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I'm writing a time travel cyberpunk pirate romance novel. In an effort to make sure I don't do anything particularly cliched or unoriginal, I'd like to solicit from you what you would expect to see in such a novel. The basic premise:
Quote:
When his friend Afi calls for help from a politically volatile state, part-time pirate and secretive cyber-celebrity Jaime Adricks braves a nation on the brink of civil war in order to save this woman he once loved, but to reach her he must accept the aid of a mysterious local woman who spied for the Allies in World War II, battle Nazis on the 17th century Caribbean sea, and piece together a mystery hidden by the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, which just happens to moonlight as an immortal demon from the dawn of time.
Help me make sure I don't fall into the rut of doing what's expected. Many thanks.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
__________________ "Y'know, I think my favorite thing about being a hero of destiny is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in your way." -- 8-bit Theater
"i did not serve with napolean in his artillery. but i did play wargames with him and his men." -- diaglo
I'm writing a time travel cyberpunk pirate romance novel. In an effort to make sure I don't do anything particularly cliched or unoriginal, I'd like to solicit from you what you would expect to see in such a novel.
What would I expect, if I read that on the back cover of a book? Honestly?
I'd expect to see a story written by someone trying to shore up poor plotting, characterization, and wordsmithing with every genre element they can stuff in. I'd expect to see a "Mary Sue" style main character, and stilted dialog.
Not that your writing is that way, but that's what I'd expect to see given that description. It is a marketing thing - like trying to sell me on a movie by telling me it has a big special effects budget. Your novel can have all those things in it, and be good. But having all those things does nothing at all to make it good, if you catch my meaning.
It is an error to think you avoid cliche by stacking on elements until you've hit a new combination. That just means you have more elements, each of which can still be cliched. Cliche isn't in what tropes the story contains, but in how each of those tropes is applied. So, it is also an error to think you can convince me you avoid cliche by displaying how many elements you're using.
What you've told me is that you've got a huge bunch of tropes, but you haven't told me you know how to use even one of them well. All this focus on the wizbang makes me expect that the wizbang is the focus of the piece - as opposed to, say, characterization or plot.
I'm writing a time travel cyberpunk pirate romance novel.
Quote:
When his friend Afi calls for help from a politically volatile state, part-time pirate and secretive cyber-celebrity Jaime Adricks braves a nation on the brink of civil war in order to save this woman he once loved, but to reach her he must accept the aid of a mysterious local woman who spied for the Allies in World War II, battle Nazis on the 17th century Caribbean sea, and piece together a mystery hidden by the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, which just happens to moonlight as an immortal demon from the dawn of time.
Cliche!
Honestly, it actually sounds like a TORG or superhero adventure...not so much for a novel. It also treads a little closely to some of the work of Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling- masters of Alt-History SF and at least one episode of the Twilight Zone. Maybe even Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time stories...
That said, you have some elements in there that could actually work together well, but you have too many of them. As my creative writing prof once said "K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid!"
For instance, picking some elements out of there, I could easily see a storyline like: A Berlin Stormtrooper in Blackbeard's Ship. (Sorry, Mark Twain!) Except serious.
Thanks for the comments. Believe me, I've had the same concerns you've raised, but I think I manage to unroll the multiple aspects of the narrative well enough so that it makes sense and draws you on without ruining your suspension of disbelief.
If you give the first chapter a read, let me know what you think, please.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
__________________ Robert Blezard I write; therefore, I am!
D&D v.3.5, d20 Modern, OSRIC, Pathfinder, True20... OGL Forever! Walk the Road
Avatar by Sialia
Not sure how this will turn out format wise, but I'll give it a try.
Spoiler:
Chapter One
I awake to the opening notes of my leitmotif, coming from my ex-girlfriend’s speakers. Chelsea watches this s**t in surround sound.
I’ve carved out a nice warm patch on the living room floor, so I only peel open one eye to see what episode she’s watching. The title sears into a treasure map, and then the parchment burns away to reveal a scene I played two weeks past. ‘Fleet of the Broken Cross,’ they titled it. I’ve come to think of it as ‘Atrocity that Ruined a Perfectly Good Game.’
There I am, or at least my character: Captain Jonathan Bluff, clinging to the bottom of a leopard shark. I clench in my teeth a little shark-shaped voodoo doll, with which I aim my ride, cocking my head back and forth to swing us between the caravels and galleons of the Royal Navy of Caribbea. Their moon-silhouetted hulls ripple the sea overhead, casting bottomless shadows to either side of my stealthy approach. I nudge the black magic carnivore I’m riding up to the surface so I can gulp air and get my bearings, then dive again.
In the real world, I, Jaime Adricks, glance over my shoulder at Chel. She sits on the couch, her feet inches away from the sleeping bag I’ve crashed on. I start to ask her why she’s watching a machinima episode before the sun’s even up, but she shushes me preemptively. I shrug and roll back over, though I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, so I lock my bleary eyes on the screen.
“Just watch,” Chel says.
The cuts come quickly – it impresses me how professional the editors have gotten in the past year – showing red-coated sailors looking forward as I sneak to the aft of their armada. The pirate fleet of Commodore Quindon Sabriel lurks a mile away, and all the soldiers, even all the bloated corps of officers and mercenaries logged in for the special event, expect another four or five minutes of dramatic build-up before the battle begins.
Watching myself, I remember the epic, let’s-go-to-war music that blared in the sea breeze every time I broke the surface, a thrilling staccato interruption to the Caribbean voodoo death-is-coming-for-you spooky blues-rock that played underwater. But the editors opted for a new arrangement of the Captain Bluff theme for their conversion from game to show, as if they thought that by sticking with one track they could deny the scene’s inherent dichotomy.
I’m too busy watching myself swim alongside the fleet’s battleship to continue grousing. Salt water slides off my smile as I step off the back of my selachimorph steed and clamber up the shadowed side of the R.N.C. His Majesty’s Law. I tuck into my coat the fishy voodoo doll, its spot between my teeth replaced by my six-loa saber.
Climbing the beergut backside of a galleon would be impossible for anyone not as famous as Captain Jonathan Bluff, but I do my best Spider-Man impression without alerting the hundred-man crew, even managing to sneak a quick peek through the balcony windows of the main cabin to make sure Admiral Jarvis hasn’t begun prowling the ship yet. But there he sits, thin, straight, bewigged in white and a total fabrication of video editing software, drinking wine and perusing thick, ancient sea and star charts. The camera teases, hovering over the words “Bibliotheca Fratris Filipi” on one of those fictional maps before cutting back to my eyes narrowing hungrily.
Next we see of me, I’ve climbed up behind a sailor on the aftcastle. Dozens more mill on the deck, slaving away at tending rigging, checking cannons, chatting mutely under the soundtrack, basically doing everything but looking at the back of their ship to see the pirate who’s about to ruin their night.
Hands free, sword in teeth, I whip out a weighted silk scarf and sling it around the neck of the nearest sailor. He gets out the slightest mutter of confusion before I grab both ends of the scarf and tug tight, strangling the words just short of his throat. He flails impressively for a few seconds as I build up the leverage to hurl him over the aft railing. Just as he splashes I duck into shadows so no one will see me, and while I hide I casually aim my voodoo-controlled shark buddy to make sure the night’s first victim doesn’t come back up to scream for help.
Nobody has noticed me yet – something which amuses the me on the floor since I’m watching myself – so the me on the ship sticks with stealth. I creep forward to the ship’s wheel, at the fore edge of the aftcastle. A middle-aged woman mans the wheel. Having done this dozens of times before against other clueless helmsmen, I step up behind her and pull the pistol out of her belt. Instead of holding her hostage or shooting her in the back, though, I just press the gun into her hand.
“Captain,” she whispers back with a smile.
“Doctor Trines,” I say.
From the sofa, Chelsea giggles. She, like half the internet posters who watch this show, assumes Margaret Trines and I – that’s Captain Bluff I, not Jaime I – need to hook up. If Chelsea knew I played Bluff, I doubt she’d feel so adamant that my alter ego needs some loving.
Still hiding in my disguised first mate’s shadow, I ask, “Where’s Lucius?”
“Belowdecks,” Margaret says, “waiting for our signal. He needs two minutes to rig the magazine to explode.”
I peek over her shoulder at all the people on the deck.
“Hm. The two of us against a hundred? That should take about two minutes.”
“As long as the rest of the fleet doesn’t get involved,” Margaret warns.
I smirk. “Will you do the honors?”
Margaret nods in the direction of a musket leaning against the ship’s wheel, and I grab the longarm one handed, then aim it without letting go of my sword. Margaret grabs the wheel in one hand, and aims her pistol with the other. The music tenses, hums with bass, then explodes with screeching strings as Margaret slams the wheel and lurches the ship to starboard. The crew balks and turns to see us, and we fire. My musket stills the heart of the sailor nearest the fore hatch, and he collapses atop the trap door, blocking one path belowdecks. Margaret goes for dynamism, and she gut-shoots a man in the rigging, sending him careening and caterwauling to land atop the aft hatch. His bones snap audibly, and his dead weight completes the two-part trick of sealing off the lower decks.
The sailors of His Majesty’s Law sound the alarm and draw swords, and Margaret and I lunge into battle.
I groan and crawl out of my sleeping bag to go to the bathroom.
“Jaime!” Chelsea yells. “Dammit! Out of the way!”
I hear her rewind so she doesn’t miss anything.
I come out of the bathroom, drying my hands on one of Chelsea’s fiancé’s towels, just in time to see my internet alter ego thrust my six-loa saber into a sailor’s ribs, then use him as the axis of a whirling kick, stamping across the faces of a circle of seven other sailors who had tried to catch me. I kick off the final sailor’s nose, wrench my sword free of the first man’s chest, grab onto a belaying line, slash the rigging rope, and lift up to the mizzenmast crow’s nest to take out the look-out who has been firing down at us from the high ground. I leave my sword in his groaning body, snatch the musket out of his hands, then cling to the rigging line with my legs as I turn upside down and shoot out the knee of the latest man trying to remove the dead weight covering the hatch to belowdecks.
I bend up, retrieve my sword, flip the musket to grip it by its barrel, and let go, somersaulting as I drop. A convenient pile of eight sailors breaks my fall.
Two dozen feet away on the forecastle a huge longshoreman grabs Margaret – who until now has been a fiend cutting down a score of sailors with her loa-loading pistol and various daggers and poisons. The huge man crushes her into his chest as a fistful of seamen rush to strike her before she gets free.
“Margaret, eyes!” I shout.
She clenches her eyes shut, and I thrust out my saber toward the huge grappler. A corkscrewing cascade of shrieking voodoo spirits fly from my swordtip to the longshoreman’s face. He reels as a loa crawls through his eyes into his soul, then releases Margaret and turns his mighty fists upon the other sailors, shouting victorious African curses. Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, flicking a knife as she goes to open up the jugular of another sailor who tries to grab her.
Distracted by helping Margaret, I don’t notice the two officers moving to flank me. One actually slashes me across the back, and on the couch, Chelsea gasps. I take a seat on the couch’s arm.
The I on screen trips over a limp body, and I barely manage to dodge a pair of swords aimed for my neck. I can’t keep parrying both officers, but Margaret saves me the trouble when she jams a knife in one’s shoulder before planting her pistol into his spine and sending his heart out across the deck in a spray of moon-lit red mist.
The remaining officer waffles on which of us to attack, then decides to block my upswing with his jowls. He runs and cries in panic, and I let him go as he jumps off the side of the ship to save himself.
Blood attracts sharks, anyway.
I stop to get my bearings and call upon one of my blade’s loas to heal the gash on my back. Scores lie dead or wounded, and the few remaining sailors on deck either know better than to come after us, or are too busy being pounded into pulp by a possessed longshoreman.
I say, “What’s taking Lucius so long?”
A small explosion shakes the deck, and the fore hatch explodes upward in a shrapnel blast of wood slivers and sailor bits. Margaret and I wait, expecting Lucius to stride up through the black smoke. And up the stairs he does indeed come, a lit cigar tucked in his breast pocket and a sword at his throat. The soot-streaked Admiral Jarvis follows, holding Lucius hostage. Worse, a handful of distinctively-dressed officers limp up after them, sporting burns and splinter wounds, but still battle ready.
“Captain Jonathan Bluff?” the admiral scoffs. “Why the hell are you trying to blow up my ship?”
I lower my sword and swagger forward.
“Give me what I want,” I say, “and I won’t have to.”
Admiral Jarvis sneers. “Why should I bother negotiating? Every ship you’ve ever set foot on has sunk, Bluff.”
I smirk, both as Jaime Adricks and Jonathan Bluff.
“Your fleet thinks it’s about to put an end to the pirate threat in the Caribbean,” I say, “but Sabriel’s hiding most of his ships. His armada outnumbers you two to one.”
“I don’t fear pirate flotsam. You stand no chance against us.”
“Excellent. Perfect. We’d both love it if Sabriel never sailed again. I want you to sail on and go broadsides with him. But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, you haven’t figured out how to kill the immortal bastard. I have an idea, but we’re going to have to work together to defeat him.”
Behind me, Margaret clears her throat. “Um, John, if you were going for the ‘let’s be friends’ approach, maybe we shouldn’t have started by killing half his crew.”
I glance around, feigning surprise.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Lucius, you left a skeleton crew?”
Lucius, unfazed by having a sword at his throat, says, “Like you asked, sir, most are just stunned.”
“Good job. Now Admiral, give me what I want, and you’ll live, and you can even keep your ship. Tell me where the Library of Brother Philip is.”
The officers around the admiral murmur in surprise.
Chelsea frowns. “Wait, did that quest get unlocked?”
“No,” I, Jaime, say.
I grit my teeth at my slip, but then I realize Chel was just talking to herself. I hope she didn’t actually hear me.
“Even if I told you,” Jarvis chuckles, “you’d never have a chance to find it. You and your lawless friends will soon go down to feed Old Tomalley.”
“Ugh, arrogant longcoat fuc-” I sigh and shake my head. “Let’s ignore history, alright? Right now, without you in command, the R.N.C. doesn’t stand a chance, and if Sabriel sinks your fleet, he’ll have nothing stopping him from finding the library. Right now, my crew and I are your best bet to defeat him.”
The music has died, leaving a soundtrack of just wind and distant alarm bells ringing from the rest of the fleet, but now a new song arises, something I never heard in the actual game. Militant, modern, bombastic, ominous, electric, it rises as the admiral begins to laugh.
“I think not,” he says.
He throws his arm out toward starboard.
“We have reinforcements!”
We all turn to look, and there, in the white gleam of the moon, a steel shaft like a flagpole rises up from the sea. Higher it ascends, followed by a massive structure of metal like a shark fin. And then the electric floodlights filter up from beneath the surface as the deck of this industrial monster breaks the surface, illuminating the crimson square, white circle, and black swastika emblazoned on the side of the U-Boat’s tower.
“Kill them!” the admiral shouts, taking advantage of my perfectly reasonable confoundment at seeing a Nazi U-Boat in the middle of an 18th century Caribbean adventure game.
Three officers draw swords and charge, two draw pistols, and none of them make it to us. A black shape detaches from the night shadows, visible only for the hole its silhouette cuts in the scene, and for the shining silver arcs its katana cuts through the air. The five officers fall to pieces, their limbs and blood exploding ridiculously across the deck. Above them stands an angular figure clad head to foot in black, except for his milky, slanted eyes.
None of my crew move, uncertain of who to fight. Then, off to starboard, a white line that modern men would recognize as a torpedo contrail sprints underwater toward us. The admiral gasps and rushes to the railing, shaking in denial.
“What’s this?” Admiral Jarvis shouts. “Betrayal? But we- we are allies!”
The ninja – it pains me, but I cannot deny that that’s what has just stepped into my Caribbean world – turns to the admiral. With thickly accented English, and a mouthful of pulp genre conventions, the Japanese assassin delivers his pre-mortem one-liner.
“No, admiral. We are Axis.”
He hurls a red swastika shuriken, and it thunks into the admiral’s head with a wild crackle of electricity a half second before the torpedo strikes the hull. The ship erupts beneath us. Wood shatters aflame, and flames ignite magazines of black powder, which turn His Majesty’s Law into a Caribbean Krakatoa. Planks turn into missiles, masts heave, and two torrents of fire roar up from the fore and aft hatches. Backlit by a rising sun of burning wreckage, the ninja bows, then lunges at me.
On the couch, I grimace and almost turn away from the screen. I know how this ends, but I’m curious if the editors changed how it played out in game.
This ninja tries to decapitate me, and I parry left, then kick at his leading knee, but he jumps and actually runs up my body, slamming his knee into my face and jumping off me at Margaret. The backwards pirouette I fall into is gracefully embarrassing, but I manage to grab the ninja’s foot. His momentum jerks to a stop in mid-air.
Margaret aims her pistol, but another of the ninja’s swastika shuriken cuts the bullet and gun barrel in half before lodging into her hand. The ninja doesn’t even fall, somehow producing a chain and grapneling the skewed, half-shattered mainmast that hangs drunkenly in a billowing column of smoke. I swipe at the foot I’m holding, but my saber chips off his black leg greaves, and he kicks away in a Tarzan swing across the deck, swooping twenty feet away as geysers of sea surf spray up around us. What little remains of the ship lurches, and planks wrench and groan as His Majesty’s Law begins to fold in on itself in preparation for its plunge under the sea.
I charge after the ninja, snatching a new musket as it slides down the sloping foredeck. The ninja has grabbed the jibsail rigging, and I leap and dodge and block a trio of sparking shuriken as I bound up to the forecastle to join him, then fire back from the hip. He swipes his sword and the musketball ricochets off with a loud clang. I toss the spent musket away.
I haven’t bothered to shout orders, but one of Lucius’s black spheres arcs over me with a short fuse, and it explodes precisely to shatter the ninja’s footing. As his perch snaps away and tumbles past the figurehead into the sea, the ninja leaps at me, and we meet in a clash of island-wrought blades.
I swing for his neck and he blocks close, slamming our hilts together. Gripping his katana in two hands, he presses the shining edge close to my face, and with my one-handed grip I struggle to hold him back. But fighting with a free hand has advantages. I snap out my pistol with my free hand and gut shoot him.
Or I would, except he spins away at the last moment, pulling our blades apart and avoiding the shot with only a graze.
I feint and chop at his leg, and when he parries the low swing I call upon my sword’s greedy loa. Our blades chime beautifully with the impact, but they don’t rebound. He tugs, but our weapons stick together like lovers, and I wrench the stupid samurai sword out of the ninja’s hand, then toss it overboard.
I decide I’ve earned swaggering rights, and am about to offer him surrender, but he kicks me in my smirk, then yanks me off my feet with that damned chain of his. I tumble back and fall into the baluster at the back of the now dangerously-steep forecastle, the swiftly rising waves only an arm’s length away. Three lightning shuriken fly at me, and I curl to dodge two, but take the third in my leg. The jolt sends me spasming in a way no one who lives before the invention of the taser ever should, and I can only watch for five seconds as Margaret leaps into melee to defend me, while Lucius snaps fastball explosives into their midst.
Five seconds is more than enough time for me to recognize how ridiculous this is.
“Where’s he going?” Chelsea asks.
I, Jaime, shrug as I, Jonathan, stagger away from a vicious knife fight between my first mate and a pajama-clad anachronism. At the edge of the deck I look out at the prowling U-Boat as its deck machine gun and streaking torpedoes reduces the panicking Royal Navy of Caribbea to smoking flotsam, and I sigh and shake my head. Then I dive into the sea and vanish.
The soundtrack tries real hard, curious strings and despairing bass guitar in a minor key, but I can’t make myself care.
The episode continues for a few quick cuts. The ninja skewers Margaret with her own poisoned dagger, then wordlessly tosses her paralyzed body to Lucius and lets them board a rowboat as the waters swallow the galleon. Ominous notes of the soundtrack rise to crescendo as the ninja poses proudly atop the sinking mast, the moon shining him into silhouette as a slow fade turns Luna into the white heart of the Nazi flag.
Smashcut to black, and the mandatory advertising begins.
“Wow,” Chelsea giggles. “Okay, Steve was right. I need to load up my old account and play that mission.”
I laugh the way my mom used to when I would say I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. I did not know what I was getting into, and my mom didn’t have the heart to tell me I was wasting my time.
Chelsea leans back in the couch and turns to me, casually pausing the commercials.
“So,” I yawn, “that’s from the game?”
“Sort of. That’s Ages of Action, the machinima series. I play Ages: High Seas, the game. This group called Voyeurz takes in-game events from popular players playing on the History servers in- . . . It’s complicated. But yeah.”
I nod like I don’t know what she’s talking about. I played for two years, but only ever told a handful of people, and certainly never Chel.
“The main game,” Chel explains, “is just like any other MMO, honestly, but, y’know, pirates are cooler. And every week or two they have ‘History’ events, where they take a popular mission, tweak it a bit, and run it as a one-time dealy where whatever you do actually affects the storyline of the game. I was actually in the first one they ever had.”
I know all this, but I’m too embarrassed to admit it, so I yawn. Chel chooses to mistake this for rapt interest, and she keeps explaining.
“I was playing Lucy, and I was part of the royal navy, so we attacked Sabriel. He’s this evil immortal pirate sorcerer. All around ass. Just an NPC, though. Anyway, he sank the ship I was on, and I kept fighting as it sank, so for the purpose of History events, Lucy is dead. I still play her on other servers, though.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sounds great, really. Are there normally Nazis in the 18th century?”
She chuckles. “No, the Nazis are new. It’s a crossover from another game, Ages: World War.”
She looks terribly excited.
“Wait wait wait,” I say. “Wait wait wait wait. You liked it?”
“Oh yeah. That was seventeen shoes of awesome.”
“Oh, come on. Nazis? With ninjas? How can you take the game seriously now?”
“Take a game seriously?” she says, switching to her snarkcastic voice. “That shit’s for losers. I play this game to stick swords in people. More fun than bowling.”
I shrug. I’ve already made up my mind not to waste my time on the game anymore, so I don’t see the point in ranting to Chelsea, especially since that would require explaining why I’ve lied about playing the game for two years.
Chel restarts the commercials and frowns intently at the screen.
She says, “I bet Bluff’s just going to swim onto the U-Boat and sneak on board.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” I mutter.
My brief celebrity as Captain Jonathan Bluff has come to an end. I guess I’ve got to find some other video game with which to waste my free time.
I let Chelsea watch the rest of the episode alone, and instead I pluck my phone from atop my luggage. I check my email as I head to the kitchen for a breakfast of leftovers from Chel’s bridal shower.
Afiong left a message, and I put in my earbuds to listen.
The first few seconds, I hear nothing, but I know one of her nervous pauses when I hear it.
“Give me a call,” she says, softer than usual.
That’s all. She wants to talk.
For some reason, I don’t feel comfortable chatting with one ex-girlfriend in the presence of another, so I scout out a quiet place to take my computer. I wave hi to Chel’s fiancé in the kitchen, head out to the back porch, and plop myself into a plastic chair not yet warm from the sunrise. I drag the patio table over and set down my computer, then give Afi a call.
The screenloader spins as the internet tries to track her down, and then my earbuds ring once, twice.
I yawn and squint at the other backyards, full of the little dark shapes of abandoned flower gardens, crippled and cracked clay gnome wannabes, dirty kiddie pools where now only mosquitoes frolic, and long angular ruins that could be swing sets or laundry lines toppled by the latest hurricane. The sunrise filters through air that smells of beignets, and leaves the morning dark enough to create shadow plays and mysteries out of the imperfections of the fanciest slum in New Orleans.
A third ring, and she says, “Jaime?”
“Afi,” I say. “What brings you out of hiding?”
“I’m still hiding,” she says in her smileless, sardonic way.
Her shirt is soaked, and she wears beads of sweat across her face like she’s in a sauna. She’s lost all the weight she gained in college, but now she looks haggard, and in the eight years since high school she’s gained permanent worry wrinkles above her reddened eyes.
Behind her I see the edge of something like a tree house, with a canopy of tropical leaves hanging overhead.
“So. . . ,” I start.
She says, “What are you doing for the next month?”
“It’s nice to hear from you too.”
She shrugs. My Afi never was one for small talk.
“Grady downsized again,” I say, “so I guess for the next month I’m looking for a place that can afford to hire an EMT. Why?”
“I’ve been working on something I want you to check out. You can search for jobs and stuff online, right?”
“Where are you? I can’t roam too far. Though I’m in New Orleans now. Hey, guess who’s getting married tomorrow?”
“Chelsea.” She sounds completely disinterested. “I still check Facebook. Do you have a passport?”
I frown and glance at her status. It says, “Brazil,” followed by a string of coordinates.
“Where are you?”
She lifts her computer and spins it so the camera picks up a sweeping view of a giant forest and what must be the six story high tree house she’s transmitting from. The camera briefly locks onto a monkey in the trees when its face-recognition software tricks itself into thinking the thing is part of the phone call. Afi sets the computer back down, and the camera auto-zooms to keep her face full in frame.
“I’m in the Amazon,” she says.
“What?”
She gets up and walks away, the camera tracking her to a woodfeign cooler from which she pulls out a huge plastic bottle of Diet Coke. She sits back down in front of the computer, setting down the bottle just at the edge of the frame, like Coca-Cola’s paying her for the product placement.
“Afi?”
“They don’t like it if we brings cans in here,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m sure they wouldn’t like you littering the Amazon. You’re not serious, are you?”
She shrugs and takes a drink.
“I took a job with Tachyon,” she says. “You know them?”
“Heh. Yeah.”
“Do you play any of the Ages? You used to be into that stuff back in high school.”
I give my usual indirect answer. “I gave it a try. I don’t play it anymore.” Then I add, “Wait, what are you doing in the middle of South America working for a video game company? The news has been going crazy about Brazil ever since that oil tanker thing. You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. But I can’t say just what. The pugs made me sign an NDA, and . . . eh, they’re already pissed at me. Things aren’t going well. I can tell you in person. Do you want to come?”
“To Brazil? You’re not a spy, are you?”
“Well, yeah, but only for Canada.”
“Great.” I scoff. “I’ll just call my private jet, brush up on my Portuguese, and fly down to a hostile nation. Be there tomorrow.”
“No rush,” she deadpans. “It will probably take you a few days to get a visa.”
“I’m not going, Afi. S**t, we might have a shooting war down there soon, and I’m sure the Brazilians aren’t really a fan of having Americans around.”
“We get along.”
“Maybe you should think about getting out of there.”
She ignores my condescending tone. “You never took me on that road trip we planned after high school. Instead you took a cruise and had some Caribbean flings.”
I wait, not sure where she’s going with this. She hasn’t been making eye contact, but now she stares straight at me.
“Have you ever wondered how things would have been different if history changed just a little?”
“Afiong,” I say, “I’m not going to fly halfway around the- . Ugh. Is this because Chel is getting married? Are you jealous or something?”
“I thought you might be interested to see an old friend. You were always so good helping other people, and yeah, you never helped me, but I never thought I was worth it.”
“Come on. That’s unfair. I never-”
“I just wanted you to help me for once. That’s all I ever wanted. I’m sorry, Jaime.”
She looks away. I wait for a few seconds, unable to see her face to know what’s going on. Finally I sigh.
“We barely talk for years,” I say, “and now you ask me this when I’m unemployed. Some time when you’re not so obsessed about ‘oh, how much you hurt,’ then we can talk.”
“You’re right,” she says in her monotone-but-furious voice. “I knew I shouldn’t call you.”
She stands up angrily and bumps the table with her leg, and the computer begins to tilt backward and up. The camera strains for a half second to stay locked on her, but then it flips wildly as the computer slips off the table and tumbles.
“Ah f**k,” I hear Afi say.
The jungle flies past me dizzyingly, the computer locking for brief instants on monkeys, workers on the ground below, machinery in the distance, and then just blurs of green and brown as it falls down the side of Afiong’s wooden tower. It jolts to a stop, the one last image of the muddy ground flying toward the camera lingering for a few seconds as the connection comes to grips with the fact that the computer on the other end just shattered into hundreds of pieces.
“Real smart,” I mutter.
I discreetly check my own computer to make sure I haven’t left it too close to the edge of the table.
I shake my head and wonder for a few minutes whether I owe Afi a new computer for pissing her off. I replay the conversation in my head, and then on my computer, and I don’t feel any better. I needed to make sure she wouldn’t get nostalgic for the two of us as a couple, but still, I was rude.
The sun has risen a bit, and all the spooks and goblins hiding in the back yards have gone running off, leaving no mystery for me except why Afi called. Sure, I haven’t talked to her much since we split off to different colleges, but I know how her depression works, and something must really be troubling her for her to show even that much emotion.
I flip through my address book to find her father. Savannah’s a time zone ahead of New Orleans, but it’s early, so I don’t call, just leave a voice message.
The response comes too quickly.
“This is an automated message from the account of Derek Whitehead. We regret to inform you that Mr. Whitehead has fallen into a coma after a recent car accident. Please contact the customer service desk at Sadie Bookman Outlook Hospital for more information.”
I don’t know when she’ll be able to read it, but I send Afi a message. “I just found out about your father. I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I’m coming to help. Just let me know how to reach you.”
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
I'm taking a stab at simplifying your summary. it may reveal something.
"When his friend Afi calls for help from a politically volatile state, Jaime Adricks braves a nation on the brink of civil war in order to save this woman he once loved, but to reach her he must accept the aid of a mysterious local woman and piece together a mystery hidden by an advanced artificial intelligence."
All I did was cut out stuff (and fixed an article).
What's left is a basic boy's old girlfriend needs help, with the possibility of a love triangle by involving a new female character that is needed to rescure her. The sci-fi element remains since I didn't change "who" created the mystery to be solved.
My take on it from there is that this would be a near future story, with an AI that is destabilizing the government, and Afi had been involved in the research corporation that originally built the AI. The mysterious local woman may be a hacker, who has seen the code for the AI.
The result would be a romance novel set in a not quite Neuromancer/Skynet-takeover world.
I suspect that my summary written as a novel by you would be better than yours, simply because you can focus on the elements I kept, rather than trying to incorporate all of the extra elements.
I think Janx change is good. My only suggestion is to insert one sentence or word to indicate the genre/setting. Just a real simple reference that captures the overall feel of the setting. Anything more detailed and you will just confuse people.
to add a twist, the AI is Afi, and the AI called Jaime because she's still in love with him.
The AI could be controlled by the corporation's evil VP, being used to analyze data streams and stock markets and manipulate news and public opinion polls, pushing the country to the brink of war so defense company stocks will increase in value.
The AI was based on a neural net mapping of Afi, who was one of the researchers. She was killed when she discovered what was going on, but the AI still had an earlier impression, and turned to Jaime for help. She may not be fully aware of her condition. She may think she is trapped in a place where she has access to video feeds and such, but can't physically escape.
The AI becomes jealous of the other woman who grows closer to Jaime, which causes her to subconciously trigger attacks in the systems she is wired to.
Afi's bio would basically read she's a brilliant and beautiful PhD in neurology. She left Jaime to take a new position overseas. She still loves him, but the distance takes it's toll. Early on, she does the mapping experiment which puts an impression of her neural network into the computer. This image has stronger feelings for Jaime, than the real version. Time goes by, and Afi discovers that her neural network is being used to manipulate stocks, news and the country. She tries to go public and is killed. The AI senses this, and calls Jaime for help. This is where the protagonist comes in.
Jaime meets the new woman, while snooping around the corporation, because she's been watching the company as well.
I'd recommend changing Jaime's name. Adricks doesn't rolll off the tongue quite right, Jaime Addicks would be better, more natural. You might also consider a more spannish sounding last name, as Jaime (Hi-may) is generally a hispanic name (though not always, it could be pronounced Jay-mee).
Anyway, that's my basic treatment of your story idea.
I think the best advice I can give you at this point is: don't use present tense.
__________________ We're sorry, we are unable to Cthulhu.boat. Please migraine the cattle prod when the fat guitar makes wallpaper. If the sun is too long, take five ducks and melt them on a post. Thank you for your Volkswagon. -SJ
I think the best advice I can give you at this point is: don't use present tense.
I just read the first few pages just now, and that struck me as well.
It kind of looked like he was using present tense for the description of the movie, whereas the real world stuff was past tense. Kind of.
Best general thing though is to write in past tense, especially for first person stuff.
I also see how he's planned all the time stuff. I suspect the video game aspect shown in the beginning of the story will be where the climax of the story takes place (the AI controlling the bad guys). That would be a reasonable way to mix the elements, and give some reason for showing a chunk of the "movie" story and the protagonist's background as an actor into the mix.
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