Author Archives: natechen

Thunder Clap: Ups and Downs

Posted by natechen on

Helix

The worst part was, it was a really good plan.

Both Circuit and I made a few adjustments but for the most part Izzy planned our general strategy in a very solid and flexible way. I guess I should have been proud of her, since she was a junior agent from my branch, but I hadn’t really had any direct influence on her training or really worked with her directly outside of occasionally being on hand when Jack or Teresa were running her through something. So mostly I alternated between feeling awkward at how little I was contributing and frustrated because Circuit was right there and I couldn’t do anything about him.

So for the most part, it was business as usual.

The worst part was finding out that Circuit didn’t know exactly where the master switchboard that gave Davis and his cronies control of the tower was. “I thought you cooked up this plan, Circuit,” I griped. “How can you possibly not know where the nexus of your plan is?”

“Contingencies, Helix, contingencies are all. There’s at least a dozen reasons the placement of the switchboard might need to change.” Circuit jabbed a finger at me. “You finding me or discovering a draft of my plans. Problems with the contractors who did the construction. Further renovations to the building. Other circumstances. There’s eight different places across six floors it might have been installed.”

“What’s the most likely one?” Izzy asked, prompting the hint of a smile from Circuit for some reason. Then she held up a hand and said, “No, wait. I have a better idea.”

Circuit and I exchanged a glance. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Such as?”

She went out into the hall where we’d trussed up the three thugs the two of them had been brawling with when I got there, using all but one of the sets of cuffs I’d brought with me.

For anyone else four sets would be excessive but for Circuit, it pays to be prepared.

I followed not far behind with Circuit’s chair struggling to keep up over the rough terrain. Yeah, that was another thing taking a lot of getting used to. Circuit was supposed to be a specter who loomed over my career with the promise of constant danger. He wasn’t supposed to be fumbling around in a wheelchair, laughing at my people as we unraveled everything he’d ever worked for. Normally, I’d think it was some sort of sham but with the wheelchair there, constantly reminding me of what he couldn’t do, it was hard to doubt any of the rest.

It didn’t help that the situation wasn’t leaving a whole lot of time for thought. I found Izzy in the hallway, ripping open the front of the hoodie on one of the three thugs they’d taken down. Underneath the baggy shirt was a complicated and bulky harness. She hefted him in one hand so we could look at him and asked, “Sykes, can you levitate this guy like you did the ones down in the basement?”

“It’s not levitation, per se…” He trailed off and thought for a second. “Well, I suppose the name is short for magnetic levitation. So yes, provided he’s near a relay. Which we’re not right now.”

“As long as it didn’t get broken earlier,” she said, hefting her thug up in the air and starting towards the elevator shaft.

I gave Circuit a curious look. He started to shrug but stopped with one shoulder lifted in a comical way. A smile slowly spread over his face, like oil over water, and he started his chair towards the elevator shaft saying, “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

And that wasn’t worrying at all. It didn’t take Izzy long to get to the elevator shaft, she was hopping over debris like rubble strewn battlefields were where she’d grown up. Actually, considering where her dad’s church was located that might be a real possibility. For some reason the doors to the shaft were lying bent and twisted on the floor when we got there. I had no doubt how it had happened and I was more concerned about why we were there than why Izzy had wrecked the door earlier.

She shook the man she was holding gently, mixing in a smack or two, until his eyes opened and got halfway focused. Then she asked, “Where is your boss at?”

It’s amazing how belligerence focuses a person’s attention. The thug went from bleary eyed and lost to focused and angry almost instantly. He also pressed his lips together firmly and refused to say anything. After about three seconds of that Izzy got a grip on the door frame, hefted him up one handed and shot a glance back at Circuit, who gave a slight nod.

Then she threw him up the elevator shaft.

From the sound of the screaming he went up a good three or four stories before gravity took over and he came back down. This is known as juggling answers and it’s actually an accepted interrogation tactic for taxmen, the catch is you’re supposed to practice it a lot before you actually apply it in the field because if you miss the catch, or even just don’t make the catch quite right, you can wind up with a splatter mark and not an intelligence source. That’s why I’d been kind of leery when Izzy headed towards the elevator shaft. It was the only place in the building with enough room for Izzy to perform the juggling part of the trick but so far as I knew she’d never actually practiced it before. I was worried she was going to drop him.

In point of fact, she didn’t bother to catch him.

He went by so fast I almost missed it, even with the building’s power restored elevator shafts are dark places and by the time I realized what happened he was long since gone back the other way, his scream dopplering out behind him even as he found all knew levels of hysteria to vocalize. I stared at Izzy blankly for a second, she’d never struck me as the stone cold killer type, but almost as soon as the idea of saying something occurred to me there was a clicking noise from Circuit’s chair and the scream cut off. I glanced from him to the shaft and back. “You caught him with the maglev harness?”

“I did indeed.” He leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smirk. “Let’s see if he’s in a mood to be more forthcoming now, shall we?”

The guy was whimpering as he came into view over the edge, grabbing desperately for the floor before Izzy scooped him up by the back of the harness and shook him like a ragdoll. I felt a little sorry for him, a little, not that he was getting the crap scared out of him but I had been shaken like that once or twice in my life and my stomach twinged in sympathy. Izzy gave him an unforgiving look and said, “Want to point me towards your boss now?”

“You don’t understand,” he said between gasps.

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…”

“Agent Rodriguez,” Circuit said. “Please do keep in mind that if you handle him roughly and his harness breaks I can’t catch him in the maglev system.”

“Good point.” She adjusted her grip so that she had the man by the front of his harness and started to lean out into the elevator shaft again. “Let’s make it a little more unpredictable, shall we?”

“Wait, wait!” The thug kicked at the floor frantically in an effort to stay in place. The struggle got him nowhere but Izzy did wait like he asked.

“They’re on the seventy-eighth floor,” he said, calming down a bit when it became clear he wasn’t about go airborne again. “I don’t know what room they’re using but we checked in with a fat guy at the southeast meeting room.”

“I know the place,” Circuit said. “Sounds like Davis is there. Give him here, Rodriguez.”

Izzy handed the man to Circuit with a quizzical look but Circuit just shocked him back into unconsciousness. Between that, getting thrown around an elevator shaft and whatever beating he’d taken before I’d gotten there I suspected he was going to be in a lot of pain when he woke up again. “Right,” I said. “What floor are we on now? And how are we going to get that chair up to the seventy-eighth floor?”

“We’re six floors beneath where we need to be,” Circuit said. “And I was planning to just float my way there. The chair is maglev equipped and Izzy can jump the distance. How are you planning to get up there?”

“What’s wrong with the stairs?”

Circuit raised an eyebrow. “You mean, besides the fact that they’re very slow and the most heavily trapped part of the building? We can do better than that.”

I planted my hands on my hips. “Yeah? What you got in mind?”

“Hm…” Izzy was holding the unconscious thug up by his harness like she was studying an outfit at a shopping mall. She glanced at me, then back at him. “I don’t think he’s quite your size. Maybe one of the others.”

I looked from her to Circuit, who was nodding thoughtfully, and put up my hands. “Oh, no. I am not putting one of those on.”

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Beats to Scenes – Or From Outline to Story

Posted by natechen on

It’s been a while since we looked at the mechanics of writing a story, how you take the germ of an idea and get it into something usable. Now outlining isn’t the greatest part of everyone’s creative process but personally, I’m a big fan of the beat outline. A lot of people seem to think outlining steals a lot of the spontaneity from a story. Some people have wondered how you go from outline to story at all.

I want to look at both these issues at once by showing how I think you jump from your outline to the scene of a story. See, I like to think that my outline is spontaneous when I’m creating it and my scenes are spontaneous when I’m creating them. Sometimes you’ll need to adjust your outline when writing a scene – usually by adding to it – but most of the time unexpected events while writing a scene just give you more opportunities to add twists to your outline that will be fun and exciting.

Each beat should be a specific event in your story. So, when that event happens, do the following:

  • Look at the characters that were a part of that event. A man getting shot in his apartment at night sets a very different scene from a man getting shot on a crowded street.
  • Decided which characters you want to talk about in the aftermath of that event. If they weren’t all there for it, figure out how they’re going to know about it. If the man shot was an off-duty cop his partner is probably going to hear about it from their captain, while if he was on duty his partner is going to know much sooner.
  • Ask yourself how your characters will react to that event. Was it good for them or bad for them? When setting the beats of your outline you think of them as good or bad for the protagonist but what about the other characters? The partner of a cop who gets shot is going to react much differently than the mobster who ordered the hit.
  • Decide what everyone in the story will do in response the beat your outline calls for. Then chose which of those responses are important to your story as a whole. Not everyone in a given scene has to have a response that you show in a given scene, some responses might be better addressed in a later scene, and sometimes characters who don’t fit in a scene have a response that is important to the story and you have to find a way to bring it to the attention of those in the scene. If the death of a cop spurs a criminal to start robbing banks it makes more sense for fellow cops to hear about it over the crime radio than for the criminal to announce it in person.
  • Look at your next beat and decide if it fits in the scene you’re writing or if it needs to be the start of a new one. A cop yelling at his captain about how to react to his partner’s murder? Probably a natural extension of his finding out about his partner’s death. But that same cop instead going to tell his partner’s spouse? That is probably better as a new scene.

Once you hit the point where a new scene is called for, go back and try and streamline the elements you’ve laid out. Juggle discovery of, reaction to and response to an event to create a nice cadence to your scene. Don’t let any one element take over and try not to let it drag out too long. Bigger beats will call for more time spent on them but on the whole you probably don’t want more than a page or two before the next beat occurs or the story begins to drag.

If you wind up with more than that you probably needed to break the larger point into multiple smaller ones. Knowing exactly how much beat you need for a scene is more art than science but in time most authors get a good grip on it and, for all those times you don’t, even as an experienced author, there’s always the editing phase.

It’s the reaction and response part of stories I love writing the most. There is where (for me) the spontaneity of a story lies and, with a good handle on where your story is going thanks to your outline, you should be able to let your characters stretch themselves and surprise you without going too far afield in your narrative. Most of the time, at least. And for the rest, well, at least you’ll see it coming quickly and only have to do a little remodeling of your outline, not completely stall out when you realize you’ve go no idea where you’re going anymore.

So happy scenecrafting! Let me know if it works for you.

Sabrina

Posted by natechen on

This month we’re looking at romance stories. Given that it’s February and all. So let’s look at the movie Sabrina.

We’re talking about the 1995 version with Harrison Ford. If you were wondering. It’s funny but never mean-spirited, it tells a story about love but never makes it a story about destiny or raw sentiment and it’s not afraid of allowing it’s main characters to need each other to complete themselves.

Sabrina is basically a coming of age story for it’s three main characters. Sabrina herself is coming into her own – at the beginning of the story she leaves home to study overseas in Paris, leaving behind her father and David Larrabee, her childhood crush. She comes back mature, confident and has to come to realize she’s outgrown David. Linus Larrabee, David’s brother, is trying to close a business deal and David’s brief infatuation with Sabrina poses a threat to that deal, so Linus tries to break them up. In the process he comes to grip with the fact that he’s missing something and Sabrina offers it to him. And David himself is a bit of a wastrel who needs to get out of his brother’s shadow to come into his own.

As a romance this story excels in a number of ways but most significantly it does so by allowing all of the characters time together, not gushing with emotion or plotting against one another, but just interacting with one another in fairly normal activities and letting us see how they mesh with each other. Rather than give us planned speeches about who’s best for who and why we get to see why Sabrina forming a relationship with David would be unhealthy for them both but a relationship with Linus would benefit both.

At the same time, the story is not afraid to let a romance be a time of growth. Too many modern romances make it sound like any kind of change threatens to tear a relationship apart, while Sabrina shows us that the very act of finding a relationship should change the people in it in a myriad of ways and, in fact, if they aren’t changing constantly that is what threatens to break them up. Finding romance is what spurs on the growth of all three of these characters, it’s not about savoring some ephemeral moment together but rather about charging forward side by side.

The best part about this film, both as a romance story and as a work of film in general, is how quiet it is. There’s nothing loud, nothing in your face, rather it’s full of moments where we see people’s attitudes through little things. Sabrina is always tense around the Larrabee brothers at first. It takes her longer to open up to Linus but ultimately she becomes more comfortable with him than with David – and we see it entirely through her posture and expression. Linus goes from preoccupied and intense to gradually more relaxed and open. David gradually starts to look more thoughtful. It makes the whole story feel comfortable and lived in, like it’s the kind of thing that could go on forever, rather than like a shiny trinket, eye-catching but likely to tarnish or scuff at the slightest touch.

In all, this is one of the great romantic stories of recent memory, and a fitting place to start our examination of stories that have done romance right. If you haven’t seen Sabrina, go out and watch it now.

Thunder Clap: Putting the Foot Down

Posted by natechen on

Izzy

They caught up to us on the seventy-fifth floor.

Partly that was because, after almost ten minutes of grueling ascent, we’d finally left the elevator shaft and started searching for what Sykes called the master switchboard. “It’s not all talent,” he’d explained as we left the shaft behind us. “There’s a certain amount of smoke and mirrors that goes into making a deathtrap like this work.”

“Can’t say that I’m terribly surprised,” I said, carefully picking my way behind him as his chair, wishing the motors in it weren’t quite so loud. It was probably my imagination but the empty cubicle farm we were passing through seemed to echo with the noise and it was hard not to see thugs with assault weapons in the shadows of each of the cramped compartments as we passed by them. “I can’t image you packed all that hardware into that thing you’re sitting on.”

He snorted. “It would be twice the size and have none of it’s current functionality.”

“Yeah, I’ll take your word for it.” I jumped slightly at what looked like a face peering out from beside the utilitarian desk to my left but it turned out to be a large photograph of an attractive thirtyish man tacked to the wall of the cubicle.  “Want to tell me what we’re looking for? In case we get separated or something.”

“Oh?” His voice managed to sound condescending and skeptical even though he kept his eyes forward and scanning the room instead of turning to let me see his face. “How do you know I’m not going to send you after some random piece of equipment to get you out of my hair? Or make you smash something that will benefit me?”

I shrugged, then said, “How am I supposed to tell the difference anyway? From the sounds of it there’s only two experts on this kind of tech in the world. They’re both in this building and I can’t really expect the other one to help me so that leaves me with you. My options are you telling me what to smash and letting you disable it yourself. I just want to have both of the available.”

“More thinking ahead than I’d credit to someone your age.” He held his hands up about as far apart as his chest. I noticed his chair kept moving even though his hands weren’t on the controls anymore. “We’re looking for something about this big, looks a lot like a mixing board. Which is exactly what it was before we repurposed it.”

I wasn’t sure what a mixing board was but before I could ask him we came to the end of the large cubicle farm we’d been moving through and to a hallway that led to office space. Sykes kept rolling towards the opening but I held back, figuring this was another good place for a boobytrap of some kind. In a way I was right because almost as soon as I stopped three guys – well, technically two men and a woman – burst out of the first door on either side of the hallway.

Time slowed down for a second and I saw Circuit’s chair jerk backwards, pivoting to the left so fast it actually rose up on one wheel. The thugs were dressed in shapeless gray and black clothes and had some kind of bullpup assault weapons. Jack’s voice in the back of my mind chided me for not being able to identify them. He was mostly drowned out by dad’s voice reminding me that when I’m in serious trouble there’s nothing wrong with grabbing the heaviest thing at hand and throwing it.

Sheet metal desks aren’t that heavy all by themselves but once you fill them with paperwork and files and pens and stuff it all adds up and the cubicles had a lot of them.

The thugs fell back, one stopping to spray a few bullets out the door at us, and unfortunately the first desk I threw caught the edge of the hall doorway and crashed to the ground, blocking it. One of the guards braced his gun barrel on top of it then jerked upright and collapsed when Circuit arced an actual bolt of lightning from a photocopier ten feet away over to his chair and from there into the metal desk. One of the remaining guards kept up covering fire while the other collected the fallen man and started dragging him back into the offices.

Circuit was straining to see around the corner without tipping his chair over or exposing too much of his profile but he still managed to see what was going on. “Don’t let them get back into the offices! If we loose sight of them they’ll be able to maneuver and regain the initiative.”

I hefted another desk and got a grip on the narrow end of it. “Stand clear, Sykes. Or, whatever it is you do.”

“Funny.” He didn’t sound amused but he got out of the way.

Smashing two desks down the hallway left some serious marks on the floor and walls and I struggled to maintain my footing on the uneven carpeting as I pushed the office furniture down the hall like a prize winning linebacker. It was a lot noisier than I expected, with the desks banging together, bullets bouncing off or punching through the sides, a couple of meaty thuds as I caught up to and ran over the thugs and what sounded like an entire stained glass cathedral shattering at once. The source of the last noise eluded me but I didn’t have much time to think about it.

The last guard had been smart and, instead of trying to out run the desks down the straight away she’d actually jumped on top of them. The whole mess had been moving pretty fast and she wound up tumbling over onto the floor next to me but she kept hold of her weapon and most of her wits. I made a snatch for the rifle but she made no attempt to hold onto it beyond squeezing down the trigger and spraying bullets all over the place. That made just wrenching the thing away from her kind of dangerous so I just kept the barrel pointed away from us while I broke the weapon’s sling and body checked her away from it.

In the time it took me to do that she’d pulled a knife from somewhere on her person and managed to open a shallow gash on my arm. I flipped her rifle around, switched on the safety and threw it at her, spinning stock over barrel. It caught her in the shoulder, spinning her back a half step and practically dumping her into Circuit’s lap. He grabbed her just long enough to give her a nasty shock before tossing her aside. “Not bad, young lady. Not bad at all. What was that noise?”

I blinked and looked around, wondering if he’d gone a little crazy. “Which noise? There were a lot of them.”

“The glass -” He paused, looking up at something behind me.

I spun and followed his line of sight, expecting more guards to be coming. Instead, the ceiling was glowing cherry red. “Better back up, Agent Rodriguez.”

I shared the sentiment so I did as Circuit suggested. About five seconds later the ceiling just sort of melted and my boss fell through. He was surrounded by an aura of shimmering heat and it looked like he was holding a chunk of the sun in each hand. I backed up a little more, leaning against the sudden wind. Almost as soon as the hole in the ceiling opened up all the air in the hall decided it was time to head out through it.

As fast as it’d started the wind died down and the hallway seemed to get warmer. At the same time the glow around Helix died and he was just a normal guy of below average stature. “Izzy?” He dusted his hands off, and I noticed something like concrete pebbles scattering on the floor around him. “I heard gunshots. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I looked up at the ceiling then back at him. “How did you get up there?”

“Long story.”

“Better save it for later, Helix.” Circuit’s chair whirred up behind me, maneuvering to avoid the torn up carpet. “We need to find the master switchboard and shut it down before Davis gathers all his men into the building and flushes us out.”

Helix’s head snapped around and his expression cleared kind of like the sky right before a big storm rolls in. “Circuit.”

“Be mad later, Helix. For once in your life, believe that I am here to help.” He parked his chair and grabbed the armrests like he was bracing himself. Which he probably was. “I’ve always been here to help, we just never agreed on the method before.”

“And we do now?” Helix asked the question in a calm tone but I felt a chill in the air, one that faded as he stalked past me and came back twice as cold as soon as he was past.

“This has to stop.” Circuit said each word slowly and clearly. “We will stop it, you and I. And then Project Sumter will take me in, I promise you. I’ve never lied to you before, Helix. I’ve no reason to start now.”

“Not even to get out of a mess you’ve caused?” Helix growled.

“This was not how things were supposed to go, Helix! This was not-”

Helix grabbed Circuit and yanked him half way up out of his wheelchair. “Listen, your wife may claim this you didn’t okay this and maybe I even believe it, but when you boil it down this is your fault. Your plan, your paid psychos, your idiot ambitions. Just because someone picked up where you left off doesn’t mean you’re not culpable for giving him everything he needed to cause this mess. I don’t care how you want to play this, we’re going to do it my way. And that means you-”

“Better idea, how about we do it my way?” Both men stopped mid argument and looked at me. Helix looked even scarier than the stories always make him out to be – and that’s no mean trick – but Sykes quickly went from surprise to outright laughing.

“Helix, whatever you’re paying her it’s not nearly enough. Is she fast tracked to senior agent yet?”

“Not funny, Circuit.” He shoved Sykes back into his wheelchair and said, “Tell me something, Rodriguez. Why would I want to listen to a field agent with little to no experience that just got captured by hostile forces?”

“Because he,” I pointed accusingly at Sykes, “planned this whole thing. Whether or not he did it recently or wanted things to happen this way isn’t the point, what matters is that whenever Circuit planned something your were the first thing in his mind. This place is built to stop you from getting in.” I looked at Sykes. “Am I wrong?”

He straightened out the front of his suit and shook his head. “Accurate enough. Only the lightning funnels are really meant to prevent Helix from using his talents fully – or to punish him if he does – but I anticipated that would be enough.”

“Lightning funnels?” I asked.

“They can trigger lightning strikes when there’s atmospheric disturbances like a storm,” Helix said. “Except we’re inside, Circuit. Even the unnatural weather heat sinks make when they’re active won’t cause a storm in here.”

“The building draws enough current of the grid to do the job,” Circuit said.

“If these funnel things are the only Helix specific defense in the building, what else is there?” I asked.

“The stairwells and elevator shafts can be collapsed, if need be, and the surveillance systems can all be run from the master switchboard or,” he patted his chair, “with this, if we park it in the right place and if there’s not a stronger fuse box at the switchboard – which there isn’t. Whoever’s running the system for Davis is passable, and keeping him locked out of the system is taxing and prevents me from using any of the systems myself, but the other side is locked out as long as I’m here and conscious.”

I pursed my lips for a moment, thinking. “Stillwater? Can you still hear us?”

“Stillwater is here?” Helix asked.

“I was wondering if you’d forgotten me.” The old man’s disembodied voice said from over by the door. “I’m still picking up your echoes but it’s not as clear as I’d like. Fill me in?”

“In a sec. That water worker, Heavy Water, is he still with you?””

“Yep. We’ve moved another floor down to play keep away but right now it doesn’t look like anyone’s looking for us.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and looked both men in the eye. “I have an idea.”

Helix snorted. “I’m still not seeing why we should listen to you.”

“Circuit planned for you. When his underlings stole the plan they adjusted it for him.”

Circuit smiled a wicked little smile. “But no one’s planned for her.”

Helix looked like he’d just taken a bite out of something rotten. “Okay, fine. What’s your idea?”

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Avengers Analyzed: Thor

Posted by natechen on

It’s time to finish up our look at the superhumans of Marvel’s The Avengers with a look at Thor. While Bruce Banner was our starting point mostly because I found him to be the least understood character, and Tony Stark and Steve Rogers followed him because their stories felt related, but Thor is the logical place to wrap up our superhero overview because he’s the final superhero in the film to show up.

Thor presents us with an interesting one because, while he’s probably the most powerful of the Avengers in absolute terms, he’s actually the most normal of them emotionally and relationally.

Yes, Thor doesn’t age, wields a weapon that easily puts out four times the power of Tony’s arc reactor and takes hits from The Hulk without appreciable harm, but he’s also got affectionate parents, friends who share his life and goals and a brother.

That last bit is the sticky part.

Point is, if you ignore the scale of his life, Thor is actually the most well adjusted, emotionally grounded and mentally stable of the four superheroes on the team. He has no suppressed anger, overactive ego or severe trauma. His greatest personal problem is a lack of familiarity with Earth culture. This both lets the audience see Loki from another angle and sets up his personal conflict.

Thor’s Background

Basically, Loki got jealous of his adoptive brother and arranged for him to be exiled to Earth, where Thor learned to be less of a Jerk. The material point is that Thor had to stop Loki’s scheming to take the throne of Asgard but in the process discovered his brother was adopted and full of discontent. Although Thor ended the matter by foiling Loki and accidentally sending him into the unknown depths of space he regrets the way they parted and clearly wants to make things right.

The Conflict 

Thor’s personal conflict is character vs. characters. Yes, as in multiple characters. For the majority of his time in the film Thor is not personally in conflict with Loki per se, rather he’s in conflict with the rest of the Avengers over what should be done about Loki. Thor still sees his brother as someone to be reformed and brought back into the fold. The rest of the Avengers see him as a threat to be dealt with via any means necessary. Thor wants to reconcile with his brother. The Avengers want Loki gone any way they can get it.

These goals aren’t necessarily contradictory but they will keep Thor and the Avengers working at crosspurposes even as Loki approaches his endgame.

We Meet Thor 

“What’s the matter, scared of a little lightning?” – Captain Steve Rogers 

For all his self-satisfied preening and condescension towards the other Avengers, when Thor arrives Loki gets nervous. We never see him show any trepidation towards anything else, he never flinches from his brother in person, but Thor beat Loki once and he doesn’t seem to have been in Loki’s calculations this time around – their dialog on first meeting suggests Loki expected his father to keep Thor at home. Thor is a weakness in Loki’s plans and a figure with enough personal power to shake Loki’s seemingly boundless self-confidence.

And then he steals Loki out from the noses of the Black Widow, Iron Man and Captain America.

Points for intimidation factor. Points for style. Nothing more to see here. Move along.

Loki – First Confrontation

“I’m not overly fond of what follows…” – Loki 

As Loki’s brother, Thor is given the unique privilege of confronting Loki multiple times through the film. Each of these confrontations marks a distinct point in Thor’s character progression and so the very first thing Thor has to do is drag Loki out for a little chat.

This initial conversation is not very long, courtesy of Tony Stark, but it clearly shows Thor’s priorities. Yes, Earth is under Thor’s protection and yes, he’s very concerned about what’s happening to it. But he’s really hurting because his brother has turned into something he doesn’t recognize and Thor can’t grasp why. Now this is in no small part because Thor is not particularly bright, he mostly gets by on being very earnest and normally this is one of his strengths. But the same forthrightness that makes Thor trustworthy and keeps his life simple also keeps him from ever fully grasping Loki’s ambition and need for validation.

When Loki mentions how much energy it must have taken Odin to send Thor to Earth we have to understand that Loki is seeing an expression of how much Odin is willing to do to keep him from happiness. All Thor sees is how much his father loves Loki and wants him to come home.

This scene is a perfect illustration of how Thor’s perspective is different from everyone else’s. The fact that it ends with Iron Man tackling him and throwing him into a pitched melee with two of the other Avengers only serves to show the logical outcome of Thor’s skewed perspective – it leaves him at odds with everyone else in the group.

A Battle of Worldviews

“This is beyond you, metal man. Loki will face Asgardian justice.” – Thor

Just about everything that happens with Thor from the end of his first brief conversation with Loki until Loki’s bid for freedom on the Helicarrier serves to illustrate the tension between him and the rest of the Avengers over what Loki is and what he’s there for. Most telling is when Thor tells Fury Loki isn’t out for power but vengeance. And not just any revenge, revenge against Thor specifically. Thor is still thinking of this as a personal problem between himself and his brother and he winds up fighting all three other superheroes in the Avengers before he starts coming to terms with things.

That’s right, as the most forthright of the Avengers Thor winds up physically fighting with Iron Man, Captain America and even the Hulk as an outward expression of his inward resistance to seeing Loki as they do. He just can’t accept Loki as an enemy to be defeated. He still wants Loki to be the brother he can save.

Loki – Second Confrontation 

“Are you never not going to fall for that?” – Loki

The moment Loki locks Thor into the Hulk cage is short, sweet and revealing… for Thor. Loki has never directly played his hand against his adoptive brother, mainly because the trickster knows he can’t overpower thunder. But the prison that used to hold him gives Loki a new card to play against Thor and for the first time there’s no masks between the two. Loki doesn’t just try and keep Thor out of the fight, he tries to kill him. It’s the same as burning the bridges between them.

While Thor escapes the death trap he’s also reached a turning point. After crash-landing in a field somewhere on the East Coast Thor brushes himself off and turns to reach for the hammer. This is an interesting moment. Although no dialog is said the image is reminiscent of the moment in Thor’s first stand-alone film, when he reached for Mjolnir and was found unworthy.

Now Thor finds he’s misjudged his brother, seen only a personal problem when Loki was all too willing to ignore Thor to pursue his bigger plans. Maybe he’s wondering if that lapse of judgment makes him unworthy to wield the hammer again. More likely he realizes the moment he takes up that hammer again he’ll have to turn it against his brother. But he takes it anyways, and it marks the turning point of his character.

Loki – Third Confrontation and Character Resolution

“Loki, turn off the tesseract or I will destroy it!” – Thor

Thor is too much of an earnest guy not to give Loki a chance at formal surrender before pounding him but this time around he’s not pleading with Loki, he’s offering an ultimatum. When Loki turns him down Thor stops playing nice and fights for real. While Thor doesn’t have the insight of Banner, capable of seeing through Loki’s illusions and immune to his semantics, once Thor turns his hand against his brother Loki’s no match for him.

People have said that Thor’s sudden reconciliation with the rest of the team is very abrupt but really, when you realize that his conflict with them was rooted in the different ways they saw Loki, it begins to make a great deal more sense. As soon as that difference of opinion is gone there’s nothing more to fight about.

There’s not as much of an arc to Thor’s character as the other three characters we’ve examined so far and perhaps that’s not surprising. After all, he is the best adjusted of them already and maybe his character didn’t need as much growth as some of the others. And to be fair, Thor is the first character to score a clean win over Loki, sending him running into the arms of the Chitauri after their confrontation at Stark Tower. That’s no small feat considering the only other character with a clear win over Loki is the Hulk – the other characters in the film never do more than stall Loki and frequently play into his hands.

Sadly, no one does that more than the core human members of the cast – so we’ll examine them next. Coming up in March, we look at Agents Romanoff and Barton. See you then!

Single Friends: A User’s Guide

Posted by natechen on

It’s February and that can only mean that love is in the air! You know, between bouts of snow, at least for those of us who live in the colder regions. And when I realized that Valentine’s Day was fast approaching I thought, why not take the month to look at stories that I like which tackle romantic love? So that’s what we’re doing.

Except for this week. This week there is a public service announcement.

Let’s start our romp through romance by addressing the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about the single people. Everybody knows at least one, probably more, whether they’ve just never had a significant other or whether they’re getting over yet another break-up, we know them and, at this time of year especially, we can find them feeling more than a little down. A good friend will probably feel the urge to try and help them cheer up and will sit down with them and offer a few words of advice or encouragement. To these helpful friends I offer this thought:

Don’t.

I’m not trying to be cavalier or anything here. I’m seriously saying, the things you’re thinking of saying are probably not going to help. I’ve been a single man for a little over thirty years, trust me, I’ve heard all the stock phrases offered to single people. Let’s take a look at a few of them, shall we?

  • When are you going to go out and get a boyfriend/girlfriend? Most people who say this think their friends just need a little push in the right direction to find someone. Usually it’s said to someone who’s been single for a longer than average period of time. And when single people hear it? Odds are they’re going to think, “Wow. This person has no idea what my priorities are.” You see, most people who are single for a long period of time are single for one of two reasons – either they haven’t found a person who they think matches what they need from a relationship or they are busy with activities that preclude the usual methods of building a relationship and will require something out of the ordinary for romance to blossom. Either way, when you ask this question of a single person, you don’t help them or prod them. You make them feel like their friends don’t understand them.
  • I’m sure you’ll find a nice person out there somewhere/eventually. No, you’re not. You’re not omniscient. You’re not sure. Maybe you think that, and I’m not dumping on optimism because I think it’s a bad character trait. Far from it. But when you say this you’re offering an empty promise. You know it. The person you say it to knows it. When you offer this kind of empty platitude you don’t help. You make someone feel like they’re not worth the effort. In the end, the only one who feels better about the situation will be you.
  • You’re not the only one – there are lots of lonely people out there. I’m not sure how to say this but, “You’re not alone, there are other lonely people” is kinda contradictory. Again, single people are usually single because they cannot do all the things they feel called to do in life – engage their community, use their talents, stay in touch with family, enjoy time with friends and find a fulfilling romantic relationship. Many things go into a complete life and a romantic relationship is just one of them. People who wind up single are probably single because they’ve found ways to fulfill their other needs but not balance them against their need for romance. That’s hard to deal with on a day to day basis, trust me. The fact that so many other people struggle to with it as well won’t really make us feel any better.
  • If they don’t appreciate you then they aren’t worth your time. Why do you think insulting the people your friends care about is helpful? Seriously, this is another case of something that makes you feel better but doesn’t really do anything to help your friend.

There’s more, but these are some of the most common platitudes handed out to single people. These, along with many of the other things singles tend to hear, ignore the basic problem most single people face: A need to balance their desire to not be single with the rest of their life. Friends of a single person need to acknowledge not only that their friend is single, and so probably not living an ideal life (a fact we single people are aware of) but also that singleness is a difficulty that isn’t solved. It is endured.

Think of a single person like a person who’s lost a kidney. It’s not exactly healthy for them, but the rest of the body can compensate for it by working a little harder to keep things clean. Being single is much like that – it’s not exactly healthy but if everything else performs well it’s not going to slow them down either. There’s also only one fix you can offer the situation, so unless you’re planning to ask your single friend out this Valentine’s Day, settle for doing the best you can as a friend and leave the single part alone.

Here is what the situation boils down to. When your single friend is having a rough time of it and you hand them a platitude, you’re showing them you desire to have the situation dealt with so you can stop feeling bad about it. That may be fine for you but it does nothing to help them. It probably makes them feel worse.

Single people are rough to deal with. We can be cranky, dissatisfied and frankly unpleasant. What we need from you is simple. We need you to be our friend in spite of that.

Take your single friends out to dinner. Go to a ball game or a movie with them. Have them over and play board games. Do whatever it is you usually do, except make sure they know you appreciate all they do to make your life better. That’s how you be a friend to a single person – just like you’re a friend to anyone else. Simple right? Not always easy, but simple.

Thunder Clap: The Icarus Run

Posted by natechen on

(Sorry for the late post. I forgot to schedule things out ahead of time last week… January was a rough month.)

Helix

According to Elizabeth Sykes, Waltham Towers was supposed to have three layers of defenses. The first were the EMP weapons we’d already encountered throughout the city in building after building Keller Realty had worked on in the past five years. Elizabeth called these empion stations and there were literally hundreds of them scattered through  the city. Massif and later Samson had spent a good chunk of the early morning clearing a path to Waltham Towers through the empion stations so that was taken care of.

Beyond that, there were roadblocks set up around the building itself. These mainly consisted of large water barrels stacked one on top of the other, blocking the road and doubling as a kind of emergency water supply for those in the tower. When Circuit had planned the scenario he’d also intended them to be a crowd control option for his viscosity manipulating henchman Heavy Water, who could drain the barrels to lay down a half-inch deep layer of gluelike water and neutralize most of what Project Sumter had to throw at him, save people like Samson or myself. Elizabeth thought it most likely that this was the layer of defense most likely to be left out of the scenario, both because he’d had no part in designing it and, since Heavy Water had gone into retirement at the same time Circuit did, there probably wasn’t anyone to work the carpet of adhesion angle of the roadblock. As it turned out, she was right on that count.

The third layer of defenses was the real problem. “It’s a deathtrap. A deathtrap with your name written all over it.”

This was also the third time I’d heard this basic line of thought. “I know, I know.” I leaned back against the side of the van that brought me and my team out from the office. l’d met Darry out there, where I’d explained the strategy we’d worked out. “I heard this from Jack and Teresa when we were back at the office and Sanders was all to happy to repeat it on the ride over. Can we assume that I’ve already met every objection you can think of and skip to the part where you agree and give Coldsnap and Frostburn the go ahead?”

“No.” Darryl glared at me from over the top of his cane, I’d found him seated on a bench on the sidewalk, watching the Sumter tactical teams as the rolled in and started setting up two blocks out from the Towers. He’d been happy to see me when I got there but it hadn’t lasted long. “When I left the building you were getting ready to question Elizabeth Sykes like the sane, if impulsive, agent I worked with years ago. In a little less than three hours you seem to have gone crazy. You don’t actually believe Circuit’s working against implementing a plan he spent ten years of his life building, do you?”

“He’s a control freak, so yeah, if he felt it was being implemented in a way he didn’t like I could definitely see Circuit doing just that.” I folded my arms over my chest and stared at him for a moment, hoping he’d cave and agree but Darryl’s always been more patient than me. “I’m going up the tower, Darryl.”

He scooped up the pile of blueprints I’d given him to look over and waved them at me. “Did you look this over at all? The entire inside of that tower is rigged with Circuit’s lighting funnel gizmos, he could fry you just about anywhere on the top twenty floors. Even if we cut the power from the building he’s got generators to keep it going.”

“But only on the inside.” I tapped my foot on the pavement. “The concrete in the building is nonconductive and he didn’t mount funnels to hit the outside walls of the building, he wasn’t planning on our taking this approach.”

“Oh, you mean he wasn’t planning on you committing suicide?” Darryl snorted. “Color me surprised. Samson should do this. He’s best equipped, best trained, and his daughter being in that building somewhere gives him more in the game.”

“Best trained? Darryl, he hasn’t done serious, full-time field work in years.”

He stamped his cane in frustration. “You know what I mean. Taxmen are trained to do a lot of solo work, you’ve always worked with a team. Now you want to try a plan that requires you to ditch them?”

“Not ditch them, just get a little bit ahead.” I held up my hand because we both knew that was pure semantics. Sixty to seventy floors up was effectively the same as working alone. “Samson can’t jump that kind of distance without a specially constructed surface to jump from. If he tried to do it here the ground would give under him and he’d completely miss the jump. At least I can break my own fall, he can’t. It has to be me, Darryl.”

“Because you’re the best choice or because you want your own piece of Circuit?” Darryl pushed to his feet and limped over, crowding me like a man who expected to have his say even if he had to beat it into me with his own two fists. “I know you, Helix. This guy has been a thorn in your flesh practically since day one and you’ve never been one to let go of things like that. But that kind of attitude gets people hurt. That’s why you lobbied to have me pulled out of the hunt for Circuit, remember?”

Getting angry is my thing, not Darryl’s. Even after Mona died he’d only really lost his temper once, Darryl was more the type to slowly burry his feelings and now was no exception. I’d known him to long not to notice the edge of unease under his hostility. He wasn’t mad at me – well, maybe a little – but getting mad was a good way of hiding what he was really feeling. “What do you want me to do, Darryl? There’s two agents missing, one of them has a father who is able and willing to tear that whole building apart brick by brick to find her, and going in is the best way to make sure they’re safe. If we wait for the man who started this mess, whether it’s Circuit or his engineer, to come out and show themselves odds are they’re going to make some kind of messy getaway attempt or at least have caused more problems for the city. And we’re talking about a guy who orchestrated a hacking attack that shut down five major cities across the nation. We need to go in now.”

“You’re being reckless, Helix. Reckless is how people get killed!”

How his wife got killed. “Darryl…”

“Do not patronize me,” he snapped. “You think I’m being irrational? Name one other person who’s contributed as much as you have to the future of talented people.”

“Corporal Sumter,” I answered without hesitation. “And Sergeant Wake. Chief Stillwater and Saint Elmo, for that matter. Even Rodriguez has been doing just as much as me, the last few years. Don’t pretend like I’m irreplaceable.”

Darry snorted and stalked off a few steps, stewing. That wouldn’t really help his mood any and I really needed his help. Maybe it was time to change the subject. “Did I ever tell you why I joined Project Sumter?”

“Because it was the family business?”

“Sort of.” I tipped my head back and stared up at the clear morning sky. It was midmorning and the buildings were catching the sun. “Mostly, I wanted to be a part of something as big as what those guys were.”

He laughed quietly. I couldn’t tell if it was meant as bitter, ironic or just tired. “You wanted to be a hero.”

“No.” I pushed away from the van and stepped over beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “One thing I learned from my grandfather’s stories. A hero is judged by what he gives, not what he has or what he does. I never signed up to die, and I don’t think I’m going to today. But if that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do. I’m afraid of dying, sure. But what I do is worth more than fear.”

When Darryl didn’t say anything in response I gave his shoulder a squeeze and said, “And I think it’s more important than pain, too.”

Finally he sighed and pulled out his phone. “Get going, Helix. I’ll make the call.”

——–

Heat rises. That’s physics and, more importantly, not the part of physics that a heat sink messes with. I’m a heat sink and that means heat is my bread and butter, my modus operandi, the one thing I know better than a third grade kid arguing Superman versus Batman. I’m good with it is what I’m saying.

The Plan, my great method for getting into the building without having to run the gauntlet of inside defenses, boils down to this: Superheat a lot of air, creating an updraft. The hotter the air, the faster it would move and the bigger the updraft. Spread out a heat sink far enough, make it hot enough, and the updraft would push me up the side of the building. I figured I’d have to run along the side of the building, since even I’m not that strong of a heat sink, but sixty or seventy floors with a tail wind couldn’t be that hard.

The catch was, on my own, I couldn’t even create enough of an updraft to coast upward on. I’d actually done exercises to test that. I could use one to break a fall, and had in the past, but go up a building? Not likely.

If Frostburn and Coldsnap helped me it was a different matter. The two were identical twin cold spikes, people who dumped heat out of the environment just like I sunk it in – long story short, them helping me was the difference between one man holding a bucket to catch rainwater and that same man catching rain in his bucket while two other people are emptying their own buckets into his. It’s not quite the same as tripling the heat at my disposal, but it’s close.

With the two of them posted at either end of the block, Waltham Towers was at the center of one of the most unnatural weather phenomena the city had ever seen. The street began to ice over at either end as the two ladies spiked as hard as they could. The heat that was frantically fleeing the touch of their power poured around them and into my hands until the air just in front and above me was shimmering like it was over the world’s biggest black top parking lot. After twenty seconds or so, it started to glow.

The windows in the building were shaking under the unnatural onslaught of wind and, since I weighed all of a hundred and thirty pounds, I was nearly taken off my feet. That meant it was time to get a running start and dash up the side of the building.

As it turned out I wound up more skipping than running. Sticking to the side of the building was tricky but the vortex swirled in a clockwise pattern and I stayed near the building for the most part. Not that I really wanted to be there all the time. One thing I hadn’t anticipated was the windows of the building, well below the freezing point of water thanks to the twins efforts, swelling in their frames until they burst. I wound up ascending the building in a cloud of plasma and half melted glass, looking for all the world like I was chasing the sun on some kind of mad flight, except I’d forgotten my wax wings.

Or that’s what Sanders said when he showed me the video he took with his phone afterwards.

Thankfully the trip up took less than a minute, although I’d have sworn it was much longer at the time, and as I passed the large conference room window I’d been told to aim for I kicked my feet towards the side of the building, getting decent purchase and convulsing my whole body, heat sink and all, into the side of the tower. One quick, messy trip through molten glass and softening concrete later and I was inside Waltham Towers. I took a few deep breaths to slow my heartbeat and promised myself whoever was behind this had better be ready for me because at the moment I was not a happy customer…

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Genrely Speaking: Satire

Posted by natechen on

Satire is the last of the three metagenres to get tackled here on Genrely Speaking, the previous two being deconstruction and parody. Satire stands apart from these two metagenres in that it is generally intended in a noncomplementary way. Deconstructions and parodies tend to come from a deep love for a genre and a desire to share it with other people – in the first case, a desire to share it with new audiences in the second a desire to share it more deeply with those who love and enjoy it already. Satire does not come from a love of its source material.

Satire is a metagenre that tries to make an idea, person or genre look ridiculous. Generally it does this by adopting the stance of its target and pushing the ideas until they become absurd.

The hallmarks of satire tend to be as follows:

  1. A very strong tendency to extremes. There’s no middle of the road here, by the very nature of satire it has to be as loud and unreserved. A great example of this comes from the book Animal Farm, where pretty much all of the pigs qualify as ridiculously extreme examples of the kind of propaganda Orwell is satirizing. The horse Boxer is a satire of those who follow such propagandists. Voices in satire tend to be loud because quiet voices tend to sound more reasonable than shouting ones and the point of satire is not to appear reasonable. With one notable exception.
  2. The voice of reason. The point of satire is to push things to such an extreme that the audience is repulsed by it but, at the same time, it’s important to make it clear that the author is not actively endorsing it. So there tends to be this one sane person that tries to bring reason to this totally insane situation and inevitably fails. It’s important to keep readers from getting the wrong impression. Clover is an example of this from Animal Farm.
  3. No sense of actual reality. The point is to push an idea to utter absurdity and discourage people from thinking that way. So the work almost never tries to keep any semblance of reality. Oddly enough, many satirical works wind up seeming realistic despite themselves – Animal Farm in particular turned out to be eerily prescient, describing the cult of personality surrounding Stalin to a T. But that’s not necessarily the goal.

What are the weaknesses of a satire? The biggest weakness of satire is that it’s not really a very nice approach to looking at bad ideas. People who hold them already are going to be offended by the treatment and people who are undecided on the issue may be put off by the tone most satires take. That’s not to say a satire can’t be done well but it’s a difficult balance to strike and even when you find it the unreality of the approach is probably going to put off as many people as it attracts.

Also, there’s always a small minority of people who just aren’t going to get that a satire is mocking the thing it portrays and interpret it as an endorsement for something terrible. Or worse an endorsement for something positive. A more clear cut repudiation of a philosophy would probably serve better.

What are the strengths of a satire? They can be a vehicle for a very prescient engagement with an idea when handled very well. George Orwell wrote two very cutting satires (Animal Farm and 1984) that have stood the test of time, in no small part because he effectively showed how bleak the ideas he was attacking were.

In the end, satire is a very two-edged sword. It can leave a very, very memorable impression but it is going to put a lot of people off, particularly if you don’t use it well. Some people have chosen to put elements of satire into works that, on the whole, are not at all satirical. The character of Gideon Gleeful, from Gravity Falls, is a very modern example of this, satirizing TV psychics and faith healers while still serving to advance the general mystery driven plot of the show.

Ultimately, the use of satire is a personal choice, usually driven by how strong a person’s feelings on a subject is and how they want to address them. How much a person likes satire is the same – some people will like it and some will hate it. You won’t have to read much of one to know which one you are and, if you don’t like what you see, there’s nothing wrong with abandoning it.

Ship of Ghosts

Posted by natechen on

I recently watched the movie Unbroken, about down Army Air Force pilot Louis Zamperini and it reminded me of a book I’ve been meaning to mention for a while. Ship of Ghosts is by James D. Hornfischer and it chronicles the ordeal of the USS Houston (CA-30). The Houston was one of the few ships of the US Asiatic Fleet that had the unenviable task of trying to hold back the Imperial Japanese Navy during the early days of the Second World War. Like so many ships in that fleet, the Houston was eventually sunk by the Japanese.

Most of the crew that survived fell into the hands of the Japanese.

For those unfamiliar with what that entailed, the Japanese had not signed the Geneva Conventions. Their military culture at the time also strongly believed that death for the country was one of the highest honors. The Japanese war machine simply had no allowance for soldiers who failed to fight to the death. On either side of a conflict.

The result was that those men captured by the Japanese would suffer some of the hardest years of their lives, enduring torture, forced labor, starvation, disease and death.

If the title was not enough to warn you, Ship of Ghosts is not a story of uplifting triumph. Some of the men do survive, in fact we only have the survivor’s voices to tell the tales. But what they endured is fascinating only in how horrible it was and in that anyone could survive it.

Like all good histories, Ship of Ghosts lets us meet the characters we’re about to learn about before things go wrong. We follow them out to the under supplied, aging Asiatic Fleet where almost nothing happens but where everyone expects something to go wrong soon enough. We watch the Houston run before the raging storm of the ascendant Japanese Navy. It fights and eventually dies, and the good ship’s labors are done. But the men have three long years to survive.

What they endure is not fun reading. But it is the kind of thing everyone should read. People did endure these things, they did survive them. Kind of puts our lives into perspective. And they did these things for us. And that, perhaps, is why we don’t want to hear about them. Because if we accept that these events are real, and they have real motivations, what are the consequences for our lives? Have we been grateful for what they gave? And do they deserve something beyond gratitude?

Frankly, until you’ve read a book like Ship of Ghosts, those are questions you can’t even begin to appreciate, much less answer. And even if appreciating the question is all you can do, you’ll be better for it.

Thunder Clap: Jacob’s Ladder

Posted by natechen on

Izzy

I crashed down on the fortieth floor, the elevator door twisted around me in a shape halfway between a cocoon and a surf board. Prying myself out took a few seconds but I’d had a little practice over the last twenty floors. Sykes, or Circuit or whatever you wanted to call him, floated in the elevator shaft behind me, a concerned look on his face. “Are you alright? I know you’re tough, at least if you’re anything like your father, but that kind of hit over and over again can’t be good for you.”

I gave my T-shirt a quick tug to straighten it and said, “Smashing into stuff is easy. We can push out against impact for a couple of seconds to absorb the blow, kind of like flexing a muscle against a hit. But you can’t hold that forever so it’s less useful when you have a lot of stuff smashing into you.”

“So that’s why you don’t just walk through bullets like that Aluchinskii guy. Too hard to bounce bullets for a long time, better not to try it at all.” For a moment Sykes looked interested in that line of thought but concern quickly took back over. “You’re sure you’re okay? I’ve met your father and I have a hard time believing he just let you smash into walls at high speed so you’d grow up tough.”

A tilt of the head let me work the last kinks out of my neck, I did my best to do it in a way that wouldn’t let him realize how tired I actually was. He was partly right, I hadn’t had a whole lot of practice shrugging off heavy hits but I had done it some as part of my field training. Unfortunately I hadn’t slept much in the last forty eight hours and that was starting to get to me. Fine control, never my strong suit, wasn’t much of a loss but stamina was another one of those things that was slipping away from me and I was getting tired. Tired enough that I was starting to feel the hits, even when I was braced for them.

But Circuit was still a public menace, even if Sykes might seem like an okay guy, and I wasn’t about to let him know how wiped out I was. “I’m touched by your concern but it’s a little weird coming from the guy who created the plan to leave the city with no power in the middle of the summer. Or did the thousands of deaths by heat and starvation not bother you?”

His expression flipped to offended superiority almost instantly. “There were contingencies in place for that. I had resources in place to deal with those issues. Keep casualties to a minimum.”

“Don’t see a whole lot of that right now.”

Sykes sighed. “Davis wasn’t privy to the full details of my plan, his primary area of responsibility was the tower. And quite frankly, I think that was the only part he cared about. It was just a chance to build newer, better systems and see what they did. It’s what he loves to do and that makes him good at his job. It would be nice if he cared about what the consequences of his actions were, too.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “And this makes the two of you different how?”

He opened his mouth to answer, stopped, shook his head and rapped his knuckles against the arm of his floating chair, sending it upward. “Forget it. We’ve still only halfway to the top. If you can keep going then keep up. If not I’ll go by myself. I want to be there when Helix arrives.”

His wheelchair was almost entirely out of sight by the time he was done speaking. There wasn’t much else I could do except jump back into the elevator shaft behind him.

We were moving in five floor chunks, it took Circuit about ten seconds to ascend that floor and I let him check for traps then get clear before jumping up into the shaft, off of the far wall and back through another elevator door five stories up. The process was uncomfortable but pretty boring, all things considered. We made it up another twenty floors in silence, aside from Circuit occasionally muttering under his breath as he scouted out the shaft. I was waiting for Circuit to clear the jump to the sixty-fifth floor when he let out a triumphant, “Aha!”

“What?” I asked, craning my neck so I could see up the shaft.

“Traps, right on schedule. Looks like no one thought to add extra traps to the setup but at least someone thought of changing them from the kind of thing I could easily disarm with my talents.” The sound of latches being undone echoed down the shaft. “Which is not the same as saying it’s not easy to disarm.”

Circuit’s chair tilted at a weird angle so he could lean over and work in an access panel. The chair was surprisingly stable all things considered. “This may sound like a weird question but is that magic chair of yours gonna have enough juice to last for the duration? You’ve been using it an awful lot. Shoving your impersonator’s guys around by their maglev harnesses, levitating through elevator shafts and who knows what else. I mean, the thing’s only got so much juice to run on, right?”

“Smart question. Yes, it’s got a finite charge but I built it to run independently for a long time.” He paused what he was doing long enough to slap the side of the chair, rattling something in the side of the frame. “It can be charged off a wall socket but that takes time. I want to get to the top before Helix does.”

I snorted. “You’re pretty confident he’s gonna be here.”

“He may be your boss but I’ve known him for a long time, my dear. Almost half your life.” He slammed the panel he was working in closed. “I have a very high opinion of him, odd as that may sound.”

“So I’ve heard. You two are something of a legend around the offices.” Circuit moved to the other side of the shaft and opened another panel there. “Can I ask you something, since we have a breather?”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Why the chair?” He stopped what he was doing long enough to give me a look that suggested his opinion of my intelligence was dropping. “I mean, you could walk just fine in every encounter you had with Helix up to and including that showdown at the hydroelectric plant you built. Why does the chair exist at all?”

“I designed it back when I was still in the business, plotting to rule the world and all that. Faking a weakness is a fundamental rule of evil overlording and the plane crash when I was younger gave me a perfect excuse to feign being lame.” He paused to shove a screwdriver into his mouth and proceeded to mumble around it. “I didn’t actually build it until I retired.”

“So you waited?” My neck was getting a crick in it so I stopped trying to watch him and settled on staring at the wall on the far side of the shaft. In the dim light of the elevator shaft Circuit and his chair cast weird shadows, like the deformed shadow puppet of a king. “Why bother if you were getting out of the business?”

I jumped a bit when Circuit suddenly dropped back into view, his expression grim. “I’ll tell you a secret, Agent Rodriguez. I’m not a good person.”

“When do we hear the secret part?”

He smiled just a bit. “The secret is, I always planned on rolling over and dying when the time came to pay for my sins. Your father was a priest, you would understand that, wouldn’t you?”

There wasn’t a sign of malice or mockery in his face that I could make out. “If that’s true, then what changed?”

He shrugged. “I’m still not a good person, Rodriguez. But no one else should have to pay for my mistakes. My reckoning day is coming but now I’ve got people to look out for. Just because I got out of the game doesn’t mean I’m naïve. I’ve always known Sumter would catch up to me one of these days. And I never imagined that the people I worked with were playing straight with me either. Insurance is my way of life, now as much as when I played the villain, and the chair was a kind of insurance. A way to influence events if it ever came to that.”

I studied his face for signs that he was playing some sort of angle but couldn’t find any. “So we’re at their perimeter, right? What’s our next move?”

“The perimeter presents several-”

A quick chop of the hand cut him off. “Listen, I’ve heard that a million times from Al and Helix. Whenever they say there’s several things that can happen they always have one that they’re planning on happening or one that they’ve settled on doing already. So just tell me what the most likely thing is and we’ll all save some time.”

Circuit stared at me in surprise for a moment, then laughed. “You know, they do that because they haven’t actually worked out what they’re expecting for themselves, right? It’s just a way to buy time.”

“You mean you don’t know what you’re planning on doing?”

“One can’t always know what to expect until you’re on the scene.” He shrugged. “I think we’ll continue with the direct approach for now. We need to get to the seventy-fifth floor.”

He shot back up through the shaft and I got ready to wreck another elevator door.

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