Water Fall: Cold Leads

Posted by natechen on November 18, 2013

Six Weeks Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Helix

After four days we were almost done. Circuit had left information on nearly a hundred different pieces of property among the papers we’d recovered from his warehouse a few weeks ago. But so far digging into the real estate agents and owners of those properties hadn’t turned anything up. The last stop we were making was also the most significant. Keller Development held almost a third of the properties on Circuit’s list and of those, the firm had acquired more than half in the last six months. All things considered Analysis felt that they had the best chance of being a front, patsy or even co-conspirator in whatever Circuit was doing.

It had also taken longest to get an appointment with them, although that didn’t mean much either way as they were also the largest firm we’d been dealing with. In addition to it’s multiple commercial and residential real estate holdings, Keller’s also owned a medium sized stretch of waterfront, the marina there was where the firm’s founders had gotten their start. While he had few holdings outside the county the owner, Roger Keller, was still something of a political force in the city. Project Sumter was an agency of the national government but that didn’t mean we didn’t like to maintain good local relations as well, so asking questions without drawing heat was going to be a priority. I was planning on letting Teresa do most of the talking.

Provided, of course, she could stay awake for the interview. She’d slept through almost the entire drive to the Keller offices, and I was hoping the hour of rest would help her keep her mind clear. We had nothing so far and I was hoping that things would be different by the time we were done.

Even so, I hesitated to wake her up after putting the car into park and switching off the engine. She’d proven a remarkably sharp, aggressive and reliable supervisor in the time I’d worked with her but I knew she was what she was because she also came with baggage. While I have something most people would consider a superpower I don’t have much in the way of emotional trauma to go with it. Sure, some people might say I have a chip on my shoulder but I suspect that has more to do with being short and scrawny than anything else.

On the other hand, Teresa had set out to get the job she had in part as a way to cope. Not doing it, or doing it badly, would probably be worse for her in the long run than loosing a little sleep. I nudged her gently. “Teresa. We’re here.”

Asleep she looked remarkably peaceful but as soon as she snapped awake layers of stress started to roll down over her face, followed by the fine tuned professionalism that kept the old troubles in and new ones out. It was kind of sad to watch, really. “Good. We’re here,” she said, rubbing grit from her eyes. I glanced away, Teresa always stretches after sitting for a while and it’s the kind of thing that leads red blooded guys to stare in ways that would get me smacked by my dad and chewed out by my mom. “Where are we?”

Okay, so there was a crack in the usual professional façade. “Last place on the list of real estate developers.” I grabbed the stack of folders in the back seat and flipped through them until I found the right one. “You feeling okay there, boss?”

“Just tired.” She took the folder from me and got out of the car.

I followed suit after putting the other folders back. “Do you remember which one that is?”

“Uh…”

I stopped, more than a little surprised. This wasn’t just a crack in the façade, this was starting to look like a full blown break. I turned and looked at her over the top of my old, beat up Ford Escort. “Look, Teresa, I know you’re old friends with Senator Dawson and his family. His daughter was your friend, got you this job, helped you live the dream. But if you stay up all night kibitzing on the investigation into her disappearance you’re going to be too tired to learn anything that will help with her case; to say nothing of the one you’re actually assigned to.”

A flicker of irritation passed under her mask of propriety, another troubling crack in her usual aura of competence. “Helix-”

“I’m serious. We need your A game here.” I shrugged. “I’m not going to say no one I’ve known in the Project has ever taken on extra curricular investigations, because that would make me a liar. But you can’t let it interfere with your assignments.”

She sighed. “Okay, fine. Your advice is appreciated.”

“Good.” I pushed off the car and headed for the building, a tall, well built place with a bunch of architectural flourishes like columns and shaped blocks which probably have technical terms of some sort. Me, I didn’t know them but I could tell it was a fancy place.

But local development firms, even fairly prosperous ones, didn’t need an entire building like that for their offices. They did take up the whole top floor, though. As we waited for the elevator in the lobby Teresa said, “So I didn’t read the brief on this place. Bring me up to speed.”

“Sure.” I took the folder and flipped it open to the most relevant statistics as we stepped into the elevator and Teresa punched in our destination. “Keller owns a large number of the properties we’re looking into, most of the commercial buildings and at least half of the smaller rental properties. They don’t deal in private real estate, so none of the houses on the list have-”

“Wait.” I glanced up from the file to find Teresa looking a bit like a deer in the headlights. “These are the Keller Development offices?”

“Yes…” I flipped the folder back closed slowly. “This is probably the most important interview in the batch and anything significant learned here is just going to wind up in our laps anyway. I figured we might as well do the legwork ourselves and kept it for us when handing out assignments.”

Teresa sighed and rubbed a thumb along the bridge of her nose. “Helix, I know you looked into my background when I first joined up.”

I could feel myself blushing a little. “Look, that was-”

“I’m not complaining because it was entirely justified given the circumstances,” she said, ignoring me completely. “But I’m surprised you didn’t come up with the names Keller, Sykes and Oldfather.”

With a sinking feeling I started to suspect where this conversation was going. The elevator opened with a cheerful ding and I instinctively stuck out a hand to keep the door from closing as I said, “I’ve heard of Roger Keller before. Who hasn’t, around here? But Sykes and Oldfather are mysteries to me.”

“You must have done a really roundabout job investigating, then.” She shook her head and stepped out into the lobby. “I can understand not knowing Kevin Oldfather, but Matthew Sykes? You’ve really never heard of him?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Then you are in luck.” I turned and found a middle aged man in a wheel chair making his way across the lobby towards us. While Keller Development’s lobby was full of low benches and potted plants that should have made maneuvering across the floor a challenge for him; he handled the obstacles with something approaching grace and all the while kept his face turned towards the two of us. The face in question had a sleepy, relaxed look. “I’ve heard of Matthew Sykes,” he added, in case we had been wondering. “Few know more about him than me, in fact, seeing as I am him.”

Teresa made a funny squeaking sound that I did my best to cover for. “Quite a coincidence, Mr. Sykes,” I said, nudging Herrera in the hope that she would calm down a bit. “Do you work for Mr. Keller, or are you an associate?”

“Work for-” He laughed, the chair rolling to a stop.

“Mr. Sykes is the owner of Sykes Telecommunications, Hel-” Teresa caught herself before she used my codename in public and smoothly turned it into something else. “He owns one of the largest fiber optic networks in the state, among other things.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I hadn’t heard your name before.”

“Not a problem, really,” Sykes said, wheeling himself the last few feet over to us. He was wearing a light gray suit and matching tie that looked expensive enough but, by contrast, his wheelchair was a very basic metal and fabric thing. Not what I would have expected from a well moneyed business man. At the very least I would have expected something self propelled, although from the looks of his hands and upper body Matthew Sykes was benefiting from the exercise. “STC is primarily based in Springfield. We’ve been expanding in this area over the last several years but we’re hardly a household name yet. Which makes me wonder how it is that you’ve heard of me, young lady.”

Teresa glanced down at her hands quickly, composed herself, although I’m not sure Sykes noticed the difference between flustered and normal, and said, “I was sponsored by the Oldfather Fund when I was seventeen. One of the first, actually.”

“I see. That would be what, eight, nine years ago?” Sykes turned thoughtful, his gaze went off into the distance as he absently drummed his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair. “Seventeen is unusually old, even for us. What’s your name, if I could ask?”

“Teresa Herrera.” She hesitated, then added, “Before, it was Ortiz.”

“You forgot ‘Senior Special Agent’,” I said, moving slightly so I could see the two of them at once and displaying my ID. Like most such cards carried by Sumter agents it placed us with the government agency we were currently working with. I’ve had as many as two dozen in a year before. “We’re with the FBI. Care to clue me in to what we’re talking about?”

“Relax.” I caught Teresa giving my ID a quick glance to remember what my current identity was. Hopefully she’d mention it out loud, I wasn’t really sure what it was at the moment either. “It’s most likely not directly relevant to this case.”

Sykes laughed again. “I would hope not. The Oldfather Fund is a charity, Agent…” He squinted at my badge for a second when I didn’t supply my own name. “Agent Hoffman. We help people finance adoptions.”

“There’s… a need for that?”

“It’s very expensive, sometimes.” Sykes shrugged. “Frequently more so than having a child in a state of the art hospital. But we specialize in helping people who are interested in adopting a child with more challenging circumstances.”

“Challenging?” I glanced at Teresa. Her birth father had been killed by a talent codenamed Lethal Injection, a serial killer who used his control over the viscosity of liquids in strange and disturbing ways.

But Teresa seemed to guess what I was thinking and shook her head slightly. “Once children are past the age of five or six their odds of getting adopted drop dramatically. Anyone older than ten is virtually guaranteed to remain in the system until they reach adulthood.”

Which didn’t sound like a great way to grow up but didn’t directly tie the Oldfather Fund back to the case. It also didn’t sound like a the Oldfather fund specifically dealt with children who had had some kind of a brush with talented people. “I see. And Mr. Keller is a member of this fund?”

“Sure.” Sykes leaned back in his wheelchair causing the material to creak slightly. I realized that it wasn’t quite the barebones package I had thought it was – it wasn’t made of metal and canvas it was made of metal and leather. I wondered absently if it was a custom job or if you could just order them out of a magazine somewhere.

Sykes went on, unaware of my moment of distraction. “Kevin Oldfather interviewed Roger and I while writing a book on older children and the foster system. We were two of the rare adoptees over the age of ten.”

“What Matthew forgets to mention is that we were chosen as much to keep the family business in the family as anything.” If Sykes didn’t look much like a high powered business man in his simple suit and wheelchair, the new guy did. His slicked black hair and neatly trimmed goatee clearly said he had enough money not to care what people thought about him, while the suit he wore, which probably cost more than I made in a year, reminded people he could still be in touch with fashion if he wanted to. There was a sort of vague slickness to him that set my teeth on edge. He had a cold look on his face at first, but then he glanced at Sykes and smiled slightly, which helped a little. “Hello Matthew. Legs doing any better?”

“I can’t complain, Roger,” Sykes replied, his own smile transforming him from sleepily interested to fully engaged. I couldn’t tell if it was a practiced skill or just part of who he was. “The doctors tell me there’s another surgery that might give me more mobility back in the knees, probably let me walk again in another couple of years, but I’m not sure I want to go through another recovery right now.”

“Best to take it easy.” The smile, faint though it was, vanished and Roger Keller turned to give Teresa and I his full attention. “Well, to business. My secretary told me my two o’clock and two thirty appointments were out here chatting, so I guess that makes you the two from the FBI.”

“Actually, Mr. Keller, I didn’t realize we’d be interviewing you today,” Teresa said. “As I was just telling Mr. Sykes, I was sponsored by the Oldfather Fund when I was younger and I’m not sure-”

“You must have been one of the very first.” Keller tapped his chin absently. “Is this one of those conflict of interest things? Am I suspected of something?”

“We were just hoping you could help us by providing us with some information about some properties that came up in the course of an investigation,” I said, tapping my folder with one hand.

“Well, that shouldn’t be very difficult then, should it?” Keller asked. “I’ll tell you what I can about properties we’ve developed for ourselves, but our work for other clients will have to remain confidential.”

“It might be better if I came back with another-”

“Look, I’m a busy man.” Keller turned and started across the lobby. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to work you into my schedule again so if you have questions to ask, let’s get to them, shall we?”

I glanced at Teresa, who shrugged and said, “At this point it is mostly just fact finding. It probably can’t hurt anything if I’m there.”

“Well, good luck,” Sykes said, backing his wheelchair up a few paces to give us an unobstructed path. “And don’t mind Roger. He’s all bark and no bite, I’m sure he’ll cooperate as best he can.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sykes.” I wondered what had brought him here. It felt like there was something that I wasn’t quite getting but I figured I could always ask Teresa about it later. As we hurried after Keller I quietly asked, “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“You were right. We do need to find out whatever Keller knows, and we don’t have time to wait for whenever we can make another appointment.” She shrugged. “Nothing for it but to see what he can tell us.”

——–

As it turned out, it wasn’t much. The buildings were a mashup of places Keller Development had invested in and places clients had asked them to redevelop on their behalf. In the short half hour we had all we really managed to do was get Keller’s promise to send us the details that had led his people to purchase those properties his firm held independently. He emphatically refused to ask his clients if he could share any of their information with us. In the end, if there was some kind of grand scheme to Keller’s work in the city, we left his office with no clue of what it might be. Analysis could sort out the data he gave us, but Teresa and I were fresh out of angles to follow up on.

So we went back to our office and wrote up the necessary reports, then went our separate ways.

My apartment is not really a place where I get to spend a whole lot of time. Even on my days off I don’t really stay there much, I have a workshop elsewhere in town where I much prefer to be. Basically, I just use it as a place to store changes of clothes. It’s kind of lonely, really.

Even so, when I get back there I take a few basic precautions. For example, before I unlock the door I check to make sure the room is at an even temperature. While I don’t have infrared vision or anything I can “feel” the temperature of my surroundings rising into cold spots or sinking into hot spots. An empty room is on an even level, because the whole place is literally at room temperature. However, today there was a slight depression in one corner of my apartment. Someone had dropped by to pay me a visit.

I checked the lock but it showed no signs of being picked or forced. There are a few people who have spare keys to my place, because being a lone wolf really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At the very least, if I ever locked myself out it was cheaper to drive over to Jack’s place and pick up the spare than pay the fee to have the building supervisor open the door for me. But I had a feeling it wasn’t my tactical team leader that was waiting for me. There were two spare keys and I’d lent the other one out a month ago, to help with the planning for a birthday party.

With a sinking feeling I let myself into the apartment and looked into the small living room. Darryl Templeton was there, sitting on the sofa, turning his cane in his hands slowly. He looked up from his cane when he heard the door open, did his best to force a smile. “Hello, Helix. Looks like you had another long day. Sorry to bother you, but do you have a minute for an old friend?”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Dialog Part Two

Posted by natechen on November 15, 2013

Dialog – when two people get together and talk to each other. In case you missed my first post on dialog, you can browse it here.

So, what do you do when you have a scene with dialog that isn’t quite working? Read it out loud? Start over from scratch and rewrite it? Find another writer to hash it over with?

Those are all options. Generally when I come across a scene with a lot of talking and I don’t think it’s quite working I step back and run it through three layers of scrutiny. Before I get to these three things, let me point out that this isn’t a checklist, it’s more like a troubleshooting procedure. If one of these things work, there’s no real reason to keep going, unless you’re really dedicated to perfecting a scene.

The first thing I do is try and identify exactly what I’m trying to accomplish with a scene. Your writing needs to serve your story. Every scene needs to accomplish something in pushing forward your plot, a sideplot or perhaps even the myth arc. Identify exactly what your scene is trying to do, then go through and trim out everything that doesn’t advance that goal. You might go back and add some of what you trim back later, but at least look at it without all the excess fluff. Most likely, it doesn’t need to be there. Hopefully that will give you better, snappier dialog.

If that doesn’t work, it’s time to look at pacing. I know I said it last week, but it’s vitally important that you keep your characters from saying too much at one time, and from keeping too many people from being in a conversation at once. While conversational free-for-alls aren’t that rare in real life, most people will tend to tune out some conversational threads and focus on others. You don’t want that to happen in your scene. By the same token, people don’t tend to launch into huge, prepared speeches in causal conversation. Yeah it can happen, but if it happens more than once a scene you probably need to rework something.

When all else fails, I resort to the index card method. You’ve probably heard writers talk about laying your plot out on index cards and spreading it out on a desk or the floor so you can see the whole thing at a glance. Well, this is the same principle applied to writing a scene. In this case, instead of writing plot points on your index cards, write out the first line of each chunk of dialog, or each action that a character will be taking between chunks of dialog. Then spread them out and start sorting. Move things around, cut things or, if necessary, add them until the scene starts to work like you want. This is a court of last resort, and by the time you’re done the scene is probably going to need a total rewrite. But not necessarily.

Dialog is a tricky thing. It drives plot, gives insight into characters and makes for memorable moments all at once, but if you don’t handle it well it can also leave your readers confused and lost. I hope these tips from the last few weeks will help you to assemble better written and more believable dialog.

Cool Things: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Posted by natechen on November 13, 2013

Time for another black and white classic film! Be warned, this contains spoilers.

One thing Hollywood loves is a good, stirring speech. You find them everywhere, from military movies to sci-fi films to political suspense thrillers to courtroom dramas, sometime around the climax of the film someone will step forward and remind us all what it’s all about. But interestingly enough, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a film where the speech is the climax.

The recap, in case you’ve never seen this film: Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) is the leader of a small boy’s group called “The Boy Rangers” and something of a state hero, at least among young boys. When the state governor has to replace a recently deceased Senator he faces pressure from two lobbies – the state reformer committees and the political machine that got him elected. Each wants their man in the Senate. The governor’s children suggest a third alternative – their hero, Mr. Smith. When the governor tosses a coin to determine the outcome, heads for the machine’s candidate, tails for the reformer, the coin lands on it’s edge, balanced against a newspaper. Smith’s picture is on the front.

So Mr. Smith goes to Washington, D.C. He sees the sights and generally geeks out over being in the nation’s capitol. Then he meets the other senator from his state, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains). Senator Paine knew Jeff’s father and gladly takes Jeff under his wing. Unfortunately, Paine is also corrupt, beholden to the same machine that the state governor is.

When Jeff drafts a bill that threatens a major piece of graft, intended to give the members of the state machine thousands of dollars of profit, Paine is forced to spearhead an effort to run Jeff out of the Senate. Jeff retaliates with one of the greatest weapons of American politics – the filibuster. Since he’s a newcomer to D.C., without political allies, Jeff will have to hold the floor of the US Senate alone and hopefully convince the jaded, politically minded men there that he’s not the crook he’s been painted as.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a great film. Not because of it’s themes per se, or even because Jeff Smith is a fantastic orator. He does have some nice speeches, and he earns our respect and the respect of the men of the Senate because of his good character and integrity. But one man standing against the machine has been done before, and there are other speeches more relevant to today in other movies out there. So why does this film deserve your consideration?

Because it acknowledges a simple fact: The truth is not enough to win.

Spoilers Start Here!

Even with all the facts on his side, Jeff cannot seem to make any headway against the forces of the political machine that are arrayed against him. In the end, his filibuster will drag to a close with the situation basically unchanged. It’s not until Jeff makes a direct appeal to Senator Paine that things change – Paine’s will breaks, and he gives away the game.

Jeff doesn’t win because he makes a speech, he doesn’t beat the machine because he has the right on his side. The right wins out because Jeff knew and reached out to a person who should have been his enemy. It’s not something that happens often, not a part of what we think of as taking a stand.

And it’s not a normal part of the classic movie speech. Paine was Jeff’s role model, a hero, someone he looked up to. Jeff calls him out, reminds him of what he was without bitterness or animosity, and gently asks him to be so again. It’s a kind of compassion that’s rare in film in general, and it makes Mr. Smith Goes to Washington unique and worth the watching.

Water Fall: Live Wires

Posted by natechen on November 11, 2013

Six Weeks, Three Days Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

My life would have been a lot easier if the soldiers had decided to do something stereotypical and stupid, like using their rifles. However, real soldiers get warned about things like ricochets and so they came after me with knives instead of shooting up the inside of an armored tin can so I was forced to deal with them without the benefit of stupidity.

On the bright side, a magnetic can was an environment that I was practically born to work in.

There was a light in the center of the vehicle, just behind the soldiers who were coming at me, but a cursory examination, which was all I had time for, revealed no other places I could hijack current from the APC’s battery. I had exactly two seconds to figure out how I wanted to get to it. There wasn’t time for anything fancy and the fact that we were still in a moving vehicle cut down on my options, too. So I kept it simple and fired up the magnetic boots and vambraces again, using them to grab onto the side of the vehicle and throw myself towards the ceiling.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get both arms in good contact with the ceiling and I wound up swinging sloppily from one arm. But it was enough of a surprise to the guards that none of them managed to get their knives around and stick me before I crashed into the one on the right and sent us both to the floor. I was getting quite used to seeing the floor of the APC and it wasn’t exactly an experience I recommend. At least the guards weren’t wearing body armor, which made it a lost easier to drop an elbow into the soldier’s gut before shoving him under his companion’s feet and scrambling back and to my feet.

The other two guards stumbled just enough to give me time to get up without interference. In the process I grabbed a small device from my belt, a miniaturized version of the lightening funnel I’d used against Helix just a couple of weeks ago. The principle was simple. Using a precisely balanced set of magnetic fields I could change the balance of magnetic potentials over a much greater range than any other fusebox I’d heard of before. While the one I was holding wasn’t nearly strong enough to arc lightning out of storm clouds it was more than enough to let me hijack the APC’s electrical systems and arc them through people and into the floor of what was essentially a large metal box.

I reached up to the light fixture and switched it on. A second later there was a sizzle of ozone, a quiet pop and the other two guards dropped to the floor. Just to be sure they wouldn’t be any more trouble I gave all three a quick kick to the head, fairly certain that would keep them quiet. Then I switched the lightening funnel back off and I slipped it back into my belt. With my other hand I smashed the light fixture, throwing the compartment into darkness and siphoning much of the vehicle’s battery charge into my harness.

That gave me more than three quarter’s charge, enough to risk switching the maglev harness back on and feeling around. Unfortunately the weird, slippery feeling that I’d felt just before it went screwy was still there, which meant I couldn’t count on it for an escape if I needed one. Since there was no point wasting charge I switched the harness back off and cranked the volume of my headset back to conversational levels. “Hangman, something’s gone wrong with the maglev rig.”

“I tried to tell you earlier,” Hangman yelled in my ear. “You’re too low!”

“Stop yelling!” I yelled. “I turned you back up. What do you mean I’m too low?”

“The highway’s dipped too low,” Hangman said, her voice back at a manageable volume. “There’s only one maglev relay that’s low enough down for you to push on. That means-”

“Yes, I follow the theory, thank you.” Getting aloft using maglev relies on making a three point triangle. Magnets can only push directly away from each other, so if there aren’t two of them to balance your maglev array against you just wind up sliding along the path of least resistance – which usually means bouncing awkwardly along the ground getting lots of fun new bruises. But this was even worse, instead of pushing myself up with the relays they were now positioned so that I was a between two of them, and the weird slippery feeling from before was the repelling force of the maglev relays pushing against each other – and me. Until I could get some more altitude I was grounded.

“Okay back there, Donner?” That question came from the APC’s driver, who was looking back over his shoulder. I realized that draining the vehicle’s batter had also fried something important and the vehicle was stopped, probably totally inoperable. When he realized I wasn’t one of his buddies his expression changed from concern to hostility. “What the-”

I grabbed the first handy thing, which happened to be a shoulder bag sitting on one of the benches, and swung it around into the driver’s face. He went down, the rest of his sentence lost in the whump of the bag making contact. It sounded like there was something fairly weighty in there but I didn’t have time to wonder about what it might be.

Now apparently a man mysteriously landing on top of a vehicle in your convoy is not a valid reason for the Army to circle the wagons but one of said vehicles stopping unexpectedly is, because that’s exactly what the rest of the convoy proceeded to do. It didn’t take quite as long as fully subduing the driver so I had a few seconds to get the lay of the land. “What are they talking about, Hangman?”

“Why your APC is stopping. Why they’re not getting any response over the satlink. What they’re going to do when they find out who’s responsible for sending things so far south. Not very pleasant talk, that last bit.” There was some kind of strange background noise mixed in with Hangman’s voice. “I don’t suppose you could have your driver call them off?”

I finished dragging the soldier in question out of his chair and laying him none-to-gently on the floor. “I’m afraid he’s a bit indisposed.”

“I figured.”

“Hangman, are you moving?” I straightened up and looked out the front window of the APC. The lights of the rest of the convoy were getting close, blocking off the highway. Absently, I wondered how soon we could expect to start backing up traffic. I was actually rather surprised there weren’t a few civilian cars out there already. “I’m not ready for extraction yet.”

“No, you’re not. You’re in the middle of what you’re new friends would call a Charlie Foxtrot, when they’re in polite company, and it’s time we changed plans.” There was a squealing sound that sounded a lot like tires spinning on pavement, then, “I can be there in two minutes.”

“That’s-”

“You can’t solo this one, Circuit,” she insisted. “You don’t have time to keep those soldiers jumping and grab the goods. All eyes are going to be on you, so I’ll make the grab.”

“They’re going to see you coming.”

“You’re in the middle of a highway. It may be 2 AM local time but you’re still going to be ankle deep in cars in just a few minutes.”

“Corporal Donner,” a voice called from outside the APC. “I want all your men out of there now!”

“Fine. We’ll do it your way, but keep your head down and don’t get hurt. You have the lot number we’re looking for?”

“‘Course.”

“Good.” I grabbed the step that swung down from the APC’s topside hatch. “And Hangman? We’re going to talk about this after we’re done here.”

“Of that I had no doubt.”

I vaulted myself up and clambered onto the top of APC. Since the silhouette of a man in a fedora and suit is much different from that of a soldier, even when he’s not in full battle dress, I got a lot of attention quickly.

“Up top!” One of the soldiers shouted.

That was my cue to leave. With a quick mental command I switched the maglev harness back on then bent my knees, ignoring the popping noise because I wasn’t that old, and jumped. Then I pushed as hard as I could against the closest maglev relay, sending myself slipping sideways across the highway and into the grass in the median. Of course, since I started a good ten or twelve feet off the pavement and the median was much lower than that, my meeting with the ground was fairly abrupt. Even with padded body armor and my best fall breaking techniques I was pretty winded but the scattered gunfire from the highway told me I really need to get moving. I’d probably just surprised the soldiers into shooting just then but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be making very deliberate attempts to punch me full of holes in the near future.

So I pushed up and scrambled along the side of the road in a crouch. The only light was coming from the vehicles in the convoy and any other cars that had come along and gotten stuck behind them. In the wild crisscross of high beams it couldn’t be easy to see anything out in the dark. Unless one of them had infrared goggles or something, and wouldn’t that be just my luck?

Fortunately the arrival of civilian vehicles gave whoever was in charge of the convoy something to think about besides finding the guy in the hat and beating him until he admitted to being a terrorist. There was a lot of yelling going on up there but I did my best to ignore it. Hangman might think she could get ahold of the package we were there to pick up by herself but she apparently didn’t know how big it was – one way or another I was going to have to be there to help out. Might as well start looking for the thing myself.

My luck held as I scuttled along the pavement and over to the nearest truck, no one spotted me even though it felt like the whole world could hear my feet scraping on the pavement.

Magnetic boots are not exactly built for stealth.

Any hope of getting in and out without being observed was now long gone, so I felt no regret at slicing through the canvas and into the bed of the truck. I clambered in, produced a small penlight from my belt and took a quick look around. Thankfully the box I was looking for was fairly large, at least four feet long, and the boxes in the truck weren’t large enough for that. I wasn’t sure what all I was looking at but I was pretty sure it wasn’t what I was after.

The next truck in line was similarly devoid of my objective but I hit pay dirt in the third. The box was strapped to the truck bed and the rest of the vehicle was empty. I couldn’t see the whole identification number on the box but I really didn’t need to. If this wasn’t what I was after I would eat my hat. I was about to climb into the truck bed when I heard boots coming around the side of the truck. I slipped down the side of the vehicle and moved as quickly as I could, although it still wasn’t all that quiet.

The soldier came around the side of the truck before I could get up to the corner; so unfortunately he had enough time to shout “Hey!” before I could slap him with the taser. Then it was up into the truck bed. I threw my suit jacket off then fumbled the maglev harness off and looped it over the four corners of the box and switched it on. Voices were yelling outside the truck as I slashed the box free of the truck bed and sheathed my knife.

“Hangman,” I whispered. “Are you here yet?”

“Out of the van, sneaking along the side of the highway.” Her answering whisper was almost lost in the background noise of a idling cars.

“Well get back in the van,” I hissed. “I found the package and we’re ready to go, but the van needs to be running, with you leaning on the brakes, in order for this to work.”

“Wha-”

“The van has a relay built in, Hangman.” My voice was rising and I took a moment to throttle it back down to a whisper. “It comes on when the motor is running. I need the van running but stationary if I’m going to maglev this piece of junk out of the truck bed and into the van.”

Hangman cursed and I heard quiet scrabbling noises over the headset. Then one of the convoy guards poked his head through the canvas truck cover and I got distracted.

Option one was to shoot him, but if you don’t want to be killing a cop before you’re ready to deal with all the cops in the county then you really don’t want to be killing a soldier unless you’re ready to deal with, at a minimum, whole infantry divisions. Option two was to close the distance and go with the tasers in my gloves. But I didn’t have the element of surprise this time so my chances of coming out of that in good condition were much, much smaller and I needed to stay near the harness to make it work anyways. So I went with option three and slipped out one of the two magnesium flares I kept on my belt, closed my eyes and lit it with a snap of the wrist.

I’d packed them with the idea that Hangman might have to move the van and the come find me later. The flares were to make the finding part easier. Well, she’d moved the van but we were close enough that finding me shouldn’t pose any problem, and it would be a shame to let a perfectly good flare go to waste. From the pained noise the soldier made when his night adjusted eyes were blinded by the brilliant glare, it had definitely been put to good use.

The flare wasn’t much use now so I threw it down and grabbed hold of the box and nudged the maglev harness to life. For a few nerve-wracking seconds there was no sign of the van’s maglev relay, then it sprang to life. There wasn’t anything to do but hope that Hangman had already set the brake, flip polarity on the harness and push it to life.

With polarities reversed the harness was no longer repelled by the maglev relay, but rather attracted towards it. Although the combined weight of the package and myself was nearly three times what the harness had been carrying before; I figured I could afford to turn the power up since the battery only had to get us a few hundred feet to the van. So I pushed as hard as I could and spared a little attention to make sure nothing important shorted out from the extra current load. And I did my best to hang on, twenty miles an hour is pretty fast when all you have to hang on to is an improvised set of straps on a large wooden box.

Of course, the van wasn’t parked directly behind the truck so I actually wound up sliding across the truck bed and into the canvas on the side – not the side I’d cut through on my way in, either. But as soon as I got my knife free and started cutting the force of the box pushing against the canvas tore things the rest of the way and the box and I went flipping over the side of the truck. For a moment I thought the box would land on top of me and that would be the end of it, but we wound up rotating just enough that the edge of the box caught on the pavement and it flipped one more time, sliding across the pavement with me on the top and not the bottom, accompanied by the surprised profanity of half a dozen soldiers.

For the second time in five minutes surprise was on my side, none of the guards managed to react in time to make a grab for me or the box and then I was beyond them and skidding through the cars that had come up on the stopped convoy and gotten stuck there. There were only ten or so civilian vehicles there and the soldiers had thankfully been in the process of clearing them off the highway, otherwise my trip could have come to an abrupt end against some hapless family’s Toyota, doing no good for them or me. Then the van loomed up, the back doors already open, and I flipped the polarity of the harness back around, letting up on the pressure on the maglev system some, so that the magnets repelled again and acted as brakes. The box slowed, tilting precariously up on one side. I hopped off and, at the last second, killed the maglev harness entirely and put my shoulder behind the box and pushed it. That, along with the last of the momentum from our mad rush out of the truck, was enough for it tip over into the back of the van. I gave it a good, hard push and got it the rest of the way into the van, then jumped up and swung the doors closed behind me. Not a moment too soon, either, as the guards were already starting to take shots at us.

But with the doors closed and all the armor in the vehicle’s chassis between us and them they weren’t really a threat anymore. I clambered over the box and into the front seat, saying, “Drive!”

Hangman wordlessly floored the gas and we took off down the highway against traffic. The vehicles I take with me on jobs are hardly stock vans, however, and between four wheel drive and upgraded suspension crossing a grass maridian like you find on the typical divided highway is no big deal. We were driving with traffic soon enough.

I noticed as I was settling in that the front windshield had taken a bullet, leaving a small impact crater in the bullet resistant glass. It wasn’t until Hangman fished the spent round out of her lap and tossed it in the back with shaking hands that I realized it was on the inside and not the outside.

I studied her carefully. She was pale, but seemed to be in possession of her faculties. “Are you alright?”

“Sure.” She spared a glance away from the road. “When were you going to tell me the package was so big we had to lift it by maglev?”

“When it became relevant,” I said testily.

“We have a bit of a drive before we can switch to a less conspicuous vehicle,” she said, matching my tone. “Maybe we can talk about that.”

“No.” I stood up and climbed into the back. “We’re going to keep all our attention on the road so that no one can sneak up on us. But believe me, we will talk about that, and a number of other things, once we’re out of the field.”

The promise followed us all the way back to base. A part of me would have almost prefered another disaster to deal with instead.

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Dialog Part One

Posted by natechen on November 8, 2013

Dialog is a major part of just about any story. Unless you’re writing a Castaway or something similar you’re going to write a fair amount of it as you go along. I’m sure a whole book could be written on just the art of writing dialog, but for now I’m going to try and keep it down to two posts. In this first one I want to look at the basics of framing a scene with a lot of dialog. Next week I’ll look at the methodology I use to “debug” a dialog intensive scene that isn’t quite working.

So without further ado, what do you do with a lot of dialog?

Set the scene. It almost goes without saying but all scenes happen somewhere; describing the setting gives you an idea of where your scene happens and lets you set up props or prompts for later. You don’t have to set the whole scene at the start, but at least sketch a basic layout for the readers to keep in mind as the scene progresses.
Have your characters move around. The vast majority of people don’t just sit and stare at each other the whole time they’re talking. They fidget, they get up to get things or gesture with their hands, sometimes they even bury their face in their hands. You don’t have to mention every little tic or gesture, but mentioning these things from time to time keeps the scene realistic and keeps the scene from devolving into huge chunks of talking, which gets tedious.
Place things in the setting your character can use. Have someone at a dinner party gesture with their knife and fork, or a dishrag left in the kitchen can become an impromptu weapon in a squabble between siblings. You don’t have to have a lot of these, in fact not every scene needs them. But a few from time to time are a big plus.
Let the setting of the scene put ideas in your character’s minds. A picture on the wall might prompt a detective to ask about a family’s children, or a pile of clothing left in the corner can spark an argument over whether or not a character is a slob. As with the previous point, you don’t need these in every scene but they help keep the reader grounded in what’s going on.
Give a few of the character’s inner thoughts. People do occasionally stop to collect their thoughts or recall some detail in the middle of a conversation. This is a great way to add background information but you have to be careful not to overdo it. Too much is both unrealistic and interrupts the flow of the scene but the right amount helps break up the dialog and helps the reader get a handle on elements of the scene that might not be entirely clear to them.
Try and keep chunks of dialog short. If you have one person talking for more than a couple of hundred words, at the very most, it’s probably a good idea to find some excuse to break things up. Have the other character interject, or add some business for the character to do.
Try and keep the number of characters in the discussion to a minimum. It’s not natural to have half the characters in the room keep quiet for a page or two at a time, but it does make the scene easier to read. Dialog refers to two people talking, after all. Two isn’t always the ideal number, but fewer is generally better.

When I write a scene with a lot of dialog, those are the things that I keep in mind. Next week I’ll look at some of the things that I do to make a dialog-heavy scene work.

National Adoption Month

Posted by natechen on November 6, 2013

For those of you who don’t know, November is National Adoption Month. I’m not a real expert on the subject, but I know it’s an important topic, definitely worth a whole month’s worth of highlighting. This isn’t just because I’m in a show about adoption – the director swears up and down that this was a total coincidence, and we didn’t know about it beforehand. No, adoption is a worthwhile cause in and of itself. If you’ve read Heat Wave, you know that one of the Project Sumter characters is adopted. It will continue to be a subtheme in Water Fall.

I wish I could say more about it, but it’s not an issue I’m very knowledgeable about. I’ve known several adopted children – in fact, one of my cousins is adopted – and I’m in a show about it as well, but I’m hardly an expert. I do know that there are countless children out there who need the love and attention of parents, and those who are led to take up a role in the lives of those children are very special and worth your support.

There’s plenty of more information on the National Adoption Month homepage. Also, every so often there’s a post from the point of view of an adopted son on the blog of Diamond Mike Watson, posts that are both powerful and insightful. If you want to know what adoptive parents do in the lives of the children they adopt it’s well worth checking them out. Know of any other good adoption resource? Please share them in the comments!

Water Fall: Shock and Awe

Posted by natechen on November 4, 2013

Six Weeks, Three Days Before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Circuit

It was dark. Not just middle of the night dark, but honest to goodness, clouds in front of the moon and not a light on the side of the road dark. You wouldn’t think there was a part of America where there are no lights on the side of the road, but the fact is that in many of the more remote parts of the country no one bothers with them.

Nebraska certainly counts as remote.

However, roads with no lights on them at all are not the kind of thing used by the U.S. Army. No, on this particular night the lightlessness of the road had nothing to do with age or infrastructure and everything to do with yours truly. The clouds over the moon were coincidental, but handy.

I was drifting along the side of the road at about twenty miles an hour. Some work with the maglev relays the day before had let me push the top speed back up to something that wasn’t quite as embarrassing as the jogging pace we’d had when testing things. Still, things got touchy if I tried to move much faster than twenty miles an hour, so ambushing a convoy moving at highway speeds was going to be tricky.

I mentally flicked my headset active. “Any sign of their calling for help?”

“No,” Hangman said, her voice sounding unusually tense. “So far they’ve just been grumbling about the maintenance the highway gets. Wait.” A moment’s pause. “Okay, somebody just floated the idea.”

“Have you found their satellite uplink?”

“It’s cracked and being monitored.” A hint of exasperation replaced some of the tension in her voice. “There’s a trojan in there that will let me shut off the feed at any point without tripping any automatic alarms. But Circuit, you know as well as I do that there’s no accounting for human eyes. If someone notices that the convoy hasn’t checked in in a while it could be even more of a problem than their complaining about the lights along the road being out.”

“Believe it or not, that has occurred to me. I’m more worried about what will happen once they start reporting flying men landing on the trucks. The Army has a notoriously slow response time, it’s part of being a huge bureaucratic institution. But if Project Sumter is listening and has someone nearby we could be in trouble before we can successfully cover our tracks.” I narrowed my eyes as headlights appeared in the distance. “I have visual.”

“They still haven’t touched their satellite uplink,” Hangman said. “Do you want me to cut it now, or wait?”

“Cut it now.” I eased up slightly, letting myself drift down so I was closer to the road. There was a bigger chance I would be spotted but the fact is keeping the maglev system working required constant pressure from my talent. It’s a lot like keeping a muscle flexed for a long period of time, you can do it easily enough with the right conditioning but it’s still tiring. The plan didn’t call for a lot of talent use once I was in, but it was best to be cautious and keep as much of it available as I could.

“The satlink is cut,” Hangman said. “Just out of curiosity, what are your countermeasures for their cellphones?”

“Bureaucracy again.” I said, trying not to stare into the headlights and ruin my night vision. It was difficult, since I needed to keep an eye on the vehicles and in the near total darkness the light could be almost hypnotic. “If they’re calling over an unsecured line they’ll need to run through a whole identification routine and it will take them time to get up the chain of command. If anything, it will slow their response time even more.”

“Point.” A moment’s silence. “Okay, they’re satellite link is now cut. Home base is getting a false signal.”

The headlights were getting larger and larger. “I’m getting ready to go down. This could be loud, and I’m going to need my concentration. I’m turning down the volume on the headset so if you have something to say be sure it’s nice and loud.”

“Or I could…” Hangman’s voice faded beneath the noise of rushing air.

The manifest we’d intercepted said there should be half a dozen vehicles in the convoy I was planning to ambush. Unfortunately which vehicle the piece of equipment I wanted was supposed to be in hadn’t been clear. Worse, since I was after an electronic component, I couldn’t risk disabling the convoy with an electromagnetic pulse, as that had a chance of damaging it. I’d known all this before I came out and had cooked up a number of different ways to try and slow down the convoy so I could get on board one of its vehicles without injuring myself.

Unfortunately only one of those schemes had actually been practical.

It involved another piece of brilliant Davis engineering, a motorized cable and winch that I had strapped over one shoulder. It contained three hundred feet of light weight line that could easily support five hundred pounds of weight. The weighted magnetic grapple at one end could be fired via electromagnets at a speed of about sixty miles an hour. In theory, all I had to do was get it attached to a vehicle and let the crank slowly bring me up to speed and then along side the truck.

But, as any well trained sniper will tell you, it’s always best to hit the last person in a line first. If you start at the front, the people behind him will notice what’s happening. The same principle applies to sticking a grappling hook into an Army convoy. I would only have one chance to snag the last truck in line. That wasn’t my favorite part of the plan.

Drifting along the side of the road at twenty miles an hour it looked even less appealing. Even though some work with the maglev harness earlier had made it more comfortable, and even though I’d practiced this while moving at different speeds and under different conditions out at the base camp I had in Wisconsin, I was still not entirely confident that I could hit on my first try.

There was a back up option, of course, in the form of a roadblock a few miles down the road at the limits of my maglev range. But not only would it take time for me to catch up to the convoy if they got past, the roadblock would put them on alert. I wasn’t really ready for a confrontation with the armed forces just yet, it would be much better if I could do this quietly.

The convoy passed below me, looking deceptively sedate. From that far up a speed difference of forty miles an hour didn’t look like much but as I dropped closer and closer to the convoy things started to happen fast.

Forty miles an hour is a big speed difference, and the first three vehicles were past before I even had the winch lined up. I got a brief glance of an APC and a couple of covered trucks as they went by and then I was lining up my shot. Unfortunately, firing a grappling hook at a moving vehicle mostly consist of pointing it in the right direction and hoping for good luck. While I could possibly recall the grapple using the magnets built into it there was only a slim chance that I could do it before the convoy was out of reach.

So there was nothing to do but suck in a deep breath, drop a few more feet until I was about a dozen feet off the pavement and just as far to the left of the oncoming vehicles, and trigger the launcher.

There was a troubling moment of uncertainty, then the grapple clanged into something important on the last vehicle in line and I was suddenly being dragged along like the world’s strangest parasailer. To be precise, the winch was still letting out line but giving some resistance, so I was picking up speed gradually, instead of having my arms ripped out of their sockets. It wasn’t fun, but it sure beat the alternative. Still, the jolt managed to send a twinge of pain shooting through my recently dislocated right shoulder. I grit my teeth and focused on the motor in the winch, reversing it so it began cranking the line in and dragging me closer to the vehicle I’d snagged.

Unfortunately, the vehicle in question was another APC. It looked like the convoy consisted of four trucks sandwiched between two of the armor carriers, which was sensible from a security standpoint but made my life more difficult. The equipment I was after was most likely in one of the trucks, which meant I’d have to work my way forward. Worse, the APCs probably had a bunch of cramped, bored guards in them, people who would probably notice and take violent offense to my hopping from truck to truck and rummaging through the contents.

I was trying to work out some way to deal with that without bringing the whole convoy down on my head when the winch pulled me down to within a half a dozen feet of the APC’s roof and something suddenly changed. For lack of a better term the magnetic forces keeping me aloft suddenly wobbled and turned slippery; then I was falling, not in freefall but actually shooting downwards towards the vehicle below. I had just enough time to toss the winch aside and throw my hands up to catch myself before I crashed into the armored surface of the APC.

The first thing I did was kill the maglev harness. Getting it up and working again would be much easier than trying to get Hangman to shut down and reboot the entire relay system. Since that was no more work than a quick nudge of talent in the right direction I was able to do it before I even started collecting my wits.

The second thing to do was shake the stars out of my vision and begin collecting said wits.

Ideally, that would have been the end of the things I had to do, at least for the next minute or two. Unfortunately, life and ideals have longstanding issues with one another. That is how I wound up face down and in pain on top of a moving APC in the first place.

So instead of getting a few minutes to recover, I got an overly-clever guard poking his head through the hatch a few feet away, probably wondering what all the banging was.

I should have tried to kick the hatch down on his head, or just kicked him myself. Unfortunately I was still flat on my stomach and doing my best to get my breath back, so soldier boy had enough time to notice me and yell something to his buddies down in the truck. While that was bad, in that it put the entire load of soldiers on notice, it also gave me enough time to get my breath back.

Even with the main part of the maglev harness off, my standard rig included magnetic boots and vambraces. So the next thing to do was check the charge in the batteries in my rig. There was still enough charge for about fifteen minutes of constant use, which would be enough if I avoided using my taser. On the other hand, the average truck has a battery that should have enough charge to refill about a third of my reserves.

Since things were, as the fellows in the APC below me might say, already FUBAR I decided to burn the charge and plan on topping off from a couple of the vehicles in the convoy. Roadblock or no, I suspected we’d be stopped soon enough.

Which shows how little I understood military strategy. Looking back at it, I suspect the boys in the convoy were expecting an ambush and resolved to push on as much as possible in an attempt to avoid it. These were soldiers, after all, not security guards, they had different priorities. So the APC kept going and the guard started to haul up his sidearm.

Now engaging on in wild struggles on top of a moving vehicle is actually on the list of things that aspiring villains should actively avoid, but in my defense I hadn’t meant for any fighting to happen at this point. Actually, there wouldn’t have been any fighting at all if I could have had my way. But again, that would be an ideal situation and those are in chronically short supply.

Fortunately I was magnetically attached to the top of the APC and that reduced the chances that I would go airborne unexpectedly. Unfortunately, I’d have to release those magnets in order to get in reach of the guard. There was a heart-stopping moment when my hands slipped free from the APC’s roof then I grabbed the edge of the hatch and dove down in, grabbing the guard’s belt to act as break.

There was a moment of tangled limbs and grunts, then we collapsed onto the floor of vehicle in a heap. Almost without thinking I dug my hands into the guard’s guts and emptied my taser. He spasmed once and went still.

I gave the guard a shove and rolled to my feet. Three disgruntled soldiers were recovering from shock and getting ready for me just a few feet away. I gave a half-hearted smile and tugged my hat brim down a bit farther. “Good evening, boys. Sorry to drop in unexpectedly. I don’t suppose you’d believe I was just looking for the restroom?”

One of the soldiers gave me a sidelong glance, but other than that they gave no sign of stopping to chat. I sighed. “Yeah, that line never works anyway. Let’s dance.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Capter

When You Don’t Want To Write

Posted by natechen on November 1, 2013

Every writer runs into writer’s block – that dreaded time when your story comes to a screeching stop because you have no idea where to go with it next. This post is not about that.

This post is about when you wake up in the morning and feel like there is absolutely, positively no possible way you could spend an hour or two in front of a keyboard or a blank sheet of paper and arrange words in a comprehensible fashion. You may have five or six ideas on the back burner, just waiting for you to put ink on their bones. You may have a great scene all blocked out in your mind, or even on paper! You just can’t bring yourself to put pen to page and do the hardest part – write it all out.

There’s any number of reasons you may not want to write. It’s too nice outside, or you’re depressed, or the classic – you’re just too busy right now. Add to this list as you see fit.

But the fact is, writers write. It’s kind of a given. So what do you do when you just don’t wanna?

Eliminate distractions. I can usually manage to listen to music and write at the same time. It helps block out distractions, like a white noise generator, and it gives me a rhythm to play with. But if I’m having a hard time finding the will to write the music has to go – it will just suck me in and I’ll spend all my time singing along or thinking about they lyrics, not about what I want to write. This principle applies in other ways. For example, if you usually write in a coffee shop or something, stay away from it. The traffic in and out will demand your attention and your manuscript won’t get it.
Take five minutes to do something else and get your head in the game. For me this usually consists of doing a few stretches and getting a glass of water. I almost always do this before I start writing and repeating these kind of rituals often at times when you don’t want to write helps keep your focus on what you should be doing. If you don’t have a ritual like this you don’t need to start one, although it may very well help, but find something to do that will get your focus back on writing.
Set a concrete, attainable goal. A couple of years ago, when I was struggling to finish my first novel (still unpublished) I found myself writing in the middle of the holiday season. It wasn’t ideal, and with all the stuff going on I very frequently didn’t want to write. So I told myself just to do one sentence a day. Just one sentence, and I’d be good. I managed to get that sentence in every day and it frequently turned into more than one sentence as the ideas got flowing. An attainable goal is not only a motivator, it gives you a sense of accomplishment when you’ve reached it. It’s okay to shoot low, as sometimes just taking the first step gives you the will to go farther.
Decide not to write. Okay, this last one may sound like crazy talk. And it’s important not to over do it – try not to go more than one day without writing or you’ll lose your edge. Be deliberate. Set a fixed amount of time where you’re not going to try and write, say two hours in the afternoon. Take a nap or get some exercise, run some errands and just get out and about a little. Don’t think about writing at all. Then come back and you might be surprised how much your attitude has changed. Just be sure to come back and write, or else there won’t have been any point in taking the time off. You’re not quitting, after all, just straightening yourself out.

Writers aren’t superhumans that just crank out idea after idea for the betterment of mankind. It would be nice if we were but the fact is that you will get tired of writing from time to time, no matter how much you love it. In this way, writing is a lot like a relationship.

And just like relationships, the fact that you go through rough patches is not something to shy away from. If handled correctly, rough times just makes you a better writer in the end. Hopefully this handful of tips will help you handle them better. Of course, the more tricks in your bag the better, so if you have any good ways of dealing with writerly apathy please share them! I think we could all use the insight.

Cool Things: Five Iron Frenzy

Posted by natechen on October 30, 2013

Ah, the music of my youth. The very first album I owned was Quantity is Job One by Five Iron Frenzy – a fantastic and fantastically short collection of pure nonsense that represented the last of the great third wave ska bands at their finest.

Never heard of ska? If you don’t want to take the time to read the Wikipedia article I just linked, the short version is, ska is punk rock meets swing. Ska bands tend to be large, and Five Iron Frenzy was no exception, sporting eight members, and typically include drums, electric guitar, bass, trumpet and one other brass instrument at a minimum. More guitar, brass and possibly a lead vocalist can be added for flavor. I think the sheer number of people needed to make a ska band work is one of the things that’s kept them from ever catching on in a meaningful way…

So, other than representing a kind of sound that you don’t hear every day, what makes Five Iron cool? Now that I’m a seasoned man of almost thirty, do they still hold up to my initial love from middle school? Why should you even care about a band that retired in 2003?

To handle each question one at a time. Five Iron Frenzy didn’t just write ska – they wrote ska with a purpose. Now if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know I love things done with a purpose, and Five Iron was always 110% devoted to whatever purpose they were pursuing, even when that purpose was just silliness.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, here’s a few of their songs from that great resource of the modern age, YouTube! First, a ditty of pure silliness extolling the greatness of our near neighbors:

Now a song with a bit of a more serious bent to it:

The contrast between these two songs does an excellent job of encapsulating what made Five Iron Frenzy a band worth listening to. They didn’t just write music or do a great job turning a phrase. They did an excellent job of making you care about what you were hearing about.

Sure, when I first encountered Five Iron I was mostly enamored of their silliness. What other band offers you greatness like “These Are Not My Pants, The Rock Opera”? None! But their sense of fun was accompanied by a sense of place and purpose, even when you’re not sure exactly what those places and purposes are. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize just how meaningful their songs about those ideas are. Certainly they’ve aged well. I suspect I’ll continue to find their music meaningful as I get older.

So why should you care? Simple! While Five Iron may have retired in 2003 they reunited in 2011 and kickstarted a new album which is slated for release on November 26th! I can’t even begin to say how excited I am for Engine of a Million Plots. After a ten year absence, I can’t wait to hear what they sound like. And if you’ve never heard of them, it’s a great place to start. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Water Fall: Pointed Questions

Posted by natechen on October 28, 2013

Six Weeks, Four Days before the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Massif

Helix likes to complain about how Project Sumter has procedures for everything. He once joked that he thought we had to file paperwork just to get a bathroom break while we were in the field. On the other hand, I think that just shows how much of Helix’s life has been eaten up by the Project. Apparently, his grandparents have been telling him stories about Project work since he was seven or eight and it progressed until working for Project Sumter was the only career path he could conceive of.

So what Helix doesn’t seem to realize is that all of life is full of procedures. The only difference is the paperwork is a lot less intense outside of our office.

“I should have asked earlier,” I murmured to Amplifier as we followed Sifu up the stairs. “Can you handle green tea? He’s going to serve it to us and it’s rude to turn it down.”

She gave me a quick grin. “Handle it? I was practically raised swimming in the stuff.”

“All the caffeine would go a long way to explaining your personality,” Harriet said from a few steps behind us. She didn’t seem to be having trouble with the stairs but she did sound a little winded. With a conscious effort I made myself stop monitoring my boss’s physical condition. She was getting up there, sure, but she was still cleared for field work and I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by second guessing her. That kind of distraction could be dangerous in field work.

While my sifu doesn’t have talent in the same way that Amp and I do, he does live a life that’s not that different from ours. Teaching wushu and dealing with talents are some things he does, but it’s not what he does for a living.

Sifu also owns a small store in Chinatown, one of those tourist trap kinds of places that sells a bunch of authenticly made in China bric-a-brac, but that’s not what he really does either. It’s run by a selection of people from his family, mostly nieces and nephews, and his oldest daughter. No, Giancarlo He is an acupuncturist, which means he gets paid to stick needles into people to help relieve their aches and pains. There are a surprising number of people who think this is a good idea and some of them have a surprising amount of disposable income, so he does fairly well for himself.

The top floor of the building where the store is located also serves as his home and office. It’s cramped, but I’ve never one heard him talk about moving out. We turned left at the top of the stairs and Sifu let us into the small treatment room. It consisted of an polished walnut desk with an equally classy chair, a long wooden table with a stack of cushions on one side and a two other chairs. A cabinet in one corner held all the acupuncture stuff and on top of it sat a tea pot and four cups. Sifu busied himself with the teapot immediately, I took a seat on the edge of the table and the ladies took the two treatment chairs.

“Why do you call him Little Mountain?”

Sifu chuckled at Amp’s question. “Because he is as stubborn and unmovable as a lump of rock.” He quickly placed three cups of tea on the table for us and kept one for himself, settling into his office chair with a sigh and keeping an eye on her the whole time. “You do not look like someone that Little Mountain has brought to me to learn wushu.”

Before answering Amp paused to take a sip of her tea. “This is good,” she murmured, setting her cup back down and leaning back in her chair with a look I was beginning to realize was anticipation. She actually enjoyed chatting up all the weird people she was meeting, which was a good thing for her chances of working in the field. “I’m not here to learn wushu. In fact, Agent Massif said he really shouldn’t be teaching me. Apparently you wouldn’t like it.”

Sifu turned to look at me and took a sip of his tea. I did the same through sheer habit, you’re supposed to follow your sifu’s lead on everything when you’re a student and I’d never forgotten it. Of course, I don’t like green tea, so I found myself grimacing at the taste as I set the cup aside. “It’s not traditional to choose your own first student,” I said. “But mostly it’s because you’d start developing a bunch of habits that won’t necessarily mesh well with the training Project Sumter has waiting for you down the line.”

“Unfortunately, to them you will be an agent and not a person,” Sifu said. “Your training will be tailored to their needs, not yours.”

“Or you could say that we’re focusing on giving you skills that you can use to serve the public, rather than skills for self defense and personal improvement,” Harriet said, taking a tranquil sip from her own teacup. That kind of verbal sparring, like the tea or Sifu’s perpetually dour attitude, were just part of the standard procedure for a visit. But they didn’t seem to be making the best impression on Amplifier, so I decided to break with protocol and try to get to the point.

“Sifu, we’re not here to talk about wushu or differences in training doctrine.” I took another gulp of tea in an effort to make up for breaking with pattern. It sounds weird, I know, but that’s the give and take on these visits. “We really just want to find out about a couple of people in the community.”

Sifu sighed and looked into his tea. Being a teacher of any kind comes with a lot of responsibility for someone in Chinese society. In the small, rural villages where his parents grew up a sifu would probably be a part of his student’s entire life, a sort of third parent. By that measure, I’d qualify as a really bad child, since I never call, write or see him in person unless it’s to ask a question. I know it’s a purely cultural thing and you can’t go around bending over backwards to accommodate all the different expectations you encounter in life. But Sifu’s still really good at making me feel guilty about it.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Two things.” I shifted my feet, partly to try and get more comfortable on the edge of the table, partly to try and shake off the nagging sensation of guilt. “First, do you know of any place where a person with unique talents could get his car worked on? Specialty modifications to cut down the chance a fusebox is going to blow out his radio, for example.”

Sifu leaned back in his chair, fingers absently tapping on the sides of his teacup. “There hasn’t been anyone like that local in three or four years. The last fellow was called Wally the Wrench, or somesuch. He actually lived in your part of town.” By which Sifu meant the Polish neighborhood. “He apparently got a job offer somewhere else, though, so now the closest person I know of who does that kind of work is across the state line, in Gary.”

Harriet made a note of that, then said, “Do you know of any others? It’s probably worth following up on them all.”

Sifu set aside his tea and fished around in his desk until he found an old-fashioned Rolodex and started flipping through it. “I know of at least eight, from Texas to the East Coast. Do you want them all?”

“That many?” Amplifier asked in surprise.

Sifu gave her a quick smile. “I know a few people here and there.”

“Well, that’s just it,” she said. “Why are there even that many people in that line of work?”

“They probably don’t do work for talents that often,” I said with a shrug. “But once you do it, even if it’s just once or twice, your name gets passed around. Some of these people have probably gone years between jobs for talented people.”

Sifu grunted, copying the information from his Rolodex onto a sheet of paper. “Just as you say. There are probably a hundred people in the country who meet the criteria you asked about. Eight is not that large a number. It is strange that the only one here would get a job elsewhere. I never though of mechanics as the type to move around a lot.”

“Yeah, that is-” I stopped as a thought hit me. I knew it showed because Harriet and Amp both turned to look at me, but I didn’t want to mention too much about the case in front of Sifu – one of the reasons I keep my distance from him is that he’s really not supposed to know a lot about what I do and I’m not certain I could keep myself from asking him for advice constantly if I did hang around him a lot. But I’d just remembered what Samson said about Circuit possibly having a whole set of replacement parts for his armored van and couldn’t help wondering why he wouldn’t get a personal mechanic, too. It fit with the kind of thoroughness that we, or at least Helix, had insisted was a basic part of his personality at yesterday’s meeting. “Sifu, do you know if Wally left any kind of contact information behind when he moved out?”

He glanced up from his Rolodex. “Of course. I made it a point to ask, since keeping track of those things is what I do.”

“Where did he say he was going?”

“Overseas.” Sifu shrugged. “As I said, very strange. Perhaps he got a government contract?”

“Maybe.” I glanced at Harriet, who waved her hand slightly to show she was following my line of thought. Helix had been tapped by the CIA for some kind of job in Africa two years ago. Rumor was Circuit had been involved. “Give us Wally’s last known contact info too, please. It might be worth following up.”

“Very well.”

I finished my tea and made another face. The others could get away with just drinking a little, as a former student I knew I had to drink it all. “Anyway, you ready for the second thing I wanted to ask about?”

“The day I cannot write and answer your simple questions is the day they pour my ashes into an urn, Little Mountain.” Sifu waved a hand for me to continue.

“Right. Do you know anything about a contact like you who goes by Hangman?”

“Hangman?” Sifu laughed. “Of course I do. I’m surprised you even have to ask about him. You people should know about Hangman already. He is quite famous in our circles.”

“You’ve met?” Harriet asked.

“No, we haven’t. I don’t think anyone has met Hangman, he’s quite the recluse. He knows a lot and I don’t think he came by the information in a legitimate way. In fact, I’ve heard some things I’ve never heard about gifted people before in the last year or so, and if you trace the rumors back far enough they always seem to come from Hangman.” He handed me the sheet of paper he’d written the contact information for Wally and the other mechanics on. “Mind you, that doesn’t mean Hangman’s information is correct. I haven’t passed any of it on myself.”

“We appreciate that,” I said, tucking away the paper. “How do we go about meeting this Hangman if we were interested in talking to him?”

Sifu shrugged. “As far as I know, you don’t. He’s an information broker, and people who deal in secrets have a tendency to die with them, eventually. Hangman has tried to prevent an untimely death by conducting all his deals over the Internet. I’ve never heard of anyone who’s met him in person.”

“Have you ever dealt with him directly?” Amplifier asked. “Even knowing how to find him over the Net could be useful.”

“I haven’t, but my nephew Lincoln has.”

That made sense. Lincoln He was the family network administrator, he spent a lot of his time making sure the technology that ran the family businesses was functional, but he’d also started studying wushu with me when I was twelve. In another ten years, if I was still around, I would probably be dealing with him instead of Sifu. “I’ll get in touch with Lincoln, see if he can tell us anything more.”

“That won’t get you far, Little Mountain,” Sifu said, a note of regret in his voice. “Hangman wasn’t unwise in taking all the precautions he did, but they don’t seem to have helped as much as he hoped. From the sound of things, no one has heard from him in-” Sifu paused to glance at something on his desk, “-almost a month. Lincoln mentioned it to me the last time he was through to check on the computer wiring.”

Presumably Sifu was referring to the network routers or something. Since it didn’t really matter I ignored it. “We’ll get in touch anyway, in case Analysis can do something with what he knows.”

“If they do, let him know,” Sifu said. “He’s been quite worried, and I don’t think he’s the only one. While Hangman never said much about how he knew what he knew, he was very fair in making sure people heard it and he’d gotten to be quite popular.”

“We’ll let you know if we find out anything,” Harriet assured him. “But honestly, finding the van armored like an APC that disappeared week and a half ago is probably a higher priority than finding an information broker who disappeared a month ago.”

Sifu perked up a bit. “What’s that? You’re looking for a full sized van fitted with military grade armor?”

“That’s right,” I said slowly. “What about it?”

“I was contacted a week ago by someone trying to find a buyer for such a vehicle.” Sifu pulled out a drawer of his desk and picked through it. “I told them I was in the business of passing on wisdom, not taking commissions. But he did leave me a contact method. Would you be interested?”

I snatched the offered piece of paper out of his hand and laughed. “Sifu, you’re priceless.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?” Amplifier asked.

Sifu chuckled. “Young lady, mark this well and it will only be a matter of time before you surpass Little Mountain, at least as a detective. He never mastered the lesson, it seems.”

“What lesson?”

“To understand something you must begin by asking the right questions.”

Fiction Index

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

Water Fall: Cold Leads

Dialog Part Two

Cool Things: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Water Fall: Live Wires

Dialog Part One

National Adoption Month

Water Fall: Shock and Awe

When You Don’t Want To Write

Cool Things: Five Iron Frenzy

Water Fall: Pointed Questions

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: