When Worlds Collide – Part 2
I wanted to sit here and write a simple follow-up post to the short story I wrote yesterday. When Worlds Collide was a lot of fun, and I feel it’s been my best work yet. Yet…
I have a confession. I don’t really like the current format of my blog. Yes, it’s nice to have a bird’s eye view to some of the crazy nonsense you have to do to get your brain to regurgitate a story, but it doesn’t feel like the right format for my site. I feel like asking you to come here only for you to be rewarded with a simple insight, a measly five hundred word post on how writing is hard (Protip: Writing is hard) isn’t exactly genuine or engaging. It feels like that’s just me wanting to fill the empty hours with an easy post and not have to do so much writing each night for the next day. That feels… wrong. And in this business, my feelings go a looooooooong way into dictating what I’m able to produce.
So, that having been said, I’m going to try out something that is at once a noble gesture and a horrible idea: No more fluff. No more posts exclaiming my need to be patient (Protip: You’ve gotta work for it. Work takes time.), or how I need to persevere. We know that. I’m going to be a writer. Not in the “sit in a coffee house with a laptop telling everyone who listens how I’m a writer” way. No. I’m going to be a writer, so it’s time to write like one.
To that end, each day will now involve a new chapter in the short story of the day before. I will tell each new story over the course of the week. Each post will be prefaced by at least five hundred words of me going in depth about the world, the story, the ideas behind it, and my thought process leading up to the story itself. The rest is imagination station. Fifteen hundred plus words of story. Five days a week. Strap in, this ride is gonna be a bumpy one.
With When Worlds Collide, I’ve taken my original concept of the universe I’m creating and refined the ideas with more detailed descriptions. I’ve chosen my protagonist, the highly successful, take charge T. Jefferson Green. I really, really like this guy. It felt good to write him, and I can’t tell if his character is directing his actions, or if the actions are shaping the character. I suppose I won’t for awhile yet, he’s still kind of young. When Worlds Collide is going to have to be at least seven parts long, so I have a ways to go with his journey still. I do have to take a moment and say this: I’ve always wanted my hero to have dreadlocks. I love the artistic appeal of the hairstyle a lot, and it just felt fun to imagine a highly successful CEO and CFO who wore the hairstyle with confidence and aplomb into a board meeting. Maybe that’s just me.
Onward!
When Worlds Collide – Part 2
Time slowed for T. Jefferson Green as sweat crept past his brow under the old racing helmet he wore. His mind frantically quested for an answer to the predicament he had somehow landed in. Sizzling lines of phosphorescent green flew past his ship. The deadly lances cast ghoulish light on the pictures in his mind of the disaster that had been Miqdash. So much destruction and death, and if I don’t think fast, it’s mine turn next. Think, Green, think! What needed to happen to survive? I need to be able to dock into the Loop. Okay, not so bad, but how was he going to accomplish that with the terminal destroyed? A bolt of blob flew so close to his cockpit that he instantly reacted with a jerk that sent his ship into a lightning fast turn, a turn which cost him precious seconds as he corrected course. He was losing this race, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if one of those bolts touched his precious skimmer.
The skimmer! He thought with mounting elation. The skimmer was his answer. Racing skimmers used the same frame and AI as the technical skiffs used for maintaining the dock terminals, only with all the part bays and spare terminals stripped out and an enormous engine and reactor placed where they had been. The skimmer must still have the module which allowed for exit through a dock for when terminals were broken in non-colonized sections of the Loop. How else could he have exited the Loop with the terminal already destroyed? If he could find the control systems in his shipboard mainframe, surely he could find a way for the system to allow him into the Loop instead of out of it.
Buoyed by the possibility of survival, he scraped every ounce of concentration he could muster as he focused on the dual task of finding the system and not dying, horribly. Tense minutes drained away, the longest and most difficult of T. Jefferson Green’s already complex and difficult life. As he was pulling out of a dive he had learned racing through asteroid belts, he found it. Buried under a layer of subroutines and automation programming, the control settings for the still intact mobile Dock. Come on, come on! The thorns had chewed through his lead again, and the loop was minutes away. He had to find this now or it was all over. He couldn’t afford to double back and try again.
THERE! He punched the appropriate control toggle to flip the functionality of the terminal from egress to entrance, and throttled his engines past their safety limits as he blazed towards his only hope. The four wings which encircled his beloved Siren folded into the locked dockyard position as he did everything he could to reduce drag. Every single second had become so precious. 7… 6 … his hands cramped with the strain of keeping the ship in the HUD’s displayed entry path. With a shudder, one of the bolts finally connected, directly into the fuselage of his poor baby. The force of impact sent him into a tight spin, but he somehow maintained his entry path. The orientation of final turn he would need to execute to actually enter the Loop was shifting constantly as the stars swam in front of him. With a jarring alert, his HUD informed him he was at the dock, but which way was up? Knowing he couldn’t afford to take the time to find out, he simply threw his ship into a dive hoping it was the right way.
With a roar and a crackle of sizzling circuitry, his ship burst into the Loop. Heart pounding, he marveled at having beaten such slim odds of picking the right direction. He finally managed to stop the spin he’d gained from the impact of the bizarre weapons being fired at him and set the ship on the appropriate course. As he leaned back to catch his breath, a harsh glare from his helmet display informed him that the HUD had switched from his cockpit to his helmet. What?! That only happened when there was… his cockpit had gone dark. Desperately he tried to find some way to toggle it back on, but to no avail. How could I lose power up here, that hit was to my rear, that’s not near the power lines at all! He scrambled to undo his crash webbing, and flung himself at the rear access of the cockpit. He flew through the ten meters from his cockpit to the reactor room, and almost ripped the bulkhead door off its hinges in his haste to open it.
A hulking, three meter tall glowing mass stood over the wreckage of his forward power lines. Covered in a greenish slime, knotted vines poked through the muck at odd intervals and it had left a garish trail of glowing ooze in it’s wake. It turned at his entrance, and Jeff Green froze in terror, something he had never done in his life. A collection of questing, writhing vines existed where a face should have been. A horrible mixture of bulbous eyes and fly-trap mouths seething in its not-a-face, it began advancing on him. Jeff noticed as it raised massive arms that instead of fingers, it bore eight long thorns in a circle at the end of its limbs. Panicked, he rushed out of the door he had been so hasty to enter. In the low illumination of the emergency lighting, the greenish glow of the monster made it appear like a demon come from the underworld to claim him.
The brute ducked through the door, its head brushing the ceiling of his brave little skimmer. Think, Green, Think! He gave ground as the nightmare advanced with a slow and squelching menace. As he backed towards the cockpit, he saw the only opening he was likely to get. If the thing moved as slowly as it walked, he could dive between the legs and make the reactor door. Kind of a sketchy plan, Green. Well, when you had only bad options, make the best of them. With a yell he was certain would be his last, he rushed towards the oozing monstrosity, and at the last second, threw himself into a roll directly between its legs. The roll was the only thing that saved his life, as an impossibly fast moving limb swiped the air where his head had been a moment before. It hammered into the wall of his ship with a sicking thud, thorns sinking through the metal. The creature would have to take a moment to extract it, and that was all the moment he needed to get back up and rush into the reactor room, pulling fast the bulkhead door behind him.
What now Green? He looked about him, gasping with exertion and fright. He was on a ship with no weapons, and there was a giant Cthulhu plant monster keeping him company. He heard the scraping as his foe freed his arm from the wall of his precious lady. He had to find something to fight back against that savage brute. He couldn’t have beat the thing in a physical fight, even if it hadn’t just punched a hole in his ship. He’d always been a thinker, using smarts and speed to outwit or outrun his problems. Nowhere to run now, it was up to his wits and the contents of his Siren to see him home this time. With his back planted against the door he had just closed, the spectacular blow of the creature as it walloped the door threw him bodily halfway across the room. His temporary flight ended at the reactor with a sickening crunch, and a flare of bright pain searing across his midsection informed him he had just broken two ribs. The room rang like a bell as the creature brought home a second tremendous blow. The metal surely couldn’t hold up to such a raw display of physical strength for long. Jeff slowly climbed up the reactor and regained his feet, hunched over to keep pressure off the supernova which had replaced the left side of his chest. He faced the door as his guest knocked a third time to be let in, spraying bolts haphazardly through the room. What now Green?
To be continued…
Justin
