough water, and generally kicked ass and taken names. I missed home, but I was doing pretty well - holding my own, holding a turn. In five days, I'd get the word that my best friend and roommate had killed himself. Four days after that, I'd be sitting in a hotel room in Ghana, waiting for my flight home.

It's hard to believe it's been a year since Joe died... I still miss that boy so fucking much. I dream about him, sometimes... he never seems to know he's dead, but I always do. I'm torn between telling him and just enjoying the moment, knowing that I'm going to wake up soon. He's always happy... I hope he really is, wherever he might be.

I think my main reason for believing in life after death is because I can't stand the thought that this is our only chance at things. Reincarnation or afterlife, I hold onto the hope that I'll see old friends again.

I picture you in the sun...

2007-08-18T04:07:00.000-04:00

...wondering what went wrong
And falling down on your knees, asking for sympathy
And being caught in between all you wish for and all you've seen
And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in
May God's love be with you
Always
May God's love be with you

It's somewhat ironic that the day I decide to update my blog is the day my little sister (hi, Jess!) leaves a comment on my last entry, asking me to update my blog - funny little coincidence there. Ahem.

Well, we're well and truly in the Burning Lands now. The temperature's been cresting a 100* Farenheit every day, the humidity ranging between 80 and 100%, the sun bright and cruel. This is our second time ducking into Jebel Ali, the port area of Dubai (or a neighboring city to Dubai, I'm not entirely sure - this whole area is very, very peculiar). We're working hard - running into port, loading massive amounts of cargo, unrepping the local battlefleet and running back in to rinse and repeat. It's pretty miserable, and the heat is murder - but the money's good, and it actually feels pretty nice to be working. The pace on the Supply when we're in the States is slow, the work pretty boring - it's good to be doing something for a change, and the faster pace of the work fills the days and makes them rush by pretty quickly. Well, usually - standing on the pier under the sun, a minute feels like an hour.

I'm keeping hydrated, refilling my Camelbak M.U.L.E (3-liter) two and even three times throughout the day, but I keep sweating it out as fast as I can suck it down - had some serious trouble with heat rash and chafing when we first got into the Gulf, but I think I'm over the worst of it now - just gotta keep changing my shirt as it gets soaked. I've found wearing an undershirt helps a lot, too... but that's probably more than anyone really wanted to know.

My external harddrive, "Wanderer", finally died on me the other day - it's been giving me a lot of problems lately, and finally gave up the ghost. I was lucky it did so on a day when we were in port - Dubai has a lot of electronics stores, and I managed to replace it within the day with a 160 GB model. Also picked up a nice set of headphones - together, the two cost me 700 dirham, about $200. After dinner at the Emirates mall, I had a couple pints of Guinness at the Seaman's Center in town, where a shipmate asked me to play wingman for him when he made his approach on a tableful of British chicks. Figured what the hell, ended up spending much of the rest of the night talking with them - turned out they were sailors off the HMS Richmond, although they kept Dino (my shippie) preoccupied by claiming they were in the UAE on a cruise ship, on holiday. Pretty amusing watching him try to prove that they were military - he finally got one to slip and spill the beans, probably 'cause she was the drunkest of the bunch. They eventually split off, and after hitting a couple more clubs Dino and I called it a night.

Next night I had duty (again - hurray for money!), and was suckered into washing the ship. We hooked a firehose up to the pier potable water source, and got busy spraying all the dust off the bulkheads and deck. Had a nervous moment when I spotted three women on the other side of the wall of connex boxes that surround our section of the pier; they seemed kind of off color. When I saw one of them gesturing at the ship and making counting gestures, I tipped off one of our security det. When he and I walked outside, they split.

Might be nothing; might be something. It's the thing I hate most about being over here, other than the heat; you never know when someone's being friendly 'cause they're friendly people, 'cause they're trying to get you to buy something, or 'cause they're getting ready to stick a knife in your back. They say Dubai's safe for us, or they wouldn't be letting us pull in; but there are way too many people with guns on board for me to really relax out here.

The odd cultural blend around here throws me sometimes, too. The stores one sees in the mall are often the same ones you'll find in the States, and people, I've found, are basically the same everywhere you go - same clothes, same attitudes, same mannerisms. Then you walk by a pack of women in burquas, or the mall PA system starts playing the call to prayer, and you suddenly remember you're a stranger in a strange land. So, in conclusion: I hate the sun. I miss home. But I love the money, and Lord knows I could use it right now. Keep on keeping on.

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout...

2007-07-23T04:16:00.000-04:00

'cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out
And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again
If you only try turning around -
So breathe, just breathe...

Rota, Spain.

The city hasn't changed much since the last time I was here, summer 2006 on the Apache. I didn't get much of a chance to get out and around then, and I spent most of my time this time around on a bar stool or a patio watching the beach (and the local fauna), so maybe I'm not the best observer. It's a Navy town; they have lots of alcohol, and the priestesses of the sacred bar are devoted to their art, and the rest of the locals would be just as happy if you'd piss off and leave them alone. Air Force guys are surprisingly fun to drink with, although it helps if you tell them "Opsec" when they ask you why you're here. They think I'm Special Forces or something -guess he didn't see the swinging gut.

I'm trying to lose that, although it's a slow process not notably assisted by this weekend's intake of liquid calories in the guise of lovely lovely ethanol. Guinness really is the beer that drinks like a meal, and other than the occasional cushioning layer of fuzzy water piss beer and sweetening shot of Jameson, is about all I consumed this weekend. Still, I'm making progress; at the root of this sudden foray into fitness is a wager with the Chief Mate as to whom can lose the most weight within the first two months of the deployment. Given that I've got twenty years less and sixty pounds more than he, I think my odds are good - I'm already down between five and ten, though I should probably check that now that we're in port and the rolling seas aren't going to keep throwing the scales out of whack.

Finally watched Scrubs season 4, and it hooked me enough to pick up season 5. Watched all of Wonderfalls - a seriously awesome show in the vein of Dead Like Me, with special bonus appearances from Jewel Staite. Many thanks to Damaris for first bringing the show to my attention, and now I really wish I'd borrowed it from her rather than waiting this long. ^_^

I bought a new hat. I know, usually hats and I get along together about as well as tall bulky men with incredibly large heads and inevitably too-small flappy things can be expected to get along, but I think this one rather works - which of course is the usual first sign that I look ridiculous. The second one, of course, is when people compliment me on how well it looks - which has also occurred. But it shades my face and the fabric is SPF 50, and being bound for the Burning Lands and all, it's probably all for the best.

On the other hand, somebody just (quite literally 'just') referred to me as "Indiana Jones", so maybe I'm just missing the warning signs.

Next stop, the Burning Sands, sometime towards the middle or end of next month. Or the month after, nobody's really sure.

Once again with the tide, she slips her lines...

2007-07-10T15:11:00.000-04:00

...turns her head and comes awake,
Where she lay so still there at Privateer's Wharf
Now she quickly gathers way
She will range far south from the harbour mouth
And rejoice with every wave-
Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?

So, we're deployed. Six months - or maybe more, although I plan to leave the ship and fly home sometime in December - overseas, ranging from Spain (briefly) to the Persian Gulf (not briefly). There's a lot going on - the lazy lethargy that's lingered over the ship for several months has been dispelled in a sudden frenetic burst of activity, as we loaded ammo, departed NWS Earle, and prepared for the arrival of our helicopter Airdet, all at once - and today has been nearly as hectic, with preparations for unrep intermixed with emergency drills. The fun starts early tomorrow and looks like it'll run for almost two days straight as we meet up with the ships making the crossing with us, and some who are returning home in need of fuel.

Busy, busy.

I made a wager with the Chief Mate sometime ago, as to who could lose the most weight in the first two months of the deployment - I'm off to a great start, I think. I've been eating healthier and hitting the gym, and the brutal heat is certainly taking its toll, too. Not to mention things like having to don my full firefighting ensemble or immersion suit under the sun today - not fun, but it certainly can't hurt my chances at winning any.

I feel oddly drained with all that's going on, beaten down and worn out - and yet, I can feel a peculiar energy under my skin, too. I wake up easier in the morning than is usual for me, and I don't feel tired during the day - maybe it's just early optimism before the grind of the deployment begins to wear me down, or maybe it's the change to a healthier diet, but I feel pretty damn good. Maybe this is what leveling up feels like.

I miss home, friends and family, but it feels great to be out to sea again - the wide open sea around us, the salt breeze stinging the eyes and filling the lungs with its fresh, clean taste.

Finally got around to watching Wonderfalls, and it was as good as expected - looking forward to the remaining two DVDs of the series. In the meantime, I've been catching up on Season 4 of Scrubs - the ending of Season 3 left a bad taste in my mouth, and it's taken me this long to get over my intense dislike of the main character to be able to sit down and watch it. It's still funny, I just have to restrain the urge to yell things at J.D. everytime Zach Braff comes on scene.

I feel like I've got more that I want to say, but I'm not entirely sure what... and seeing as how my coffee break has run overlong, I need to be moving along anyway. Maybe more later.

The tide has turned, and the ship bell chimes...

2007-07-09T17:07:00.000-04:00

...So raise the cup and think betimes
Of this poor sailor 'pon the sea
Whose passing is but memory

'Tis not that I would have you think
Of this but as a friendly drink
For with my heart I loved you truly
Though I'm forced to treat you cruelly

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

The tide is turned and so we sail
This brief sojourn has now grown stale
The wanderlust has me, indeed
I care not where my travels lead

The captain asks if I'm a-feared
A smile tangled in his beard
His laughter tells me he must know
The pain that I now undergo

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

I cast my fate into the wind
I have no mate, nor kith, nor kin
For I must go where I am sent
A victim of self-banishment

Orion has become my guide
And Venus is my willing bride
With wanderlust my fuel and feed
I roam the world as 'tis decreed

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

For the fever's upon me
And the Captain is calling
I cannot stay with thee
My destiny's calling
I'll never be free, but I do what I must
A captive of my wanderlust

~Heather Alexander, "Wanderlust"

This island is big enough for every castaway...

2007-06-28T21:25:00.000-04:00

...but most of us are looking 'round for someone else to blame...

Sitting in a Borders somewhere in Red Bank, New Jersey as I write this... switching it up a bit from our usual Barnes & Noble visit, although the wireless is a bit pricier. $10 for 24 hours is certainly a better deal than $3 for 2 hours, but I won't likely be sitting in here for 24 hours - work in the morning, and the store needing to close, and all.

Visited home this weekend past, although only briefly - most of the weekend was spent driving, with a nice visit with Cat thrown in for good measure. She was taking part in a field trip in western Virginia, near Charlottesville, and I managed to meet her out there - we saw some of the sights in Charlottesville on Sunday, and I finally managed to meet her friend Kave, a medical student and generally cool guy. I've been hearing stories about him since Cat and I started spending time with each other, and it was nice to finally attach a person to the various anecdotes (like the one about how she cracked one of her ribs pouncing him one time...) Our stay was extended slightly when Cat lost her keys - fortunately, she discovered this fact before she and I separated and my rental car and I went speeding down the highway, so we rushed back to Charlottesville and rampaged about retracing our steps until we recovered them at an ice cream parlor. There was much rejoicing.

The drive back up to New Jersey sucked (but then, given the destination... I keed, I keed...), but I returned my rental and made it back to the ship intact and on time to get a little rest before starting an MHE - Material Handling Equipment, or fork truck - school bright and early Monday morning. The rest of the week has been spent driving fork trucks around and learning far, far more than I ever really desired about the buggers. Passed my written test today with flying colors (big surprise), but I'm feeling a bit nervous about the practical tomorrow - it doesn't help that the weather, hot and humid all week, has taken a turn for the gloomy and tomorrow might very well receive the rain predicted for today. Class isn't canceled for inclement weather, so if it's pouring rain when my turn comes to drive the truck tomorrow - well, them's the breaks. >_<

Still haven't begun work on my screenplay, and given that the end of the month is the day after tomorrow, I might as well admit that I'm a non-starter for this year. Not my proudest moment, especially given how excited I was in the months prior... but for whatever reason, I just didn't get into it. Ah, well... there's always NaNoWriMo in November.

Less than two weeks until we deploy. I think I'm ready, as far as stuff goes, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm ready, emotionally. A large part of me is ready to quit the States for a while - I get a sort of caged in feeling when I'm back in the world for a long time, and it's been six months since last I was overseas. On the other hand, some bit of me is already ready to say screw it and go home.

Guess we'll see how this one goes.

I can't get to sleep...

2007-06-10T00:48:00.000-04:00

...I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination...

Kicked back in my bedroom, on my futon, looking over at the scattering of dirty laundry and clutter that really needs to get cleaned up before I leave. Just a few more days - then it's back to Jersey, and not long after that, back to the Gulf. The weather's taken a turn for the warm lately, riddled with summer thunder storms aplenty - and oh, how I love the rain - and searing heat and stifling humidity the rest of the time. I don't know what adds more to my misery - the uncomfortable temperatures (and mind, I've always been a cold weather creature) or the knowledge that the current 90+* heat is absolutely nothing compared to what we're going to see when we get back to the burning lands.

Despite taking most of the last week off to get personal business done, I've managed to accomplish pretty much nothing... par for the course, I'm a horrible procrastinator and as lazy as the day is long (and in summer, that's pretty damn long). This makes the weekend a little crowded as I try to squeeze in the last few things I need done, something not helped by getting woken up at an ungodly early hour this morning by my brother, who had discovered his apartment flooded and needed some help getting things back together. Turns out his water heater had developed a serious leak during the night... quickly replaced by maintenance, who also managed to get a carpet cleaner to the apartment in good time, although things are still uncomfortably damp over there at the moment. In the meantime, his two cats are running around my place. They surprisingly haven't done much damage to anything as of yet, although I did take the precaution of moving my fish (Moby, a Christmas present from Cat) to the master bathroom and keeping the door shut - best not to tempt the hellions, after all. I'd forgotten just how much I missed having a cat around the house, but it's not a situation I'm likely to remedy any time soon. After all, it's pretty damn irresponsible to have a pet when you're out to sea most of the year.

Cat and I caught Knocked Up the other night; I found it surprisingly good, plenty of humor (both in witty banter and in general goofiness), although it did little to encourage me to budge from my current anti-parenting stance. I don't think I'm cut out to be a father.

Speaking of Cat, I managed to install the drivers and support software for the MobilePro 790 I bought her - she's off to DC for the weekend, visiting the ex, and since she lacks a laptop this gives her internet (and some word processing) capabilities for her classes. I'm curious as to how the MP will work for her; as much as I adore Madb, I haven't used her extensively, or as my sole means of computing, thus far. She makes a wonderful backup when Cat monopolizes Eris for school work, though, so she's worth the money I put into her.

Speaking of computers and money, I've been toying with the idea of getting Liira fixed - since my printer has decided not to cooperate with Windows Vista, I wouldn't mind having an XP machine around the house, and you never know when an extra laptop might come in handy.

Joined my friends Mark and Elijah (and Elijah's infant son, Cyrus) for sushi today, a rather nice all-you-can-eat sushi buffet near our former gaming hang-out, the Hobbytown off of Virginia Beach Boulevard. Surprisingly good food, I ate until I was stuffed - which is good, because I'm absolutely ravenous right now. I'm supposed to be fasting in preparation for some follow up bloodwork tomorrow (cholesterol... sigh...), and I neglected to eat anything before my 9 PM cut off, thanks to an unforeseen nap this afternoon. Lord knows I can stand to miss a few meals, though, so I'm not in too bad a shape - it's just annoying.

Haven't actually gotten anything written for my screenplay yet - I never seem to get any writing done when I'm home, so I suppose it's just as well we'll be off to sea/New Jersey pretty soon. As things go, I'll have lots of catching up to do...

But I guess that about wraps it up for now. Despite this entry's choice in music, I'm going to need to take a serious shot at getting to sleep soon if I have any hopes of getting up early for the doc visit... I'm also supposed to meet up with Mark to maybe catch a movie (he nominated the third Shrek flick, about which I've heard disappointing rumors), and then meet my parents for lunch/dinner in the late afternoon. And somewhere in the middle, finish cleaning my apartment. >_<

And the sun's been quite kind, while I wrote this song...

2007-05-31T22:23:00.001-04:00

...it's for people like you who keep it turned on...

Just another day in paradise. Out to sea once again, pulling in tomorrow... this'll be the last time the ship's in Virginia for a long, long while, though I'll hopefully get a chance to catch a train or rent a car and make my way down for a weekend or two before we deploy. Got a lot of things to clear up before we go, renewing my lease, picking up my medications, and all that rigmarole... I'll take the weekend and most of next week off, unless they suddenly decide I'm too vital to let go. O_o It's happened before, although usually the powers that be have more sense. I am, after all, just another deck ape - one of almost forty, and hardly irreplaceable.

Not a lot else going on, we've finished up a number of unreps - quick ones, for the most part, just a long line of tincans topping up their tanks before they pull into port, but it helps the day go by. Tomorrow's payday, which is good - lord knows, I can always use the money. Haven't played Neverwinter in a few days, which I suppose means I broke the addiction - I beat the original campaign, and Shadows of Undrentide just doesn't seem to grip me. I'm fooling around with the Winter Assault campaign for Dawn of War right now, but with Script Frenzy starting tomorrow I'll probably drop that, too, at least until the end of June.

Shipmate lent me Wonderfalls... haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but my friend Damaris has spoken highly of it (she also compared it to Dead Like Me, which is one of my favorite shows... so here's hoping good things will come of it).

And... that's about it.

I may be old and I may be bent...

2007-05-21T19:10:00.000-04:00

...but I had the money 'till it all got spent.
I had the money 'till they made me pay,
Then I had the sense to be on my way.
I had to stay in the underground -
I was in the house when the house burned down.

Sitting in Barnes & Noble again, enjoying coffee and internet. They tell me the ship's computers are working again, but I haven't had a chance to prove it for myself - I'm going to need to do all the regular rigmarole of renewing my account and setting up. Nothing too major, just a hassle when I'm trying to juggle other things with my free time... like Neverwinter Nights.

I finally managed to get NWN and Vista to cooperate (thanks in no small part to downloading the offered patch), and I spent all weekend holed up in the rack playing obsessively. The last time I played I only made it to the opening of Chapter 2, playing with my roommates at my old house - meaning it was at least early '05, possibly even '04. I've made it further this time, and I have some hopes of actually finishing the game - finally. Of course, I picked up the Diamond edition, so I'll have two expansions and a fistful of modules to play through if I make it through the main game.

I've got a bad habit of picking up video games, playing them obsessively - like scorning food and sleep to cram in a few more minutes - and then losing interest as quickly as I gained it, letting them lie half finished and never touching them again. It's a waste of time and money, so I've mostly weaned myself of it; thank god I've never had the time for MMPORGs like Everquest or WoW, because I'd probably be one of those sad saps found dead at his computer. It's been a while since I've been hooked like this, but a good D&D-based game will do it to me every time.

The ship's still in New Jersey, but we'll soon be underway again - not going anywhere in particular, just cruising the water off the coast and doing training (and a few actual) unreps. It's kind of nice to be doing something, anything, again. I'm almost looking forward to deploying. Training squats, practice unreps, with another MSC ammo ship - the USNS Mount Baker, an older and smaller ship with a lousy reputation in the outfit.

Several of my friends are hooking together solid plans to attend Gen Con this year, which fills me with envy and sorrow - the ship will, of course, be overseas at that time. I could - maybe - make Origins, if I pushed, but a smaller group than normal is going this year, and they're going primarily to spend time with a friend whom, while I don't actively dislike, I also don't particularly get along with. They're also looking at flying up, and then staying at his house, which removes two of the things I enjoy about the con experience - the road trip to and fro (for whatever reason, I enjoy long car rides and road trips), and staying in the hotel at the con (while massively more expensive, having one's room so close is oh so convenient). So, no dice for Origins and bloody unlikely for Gen Con - which makes me quite the sad J.

And, as previously mentioned, incredibly envious of all those who are going.

And... that's about it for this update. Eagerly awaiting Script Frenzy in just over a week, although I'm still pondering just what I'm going to write. Here's hoping my NWN addiction doesn't get in the way of my writing. >_<

Whatever gets you through today...

2007-05-16T19:30:00.000-04:00

Life continues on.

Ship's in New Jersey right now... I've been meaning to write for the last week or so, but at first, whenever I sat down at the computer I just couldn't think of anything to say. Then the ship's LAN and satellite linkup went down, and I was effectively struck mute anyway... I'm sitting in a Barnes & Noble in Holmdel, NJ right now, about ten minutes (and a $13 cab ride) from the ship. My bank account is at $-26 right now, but I've got about $200 in my pocket... and no way to get it into my bank account. 12 AM Friday is payday... so I guess I'll just keep on keeping on. There's little doubt that this temporary bankruptcy is doing horrible things to my credit, but I can't seem to bring myself to care overly much... I've been borderline burnout for the last week or so, and I don't even know why. I'm not depressed, or down, or angsty... I'm just kind of 'meh'. Like worrying about things is just too much of a bother... I'm still laughing. Heh, and iGoogle serves me an appropriate quote - "Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." - John Stuart Mill. Thanks, Google.

There's a huge storm outside right now... much more impressive when it was coming on this afternoon, heavy winds forcing everyone in the Deck Department to seek shelter as it whipped the seas to a froth and rolled the ship, even tied to the pier, lightning lashing an angry sky, a gray curtain of rain rushing across the sea at us... all that potential, reduced to a paltry dribble and a chilly wind. Typical Jersey.

It's really not that I dislike Jersey, I just don't want to be here... but I didn't really want to be at home, either, and at least this way I'm saving money on food and gas, and I've got the extra motivation to work overtime and make more money. I just feel out of place, I guess, maybe with myself... like nothing fits right, and nothing feels right. It's pointless, and it's stupid, but that's the way things go, I guess.

I've been taking pictures like a fiend, lately, all the better to feed the blog... many of them are worthless (and I've learned, to my mental scarring, to never forget my camera in the crew lounge again), but a few might be worthwhile. I'll try to get them up before either my battery or my hotspot account run out... I've got another hour left, and even as slow as this connection is that should be sufficient. For the most part, they're just slices of shipboard life - things we're doing, none of which are momentously exciting (although some of the shots as we tie up or let go from different piers were nice enough).

I feel so metro, blogging away in a coffee shop. Emo blogging, at that. Tee hee. Which reminds me, it's time to satiate my poorly neglected caffeine addiction.

...mmm... Peppermint Mocha...

So, The Office of Letters & Light - the group behind National Novel Writing Month - are starting a new crazy adventure, Script Frenzy. The objective is to write a 20,000 word screenplay or stage play within the thirty days of June, and since I've proven myself incapable of writing anything without a firm deadline, I've signed on... even though my script writing experience is nil. But hey, 50,000 words was, once upon a time, an undreamt-of goal for me, too. I've bounced around on my ideas for a while, now, but I think I've finally settled on one - and like my first NaNoWriMo novel, it has its roots in a different project I was working on, once upon a time.

I dubbed the project "Odyssey". It was a roleplaying campaign, originally intended for D20 Modern, but other ideas were bandied about - it never got beyond the planning stages, so it's not like any of the mechanics ever mattered. The name has several homages, to Homer of course, and to an old TV show of the same title that I never really watched, but liked the looks of on the bits and pieces of episodes I caught - something about a kid in a strangely surreal post apocalyptic world where all the adults were dead. Or something. It also had links to a D&D (originally Palladium Multiverse) game I ran called Journeys.

The basic storyline involves a group of strangers - the players characters, of course - on a subway in a major East Coast metropolis (probably New York, despite my lack of actual experience with the city). The train wrecks, and the passengers are miraculously unharmed - but no help comes. When they finally get out of the train and hike to the surface, the find the entire city deserted - as if the population had simply dropped what they were doing, and walked away. What was supposed to follow was a journey across a strange, changed America, where the world - to use the parlance of Stephen King's Dark Tower series - had 'moved on'. In places, there is nuclear wasteland - in others, plague - in others still, the aftermath of natural disaster, or alien invasion, or other countries invading, or all of the above, at the same time. Sometimes, the disaster is fresh and new, still burning, still dying. Sometimes, the world has been dead for centuries... millenia. New life is growing. There are no explanations, and every scattered survivor has their own theory. Somehow, the characters have to make it across America... and maybe even further, across the world.

The original idea was pretty unstructured, but since then the possibility of apocalypse - and what people do in the aftermath - has become a hobby of mine, and writings in the genre some of my favorite. I would recommend S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire, Brian K. Vaughn's graphic novel Y: The Last Man, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead - the original, of course - and numerous other works which I've no doubt overlooked and haven't the breath to mention anyway. Needless to say, I have a few more ideas to throw into the mix - chances are, though, I won't attempt a movie screenplay, but rather something more like a TV series pilot - meaning I won't actually have to worry about wrapping things up as much.

But I ramble on, and I realize my battery is slowly but surely dying - twenty minutes of power left, and this thing always lies. I should probably publish while I still have the chance, and offer vague promises of future updates... yes.

So, with any luck, I'll write more soon - getting started is always the hardest part. As anyone who knows me can testify, I do have a tendency to ramble for hours on any subject that fascinates me, and at least on a blog I don't have to worry - too much - about people getting bored and falling asleep on me. I mean, it's not like I have to look at you, dear Nobody.

It's so hard to find my way...

2007-04-29T23:11:00.001-04:00

...now that I'm all on my own...

Not looking forward to the coming week. No particular reason not to, nothing particularly dreadful looms on the horizon; hell, the ship's coming out of the yards, so pretty soon things will be back to normal. For some reason, I've been pretty down the last half of the day today... started out a little meh, with my parents waking me up far too early asking questions about my Flickr album, but things went a bit smoother after that; Cat invited me out to lunch, which I declined, and then Mark invited me to see Hot Fuzz, which I jumped at. Cat at first agreed to join us, and then reneged, citing the need to study for her exam tomorrow. Can't say I blame her, as her grad school choices depend heavily on her GPA for the this semester, and work and school have been pressing her pretty hard.

Her loss, though, as the movie was excellent, as good or better than Shaun of the Dead; very funny, with a heaping helping of action thrown in at the end for good measure (and fortunately, without interrupting the laughs). Couple of predictable moments, but overall very solid, and definitely recommended for those who don't mind language and gore.

Hung around the mall after the flick, got sushi and coffee with Mark and Mike, and then headed for home; went shopping with Cat, and then after she got off work went and got dinner with her. Despite nothing going wrong, or even being wrong, I've been feeling weary and depressed since I got home; probably just the general sort of malaise I get every so often, and soon to pass (there's a reason Danielle once called me 'the moodiest man alive', after all), but it doesn't do much to help me out now.

Did indeed get my 900c, which I've decided (with some assistance from Dani) to name 'Madb'; unfortunately, this entry is still being written on 'Eris', thanks to Madb's inability to access the new entry page on Blogger. Still, she can handle most websites I frequent pretty well, and she has a word processor; that right there accomodates 90% of my computer needs, and probably 100% of my travel needs. If I could get Armies of Immoren to run on her (probably a feeble hope, given the lack of Java) and a better word processor than WordPad, I'd be one happy camper indeed.

That latter should actually be a possibility; I've been browsing the various Handheld PC fansites on the web since I became interested in getting the MobilePro, and there are an awful lot of add-ons and support available amongst the user/hacker/modder community. Some assembly required, of course, but I think the gains are worth the risks...

Just realized I mentioned Eris without explaining. As I mentioned way back in November, I name all my electronics; my (60 gig photo) iPod is Molly, my PSP is Alexia, Madb is my MobilePro 900c, and Eris is my Acer Aspire 5100 series notebook (her predecessors were Liira (an Averatec 3200), and Kimmi (a Sony VAIO whose model number I've sadly forgotten, not that it really matters to anyone but a die-hard techie... which even I fail to count as). There are generally reasons behind the name; Eris, in this case, is because my computers are almost always sources of chaos, mischief, and frustration - I just figured I'd acknowledge the situation up front, this time around.

So, there you have it. I desperately need to go grocery shopping... and come to think of it, I need to transfer my laundry from washer to dryer before I crash for the night. I'm hoping to make it to sleep within the next half hour or two; while our hours are shifting back to our normal schedule (meaning 0800 to 1630 for the work day, rather than 0730 to 1530), giving me an extra half hour to to get in to work tomorrow, I've an awful tendency to stay up far too late on Sunday nights - making Mondays extra miserable. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how this one works out.

Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep...

2007-04-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

...this air is best, you share with me...

Not a hell of a lot going on here in J-land, just thought I should write... trying to keep in the habit. Sorrowfell continues to toddle along, never quite dead but never as alive as I'd like... differing schedules, my own random approach to updating, and the slow pace of online roleplaying in general all combine to make a frustrating morass of the storyline, as events that take only seconds in the game - and would probably take a few minutes to play out in real life - go on and on for weeks or months.

But whine, whine... if that's the most I've got to complain about, then I'm doing well indeed, hey? Took today and tomorrow off from the ship to try to get some personal business done, and ended up spending today being a lazy bum - big surprise to everyone, I know. I've done a little laundry and spent some time burning myself at the beach, but other than that I've been right here, doing just this - glued to my computer, snorting frantically to get my internet fix. This is our last weekend in the shipyard, and probably our last weekend in Virginia for some time, coming up; I'm looking at working it, as my 'vacation' in San Diego set me back a little bit, and I haven't been working anywhere near the overtime I should be. I suppose it's pretty cheap to take two days off during the week and then work the weekend for the extra money, but you kinda take these things as they come to you.

The weather's taken quite a swing for the warmer - I'd almost gotten used to the late fall temperatures rolling through the area, and all of a sudden summer rears its ugly head. I've always been a cold weather kind of person, although New Jersey in February of this year came close to freezer burning that out of me; it doesn't help that the pier we berth at in Earle stretches about two miles out into Sandy Hook Bay, leaving us to the tender mercy of a biting wind. Still, I'm most comfortable when the temperature is in the 40-60* F range, and the recent surge into the high 80s has left me miserably overheated... an unwelcome, teasing taste of what we're going to be dealing with in a few months. And I'm planning on sticking around for the next trip to the Gulf, in the summer, where the temperature has been known to reach 120*...? Clearly I've gone crazy.

A random post on one of the NaNoWriMo forums triggered the kewl gadgets lust forever lurking just one small step below my conscious, this time for the very cool looking NEC MobilePro 900c, a handheld PC. Yes, I did just purchase a new laptop, but this one's smaller. I've got something of a craze for tiny computers which my current laptop and its 15" screen just can't handle... I was able to get the 900c for a song on eBay, but now I'm trapped in that horrid sargasso that is the wait for shipping, and the hours - don't even get me started on days, or even weeks - drag by like years. As Carrie Fisher once said, "Instant gratification takes too long."

But with luck, my next update to this blog will come from my new, tiny sidekick - which I like to imagine myself carrying everywhere, ready to spring into writing action at the very moment of inspiration, but which I will probably use in the same manner as I do its much larger cousin, currently comfortably settled into my lap. Now, I just need to think of a name for it...

With just one kiss, you could change the world...

2007-04-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

...it might not be much better, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

So; I'm still alive. I know it's been some time since I've updated this, but I did warn you that it was random - and that I have an absolutely horrible track record when it comes to journals, blogs, diaries, and anything else that one is supposed to write in on a daily basis. To update the concerns from last time; the ship is back in the States (currently in a shipyard in Norfolk, VA, as a matter of fact, so I am actually home - a wonderful thing), I did make my goal of 50k words for NaNo, but once again failed to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion and then stopped work on it. I did add a little bit this past week, but I haven't a clue yet as to whether or not this is an indication that I'll actually pick it up again.

As far as my recent activities, I just flew home from San Diego; my cousin Curtis died recently from injuries sustained in Iraq, and my parents and I flew to California for the funeral, and to provide what help we could for his family. Curt was a couple of weeks older than I, and his older brother died last year - I'd only met them a couple of times, but their father is my favorite uncle and I hate watching him go through all of this. Funeral vigil and service were very sad, not something at all I'd like to go through again - but then, nobody ever said they were supposed to be pleasant, and having fun wasn't what I was there for.

That said, I'd like my funeral to be a hell of a lot more entertaining - held in a cabin in the woods somewhere, by a crystal blue, and very deep, mountain lake. I'd like an old fashioned wake all night, with whiskey, dancing, and song, and as the sun rises I'd like for my body to be laid in a longboat, with a backpack behind my head, a sword on my chest, and a bottle of whiskey in my hand. Then light the boat on fire and push it out in the lake. An Irish wake, a Viking funeral, and no crying.

Sounds like a plan to me.

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me...?

2006-11-15T19:04:00.000-05:00

...for I must be traveling on now, there's too many places I gotta see...

So... back in Dubai again, but leaving tomorrow. Just wrapped up a mid to four sea watch... we've been here four days now, two day watches (counting our arrival day) and two mid watches. Went out the first night we were here, after I got off the day watch; the watch officer had told me about a rock and roll cover band he enjoyed, a group called the Rock Spiders. Turns out they were all Filipino - yeah, a Filipino cover band in Dubai, how good can they be?

Abso-fucking-lutely awesome. One of the best live shows I've seen, bar none - and while I admittedly haven't seen too many live shows, I think I know my music enough to say 'wow.' Great band, the vocals were a little odd sometimes but their accents didn't get in the way half as much as I would have feared - they rocked out with my two favorite Pink Floyd songs ("Comfortably Numb" and "Wish You Were Here"), lots of old-school Guns 'n Roses, a little bit of Metallica and Iron Maiden, and closed up with "Freebird" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - all of which were excellent (especially the GNR and Iron Maiden). So, if some by some godawful chance you find yourself in the UAE - look up the Rock Spiders, playing pretty much every night from 10 'till 2, at the Music Room next to the Majestic hotel. You'll not be disappointed.

Stood the day watch the next day, barely managing to drag myself along after rolling back to the ship at four in the morning; crashed after watch, rousted out again for the mid to eight watch, caught a bus into town about ten that day to do some shopping. Hit the Dubai Harley Davidson to get some t-shirts for my dad, then wandered around one of the two (or three) ginormous malls in the city for a bit... hit Starbucks, a couple bookstores, a Woolworths (!) and a department store, gathering the necessities, then went back to the ship after lunch - slept a bit, dragged myself through watch again, then slept all day yesterday... roused up again about sevenish.

Got a bit more writing done for my NaNovel, though I am still horrendously behind - just a tad over 15K as of last counting, with hopefully more to come. Despite the great start I had, I'm falling further and further behind, and can't seem to get my head in the right place - barely five thousand words in nine days. But - whinewhinewhine, I can't get my wordcount high enough, it's NaNoWriMo, same old song. If I can't finish this beast by the 30th, I'm going to hate myself the rest of the year... so here's hoping I get my arse in gear soon.

Sorrowfell continues on nicely; not a lot more to say about that, other than that the pace seems to have sped up a bit and yet is still too slow for my tastes. I keep finding myself checking back on it almost religiously, the same way I look for e-mails from home - hoping that someone else will have posted, so that I can jump in with something new. I swear, I'm like one of Pavlov's dogs...

But I guess that's about it. Over to another berth in a few hours, then I believe out of here tonight... back to sea. Still not much new in the way of news on our homecoming, I heard some scuttlebutt that we'll be shifting down to Norfolk after offloading our ammo in Jersey, but the old hands are skeptical - thinking it'll take much, much longer than a week to get everything off here. :( This makes J der sad bunny, because it's beginning to look more and more like my chances of getting this Christmas at home are hosed. Eh, that's what I get for being a sailor, hey?

Show me the river, that leads to my home - back to the one I love...

2006-11-07T19:01:00.000-05:00

...show me the wind that constantly blows , and I will fly away, fly away home...

I love eastmountainsouth.

So, it's been a rather mild week and a half or so since last I wrote; NaNoWriMo is in full swing, and although I had a great start (4K the first day!) I'm moderately behind on my word count as we roll into day 8 - barely 10,000 words to my credit, more shame to me. Still, those people graceful enough to read the work in progress have given me high praise - which probably defeats the point of the exercise, as then I worry about whether or not I'll be able to maintain that standard - but on the other hand, I'm a flattery junkie, however modest I may try to be. I just love being told how pretty I am, even though I strongly suspect the motivations and sincerity of anyone giving me a compliment.

Yeah, I'm just a giant bundle of neuroses and contradictions. It's a feature!

Life on the ship continues much as before, with the addition of NaNo thrown in for fun and excitement; I've been doing the majority of my writing during rover rounds on watch or immediately after (which probably explains my slow pace, to be honest - I really need to strap my ass into the chair and just work on pushing through the damned thing), with my free time spent on various other pursuits - ah, NaNoWriMo, the one month out of the year that writers everywhere come together to celebrate procrastination. I love it so.

I've restarted (or, at least, made the attempt to restart) my long-running, oft-delayed D&D PBP, Sorrowfell - it's a creative outlet at a time when my creative energies should be posted elsewhere, but it's actually given me some ideas for Searching for Avalon, my NaNovel - part of it's similar themes, and part of it, I guess, is I just need something else to blow off steam.

...I'm the only person I know who needs a hobby to distract him from his hobbies.

Good news on the home front, my parents took Molly (yes, I named my iPod - aren't I cute/pathetic? I name all my electronic gidgets) into the local Apple store, and the techs were able to fix her - at the predictable cost of all my music, damn the luck. A lot of the songs on there were garnered from friends, meaning they're irreplaceable, or damn close to it; the majority I have on CD, but the mp3 files were lost with my last external harddrive, meaning they are replaceable, but it's going to be a right pain in the ass putting all the music back on.

On the other hand, it's a damn sight better than having to buy a new iPod and do all that anyway, so I might as well quit bitching.

Speaking of new iPods, I like the concept of the 80-gig video iPod a lot better than I like the reality. I find the older Photo 'pods more aesthetically pleasing, since they don't have the 'cut off' look to provide the flat screen; I'm a tad irritated that the new generation iPods can't use the accessories from the old ones (so, for example, had Molly not been restored to me and I'd been forced to garner her replacement, I would have had to get a new FM transmitter - a vital necessity for the car, especially given the state of radio in Hampton Roads - and wireless headphones), and I think watching video of any length on a screen the size of even the largest iPod is a silly idea. Talk about iStrain.

...teehee. Yes, I thought of that myself. Please direct your death threats to the little comment link at the bottom of the entry, folks.

Which... pretty much wraps it up for now, I guess. It's five AM here, with an unrep due in an hour - not one, thank god, that I have to deal with, as I was up fairly late (for me, anyway) with an unrep this afternoon. This should be a bright, sparkly paycheck coming up; this pay period has had two unreps thus far for my team, a holiday on the eleventh, and it turns out the day we were restricted to the ship for fueling counts as penalty time - almost 11 dollars an hour for about sixteen hours, just because they wouldn't let us go out in town - which in other times, might have irritated me, but last time we were in port (and possibly this next time, as well), I had no interest in going out.

I am going to have to venture out into Dubai at some point, though, as my dad's asked for a Harley shirt from overseas for this year's Christmas present - his present last year was two shirts from Cadiz, Spain, and I guess I've started a tradition. Makes me wonder just what I'm supposed to do on a deployment where we don't visit new ports - I can see myself buying multiple shirts from different ports and squirreling them away, just to have a present source for the future.

Heh. Guess that's all for now.

I'm a million different people from one day to the next...

2006-10-30T07:13:00.000-05:00

So, we're back in the UAE - and my luggage was waiting for me on the pier! Yay!

Other than that, there's almost nothing going on. Tomorrow's All Hallow's... and All Saint's after that, the long awaited beginning to NaNoWriMo 2006. The weather here is still entirely too warm, with a sun entirely too bright, but I think I'm adjusting to it, slowly but surely... today didn't seem as hot as yesterday, but the thermometer says otherwise - and how!

It's come to my attention that I'm a two-finger typist - I use my thumb to hit the space bar, and my right ring finger to hit the backspace key, but other than that pretty much everything is done with the index fingers on my right and left hands - my left, especially, never uses anything else. Odd, especially considering that I have a rather decent typing speed (with far too many mistakes, I admit) - no doubt a skill picked up from far too many years spent in chat rooms or are on instant messengers.

And I use my right pinky to hit the enter key. Wierd.

I found this shiny thing on the NaNo forums; a badge to mark one's NaNoveling progress in message board .sigs and on blogs. Since I have a blog... what the hell.

Is it not beautiful?

Although I'm eight hours ahead of the East Coast, I've left my default time setting to there - keeps me on par with my friends/rivals back in the area. Besides, I'm on a ship - we move around a lot. I'd hate to have to keep adjusting my time zone as we move west.

Whenever the hell we start moving west again. We're out of here on the 1st, but we'll be back a few more times before we head for home.

Sigh. I miss home.

Every day is a winding road...

2006-10-26T20:14:00.000-04:00

So, I made it safely to the USNS Supply, currently overseas in the Persian Gulf - my luggage, alas, did not. It's somewhat amusing, really, as I make it a point to travel light - a single backpack with my electronics and books, a single seabag with my clothing, hygiene gear, and anything else that might be required (in this case, a water bottle and travel coffee mug). The backpack is always carry on - so at least I made it to the ship with my laptop, iPod (okay, Dad's iPod - he was kind enough to lend it to me, no doubt fearing for my sanity. Thanks Dad!), PSP (without power cord - that was in the seabag), camera, and PDA.

So, even if they haven't located my bag by the end of the week when we pull back into port, I'm in good shape for NaNoWriMo.

Unfortunately, this means I'm living out of a pair of coveralls for a week... one which, admittedly, is almost over, so it's a little late to complain about it - even here. I managed to get underclothes and personal hygiene supplies between the ship's store and the duty free store (before we left Fujiara), so I'm actually in fairly good shape, period.

But it is aggravating, to say the least.

They of course put me on watches after giving me a day to rest up and get over the worst of my jet lag; 12-4, which is my preferred watch, and I was surprised to find that I knew the watch officer, having sailed with him on the USNS Laramie. He's not the only person I know from there, either - the chief mate, two bosun mates, a steward utility and one of the D/Machs - probably others, too, as it's a large ship and I'm only just beginning to learn my way around and meet everyone. Amusingly enough, the man whose place on watch I took sailed with me on the USNS Apache.

Small world, eh?

The weather's warmer than I like, especially for October, and the ship's not due back until the middle of December - and when she does return, it'll probably be to her homeport in Earle, New Jersey. Which means freezing cold, most likely - if it's not one extreme, it's another. >_<

Former crewmember from the Apache drew my attention to this, an article in the Navy Times about one of the days we had in Liberia - there was another article for that week (busy week) that I've linked to in my Flickr account. Yanno, I was pretty negative and pessimistic when I joined the Apache in Crete - now, I kinda miss it, and wish I could have served out my full time on there. But life gets in the way...

Guess that's about it for now.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

2006-10-21T16:34:00.000-04:00

Got my ship, and I'm heading out. No idea if I'll have access to this blog from ship's computers - they've been cracking down on stuff like that. Guess I'll see when I get there.

After much fun with delayed flights yesterday, I'm still in Norfolk, but 30 minutes away from boarding... sitting in the airport, enjoying my overpriced wireless access. I'm such a net addict, it's amazing that I'm a sailor... sooner or later, I'm going to get a ship that has no internet whatsoever, and then we'll see just how secure my sanity really is.

First stop's Atlanta, second's Paris - where I apparently have to run-not-walk across half the city to make it to my plane before it leaves, a mere hour and a quarter layover that requires me traversing multiple terminals. I also have to check with the gate to get my boarding pass, so if I don't make it damn quick like they certainly won't be holding the plane for me. Feet don't fail me - I don't particularly want to spend the night in Paris (too little time to do anything, and I'm broke besides), and it means I'll miss the ship's overnight stay in Dubai... meaning I'll have to spend a week in a hotel there, too. Fun. Fun.

I like airports, I like traveling, but I hate flying. I'm never comfortable on planes - they're sized for little people, and me, I'm larger than the average bear. I can never sleep, and I read fast enough where I can finish a good-sized novel in a few hours - meaning I go through one or two on each leg of these stupid halfway across the world plane rides. At least flying home from Africa, they routed me through KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines... movies galore, an individual screen to watch them on, and I could pick the time. No silly kid's movie on the main cabin screen.

My dad surprised the hell out of me when he dropped me off at the airport - he gave me his iPod. Just for the trip, of course, and he's going to try to get mine fixed while I'm out and about - but I was seriously touched. I'm incredibly fortunate to have the family I do.

Ah, well. Once more unto the breach...