Author Archives: natechen

I Am Not Making This Up

Posted by natechen on

The title for this post is one of Dave Barry’s favorite phrases, one he trots out whenever he’s found something so bizarre, so ridiculous, it seems like there’s no way it could actually be a part of the world we live in. Except, of course, that it is. And really, for a humor columnist, what could be better than that? Why spend all his time and energy making up halfway funny stuff when Barry could let us find stuff twice as funny for him? By the end of his syndicated column’s run he actually had people all over the nation who would scour newspapers, flip through ads and watch news broadcasts just to find new absurdities to send to him.

And they didn’t even get paid!

Why do I mention this? After all, the primary focus of this blog is fiction, am I right? (Of course I am.) Well, for a moment or two I’m going to wander into the territory of nonfiction. See, while I write fiction for this blog my degree is actually in Journalism, a field that actively blends nonfiction and fiction.

Okay, I kid, I kid. To all those newspaper editors around the country who are about to denounce me from your pages, I ask that you resist the urge. In spite of some high profile cases, there are still such things as journalistic standards and fact checking. It is a form of nonfiction writing, just as humor columns, editorials and technical writing are. In this post, we’re going to look over three things nonfiction needs to do well in order to succeed and how being a good nonfiction writer can help your fiction writing succeed as well. The things that nonfiction needs to work are facts, structure by importance and a clear evolution of ideas. These things are present in all forms of nonfiction writing and, if you manage to write them well in nonfiction applying them your fiction will benefit you as well.

The first thing nonfiction needs in abundance is facts. This is kind of a “duh” thing, but if you’re making up what you’re writing about it’s fiction. You can only be writing nonfiction if you start with facts. Gathering facts and organizing them is where a nonfiction writer starts. So if you’re writing fiction, guess what you need?

Facts! Not facts in the same sense as a nonfiction writer, of course, but facts about your story. I’m not just talking about outlining here, I get that some writers don’t find that to be helpful. But you need to have facts about your story – where is it taking place, who is at the center, what are they doing when it starts, when it ends, what makes them qualified to tackle the problems the story will throw at them? The list goes on and on and on. What’s more, the kinds of questions often vary from genre to genre. A sci-fi tale will need more information about places, new technologies and societal changes than a romantic comedy.

The second thing nonfiction does is structure it’s information by importance, particularly in journalism. Rather than starting you at the beginning and working through to the end, most nonfiction starts with a premise and explains why it is relevant to the reader, then begins with the foundation of it’s argument and works it’s way through to the conclusions. Fiction is the same – not every story should begin at the beginning. Every story should begin at the part most likely to grab the reader’s interest. The ‘beginning’ of the story may not be revealed to the reader until they are part way into the story because it reveals too much about the plot, or it’s just not interesting enough. It’s important to start your story where it will interest your readers – not at the beginning.

Finally, nonfiction has to clearly work from it’s premise to its conclusion, that’s the whole reason nonfiction gets read. Fiction needs to be just as clear. Even in stories like Pulp Fiction, where the timeline is convoluted, there’s clear purpose and drive to the story and the audience can follow what’s going on all the way to the conclusion, even if the exact order of events doesn’t make complete sense to every member of the audience. Fiction is more than a series of unrelated events, no matter how clearly those events are told. If they don’t tie together into a cohesive whole with a purpose in mind they’re not good fiction. Reading (or writing) well written nonfiction gives one a good sense of how to tie fiction together in a similar way.

In short, don’t underestimate nonfiction as a resource for the fiction writer. Reading works of history and journalism in particular of great value to you as you seek to hone your craft. You could do worse than seeking them out actively.

Cool Things: It Happened One Night

Posted by natechen on

Classic film time once again. It Happened One Night doesn’t contain that many names recognizable to casual black and white fans but it does hold one claim to fame that only two other movies can make – it won all five of the “big” Academy Awards – best film, director, actor, actress and screenplay. It’s also had a subtle effect on popular culture, not to the extent of say, Casablanca, but still a marked one. Ever seen a woman stop a vehicle just by showing some leg? That’s a homage to It Happened One Night.

This story is essentially about a rich young woman, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) who marries someone her father does not approve of. When Mr. Andrews (Walter Connolly) tries to annul the marriage she runs away, catching a bus and running into the down-on-his-luck reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable). Unfortunately, the sheltered Ellie doesn’t have the resources or know how to meet up with her husband so she agrees to take Peter’s help in avoiding her father, who has offered a hefty reward for her discovery.  What ensues is a strange cross between a caper film, a romantic comedy and out and out screwball humor. By the time the story is over Peter and Ellie will have fallen in love, had a falling out and learned a little more about themselves. All in all, not bad for a love story from Hollyweird, right?

So what sets It Happened One Night above the rest? Was it really worth all those Awards?

For starters, Colbert and Gable really do provide a great performance. The chemistry between the two is great and serves to drive the story when the laughs aren’t coming. But there’s not that many points where the laughs don’t come. The script is incredibly tightly written, keeping the audience moving from bus to motel to roadside like a drill sergeant, alternating between showing us how well Ellie and Peter work together and how little they appreciate one another. This is undoubtedly for the best, if scrutinized too closely the whole story would most likely fall apart and yet, once it’s finished, we can’t help but admire the finished product for what it is.

But the greatest strength of the script is in it’s careful use of characterization. It’s very easy for a writer to give into the temptation of spelling out too much. But when Peter finally comes to confront Ellie’s father, when he’s offered a reward for all he’s done and all Peter can do is rant about a woman who he thinks has played with him and left him in the cold, we see far more about how much Peter loves Ellie than any poem or soliloquy could tell us.

Watch It Happened One Night and it’s easy to see how it could have won all five of the Big Academy Awards. The piece itself may be fluff, but it’s such well written, well acted and well directed fluff that you can’t help but loving it for what it is. Whether you love movies, storytelling in general or just a good romantic comedy, I assure you that you won’t be disappointed with what you find.

Water Fall: Shaking Earth

Posted by natechen on

Five Weeks, One Day Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Massif

Jane Hammer certainly lived up to her name. I can process all kinds of movement but, even though I’d been warned, I wasn’t ready for just how fast she moved. It took her all of two seconds from the time she hit the ground to run a loop around me and get to the van, which rolled onto its side to the tune of screaming metal. I cursed and turned to start back towards her but I needn’t have bothered.

She came back my way even faster than she’d left and when we collided the force was more than the ground under my feet could safely handle. The parking lot was fairly worn down concrete and under that there was only gravel fill, I know because a great deal of it sprayed in the air when a chunk of paving about five feet around pulled loose and tilted up, sliding a few feet to the right in the process. It had taken the force of Jane’s hit but ruined my footing in the process.

At least I had known what to expect and managed to keep my balance. Jane, who had used a fairly straightforward shoulder slam that probably would have smashed a normal man’s ribs into kindling, hadn’t expected me to stay standing or for her to wind up stopped, much less for the ground to move under her feet. She slipped and went down on all fours.

Even though I knew it wouldn’t work training prompted me to try and kick her closer hand out from under her. The force from the kick vanished as soon as we made contact and her appearance changed subtly. According to Voorman, vector traps don’t move force, they store it and can release it later, although the amount of force they’re holding drains away over time. So I’d basically just handed her a free kick. She retaliated by punching me in the thigh and letting the extra force spring back out at the same time, which hurt about as much as the evil eye she was giving me as she swung.

Trading punches was going to go nowhere fast, neither one of us could really hurt the other that way. So I grabbed her wrist and shoulder before she could recover from her punch, pulling her off balanced and into a hip throw that dropped her to the ground. When we stayed in direct contact the whole time her talent was basically useless, while mine still ensured that I never lost my footing. I’m not sure why that is but that’s the kind of thing we leave to the scientists. While wushu doesn’t have a whole lot of wrestling in it, it does still include some basic throws and pins to go with all its other moves. Against a complete amateur, which Jane obviously was, that’s more than enough.

Or so the theory went. But I hadn’t even gotten her fully locked into a pin when she started kicking her feet against the ground. To my amazement her appearance started to warp slightly, like it had when she’d absorbed my kick, and even glimmer around the edges. Somehow kicking against the ground was letting her build up force. By the third kick I realized what was going on and shifted to try and pin her feet as well. After fumbling for a couple of seconds I only managed to get one of them.

Jane’s next kick after that hit the ground with enough force to rock the loose pavement we were on. The next after that actually shoved it a half a foot sideways. This was getting bad. If she managed to knock us airborne all my advantages would vanish – in fact, she’d be way ahead of me, since vector traps don’t need their feet on the ground to be quasi-invulnerable.

So I let go, timing it so it happened a split second before her next kick. With nothing to push against Jane wound up flipping herself over and skidding along the ground a good ten feet. I winced. Even if she didn’t feel the impact with the pavement she’d still get scrapes and limbs would still get yanked out of socket. For all that, she still got to her feet before I could get to her. I might have the advantage in durability, since Voorman said traps could only absorb one vector at a time and had to use it before they could grab another, while I could shunt hits into the ground all day. But Jane had far more mobility than I could ever hope for. At least I did have time to get off the broken pavement before Jane came back for more.

In fact, she backed up several steps, moving with a weird rocking motion of the feet and storing up a little more force with each step she took. Now that I had a clear look at it I remembered something Voorman had said about the principle of action producing equal and opposite reaction and Jane’s talent, but I hadn’t really understood it. Looking at it now, it seemed that every time her foot hit the ground she absorbed the impact and released it on her next step, making each step gradually a bit stronger than the last. I wondered absently if that took training or if it was instinctive.

Jane wasn’t distracted by such things. She was focused on taking me down and I was more than happy to let her try. Even with just a few seconds to study her it was clear to me that she had never had any kind of formal hand to hand combat training. All she was doing was building up a head of steam and slamming into her target with all the force she’d accumulated. And the fact is, that would probably be enough for eighty to ninety percent of the people she would fight.

But wushu isn’t just fighting hand to hand, it’s reading the flow and pattern of movement, anticipating it and countering it. While Jane’s movements were bigger and more powerful than anything I’ve seen from something that didn’t have a six cylinder engine in it they were actually very simple and easy to analyze. And while they might be too fast for an untalented man with my level of discipline to follow I could see her coming in ways she probably wasn’t expecting. The files suggested vector shifts and vector traps perceive the world a lot differently, so she probably didn’t realize that the way she manipulated momentum caused her to light up like a Christmas tree.

To my eye the average person is surrounded a dull red haze that gets lost in the gray static of ambient motion once they’re more than twenty feet away from me. A running person may work their way up to yellow and be visible thirty feet away – forty if they’re really fast. But Jane burned white hot and I could probably spot what she was doing from the other end of a football field.

The more force Jane put behind her movements the easier they were to track and anticipate. I almost felt guilty at how easy it was to toss her back to the ground when she came around for another hit. This time instead of letting her go flying I kept ahold of her and bled her momentum out into the ground. I also made it a point to grab her by the leg and wrestler her into a lock that would break it if she tried to power her way out again. “Give it up, Jane!”

“What?” There was a note of confusion in her voice and I belatedly remembered that, unless Project Sumter had actually had her in custody at some point she wouldn’t know what her codename was.

“Never mind.” I sighed in exasperation. At least her friends had stopped shooting at me once she came into the picture. “Are you going to give or not?”

In response she started drumming her hands on the ground. “If you try and move you’re just going to break your leg. Believe me, you won’t be breaking mine.”

She exhaled deeply, a lot like sifu would when “centering the chi”, and there was a confusing flurry of motion. She kicked against my leg lock and I held steady, not moving, but she managed to press herself down into the pavement with enough force to crack it again. For a split second I lost my footing and couldn’t keep her in the join lock; then suddenly Jane was free and bouncing a good ten feet in the air. She didn’t land on her feet but I don’t think that really bothered her much.

And this time she didn’t come back around for another pass, this time she just kept running away. I swore and then yelled, as loud as I could, “Amplifier! Jane’s running for the alley on the east side of the building!”

A second later I heard Amp’s voice, at normal levels, saying, “We’ve got it.”

I suppressed a shudder. If she was still where she started the operation she was a block and a half away, coordinating communications for-

The fast retreating point of light that Jane made as she retreated into the distance suddenly vanished in a weird pulsing of the air. I’m not sure normal people could have spotted it but I sure could.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Just hit her with a little noise, one of the things I picked up in the past few weeks” Amp replied, still throwing her voice. I knew that she’d been having occasional meetings with another wave maker, who’s codename hadn’t been shared with me, to help them understand how she did her little ventriloquist trick over long distances. Apparently she’d picked up a few new tricks in the process.

“Is she still going to be a problem?”

“Don’t think so.” There was a pause, then, “Yeah, Dominic says they’re spraying her down with some of that riot foam stuff now. Voorman said that would be enough to hold her.”

“Good.” I turned back to the building, dusting myself off as I went. “Let’s see if I’m needed inside.”

——–

As it turned out, I wasn’t. Helix’s team had come through the front door and locked down the concessions part of the office as soon as the shooting started and the rest of the building had been cleared by the state police by the time I could actually get to it and get inside. After about five minutes of fast and furious work the raid was all over but the clean-up and analysis. This after nearly a weak of intensive planning.

My life in a nutshell.

All the work paid off, though, as the police got plenty of charges to press against the arms dealers and we got – well, we didn’t get the van in pristine condition since Jane had it hard enough to completely roll it once, but the body of the vehicle was mostly intact and hopefully analysis could get something out of it. On top of that, no one got seriously hurt other than the officer who was in the van when Jane rolled it. Even he got away with nothing more than a few sprains and a broken leg. Not bad given all the shooting that went on.

After asking around a bit I managed to track down Helix and our analyst team in what appeared to be the office of the accountant in charge of the operation. As with most criminal operations focusing on making money, most of the relevant evidence was probably going to be found there.

The small room was pretty cramped since Helix was there with Agent Herrera, his field analyst, who I’d heard being called Mossman, my field analyst, Auburn Reinke, and a youngish kid who I didn’t recognize but assumed to be Samson’s field analyst.

I’d passed a vending machine in the hallway, presumably one of the cover company’s offerings, and it appeared that Auburn had bought some popcorn out of it, which she was now trying to convince Helix to pop for her.

“It’s important,” she was saying, “to have something that crunches when you’re doing mathmatical analysis.”

“Then you should have bought some potato chips.” Helix put his hands on his hips, an action that would be totally lost on someone like Auburn, who suffered from Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t process body language much better than I could read facial expressions. “I’m not a microwave.”

“Potato chips are only for decoding messages.” Auburn’s tone suggested that everyone should know that.

“Just pop the popcorn,” I said, sidling up behind the skinny kid, who was shuffling papers back and forth with Mossman so that they made weird patterns. “She’ll never get off your back if you don’t.”

Helix sighed and took the bag of popcorn. Then he pushed past his supervisor and out the door. I glanced at Herrera. “Where’s he going?”

“I think there’s a microwave in the lounge a couple of doors back,” she said with a hint of amusement in her voice. “I don’t know as he can regulate temperatures enough to pop a bag of popcorn without burning through the bag.”

“Auburn, did you look over the records here already?” I asked.

“She glanced at them,” the skinny kid started to say, “but-”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them.” Auburn sat down in the room’s only chair and slouched there. She didn’t understand body language or facial expressions and she didn’t use them, which actually made it easier for me to understand her, since I’ve always been bad at seeing them. “They get guns from drugs and sell them back to drug people. Waste of money for the druggers, but makes these guys money. The van was already theirs.”

There was a moment of silence as the room processed that. While I’m sure Helix and Samson had competent analysts, Auburn was an honest to goodness getman, in the same mold as the original. The Man From Gettysburg had been a single-minded, relentless genius who set out to destroy both sides of a conflict that killed all three of his sons. He nearly killed both Corporal Sumter and Shenandoah more than once and stopping him eventually required the assistance of Fog of War, who supposedly brought a plan crafted by Robert E. Lee himself. Even then the original getman only got caught and hung because he was over seventy. He claimed to have thought of a way out of the trap set for him but lacked the strength to carry it out.

And Auburn? She may have suffered from a weird way of looking at the world, and had an even harder time making herself understood, but she also had a photographic memory and incredible reasoning skills. Sometimes I wonder if she’s not as dangerous as the original getman simply because she hasn’t, or can’t, experience the same kind of traumas as he did.

To avoid thinking about such cheery subjects I asked, “If you had all that figured out, why did you want popcorn?”

“Wanted to double check.”

Of course. Self esteem was not one of her strong points.

“I see,” the skinny kid said. “There’s no record of purchase for the van anywhere in the last month of records. But I don’t know why that makes her say they already had the van…”

“Because all this stuff came up ‘with drugs’, which means from Mexico,” Helix’s analyst replied, the papers in his hands ignored as he stared off into space. “It had to come up through Texas and the south. This place is part of a network based in the south – remember, the write-up on the two talents here came from our southern offices.”

“Yeah, I remember,” the kid said. “What’s significant about that?”

For once, I was following the analyst’s logic. “It’s significant because Circuit always works in such a way as to minimize Helix’s impact on his operations. The South’s Senior Special Liaison hates him, won’t let him operate in his jurisdiction. If Circuit wanted to set up a money-making operation, or just start assembling material for that overthrow of the government he’s supposedly plotting, what better place to do it than the one part of the country his archrival isn’t allowed to work in?”

“Oh…” The sound of the light dawning for the kid. “So when he winds up with a van he can’t or doesn’t want to repair instead of abandoning it he arranges to sell it through a satellite operation.”

I frowned at that. When the kid put it that way, the whole theory suddenly sounded wrong. “Didn’t Voorman or Samson say something about Circuit having enough armor plating to manufacture replacement parts? Why wouldn’t he want to repair the van?”

“Because he didn’t just build one van.” Helix tossed Auburn the popped back of popcorn as he walked back into the room, “He’s got several. There’s this whole story behind it, it’s got to do with auto plant closings in Detroit and one of the most absurd cons I’ve ever heard of, but we’re pretty sure he’s got half a dozen of the things, maybe as many as ten. For that guy, anything worth doing is worth doing on a grand scale. He may not have gotten his hands on enough plating to build all of them and have resources left over for spare parts.”

“You’re sure about that?” The kid asked.

“Reasonably. That’s the conclusion Mona came to. You can ask her-” Helix caught himself and sighed, running a hand over his face. “Never mind. There’s a write up about it somewhere, I’m sure. It was never proved, but it was as likely as not. That’s how we knew what VINs we should look for when checking out the van here.”

“What’s important,” Herrera said, putting a comforting hand on Helix’s shoulder, “is that we have a potential lead into Circuit’s organization on a scale we’ve never had before. I want all this sorted and boxed and back at the offices by this time tomorrow. The more people we have looking at this, the better.”

Helix nudged the skinny kid with his elbow. “Movsesian, I want you and Darryl to sit down and-”

“He resigned,” Auburn said. Helix stared at her silently and for once she took the cue and went on. “The day after you left for Omaha he handed in his resignation and left town. I haven’t heard where he went. Agent Philmore is interim head of Analysis, Clark could talk to him-”

“He’s never worked any of Circuit’s cases,” Helix snapped. There was no doubt he was pissed. Not at the kid, Movsesian, or Auburn but still angry above and beyond his grumpy norm. “Try Lightning Cage’s old field analyst, Williams. Go over all the accounting stuff here, see if it matches what he’s done in the past and if you can trace it back to any of his past operations. I’ll give you the name of a contact in the CIA, tell them to see if they can get it back to Morocco. This time we’re blowing the lid off his whole damn network.”

I reached out to give Helix’s shoulder a squeeze, thought better of it, and settled for saying, “Take it easy, big guy. He’s finally made a serious mistake. We’ve never caught anyone from his organization in a position to talk to us before, never caught any talents that worked for him. Definitely never found this much evidence in one place before. It’s only a matter of time before we get him.”

“Assuming that this organization is actually part of Circuit’s. That’s not proven yet,” Mossman said.

“Duly noted.” Helix sighed and cracked his knuckles, then slumped against the wall and shook his head. “I almost hope it’s not. Circuit wouldn’t be this careless if he didn’t have something big in the works. It’s a race now. If we win, we catch him.”

“And what happens if he wins?” Herrera asked.

“I don’t know,” Helix said. “But it’ll keep me awake at night. That’s for sure.”

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Naming Right

Posted by natechen on

Names are tricky business. The name of your story tells prospective readers a lot about it. By the same token, the way you name the characters in that story says many things about them. How you choose character names is at once complicated and simple.

Now some people might say that the name you get when you’re born doesn’t really say a whole lot about you, so why should fictional characters be named any differently?

The answer, of course, is because they are fictional characters. Fiction does aim to replicate real life to an extent, but it also aims to tell a story that evokes an emotional response from its readers. One of the biggest ways fiction connects with its readers is through its characters, and that means every aspect of the character must be chosen to maximize the reader’s reactions. That includes how the characters are named.

So what kind of things should you think about when naming characters?

First, you have to like the relationship between the character and the name. This is not exactly the same thing as liking the name you give your character, although that certainly helps. It’s entirely possible you will want to create a character who’s name is a loathsome thing because the character is not that nice (or they are nice and you want to create some irony, more on this later.) What you have to do is love what your character’s name is saying about your character.

So the next thing to do is find a name that actually says something about the character you are naming. For example, in the Project Sumter stories Teresa Herrera is a young Hispanic woman who acts as a calming, more positive foil to Helix’s sometimes cynical and always temperamental personality. Naming her after a famous, nearly sainted member of the Catholic church does a couple of things. First, the Hispanic community and Catholicism are closely linked, so it speaks to her culture. Second, it emphasizes her approach to life and highlights the contrast between her and Helix. The inverse of this would have been to give her a name that contrasted starkly with the idea of compassion and empathy, such as Ayn (for Ayn Rand.) Such a name would have been weird and highly ironic given her personality.

Be careful playing around with ironic naming, though. A character’s name is what the reader is going to see every time your character comes into the story. If the character is a big enough part of the story their name may come up so often that their name ceases to be ironic and starts putting the character at odds with itself, destroying the impact rather than enhancing it.

One way to get around this problem is nicknames or titles, ways of being identified that the character has earned through previous actions or that they have been assigned by people who know who they are. Of course, the talented people in Project Sumter’s files are a perfect example of this. Double Helix’s codename comes from his long line of ancestors who worked with the Project – the double helix being the shape of DNA and thus heredity. Likewise, the incredible stability vector shifts have results in their being named after mountain ranges, beginning with Shenandoah and continuing up through Aluchinskii Massif. Nicknames let a character have an ironic or just plain meaningless given name but still be known to the reader and other characters in a more appropriate fashion.

Finally, it sometimes helps to build the identity of your setting if you respect certain naming conventions. For example, the patronymic is an old, reliable way of coming up with last names in European cultures, so choosing to use it extensively is a good way to give a sense of cultural continuity in a story. Likewise, Project Sumter codenames tend to be abstract, chosen more to be cryptic than to be impressive, since it’s a secret government organization. This helps set a Sumter talent apart from the average superhero. Loose naming conventions like this will help build the identity of the story through the names of it’s leading characters.

Of course any story, regardless of length, benefits from having someone named Sam in it.

Seriously.

There’s more to naming characters than just flipping through a book of baby names or hitting up a few websites. Everything from saying the name out loud so you can hear it’s cadence and tone to considering how important a character is, and thus how awesome his name should be, goes into the process. It’s important that you like the name, that it be fairly easy to remember and that it make a good impression on your readers. But more than that, for a fiction writer, the name is powerful and has to be chosen with care. May you find the process a little easier with these things in mind.

Cool Things: Wearing the Cape

Posted by natechen on

Superheroes are a uniquely American thing, one of the few cultural phenomenon that definitely started here. It should come as no surprise to us that they’ve slowly leaked out of comic books and into TV and movies, and the national consciousness. And now they’re starting to stake a claim in the realm of written fiction.

While few superhero novels can claim the august status of literary works they do offer the superhero archetypes an opportunity to be explored with more time and depth than any other medium. Austin Grossman took an early stab at this when he wrote Soon I Will Be Invincible and others have since followed in his footsteps.

Marion G. Harmon’s Wearing the Cape is an interesting addition to this small but growing genre of fiction.

It focuses on Hope Corrigan, who becomes the superhero Astra after nearly getting crushed by a falling bridge. Like all origin stories, Wearing the Cape shares a few of the problems Astra has with her identity, secrecy and changed living arrangements. But for the most part the story is focused on Hope’s sense of responsibility, her problematic relationship with her new powers and identity as Astra and her odd relationship with a person who calls himself the Teatime Anarchist and can somehow travel through time.

It’s that last bit that makes things really interesting, if you were wondering.

Wearing the Cape does more than just tackle the basic issues of identity and responsibility that most superhero stories focus on. It also pokes a little into the structure of superheroes and society and how people might react to having superpowered individuals around for over a decade. Also interesting is Harmon’s decision to give all superheroes the same basic source for their abilities – a strange, unexplained occurrence a decade ago that left the world without power for a few seconds and the latent potential for superpowers in its wake. Since “The Event” people exposed to life threatening situations have a chance of awakening superpowers.

Life in the world of the Cape is interesting. Capes (which is to say, superheroes) have to deal with supervillain gangs, drunk and disorderly supers, legal woes and more. One of the most interesting ideas are origin chasers, people who willingly undergo life threatening circumstances such as stepping off a building or in front of a truck in order to awaken superpowers. This does not always end well.

But at the core of Wearing the Cape is a story about actions and consequences. As soon as Hope puts on Astra’s cape she’s in a different world, and how she deals with the heroes and villains she meets is as important as what powers she uses in dealing with them. Harmon does an excellent job weaving Hope’s actions and their consequences into a story that is fun and exciting.

While superhero stories are not everyone’s cup of tea, Wearing the Cape is definitely an accessible and enjoyable one. I recommend it, particularly if you’re interested in writing in the genre yourself.

Water Fall: Echoes and Avalanches

Posted by natechen on

Five Weeks, One Day Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Massif

It takes a lot of hard, boring work and careful fact checking before cops can go from getting a tip to getting a warrant. Life for those of us working for Project Sumter is complicated by the fact that we are not technically a law enforcement agency (what we are, technically speaking, is pretty vague). If we want to raid a place or make an arrest we actually have to coordinate the operation with some branch of government that can legally do those things. On my team, most of that work is usually handled by Harriet or Dominic Screeton, my tactical team leader, so I spent the most of the time between getting sifu’s tip and the resulting sting working with Amplifier on various parts of her application process.

Mostly it was the formal address to the Senate Committee, which is one of the two big hurdles every talent joining the Project has to face. But once Dominic started talking about the kind of operation we were looking at I decided I also wanted to bring her along on that. The field stress test is the other big hurdle we all have to go through and the sooner Amp took her first crack at it the better it would be for all of us.

Most of Dominic’s law enforcement contacts are with the state police, which turned out to be fortuitous since they were already aware of the group that had wound up with Circuit’s damaged van. They seemed to be some kind of low grade arms dealers, mostly working with drug dealers and the like. I’m not sure how they planned to market an armored delivery van, other than possibly as a way to ensure drug shipments never got hijacked. Regardless, they apparently couldn’t find a buyer as easily as they thought.

The operation was shaping up to be a kind of sting. We’d give the State Police an excuse to crack down on the operation by suggesting they serve a warrant that accused them of accessory to assault. After all, the van had been last used by Circuit, who had merrily shot at Agent Samson at least eight times in the course of his escape from the Diversy Street incident. Now these guys were trying to sell it rather than turning it in as evidence of a crime. Even if we couldn’t make the original charges stick with what we found when we raided their place the State Police were bound to find something else they could charge the arms dealers with once they’d searched the building. The police could close down the death merchants, we’d get our van. Wins all around.

If this sounds like a lot of carefully cultivated self interest, well, welcome to my world. Helix sometimes wonders if keeping all our secrets is worth the time we waste on this kind of thing. I just try not to worry about it too much.

Especially when I had to worry about getting Amplifier through a crash course in field work, which is what we spent the rest of our time working on. When Helix first stumbled across her, Amp was working with a couple of friends, trying her hand at vigilante work. They’d been smarter than most, investing in body armor and some basic communication gear, but Amp proved to be woefully untrained in the use of firearms and teamwork, and she was still far below the basic conditioning threshold we like our agents to have. On the other hand, we weren’t planning to just throw her on the front lines and by the time we had all our paperwork squared away Harriet and Dominic agreed she was readyish for the field.

I walked into the briefing early that morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of the files we had on the arms dealers in the other. It wasn’t a big time operation but there was enough money and people behind it that we could be looking at some serious opposition and I wanted to be sure exactly what we might be dealing with before we went in. While bullets don’t pose much danger to me, just about anything chemical works just fine and I can be stunned by a flash bang same as anyone else.

I was looking over the speculation on whether the folks we were about to tangle with had any – the state police were fairly sure they didn’t – so at first I didn’t notice the slight change in the air when I entered the briefing room. After all  this file wasn’t in Harriet’s special 24-point font, so I had to hold it pretty close just to read it properly. With the paper practically plastered to my face there wasn’t that much of the room around me visible so it took a few seconds for it to register; but the way things are moving around me always clicks sooner or later.

“Helix?” Once the papers were out of the way I could see that yes, he was in fact sitting at the table. Well, not exactly sitting, more like slumped in a chair with his head resting on his arms.

“Hi, Massif,” he said, voice muffled. He lifted one hand and waved it in a vaguely welcoming way. “What brings you here?”

“I have a morning briefing.” I dropped the papers onto the table and took another sip of coffee. “What brings you here?”

Helix raised his head to look at me. Even though his talent being present made it easier to see through the fog of random movement in the air I couldn’t read much in his expression beyond general exhaustion. “I have a morning briefing, too. Someone must have goofed up.” He fumbled in his coat pocket for his phone and eventually found it. “I am not in the mood for this…”

“I would never have guessed. You only look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

He snorted out something like a laugh as he thumbed buttons on his phone. “Just flew back into town last night. Musta put in a hundred hours in the last five days. Jet lagged, cranky, in the wrong briefing room.”

I shook my head and focused on finishing my coffee. When Helix gets in a mood like that it’s best to stay out of his way. “Wait.” I paused with my coffee halfway to my lips. “You went out of town? Why?”

“Circuit hijacked some army trucks. There’s a write-up about it coming.” He lifted his phone to his ear and waited a second or two. “Teresa? What room is our briefing supposed to be in?” A pause and then, “That’s what I thought.”

He hung up without saying any thing else and looked back at me. “I think you’re in the wrong place.”

“Who?” We both looked over at the door, where a familiar, vertigo inducing knot of impossible was walking in.

“Hey, Sam,” Helix said, putting his head back down on his arms. “Don’t tell me they triple booked this room or something.”

“Not that I’ve heard.” Agent Samson took a seat at the table. He hadn’t brought anything with him but he still seemed to take up half the table. I unconsciously inched a few steps away. “How’s things coming with the van follow-up?”

“Well actually-”

“Helix!” Amplifier practically bounced into the room. Helix jerked upright, sending his own cup of coffee teetering across the table. Samson caught it before tipped over entirely. Sadly he couldn’t also grab Helix before he tipped out of his chair when Amp wrapped him in a bear hug so I had to grab them both before our senior talent got sidelined with broken ribs or something.

Have I ever mentioned that Helix has serious ideas about personal space? I think it has something to do with the way he can only affect temperature in the area immediately around him; and I’m not sure if he just doesn’t like other people’s body heat being there, messing with stuff or if he’s worried about someone getting hurt. Regardless, he wormed out of Amp’s hug in record time. As he started to straighten out his suit he said, “Good morning, Amplifier. What brought that on?”

“You’ve barely said ‘hi’ for the last two weeks!” She protested. “Where have you been?”

“Out of town.” He took his coffee back from Samson and sucked down about half of it. “What is going on here? Don’t tell me there’s supposed to be four meetings in one room.”

“Amp’s getting ready for her field stress test,” I said quickly, trying to get a sense of where all this was going. Helix was right, it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for us all to be here at the same time. “She’s actually supposed to sit in on my briefing. What are you here for?”

“Dunno.” He tossed off the last of his coffee and looked at the empty cup glumly. “Teresa just called me up this morning and told me we had a meeting here.” He glanced at Samson. “Pastor? What brings you here? Something to do with your media notoriety?”

The big man sighed. I’d heard about his appearance on television and I was still trying to get over the idea of Project Sumter’s personnel being interviewed on the news, but I had to admit it did seem like a good angle for a missing persons case to take. It’s just that we so rarely investigate those and. when we do, there are other considerations to take into account.

Like secrecy.

The two actually don’t work that well together. We’d probably have left the Elizabeth Dawson case alone if it hadn’t been for her father and the fact that pretty much everyone was sure Circuit had something to do with it. But our point agent on that case didn’t really look happy with the notoriety his part had brought him. “We’re probably going to have to pull a team of analysts together to go over all the tips that newscast has provided but no, that’s not why I’m here this morning. We’re here because Massif’s team has finally tracked down one of the leads we handed off to them.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, waving at Amplifier with the files I’d just been reading. “That’s why we’re here. But what about you two?”

“It’s going to be a joint operation,” Voorman announced. We all, except for maybe Samson, turned in surprise. I’d been expecting Harriet to be leading this briefing. Helix had no doubt anticipated having Agent Herrera leading his briefing. But Voorman closed the conference room door behind him and locked it, so he obviously wasn’t expecting anyone else. “In case you are wondering, I’ll be briefing you talented people, Agent Herrera is in charge of field analysts and Agent Verger is going to be coordinating the tactical teams.”

Helix threw me a glance, something I caught more as a quick movement then a meeting of the eyes. He asked, “A joint operation?”

Amplifier cleared her throat. “I take it that doesn’t happen very often?”

“It hasn’t happened in over seventy years,” Helix said. “Not since Project Sumter was part of the war effort. Getting the tactical support and complicating factors of various talents to work together smoothly is very difficult. I’m not sure this is a good idea, Voorman.”

“We’ve been considering some revisions to normal procedures over the last few weeks,” he said. “And by we, I mean certain Senior Liaisons and the Senate committee. They’ve decided this is a good test case.”

That got an inaudible grumble from Helix. At least, I couldn’t make it out and I don’t think Voorman did, but from the way Amp snickered it probably wasn’t very nice. “Sir, with all due respect, why this one?” I asked. “The write up from the state police suggest there’s only twenty or so of these guys, and there’s no reason to expect all of them to be there at any given time. I think between us and the police we can handle this.”

“And I would agree with you. Except we received these from the South two days ago.” He set a pair of files on the desktop and pulled glossies out of them. At first he made to put them up on the whiteboard that dominated one wall in the room then he caught himself and handed them to me, apparently remembering I wouldn’t be able to see them otherwise just in time.

I squinted at the pictures as Voorman went on. “These two people are known criminals with unusual talents. The man is Static Shock, a fuse box, and the woman is Jane Hammer, a vector trap.”

“Vector trap?” Helix sounded as confused as I was. “What’s a vector trap?”

“You don’t know?” Amplifier asked, incredulous.

“There’s sixty-two known talents and some are rarer than others,” Helix said defensively. “I can’t have met or heard stories about them all.”

“I’ve never heard of vector traps either,” I said, passing the photos back to Voorman.

He put them up on the board as he said, “I’ll be covering the capabilities of both of talents, as not everyone here has heard them before.” I knew he was referring to Amplifier there, since I was pretty sure the rest of us were familiar with Circuit’s abilities. “But Agent Massif, I hope you took special note of Jane Hammer. We’re expecting you to act as a counter to her abilities.”

“Right.” Just as soon as I knew what those were I could get started. Unfortunately, Jane had looked pretty unremarkable – a brunette woman in ratty jeans and jacket that were either very old or very expensive. “I don’t suppose we’ve got any kind of way for me to pick her out of the crowd?”

Voorman pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, loosing very little of height in the process. “From what I hear she’ll be almost as distinctive as Agent Samson here, at least in your eyes. Her rap sheet says she’s also six feet tall, so that should help the rest of you identify her out.”

“Lovely,” Helix muttered.

“But all this is just in the event that the situation deteriorates,” Samson added. “I’ll be praying that things don’t go that far. They might choose to simply surrender once we make ourselves known. Assuming these two are even there.”

“How often does that happen?” Amplifier asked.

“Sometimes,” Helix said, voice grim. “But not often enough.”

——–

A weapons ring would be the perfect kind of thing to run out of an abandoned warehouse, or at least that’s what you’d think, right? So of course this particular group decided to hunker down in the back of an office complex. As nearly as we could tell the front half of the building was devoted to a legitimate business that managed vending machines. The constant in and out of concessions served as a cover for moving the other, more exotic wares that were sold out of the back.

The building all this happened in was a large, L-shaped three story structure. From the blueprints on file at city hall, most of the storage space in the structure was on the ground floor in the short part of the L. There was a small loading dock there with enough space to hold a half a dozen regular vehicles or a couple of semis at a time. We figured that was where the van we wanted would be kept.

Now since the van was merchandise the dealers had been looking to sell the state police had decided the easiest way to handle things was to pose as a group of people interested in buying the it. The police had handled that side of things through their own channels but, at our insistence, they’d agreed to pair me with the man that went to check out the vehicle. The rest of the Project people on hand would hang back with the police team and wait for our signal to sweep in and round up anyone we managed to catch on site once we’d confirmed that yes, this was the vehicle we’d come for. If it wasn’t our warrants would start to look a lot flimsier in court.

And yes, if we want to maintain good relations with the police that is something we have to think about.

What really struck me as funny about all this was that buying what was basically a small APC from a back alley arms dealer turned out to be a lot like buying any other used car. The dealer rep who brought the van out to the parking lot for us to look at spent most of his time talking, detailing the van’s gas mileage, it’s good condition, it’s spacious interior (which looked like it had been made that spacious when a cut-rate chop shop ripped all the innards out in one hour’s time) and, of course, the bulletproof plating. In turn, the undercover cop who was handling most of the deal pushed for a lower price and asked to take the van for a test drive, a cover so we could check the VIN. If it wasn’t the right van our warrant wasn’t valid.

And me? I wound up standing around and looking tough, which is fine since I’m a pretty big guy, at least vertically. The important part here was to make sure my temporary partner didn’t get hurt, there were only the two of us and if things got hot it would be a minute or two before the rest of our teams got there. So when he climbed into the van to check the VIN I moved so that my body blocked most of the door.

The rep and his two bodyguards were just starting to get curious about what the cop could be doing when he reached out and tapped me on the shoulder. I nodded back to him and he slammed the van door closed. One of the guards took a step forward to protest but I shoved a palm to his chest and brought him up short. With my other hand I pulled out a badge and said, “Gentlemen, you’re under arrest for accessory to the crime of assault.”

Dealer rep and his other bodyguard exchanged a look and the rep said, “You’re serious?”

“You have the right to remain-”

The bodyguard pulled a pistol of some kind and shot me before I could get any further and I assumed that pretty much ended any possibility of reading them their rights, or their coming peaceably for that matter. The rep had already turned towards the building and started yelling “Five-Oh!” when I took the other bodyguard, who had tried to back away when his partner started shooting, by the wrist and threw him to the ground.

The guy with the gun just stared at me for a second, then fired three more times. He only hit me twice and I felt more than saw the spikes of momentum bleed out of the bullets, through my body and down into the pavement at my feet once they made contact with my skin. Since the guard I had thrown probably had a gun too I kept hold of his wrist and used my position of superior leverage to quickly wrench his arm out of socket with a disturbing popping noise.

With his dominate arm out of service I figured I could focus on the other two, who were now staring at me like I was… well, what I was. Some kind of freak.

They bolted for the building as soon as I took one careful, measured step towards them. Unfortunately, since keeping at least one foot on the ground is a survival skill for me I had to keep that pace and let them get a good ways ahead of me. I’m told the slow, deliberate approach can be very unnerving to watch but I’ll tell you this, it’s frustrating to do. Not only did the other two guys get back to the building way ahead of me, at least two other people started shooting at me from the windows. I knew I couldn’t get hurt by it but they were ruining a perfectly good shirt and it was obnoxious. Plus the bullets were hot and they burned when they got stuck under my clothes.

I did my best to brush them out as I went but quickly wound up with bigger concerns on my hands. I’d covered about half the distance between the van and the building when something dropped off the roof and hit the ground, becoming a very bright knot of momentum that rocketed towards me like a cheetah after it’s prey.

The vector trap had arrived.

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Writing Men: Objectivity

Posted by natechen on

It’s time to talk about writing men a little bit more. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, clicking that link will take you to the introduction of the idea a little while ago. Feel free to catch up and check back when you’re done. We good? Okay.

According to Merriam-Webster’s, objectivity refers to a lack of favoritism for one side or another. Throw out this definition, at least until you finish reading this.

When writing men, objectivity refers to the way we love to have goals and seek to fulfill them.

Now some of you out there might object to this by claiming that a lot of men today seem kind of aimless, just drifting around life with no real goal in mind. I’m not going to argue with that, because I’ve met my share of guys who sound exactly like that. However, that just means that they have little interest in life as a whole, if you observe their activities you’ll start to see the objective theme playing you.

For example, the vast majority of men who are drifting through life probably have an obsession of some sort with video game(s). Most video games are objective driven affairs – clear this level, defeat those enemies. In fact, there’s a special term for these kinds of objectives in videogame land: Achievements. And people become obsessed with them.

Even the most free-form video games become objective driven for most guys. Take the bizarrely popular Minecraft, for example. It’s a game that lets people gather blocks and build things out of them. In my day, we called these Legos. The appeal of Minecraft is that it offers an infinite number blocks that are basically free. Some people will use them to recreate famous buildings, others will set out to build the Ultimate Fortress, some people want a life sized model of the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701 no bloody A, B, C or D).

So even the seemingly aimless men you meet actually have goals, they’re just goals that have been provided by someone else, or goals with little connection to reality. Whether it’s wealth, enlightenment or the World Record for time spent on a unicycle, the odds are that 99% of the men you meet have some sort of objective they’re actively pursuing at any given time. What does that mean for the way you write men in your stories?

  • Men are pursuing goals. Given today’s subject matter that probably sounds obvious but it bears repeating.

  • The goal isn’t necessarily something a man will talk about. Maybe they feel embarrassed about it. Maybe they don’t want anyone else to try and get there first. Maybe they haven’t given their own motivations enough thought to properly articulate them. Regardless, the fact that a man doesn’t mention or understand his goal doesn’t mean he isn’t pursuing one.

  • The objective has a high level of importance, possibly being the most important thing in their life. Men are far more willing to obsess over and sacrifice for their goals than most women. This is why they frequently wind up running businesses, making massive scientific breakthroughs, setting out on quests for vengeance and destroying their families and lives in the process.

  • The above doesn’t mean that men never take a break. In fact, most men have multiple objectives and balancing them can become a goal in and of itself. With the exception of the most obsessive, men are okay with taking a breather now and then. Particularly when there’s nothing more that can be done to advance their project at the moment. But they’re rarely drifting aimlessly. They’re just pursuing a different goal.

  • Men will evaluate their actions first and foremost in terms of their objective. This is why doing something crazy risky like jumping over a spike pit is only stupid to a guy if it doesn’t result in the man getting something of value in exchange. The actions of other men are also evaluated in terms of the impact they have on goals, both the observer and the observed.

  • Men evaluate other men by their goals. The things a man values and pursues are usually viewed as the foundation of his character, at least by other men. This is why men who share interests tend to get along so well even when their personalities seem to have little in common.

If you’ve been reading this with a discerning eye so far you’ve probably already figured out that being objective centric is a double edged sword. Just having something you hope to accomplish and putting effort into it doesn’t mean the goal is good or bad. But when the goal is good, that focus makes it more likely that the objective will be reached.

To men, accomplishing a goal is something to be desired. It’s a foundation of who we are. So when writing men, remember to give them their objectivity.

Original Art: I’ve Seen The Sun

Posted by natechen on

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven’t listened to the new album by Five Iron Frenzy, Engine of a Million Plots, then today’s post will not make a whole lot of sense, since it’s a drawing inspired by the song “I’ve Seen The Sun” from that album. Of course, you might be able to enjoy it anyways…

TsunamivsUmbrella

Who’s that holding the umbrella? Probably Jack’s smirking revenge.

Yeah, all this makes more sense if you’ve listened to the album. So what are you waiting for?

Water Fall: Loose Wires

Posted by natechen on

Five Weeks, Three Days Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Circuit

I climbed out of the back of the van, wiping my hands on a rag. Davis was a couple of steps behind me. “The tweaks to the maglev relays are good, but if we add in your new toy it’s going to necessitate rewiring the whole vehicle. Again.” He tossed his own rag back into the van without bothering to look where it landed. “I’m not saying that it’s a bad move, but it might be easier if we just pulled out the computer and communication gear from them. That would solve most of the load issues.”

“That’s fine.” I tucked my own rag into the back pocket of my coveralls. “I’m not entirely sure we’re going to be able to keep these vans after the operation. It’s best we leave as little nonessential equipment on them as possible.”

“And it helps us with another problem.” Wallace, my mechanic, was still poking around in the back of the vehicle. “I’m not sure that thing you want us to install would fit with everything else you want to bring along. If we take all the IT stuff out that should help with the crowding some. Even so, it’s going to be a tight squeeze. Are you sure we need it?”

“It’s an EMP-countermeasure, Wally,” Davis said in exasperation. “If they want to keep using any of the electronic gear after clearing the perimeter they’re going to need it.”

“And after all the trouble I went to get it, I’d hate to leave it behind,” I added. “How soon can we start duplicating it?”

“The lab has a preliminary knock off ready for testing,” Davis said. “If you want we can-”

“Excuse me, sir.” Simeon carefully picked his way through the garage. “Do you have a moment?”

I sighed. There was always something and we were getting ready for out biggest job yet, but the constant interruptions were beginning to wear on my patience. “Yes, Simeon. What is it?”

“New development on the news, sir. I thought you’d want to know.” He offered me a tablet. “I don’t know to what extent it will affect your current plans, but fore the long term it may be relevant.”

Wallace took Davis by the arm and gently pulled him away saying, “We’ll get started pulling all that computer gear out of the vans.”

“The auxiliary vans, Wallace,” I said absently. “Not the good vans. We’ve lost one of those already, we’re going to need all the mileage we can get out of the others.”

“You got it, boss.”

I acknowledged Wallace with a grunt, most of my attention on the tablet Simeon had just handed me. It was cued up to a news clip. The reporter was interviewing a familiar face.

Pastor Manuel Rodriguez looked a lot different from when I’d first met him. Then, he’d been dressed more like a janitor than a man of the cloth, his short sleeves revealing tattoos that would have been at home in any ghetto or barrio in the city. But for this interview he was wearing a conservative suit and tie that wouldn’t have been out of place on an office worker or a Sumter agent.

Neither appearance hinted at what truly made him dangerous: The way he sided with the establishment and backed it with inexplicable physical strength. I had personally witnessed him throwing a desk that must have weighed at least a hundred pounds two city blocks. He’d then ripped the back door off of one of my armored vans one handed.

Actually, in terms of total destructive potential nothing he’s done holds a candle to someone like Helix, who can melt concrete if he wants to, but he’s also inhumanly fast and, unlike Helix, who’s powers take some time to get going and are kind of unwieldy, Rodriguez is contained and fast. On top of that, I have no idea how his talent works. I was not happy to see him on the news and I was even less happy once he started talking to the reporter.

“I’ve spent the last twenty years working with the misguided youth of the city,” he said. “When I was young I made my share of bad decisions. Whether it’s dealing drugs, getting into fights or running away from home, many young people act out simply because they’ve never seen a better example. As a pastor, it’s my job to present the example of Jesus Christ as that better alternative. But when-”

“If you just wanted me to know about Rodriguez, I kind of guessed he would wind up in this sooner or later,” I said to Simeon. “If someone with his background and talents wasn’t involved with Project Sumter somehow I’d have been very surprised.”

“That’s not it, sir,” Simeon said, directing my attention back to the video feet. “Look, it’s coming up now.”

The reporter had asked the pastor something during that brief exchange. Now the video showed a series of pictures as Rodriguez’s voice answered. The first half dozen or so were of Hangman – or rather, Elizabeth Dawson – over the last year or so of her college career. “The Senator spent quite a bit of time here in town last month and it’s not unreasonable to assume his daughter might have come down here to visit him as a surprise.”

Anyone who thought that obviously didn’t know them very well, but then it did sound well enough to the general public. “Over the years I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the community,” Rodriguez continued. “And when kids drop off the radar for whatever reason and worry their families there are people I talk to. I’ve found that people are more willing to speak to a leader in the church than the police. In this case, they were also willing look through pictures.”

I sucked in a breath as the pictures changed from Hangman as a graduate in cap and gown to pictures of her in Millennium Park. She wasn’t actually the focus of them, it looked like she’d just wound up in the background of a picture or two, but it was definitely her. In the first she was seated by an artificial stream, kicking her feet in the water. “You can see Ms. Dawson here, in Millennium Park, the day her disappearance was reported, that’s a day and a half after she was last seen by anyone who knew her.”

The next picture was timestamped a bit later in the day. I mentally cursed digital cameras and their wealth of useful information. There were some days it felt like technology companies were deliberately trying to make my job harder. “In one of the photos shared with us you can see Ms. Dawson speaking with an unidentified man in a suit. Investigators are beginning to-”

I paused the playback and looked up at Simeon. “How complete of a description do they have?”

“Not a very good one, sir,” Simeon hastened to assure me. “You were only photographed from the back and that’s not your natural hair, so all they really have is your build. But they know someone was with Ms. Dawson shortly before she disappeared.”

“Not that they didn’t suspect that already,” I muttered. “But now they can definitively prove it. Was there anything else of importance? Other than the fact that Rodriguez is involved with this somehow.”

“Somehow?” Simeon quirked his eyebrows. “You don’t think he’s directly connected with Project Sumter?”

“Oh, sure. He has to be.” I shrugged and handed the tablet back to Simeon. If there had been something else I knew he would have brought it up immediately instead of asking about Rodriguez. “But the fact that he can be about it so publicly is annoying and unexpected. As is the fact that he’d be working on Hangman’s case rather than mine.”

“To answer you directly,” Simeon said, tucking the tablet under his arm, “no, there’s nothing else of note in this news broadcast. But I thought you would like to know all the same.”

I rubbed my chin absently, trying to focus my thoughts. “We need to get the media’s focus on something else.”

“That would be convenient,” Simeon agreed. “I don’t suppose you have a way to do that on hand?”

“In fact, I have a few thoughts on how we might do just that. Let me try and decide how to best implement them.” I refocused on the present. “If that’s all, I should really-”

“With all due respect, sir, it’s not quite.” Simeon hesitated for a minute, which was surprising enough, then he took the tablet, turned it over in his hands and then firmly clamped them behind his back. “Sir, this may not be any of my business but have you spoken to Miss Dawson since you returned from your trip out west?”

After all the fidgeting I had expected something a little more significant than that. “Not since the after the fact analysis. I’ve been quite busy. My other persona had an appearance to make, the EMP-countermeasure needs-”

“Yes, sir, I’m aware of your schedule.” He didn’t outright say he had written it but it was implied in his tone. “But… Sir, do you remember what you said to me when you first hired me?”

“I was going to give you the biggest administrative challenge you’d ever faced?”

That got the ghost of a smile on Simeon’s typically serene face. “After that.”

I sighed. One of the reasons I rely on Simeon as much as I do is because I know he makes up for many of my weaknesses while also understanding me well enough to function as a proxy in most situations. Unfortunately he has this mysterious compulsion to try and fix my failings in his spare time. I’ve learned to suffer through it as part of the price of keeping his most excellent services.

And that means playing along with him when he wants me to. “You’re better at judging people than I am.”

“And as such, I am in charge of managing your staff.”

I glanced around the garage and sighed. “Perhaps we should move to my office for this conversation.”

“If you prefer,” Simeon said.

“I do.” The garage was on the ground level of the compound and my office was on the second floor so I headed towards the stairs on the far wall, Simeon walking beside me.

“Sir, I know it’s not your habit to overanalyze the history of your employees unless you think it has a direct bearing on your plans.”

He paused like he was expecting a response; but it was a very cryptic statement and I climbed half the flight of stairs before saying, “Okay, I don’t quite follow you. I know that, outside of Davis and maybe you, none of us are exactly ordinary. But what does that have to do with Hangman?”

Simeon nodded, like that was about the response he’d been expecting. “Sir, you are aware that her father’s stance on unusually gifted individuals is very… strict.”

“If you’re saying that her father is an idiot who believes natural talent, of any kind, is an offense of some kind then yes, I’m familiar with Senator Dawson’s stance.” I shrugged. “He takes the nature versus nurture conflict too seriously. If he really believes all we need to do to build the perfect society is crush human nature under a system of education that acknowledges no differences between people he’s crazy.”

“Maybe. But his insanity has had serious repercussions on his only child. After all, Miss Dawson demonstrated exceptional talent for mathematics and programing from a young age, an ability her father actively discouraged her from pursuing. Am I correct?”

I nodded, fishing around for the set of keys that would let me into the office and records part of the complex. With my abilities, electronic locks seem more like a liability that a properly built set of mechanical locks. “She had to teach herself, which only made her better at what she does, in my opinion.” I slipped the two keys into the door’s locks, one at waist height one at shoulder height, turned them and opened the door into the antechamber. “So on the whole, not a bad exchange.”

“Except she had to do it with no affirmation from her father. Children who have lacked a meaningful father figure in their lives have a tendency to seek a surrogate.”

I paused with the keys half out of the locks. “What, you mean me?”

“Well…” He shrugged, a distinctly uncharacteristic thing for him to do. “That’s the most immediate result of it, yes. But more than that, you told me she had ‘bought in’ to your ambitions.”

“In the long term, as she understands them, yes.” We were still in the open platform over the workshop and garage so I stepped into the antechamber and motioned Simeon in after me, then closed the door. Something made me keep my voice down despite the fact that we were alone in the small chamber, with the only exits being my office, the server room and back out into the main part of the complex. “I haven’t explained Operation Chainfall to her yet. Or the Thunderclap Gambit.”

“To say nothing of Thunderbird?”

“To say nothing of that.” I shrugged. “She is a very, very good analyst. She might have guessed at what Chainfall aims to do. Possibly even Thunderclap.”

SImeon nodded. “I guessed as much, so I can only assume you did as well, and find it to be acceptable. Are you going to tell her about Thunderbird?”

“Of course not. It’s not relevant.” I scowled. Hangman hadn’t been exactly thrilled when I’d held back information on our last jaunt but surely she understood I couldn’t tell her everything. I didn’t mind if she figured things out on her own, independently drawn conclusions aren’t nearly the liability my spelling things out could be. And I don’t like spreading deliberate disinformation among my own people, it cuts down on trust and makes running an efficient operation harder. “What does this have to do with Hangman?”

“You and Miss Dawson had significant disagreements about operational parameters after your first joint field effort, did you not?”

I rubbed my forehead for a minute, willing myself to be patient. For some reason I was getting fed up with Simeon’s roundabout approach. Normally he didn’t upset me at all. We had the best working dynamic of any two people in my organization. It could only be because I was getting so close to my endgame. “Okay. Yes, you’re right. She was impulsive, and it could have blown the whole operation if she got caught outside of the van. I don’t think she’s ready for field work yet, but that’s not her fault. She doesn’t have the experience Grappler and I have, or the upbringing Heavy did. We’ll just-”

“You’re missing the point, sir.” Simeon drummed his fingers absently on the side of the tablet he held. “You see, based on the… extreme measures Miss Dawson took to engineer a meeting with you, the way she’s behaved since you met, the time she’s spent in planning and analysis with you…”

I frowned. “You think she wasn’t sincere when she said she was joining for the cause?” Suddenly I stood straight as a new idea leapt into my mind fully formed. “Do you think she’s trying to get a picture of Thunderbird? Turn it over to her father and prove herself somehow?”

“No.” Simeon said it quickly and firmly. “No, I think she was entirely truthful about joining so that all people of talent could find the freedom to use their talents. From the time we’ve spent together it seems that’s all she’s ever wanted to do. You’ve given her that opportunity and you value her contributions. Not only that, you encourage them and try to help her be better at them.”

“So she’s loyal.”

“Loyal is not the word I would use, sir.”

I stared blankly at Simeon. He was waiting to be prompted again. “What word would you use, Mr. Delacroix?”

“I…” His mouth was open for a moment, then he closed it and cleared his throat before trying again. “Understand, I thought her behavior was odd at first. But I didn’t understand it until… Well, something was said to me that suggested it. Once I came to study the problem from that perspective it made more sense.”

“What perspective, Simeon?”

“Love, sir.” He sighed. “I believe that, at the very least, Miss Dawson has a very strong crush on you. Maybe her feelings are more mature than that, but I can’t say for sure right now.”

“What…” My voice trailed off as my brain tried to assimilate that idea. “Simeon, I’m at least fifteen years older than she is.”

“Thirteen years, two months actually.” He shrugged again and the motion made me dizzy. Or maybe it was just my head spinning. “Sir, in my experience that doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Especially to the kind of young woman who gets caught up in a romantic cause like the crusade you’re on.”

“Simeon, I’m trying to conquer North America, not save the world. What kind of woman-” I caught myself. As Simeon had just pointed out, he’s better at reading these kinds of situations than I am. Best to assume he was at least partially correct. “Fine. But, Simeon…” I shook my head. “That just means Thunderbird is…”

“Yes, I know.” He sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. I stiffened. “Sir, forgive me but I’m about to be very blunt and very personal.”

I stared at him a moment, wondering if I should just electrocute him and make a run for it. I’ve made more impulsive decisions. But they were all a long time ago, when Thunderbird was still a vague idea in the back of my head, not an endgame that was only months away. “Go ahead, Simeon.”

He nodded and seemed to gather himself up for the final push. “Sir, I’m telling you this mostly because you need to start taking it into account. If I’m right then yes, Miss Dawson is going to hate the ideas underpinning Thunderbird. But more than that, she’s going to actively try to insert herself into your plans. To get your attention and win your favor, regardless of what she knows.”

I nodded. “Yes, I can see that. And not speaking to her for several days after our last argument just because I have been busy is not going to be acceptable to her.”

“Agreed. But I’m sure you can find a way to deal with any fallout from that quickly enough. Assuming Miss Dawson hasn’t taken the initiative on that as well.” Simeon leaned a little closer and dropped his voice down to a murmur. “What I wanted to say is… I think you might need her.”

“Of course,” I said, baffled. “I’ve been relying on her data-”

“No, sir,” Simeon said, cutting me off. “As you’ve just said, your goal is to conquer a continent. Your reasons for doing it aren’t even all that selfish. But they’re still not something many are going to understand. One of the few who will has come and found you, and might even be interested in more than just helping out.”

He took his hand off my shoulder and stepped back, resuming a more normal tone. “I’ve seen you take on challenges and stress that would break a dozen lesser men, but even you must have some limits. And not even I really understand your motivations. If you want to see this through, a companion who does ‘get it’ is something you’re going to need. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, you should think about it.”

Having said his piece Simeon gave me a slight nod of the head and let himself back out. I didn’t really acknowledge him leaving, in fact I didn’t surface from my thoughts until a few minutes later. The whole idea just seemed so preposterous. I didn’t have time to think about romance, much less a romance as preposterous as wooing a woman a decade my junior.

In fact, without Simeon’s calm presence there to reinforce the idea it was starting to look truly absurd. But he might be right about the father figure idea. I did need to go and talk to Hangman, let her know I still valued her abilities in spite of her impulsive decisions in the field. I nodded to myself. I would do it right after checking a few things in my office.

So I unlocked my office door and let myself in to find Hangman sitting behind my desk, her feet up on the writing surface, fiddling with her laptop. 

“Hi, Circuit,” she said, putting her feet down as soon as she saw me come through the door. Then she fished her earbuds out and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. At least she probably hadn’t overheard the conversation out in the antechamber. “I wanted to talk to you.”

I felt a moment of sudden awkwardness, Simeon’s words still fresh in my mind. So instead of demanding to know how she had gotten into a locked office to which she didn’t have a key, or why she thought I would have time for her with all the other things on my plate or any of a dozen other potentially relevant questions, all I managed was, “Oh?”

She looked back down at her laptop. “I’ve been sorting back through all the jobs you, Grappler and Heavy have done in the last year.”

“Yes?” Another part of the far-flung Chainfall plan which she hadn’t been told about. Apparently she was still trying to run down the various elements of that on her own. “What about them?”

“Three bank jobs by you, focusing on electronic sabotage, five heists by Grappler where authorities are still trying to figure out how a catburgler could have climbed in and out without leaving traces – which she doesn’t leave, of course – and one massive water system shutdown by Heavy Water.” She glanced up from her laptop. “At least, I’m assuming that taking place at the same time as the warehouse raid where you picked up those superconductors in Memphis wasn’t a coincidence. The cause of the water company’s difficulties was never officially found.”

“Because turning normal water, even sewage water, to gelatin without the addition of any chemicals isn’t the kind of thing Project Sumter likes getting around.”

She set her laptop to one side of the desk so she could lean on it and give me a mischievous look. “And then there was the Stillwater job just a few days ago, where Grappler actually went in to steal equipment and didn’t bother shutting down any of the cameras in the security system. Sure, it was a smalltime company with small time security, but still. Circuit, why does it look like you’re deliberately doing jobs in ways only people with your unique talents could do?”

“Because I have talented staff?”

“But you never did that in the past. Just in the last year or so.”

I crossed to the desk and rested my hands on it’s top, scowling down at her. “Hangman, why are you here?”

She ignored my attempt at intimidation. “Circuit, you’re trying to end the Masquerade. Trying to tell the world talents exist. And you’re doing it wrong.”

The scowl grew deeper. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, no one’s going to care about robbing banks or warehouses unless they own them. If you want the public to know you exist then you’re not stealing the right stuff. You need to get creative. Send a message. Trust me, I might have hated studying journalism but one thing I’ll always remember is the importance of having a point to a story and getting it across by any means necessary. You want to deal with Project Sumter, built on Lincoln’s Law and dedicated to keeping talents a secret? You don’t steal money, superconductors or sound equipment.” She turned her laptop so I could see the screen. “You steal this.”

As I read the information on the screen I didn’t follow what she was saying. At least, not at first. But then the pieces began to fall into place and I felt a manic grin sneaking it’s way across my face. By the time I was done I could see what she wanted me to do, so I looked her in the eye and said the first three words that came to mind.

“That is brilliant.”

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Giving Thanks

Posted by natechen on

Tomorrow is the day Americans set aside as a time to give thanks for all the blessings we have received. Thanksgiving is a time of remembrance, family and yes, thanks. I’m thankful for many things, not the least of which is you readers, but I’m afraid that the holidays leave little time for other activities. So there will be no further posts this week. I look forward to seeing you all back here on December 2nd for the next chapter of Water Fall. Thanks!