Tales · from · my · Head

It's got a few strange quirks: I apparently have a habit of slurping the last bit of a drink out of my moustache, which now has become a vain gasp after I finish taking a drink. I keep going to run my fingers through it, and am horrified by the soft pliancy that awaits, in the place of my noble scruff. So far nobody but Erin has seen it, as I have been very sneaky around the office.

I mostly just don't want to tell the people that I work with that I shaved my beard so that I could dress up as the Joker for Dark Knight tonight. Doesn't seem the most... lawyerly thing I could do.

I'll take some photos when I get home, during the make-up phase, and probably post them over at the Facebooks. I'll try to remember to put a link up here.

Anyway, As of last night, I'm back to work on my novel on a hopefully-regular basis, but to mix things up I'm writing it by hand now. No way to measure the word count, but I'm quite enjoying it. It's been a while since I've started anything at the pen-and-paper stage.

For those of you who are interested in these things, I'm writing in an acid-free ruled journal, hardcover, that my girlfriend's parents bought me. I think it's from Lee Valley. I'm using a Bic GripRoller Fine, which I actually bought for inking back when I was still drawing regularly. It has a great flow to it, so it just glides over the paper.

I just introduced a new character into Heart of the World Machine who was inspired by two bands I've been listening to lately: Tinariwen, who are a Tuareg folk/rock group, and Corb Lund, who's a local alt-country act. If you're wondering how those two things could ever collide into a single character, you need to read up about the Tuareg, and then cross-reference Corb Lund's latest album "Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!" and tell me what you come up with.

The bridge was a new project, paid for by the king in the faraway capital, to facilitate trade in his realm, since his citizens had a tendency to be clannish and isolated, journeying only when it was absolutely necessary, and no farther than the next town, whenever they could get away with it. The bridge would span the muddy river – too fast-moving for boats or easy fording, too shallow to dig out canals – and it would let traders, tinkers, and travelers move themselves and their goods from town to town, village to village. The king’s ministers had planned a whole network of bridges, canals, and roadworks, and they all hoped that their efforts would ensure them their place in history.

They hadn’t expected, of course, that the bridge wouldn’t be used.

***

A man and a woman, middle-aged, and clearly familiar with each other, stood at the edge of the bridge where it met the deeply-rutted dirt road. Already the dandelions and columbine, and other hearty wildflowers had begun to sprout around the bridge’s stones, such flowers having no interest either in bridges, or stones. The woman said to the man “Well, I don’t care who hears it, but you won’t get me across that damned thing.” The man just nodded his assent.

“Everyone knows,” the woman continued, “the first person across a new bridge might as well have walked right into church and spit on the altar. There’s no recovering from a sin like that one!” The man nodded again. His views on the permanence of sin difference somewhat from his female companion, but her meaning was true enough: the first one to cross a new bridge was damned, and that was the way it was. Three months since the mortar had set, and three months the bridge stood there, with nobody using it but local foxes, who had quickly discovered that they could get close enough to the village to snap up a hen or two, and then run right across the bridge without being followed.

“I don’t know why they built that bloody thing anyways,” she said. “Peddlers just take the long way ‘round anyhow, and always have. They don’t need some shortcut to get here any sooner. The bridge down by Nettleton serves just fine, and it’s not like we need more strangers.” The man, growing bored with the conversation, watched some rabbits chasing each other through the grass about a stone’s throw away, and wished he’d brought a sling.

“Well, if we were down south a ways, maybe it wouldn’t matter so much. People down there, they can always find a sinner or two in the village, someone who wouldn’t be losing much by inviting the Devil’s gaze like that. But us? Up here?” She looked both shocked and mightily offended. “We’re good honest folk in these parts! Not one of us enough of a black soul to be so bold and impious!”

The man broke his silence: “Why do you think it attracts the Devil anyway, to walk across a new bridge?” he asked. “I mean, is it because building bridges is unnatural? Goes against the laws of nature, maybe?” The woman gave him a foul look, like he was a moon-brain, and shook her head.
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After a fortnight, Albert was amazed to meet a countryman, a priest who had felt the calling to visit a nearby shrine, and though neither of them were Parisian, both spoke enough of that particular strain of French that they were able to communicate. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from Albert’s shoulders; he had taken to talking to himself, just to hear the familiar sounds of speech, rather than the guttural, speedy grunting of the people in the towns and villages he passed through. The priest told Albert of a woman he had seen wandering the woods, a golden-tressed beauty who wore a flowing white robe with a delicate acorn graven in gold on a chain about her neck. She had not replied when the priest had hailed her, but she had turned to see him, and the beautiful melancholy of her face was clear to him, before she turned away and walked deeper into the wood.

The priest said that he had asked the local villagers about her, and – young and old – they had hissed through their teeth and made the sign of the cross, and said nothing. He had asked the monks at the shrine, and they too had made the sign of the cross and told him to ask no more, if he truly loved his soul. Being curious by nature, though, the priest had done some investigation on his own. He had scoured the library of the monastery, but they only had five books, and four of them were records of the lives of saints, and the other was a badly water-damaged volume collecting Greek translations of Saracen medicine and science, and the monks debated constantly about whether reading it would lead to heresy or some other wickedness, and so denied the priest access. He had also sought out the collection of the local lord, who was renowned to be a great collector of written stories, but the lord had never heard of the woman in the forest, nor did he have any interest in the superstitions of his own people, his own reading being dedicated to the gods and stories of Classical times.
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***

When the glider was directly above the ornithopter, Cogwheel was forced to make up his mind quickly. He acted immediately, releasing the anchor rope from his harness, and running forward along the hull of the flying machine. Just before he reached the propellers, the glider was above him, and he leaped into the air, grabbing onto the straps which held the pilot in, gripping the strong fabric tightly with both hands. The glider pilot, surprised, fired the rocket and banked back hard, and the two of them shot rapidly into the sky.

Wire was all-but-blind. There was only glass facing forward in the ornithopter. The rest of the hull was necessarily solid metal, so Wire didn’t know that Cog had climbed on board the one glider, nor could he find the other. Not knowing that Cogwheel’s fate was now in his own hands, Wire was reluctant to pull any more dangerous manoeuvres, for fear of harming his smallish companion. Wire cursed Cog, first quietly, and then with more force. He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw the anchor line hanging limply, the end resting inside the mouth of the still-sleeping frog. The hatch had slammed shut, though loosely, and it rattled with the craft’s movement.

It was then, while Wire was looking back at the interior of the tail, that the other glider, the one he could not see – for it was directly behind the ornithopter, doing its best to match speed, activated its weapon: a smaller rocket, which launched from the top of the mechanical assembly of the glider.

The rocket roared to life and tore through the air at incredible velocity, and exploded upon impact with the ornithopter. It struck the tail of the craft just below the simple rudder, and the impact, though it didn’t manage to break the ornithopter’s reinforced hull, ruptured the steam engine. The ornithopter began bleeding: the gray-green biological matter that they used for fuel and the boiling water that rose to drive the beating wings and the twisting props sprayed around the interior of the rear compartment.

People caught beneath the wheels
Struggling to buy their meals
Engines engines click and fire
The hands that fuel them clench and tire

Clockwork steamwork diesel fuel
Each and every modern tool
Meant to give a life of ease
We feed them water, air, and trees

Airplane shuttle home PC
All these things don't set us free
But go back to the Age of Stone?
Leave central heat, leave my cellphone?

***

I went to write a poem about machines and it turned into this crappy screed. It's tough to focus on this, since I have two long-term stories on the go. Maybe I'll try to fire off some short fiction as practice, but I'm not sure when I'll find the time.

I knew it was going to be a good meal when the waitress said to Charlotte “Oh, are you a vegetarian? Then you can’t eat in our restaurant. You can’t eat Japanese food, in any restaurant in the world.” Things got better from there.

When the We Like Food group decided to go to Sumo Lounge (Eau Claire Mall, Calgary), the only people who were actually able to make it were people who’d never been before; Sumo virgins, if you will (and take a moment to savour that image, please).

Getting our table was actually pretty easy. Charlotte had booked a table for six earlier in the day, and even though Sumo was going to be suffering a 40-person booking that same night, and told us we would have to have two smaller tables, we still managed to get in and get seated together – it’s worth noting at this point that she also asked about vegetarian alternatives at the sushi bar, only to be directed to the table-and-menu section instead, making the waitress’s comments above that much stranger. Parking was apparently a pain in the ass, as downtown parking often is.

Christina and her friend Lisa arrived first, me next, Charlotte, Jess, and Ryan coming together afterwards. Before the rest of us started arriving, Christina and Lisa ordered Jasmine tea, only to be rebuffed (yes, by the same waitress). “It’s a Japanese restaurant,” she said, “not Chinese.” Because apparently the Jasmine flower doesn’t grow in Japan. They didn’t bother arguing the point, and just ordered tea and water.  When I arrived, the table was bare, except for menus.

Once we all settled in and started passing around menus, we encountered the sticking point about the lack of vegetarian options on the menu. Eventually, the waitress relented, and admitted that although sushi restaurants are not VEGAN-friendly, as the veggie stuff is cooked in the same grill as the fish, vegetarians who are not too picky will be able to get by with tempura and veggie rolls.

Finally, out of nowhere, the tea appeared, with three plastic teacups. Let’s do the math: two people ordered tea, six people are sitting; one would assume that either two or six would be the right number of cups. Maybe the waitress was just showing off her mad factoring skillz. I ordered water, as did a few others; some of us for the second time.

Service was fairly quick, and soon the table was laden down with varieties of fish, rice, veggies, and drinks. Which is when Christina asked if anyone else’s water smelled like cat pee. After passing the offending drink around and concurring that it had an offensive odour, it was determined that the smell was stale beer, the glass having not been thoroughly cleaned. At that time I took out the notebook, to ensure that the waitress got the impression that we were writing a restaurant review. My water was fine, for the record.

Anyway, the food: it’s decent. Sushi is kinda hard to screw up. I had sashimi, which was a mistake on my part. I wanted sushi, but not maki, and so I overcorrected. It was good, though, and was served on a bed of coils of radish, which are really yummy with soy sauce and wasabi. It came quickly enough, and nobody left the table hungry, for what I would guess was an average investment of $20-$25 per person, which is standard for sushi. To be honest, for the majority of what I ate, it was only moderately better than the little platters you can get at Safeway (which sounds like an insult, but the Safeway sushi is getting better as time goes on).

There were enough of us that we tried pretty near everything on the menu. Of course, we didn’t get access to the piece-menu (standard in sushi restaurants, where you can pick individual pieces, rather than getting a platter) until we’d already all ordered, and other than Charlotte, nobody was even offered one.

The seaweed wrap on the maki was really dry and chewy, and had clearly been sitting out for a while. I can’t get my head around why a busy restaurant (it was pretty much packed when we were there) wouldn’t make fresh rolls on a Friday night.

The conversation was good, especially when Christina busted out her various computer stories, which were sadly not food-related, and so will not be repeated here. We were clearly infected by the atmosphere of the place, since we kept coming back to fish: how a vegetarian eating fish was less like a straight person watching gay porn, and more like that person giving oral to a person of the same sex; how dating site Plenty of Fish gives limited options at best; some kind of sex act called “starfishing” (which is less gross than you’re thinking, but I’m not going to tell you what it really is, because I want you to be tormented by your sick mind).

We had a few more questions: why did a table reserved for six only come with three soy dishes? Perhaps it was related to three teacups; maybe our waitress had an OCD thing for threes. When we asked for more teacups and more soy dishes, we ended up with about ten or twelve of each.

When we tried to leave, it took ten minutes of standing in the entryway before anyone would actually take our money, although all standard payment options are available.

Overall, I probably won’t be going to Sumo Lounge again. There was nothing distinctly wrong with it, except for the insane waitress, but it didn’t have anything about it that was good enough to make me choose it over the numerous other sushi options out there.

I’d say:

Service 2/5 (prompt but barely-sentient)
Food 3/5 (pedestrian)

The 1000 words per day pace continues, although more and more I find myself writing in fits and starts, rather than hitting every day. I'm getting more likely to coast for two days, and then write 3000 words in a mad flurry... especially if it's Thursday and Friday I'm skipping.

Many of my distractions are falling away, as I've finished Half-Life 2, and also totally dominated Assassin's Creed (except for that ONE flag in Damascus somewhere.. grr...), and I watched the last episode of The Tudors recently.

So, I am no longer suffering from being unsure where the story is going. I have enough characters and enough steam and enough interesting ideas for scenes that I shouldn't have any trouble at all finishing the tale. What I am suffering with, however, is a constant concern with how interesting my scenes are. I have a tendency to over-describe, and I find myself wondering if my characters are doing too many uninteresting things. I'm also suffering from the fact that I know for damn certain that this story is going to be too long for one month's writing. Given the current state of the plot and my current word count, I would say I will need to at least triple what I've got to wrap everything up. My other current problem is that I now have a large enough body of story to have to worry about continuity: I often have to dig back through the pages and try to find certain facts because I can't remember if I've shared them or not.

Alright, well, there you have it.

Reason the onest: this winter story was incredibly dull, and even though I blocked out pretty much the whole arc, I'm not going back to it. It's lame.

Reason the twost: I have been participating in my own halfass NaNoWriMo (can it really keep the "na" bit if it's Interna?) and trying to produce 1000 words per day. So far I have managed, and I started with a story I'd begun ages before, so I am actually a bit ahead. Which means as of the end of the day yesterday, I am at 14,100 words or so. I've learned a lot from this, which I will detail below, so as to avoid embedding a list in this list.

Reason the threest: The Tudors. This show is like crack for history nerds (well, history nerds who aren't too picky about creative liberties). If history nerdage doesn't sell you, then perhaps NIGH-CONSTANT shirtlessness, both on the part of Johnathan Rhys Meyers and 90% of the female cast will! Seriously, watch this show on TV, or find an alternative viewing method, or wait for DVD, I guess... it's good.

Reason the fourst: As many of you know, in addition to a history nerd, I am a gaming nerd. I am currently participating in two weekly tabletop RPGs in various capacities, and trying to beat Half-Life 2 (Yes, I was the target audience for the Orange Box; I'm the guy who bought a two-year-old game because he'd never played it. And also for the cake).

Reason the fivest: I used to update my LJ at work a lot, but since becoming a lawyer in more-or-less private practice, I just leave the office if I have nothing to do. No salary means no demands on my time!

Alright, that list is done. New list time.

Things I have learned trying to produce a consistent number of words per day:

Unus: When I can't think of what to write, I add a new character;

Duo: When I feel like I have too many characters, I have a character remember something from their past marginally related to what's going on;

Tres: 1000 words is a nice length for a fast-paced scene;

Quattor: Writing without an overall plan for a story adds a lot of flexibility, but also results in a lot of evenings sitting in front of the computer, saying "OK, and then what?";

Quinque: Writing in a historical setting makes certain things easier (adding references to dates and historical events or personages) but makes certain things harder (the constant dread that you might write an anachronism -- even in a speculative fiction story; the struggle to get the details right; the desire to reference every interesting historical occurrence in your chosen period);

Sex: *Snort*. The Latin word for six is sex... and apparently I'm in grade six;

Septem: Say what you will about utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham was a forward-thinking cat.

So, there you have it. Now you know what I know, and why I am not doing what I used to be doing.

Warren wondered how he managed to get so far from the road. When his car had broken down, and he couldn't get cell phone reception, he had remembered that there had been a service station only a few kilometres back the way he had come. He put on his parka and heavy mitts, and set out on foot along the highway, but he hadn't factored in how complete the blizzard was. If he stretched out his arms in front of him, he couldn't see his fingertips. There were no streetlights out this far, and the snow had swallowed the moon. Warren believed that had it been day, the storm would've even swallowed the sun. By the time he was one hundred steps from his car, the highway had vanished under the white.

He turned back, deciding that seeking shelter in his car would at least keep him from hypothermia while he waited for the snow to pass -- plow trucks would be by in the morning, certainly, and he would be saved -- but he couldn't find his footprints; already they had been hidden by the relentless storm. Without a trail, he wandered blindly, and the first solid object he encountered with his groping hands was a tree.

The tree was an ancient conifer that had surely weathered storms like this before, and it filled Warren's vision. Already the snow was piled up around its base, but Warren knew that if he could dig down, and get under the lowest branches, he would be protected from the worst of the storm. Though he was already cold and fatigued, he managed a brief smile that he had remembered that much of his outdoor survival class, at least.

The digging was hard, as Warren's mitts where fur-lined buckskin, and they afforded little purchase against the slippery snow. As he worked, he could feel the cold creeping into his clothes. Under his hood, snow blew against his eyes, and he had to blink to keep the surface moisture from freezing. The wind crept in under the hem of his coat and his sweater, and he could feel the fingers of cold brush against his skin. His boots were cold-weather-rated, but they were not designed for trekking through knee-deep snow; they were filling up, and the snow was melting. Already Warren's toes felt like they were on fire. Warren had suffered frostbite before, and he knew that soon enough, the burning would move up his foot as the numbness set into his toes.

Finally, fighting against the falling snow, Warren managed to dig a hole large enough to squeeze his parka-padded form into the space under the tree. It was small and tight, the white powder having drifted under the branches. Warren had never been claustrophobic, but when he lay as flat as he could, his back on the snow, his body as close to the tree's trunk as he could manage, the needles brushed his face, and he could feel the snow already piling up and burying his left arm, the one outside. He rolled onto his side, his back to the howling winds, facing the bole of the tree, and huddled himself into a foetal position.

"Oh god," he thought, his mind remarkably calm. "I'm going to be snowed in and buried alive. Hypothermia's not going to get a chance to get me; I'm going to suffocate. I'm going to drown in open air, and nobody will ever find me and I'm going to be picked clean by coyotes and beetles and who the fuck knows what else." The coldness slowed down his thoughts, kept his mind from racing. Everything seemed crisp and clear, painfully so, and every thought was precise and calm.

The police had come and gone, sealing the area off from the public, and had placed their little numbered placards and taken their pictures. No fingerprints had been found, and a variety of trace evidence -- fibres, blood, and the like -- had been sent to the police lab for processing. The building had no security cameras or alarm system, so there wasn't much to go on. Even as I acted, there was a detective going around the neighbourhood looking for eyewitnesses.

My bare feet crunched across the glass, but were unharmed. I tried to recreate the scene in my mind, but there were simply too many variables. Even the best imagination in the world can only layer so many factors. Still, I had advantages that the police did not: I knew that the point of entry was not the window, shattered inwards though it may be, and I knew that Mr. Smith was still alive, and hadn't yet been taken by the invaders of his office.

The air crackled with power. The police had noticed it, their hair standing on end, and their pupils becoming momentarily dilated, but they had not known what it meant, nor had they discussed it. I did not have their trouble.
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The work began innocently enough, I suppose. The Professor, still working at the University, doing studies on behavioural triggers. Electric stimulation, images, colours, sounds, smells. Whatever. A few of us signed up for the tests, and got fifty bucks and a bottle of apple juice for our trouble. I never had any interesting reactions, other than the fact that I discovered that the note of E makes me hungry.

Then the Professor got tossed. It all came out, big scandal, barely-avoided criminal charges, the works. Turns out he'd been programming rats, and then students -- without any authorization, of course -- to respond to certain stimuli in exaggerated ways. Nothing "Manchurian Candidate-y", but some really strange stuff; things like the smell of coffee increasing body temperature, or a certain tune causing pupil dilation. Shit that couldn't possibly be pulled off without a more intrusive form of manipulation than I'd been subject to, and well beyond what the research committee had approved. His lab was shut down, and his tenure-track position revoked. He was out.

Nobody knows where he got his funding from. Lots of speculation on that front: "enemy nations", the government, secret branches of the military or intelligence world. Who knows, and who cares, I say. What matters is what happened next.

As I said, they built the lab under a cookie factory. I can't imagine that was part of the Professor's plan, but I assume that whoever his backer was, they already had the space there. They set him up with everything he needed, and started kidnapping people off the street for him to work on.

They kept the operation totally secret, and in one big lump, they re-introduced the heavily-manipulated subjects back into society. They would just go about their days, doing whatever it was they normally did, until they were hit with the trigger. OK, so it got a bit Manchurian Candidatey. But the Professor had failed to plan on one crucial twist.

You guessed it: the cookies.

Apparently, whatever the plan was, it resulted in the victims becoming drooling zombies, attacking everything in sight. But when the triggers were implanted and set, nobody noticed the delicious drifting smell of freshly-baked cookies wafting down through the lab's ventilation system.

Imagine it: the pre-zombies, all messed in the head, are released on the streets with headaches and no sense of what's happened, maybe a few days of lost time. They all instinctively do the first thing that normal people do when they feel shitty and aren't at home: they go for coffee. Enough coffee shops carry cookies these days that what happened next was inevitable.

I wouldn't want to exaggerate and call it a bloodbath, but more than a few barristas needed to go get stitches by the time things had calmed down. Luckily none of the subjects had anything communicable. I can only imagine how shitty it would be to go to your minimum-wage job, get bitten by some cookie-mad customer, and then get Hepatitis.

Anyway, I guess that's the story as I remember it. Funny what some people will do. Sadly, the Professor himself disappeared during the raid on the lab, so nobody was able to question him. I guess we'll never know the rest of the story.

Although there are strange lights at night coming from the windows of the muffin factory down the road...