Monthly Archives: November 2013

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Today’s example of “Next Time, Do More Outlining” comes from Chapter Nineteen, which I started on Saturday night and finished on Sunday. In the first half, once Tom gets in the car, his camera gets taken away. In the second half, once they’ve been driving for a while with the phone on and transmitting and being tracked and all kinds of other stuff that DIDN’T happen with Margaret and Jason in Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen, then his phone gets taken away.

Obviously, he needs to have his phone taken away when the camera gets taken, right at the beginning of the ride. I’m thinking that both devices get put in a Faraday cage in a suitcase so that they can’t be tracked. Then Ellen can bring them into the guest suite with Tom once they get to the compound. But for now, it’s just one more thing that needs to be fixed in the first draft.

On the other hand, with no outlining or plotting at all, I’ve just been “flying blind” as far as the action and point of view shifts. The way it switched from Tom to Margaret and now back to Tom — totally unplanned, it’s not part of a formula that I learned in some workshop. It’s just what felt right at the moment, and it still does. I guess after you’ve read your first five thousand books it starts to sink in. (Speaking of workshops, I would kill for a chance to go to Clarion, but I think I need to hone my craft just a little bit more first.)

CHAPTER TWENTY

After he ate his ice cream, Tom took a quick tour around the suite. The other two bedrooms were identical to the one he had picked. He found the same clothes, same shoes, same underwear, same bed, same furniture, and same security cameras. At least he knew where to get a spare pillow if he needed it.

A quick reconnaissance of the kitchen told him that his “hosts” weren’t worried about being attacked by him. The kitchen utensils and silverware included a full set of steak knives and carving knives. There were canned goods, pasta, pots, pans, dishes, cereal, and a full freezer and refrigerator. There was even an ice maker in the refrigerator door, as well as a coffee maker and a hot air popcorn maker on the kitchen counter. Tom wondered if he had to do his own dishes or if there was maid service.

The computer monitor was high-end. As promised, there were icons on the desktop for books, music, television episodes, and movies. Tom was tempted to see if the movies were edited or uncut, but decided he had better things to worry about. There were no inputs to the computer other than the keyboard and mouse. If he had somehow managed to smuggle in a disk or thumb drive, it would have been useless.

He found the thermostat and kicked it up a notch. He immediately heard something on the roof kick to life. Warm air started blowing through the vents.

Without a coat he wasn’t too interested in testing his freedom to move around the compound. It wasn’t that warm today to begin with and as the afternoon stretched on it was only going to get colder. Looking out of the building’s one window he could see that the sky was still clear. He couldn’t tell if it was windy because there weren’t any flags or trees in sight.

Tom couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he went to the book shelf and found something he could pass the time with. It was a Tom Clancy novel that he had already read, but it would occupy his brain while he waited and thought.

Tom knew that he was being monitored. He had done what they would have expected by checking out the bars on his cage. In retrospect, he should not have explored like that. He should have just sat in the middle of the room, very still, very quiet, just to see if it would freak someone out. It would have been unexpected and rebellious. It also would have put everyone on the other end of the monitors on alert, while leaving him in the dark about his situation. It sounded like a great idea on paper, perhaps not so good in practice.

He spent the wait running through what he knew, what he suspected, what he knew that they knew, what he knew that they might not know, and all of the other permutations and combinations. It was like a multi-dimensional chess game being played while juggling.

Tom also spent some time thinking about what he wanted to accomplish here. He was pissed about being ditched in Colorado, lied to, led on a wild goose chase, and now abducted, All he wanted to do was find his aunt and talk to her!

But that wasn’t the whole story, and he kept forgetting that. The reason he needed to find Auntie Annie was because of that thing in his home. Between the urns in Santa Fe and the thing that had been there in Ellen’s store, it was hard to believe that these guys didn’t know something about them. Add in all of the secrecy and hush-hush activities of this group and it all added up to a can of worms that just kept getting bigger and bigger.

The only way that Tom could see he was simply going to get released would be if they didn’t know that he knew about the disks. The only way that could happen would be if he didn’t talk to Annie and managed to lie and bluff his way to convincing them of his ignorance.

But what if they let him talk to Auntie Annie for a while? Was there any way that they could talk in private? Not that he could see. Any room here where he didn’t see cameras or microphones just meant that they were doing a better job of hiding them. He had to assume that there was absolutely zero privacy here.

So how could he talk to Annie about the invisible disks? He was hoping that talking to her would give him some answers, but he would pay for those answers by letting Ellen know that he was in on the big secret. He didn’t see any circumstances where he got released after that happened.

Tom remained convinced that there had to be an answer that he just wasn’t seeing, but this spy game wasn’t his forte. He had been thrown into it without warning and forced to do it for almost a week now. The stress was unlike anything that he had ever experienced. But he had the tiger by the tail now and couldn’t let go.

The stress and repeated shots of adrenaline were also leaving him tired to the point of exhaustion. One factor was that he had been up late every single night exchanging information with Jason and trying to figure out what it might mean. The second factor was his age – he was too old for this sort of nonsense. This travel was also wearing on him. He really wanted to be back in his own home, in his own bed, and doing his boring daily activities. Finally, there were only so many times that his adrenal gland could be squeezed dry, and he felt near that limit.

The thought occurred to Tom that this pursuit of answers might not be that unlike a tough investigative reporting assignment. If only he had been that type of a reporter. But he had spent more time interviewing researchers and going to seminars and news conferences than he had digging deep for hidden dirt and writing exposes.

In the comfortable chair in the warm room with an exhausted body, it wasn’t long before Tom caught himself drifting off to sleep. He caught himself and tried weakly to fight it, but it was a losing battle from the beginning. He briefly wondered if Ellen might have slipped a mickey into his ice cream, but he couldn’t figure out how she would have known which one to drug. As he finally allowed himself to be sucked under into sleep, he realized she probably had drugged all of them.

(Chapter Twenty to be continued)

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

This year’s NaNoWriMo adventure is not only a stress test on me, but on my primary computer system as well. While I have a decent system as of a couple years ago (8GB RAM, multiple 3TB hard disks, high-end video card, Win7 Pro, etc) like most Windows systems, it tends to pick up processes that just keep running in the background. I also use some programs that have known memory leaks. The more the system is used, the sooner it gets to the point where it has a fair amount of resources tied up, starts to slow down significantly (due to more and more stuff needing to be constantly swapped in and out of memory and off to disk), and needs a reboot to get back to normal.

But all month I’ve wanted to avoid any reboots because I’ve go so many programs running and so many windows open and so many active tabs on my browsers — it would be a real pain to set that workspace up again every time I reboot. So I’ve avoided rebooting.

In addition, this month I’ve been using the system a LOT, really stressing it with many, many windows open, multiple programs running, big files, lots and lots of internet access, printing, and screen grabs (a known memory leak). In addition, many of the updates from Microsoft, Java, Adobe, and others will require a reboot after installing, so I haven’t installed them. This leaves those annoying processes running to remind me about twice a day that there are updates available. And so on and so forth.

I keep waiting for the big file save or the big screen grab that’s going to push the system over the edge and lock it up tight. I almost got there this afternoon. When it comes I’ll have to do a hard reboot and rebuild the workspace, but so far I’ve dodged that bullet. (When the time comes, I hope to lose little or no data. Save early & often!)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (continued)

A possible solution presented itself as Ellen turned off the secondary road they were on and onto a rough dirt road. She slowed some due to the washboard surface of the road that was rattling everyone’s teeth. Burly Dude #1 was forced to turn around to face forward, although he put down the visor, opened the vanity mirror in it, and angled it around so he could still keep an eye on Tom.

Burly Dude #2 and Tom were getting bounced around pretty good. Burly Dude #2 finally reached his right arm up and held onto the grab bar there in order to stabilize himself. Seeing his chance, Tom did the same with his left arm.

The next big pothole did what Tom had hoped it would do. The tracker was jostled out of the coat sleeve and down into the body of the coat. There it was held near Tom’s waist by the elastic bottom of the coat. Still holding on to the grab bar with his left arm, Tom hoped that everyone was being tossed around enough so that a little bit of motion by his right arm wouldn’t be too noticeable.

Tom allowed his loose right arm to bounce up and bump his chest and waist several times, each time pulling the tracker a little closer to his right side. When he had it moved around to where he wanted it, he waited for his next chance.

Soon enough, the road got rougher and started resembling an off-road motocross track, climbing a steep hill. Tom looked ahead and saw a series of big potholes and rocks that they would have to get through while climbing. As Ellen put the SUV into four-wheel drive and drove in at a speed that Tom wouldn’t have thought wise, he was able, while being tossed around, to grab the tracker. In one smooth move he stuffed it down into the crack in the upholstery where the back and the seat met.

He hadn’t had the time to try to activate the tracker, but at least it was someplace where he might be able to use it later. That was much better than being caught with it. As long as no one folded the seat down or started poking around in the upholstery, it might be possible for him to somehow safely retrieve it later.

He had acted none too soon. As soon as they were at the top of the hill, the road got a bit smoother and started running parallel to the railroad tracks that supposedly didn’t exist. Beyond the tracks on his right, Tom could see the low cliff of the Hogback, here less than a hundred feet high. Ahead about a half-mile was a break in that wall where a canyon emptied out. Beside the mouth of the canyon was the compound.

“You wanted to see it so badly, here it is,” Ellen said, breaking her long silence as the ride got smoother.

“Thanks,” said Tom. “That’s quite the little obstacle course you have to get here.”

“We like it.”  There was one last series of bumps and jolts as they crossed the shallow dry stream bed coming out of the canyon and climbed out the other side. Then Ellen turned to the right across the railroad tracks and stopped on them in front of the compound gate. Either she pushed a button he couldn’t see or there was some other trigger for the gate, but it slowly started moving to the side. When the opening was wide enough, Ellen drove in.

She parked next to three other heavy duty four-wheel drive SUVs that were parked out in the open between buildings. As she stopped, Burly Dude #1 and Burly Dude #2 immediately got out. To Tom’s surprise, they both walked off toward the back of the compound instead of coming around to his side of the SUV. Ellen retrieved Tom’s camera from the console between the two front seats, then got out. Tom got out beside her and throw a thumb in the direction of the two receding figures.

“We don’t need them anymore?” he asked.

“They have other things to do,” Ellen replied. “Come with me, please.” She began walking away from the large, long building that ran along the west side of the compound and toward one of the freestanding buildings on the east side.

“They’re charming guys, the life of the party, I’m sure.”

“They’re very, very good at what they do,” Ellen said.

“Just what is it that they do?”

“They keep unwanted guests away from us. We value our privacy.”

“That would explain your stylish and elegant downtown location.”

Ellen pulled open a door in the building and gestured for him to enter. Tom went in to face his fate, whatever it might be.

The room turned out to not be any kind of torture chamber or interrogation room, but a rather conventional living room. It was simply furnished with nothing too elegant or flashy, but it was not Spartan. There was a small kitchen on the left and what looked to be three bedrooms on the far side. There was a large computer monitor mounted on the wall above a desk, with a keyboard and mouse sitting on the desk. Next to the desk was a book shelf with a variety of fiction and non-fiction paperbacks, There were also very prominent security cameras mounted in smoky plastic bubbles on the ceiling in all four corners.

The room looked like the love child of a private minimum security prison and a Motel Six.

Ellen went into the kitchen and put Tom’s camera on a small table. She opened a cabinet, pulled out a large cloth bag, looked at Tom and pointed at the table. “Empty your pockets there.”

Tom pulled out his phone and briefly considered “dropping” it to prevent it from falling into Ellen’s hands, or even smashing it on the table corner right in front of her. The futility of the act was apparent though, since most phones were rugged enough to not be destroyed that easily. He could probably crack the glass front, but they would still easily be able to get the information off of it. He was just going to have to trust that Jason’s software was good enough to keep them out of trouble if necessary.

He put the phone on the table, along with his keys, a pen, his wallet, and his watch. He looked at Ellen and asked, “Do you want my belt and shoes also? Are we going through a TSA checkpoint nearby?”

Ellen held out the cloth bag. “Please put all of your clothing in here, including your shoes and coat.”

Tom took the bag as he raised his eyebrows and gave Ellen a quizzical look. He turned and looked for a bathroom, didn’t see one, then started walking toward the nearest bedroom.

“Stop!” Ellen ordered. “Please do not leave my sight until I instruct you to do so. We require that you disrobe here and put all of your clothing into the bag.”

“You’re kidding,” said Tom.

“Please do as you’re asked.”

“I don’t get a male attendant for my strip search?”

“Grow up, your body issues and nudity phobias are not my concern. Please put all of your clothing in the bag.”

Tom wanted to react. He fought the urge and took a deep breath. He had heard of this sort of thing being used in other interrogations, in order to put the subject off guard and at a psychological disadvantage. He would do his best to not give them the pleasure. He stripped, putting all of his clothes into the bag before walking over and setting it down next to Ellen.

“Thank you,” she said. “You may choose any of the bedrooms you wish, you’ll be staying here alone, for now at least. In the closet and dressers you’ll find a variety of clothing and shoes. Each bedroom has a separate bathroom with a basic selection of toiletries. Please go get dressed and then come back out here.”

Tom did as he was instructed without bothering to say another word. He went to the middle bedroom where he found a queen-sized bed, dresser, and night table. There was a walk-in closet at the back of the room with a bathroom on one side. There was no window. In this room as well there were security cameras on the ceiling in all four corners. In the closet there were two cameras, with two more in the bathroom. So much for any semblance of privacy.

Tom found the clothing as Ellen had said it would be and got dressed. He came out to find Ellen sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him.

“There are drinks in the refrigerator if you wish,” she said as he approached. “Then please sit down.”

Tom was thirsty and hungry, so he opened the refrigerator and found a variety of soft drinks, as well as bottled water, fruit drinks, and milk. There was also a variety of fruits and vegetables, lunch meats, and cheese. Tom upgraded his opinion of his cell. It was more like a combination of prison and a Marriott Suites. Tom took a bottle of water and sat down across from Ellen.

“Please put in the security code to unlock your phone, and tell me what the code is. We know that you may have software which will wipe the data and destroy the phone if you put in a destruct code. Please do not consider doing that if we are to be able to work together cooperatively.” She handed the phone across the desk.

Tom did in fact have a destruct code, but he decided not to use it or mention its existence. Thanks to Jason’s software he also had two separate unlock codes. The first one was for his use, allowing him access to everything on his home system and secure communications with Jason. The second was for situations just like this, not that he had ever envisioned needing it when Jason had set it up.

Tom unlocked the phone with the second code and gave the code to Ellen. She took the phone and began going through the control settings, making changes right and left. The GPS and antennas got disabled, what used to be called “airplane mode”. The automatic locking function was disabled. Soon the phone was set up with no security at all.

Tom watched calmly and tried to keep a poker face. Jason had told him what was really going on when his phone was in this mode. While it appeared to have had its security and communication functions disabled, they were in fact still active. Anyone using the phone would get innocuous data, but no clue of the existence of anything Jason’s system had flagged as confidential. And the phone’s camera would quietly and silently be taking time-lapse video of its surroundings and transmitting them when it could. The phone was now an electronic Trojan horse.

Ellen looked up and waved her arms toward the room. “For now, this suite is yours. There are a selection of movies and entertainment options on the computer. You will not have access to the internet or the outside world, for reasons that will become clear later if they’re not already. Obviously, you will be monitored in here. If you get hungry there are a variety of things to eat, including microwaveable meals in the freezer. There should even be some ice cream in there. We’ll be back later in the afternoon to talk. In the meantime, please relax and make yourself comfortable. Do you have any questions?”

Tom had many, many questions, but stuck to a few simple ones for now. “Am I prisoner here?” he asked.

“No, you are a guest. The door will not be locked. It is cold outside and we have a fence to keep wild critters out and domestic critters in, so we strongly suggest that you stay in here. All of the other buildings will be locked, so there’s really nowhere for you to go, but for now you are not strictly restricted to this building.”

“When can I talk to Annie, or Dahlia?”

“She’s still in her morning activities and will be there for a while. We’ll let her know that you’re here when we’re able and then set up an initial meeting time, but that might not be until tomorrow. We’ll see.”

“How do I get in touch with you if I need to?”

“There’s a communication icon on the computer you can use.”

“Okay. I guess that I’ll twiddle my thumbs and wait for your next move. Let’s hope at least that you have ice cream that I like.”

Ellen never smiled or changed expression as she got up, took all of Tom’s possessions and clothing, including his camera and phone, and left the building.

Tom checked out the freezer. There were small servings of vanilla and chocolate ice cream along with the TV dinners. He picked up a half-pint of chocolate, found a spoon, and sat down to wait.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Can’t stay up too late writing tonight (famous last words if I ever heard them) since I’ve got to get up & get moving on Sunday morning to watch my beloved KC Chiefs. Of course, I say this knowing that the average time that I’ve posted the previous twenty-two of these is probably (I haven’t actually calculated it) about 23:50 or later. It’s a process that really kind of sucks in many ways, but it seems to be producing many words, so if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, I guess.

It is an interesting experience. I noticed it about eight years ago when I had to write reports and papers for my MBA program. I would dread it, procrastinate, panic, and then out of nowhere be “in the zone.” It is truly almost an out of body experience when it’s the good stuff. I start writing, I get hooked back into the story, the twists and turns, the characters and their personalities — and suddenly it’s two or three hours later and there are many words there. I’ve heard authors describe that at conventions, but I didn’t understand until it happened to me.

Not that you can get it to happen every day. At least half the time (like tonight, so far) it’s work, an exercise in staying focused while also trying to watch (well, more like listen, the television is behind me) the Kings hockey game. (Still 0-0 in the second period.) No out of body experience, no possession by my mortal flesh by my personal muse, no golden river of sweet, perfect words flowing through my fingers like high-voltage electricity. (Hey, that wasn’t a bad image!) Nope, some nights it’s just grind it out (just like the Kings), keep working, don’t give up, play one game at a time, just be happy to be there, and good Lord willing, it will all work out. (Thanks, Crash!)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tom saw that Ellen was waiting for him to get in the SUV before she got in. As soon as he was in and the door closed, she climbed in herself and started speeding off across the parking lot, leaving Margaret behind. Tom noticed that no one else had buckled their seat belts. Apparently that was another law that this group was above. He briefly thought that it would be easier for him to jump out of the SUV with the seat belt off, but realized that if he was going to do that, he never should have gotten into the SUV in the first place.

Tom buckled his seat belt and settled back for the ride.

Burly Dude #1 had been watching him from the front seat since he got in. Burly Dude #2 sat next to Tom and just looked straight ahead, but Tom suspected that he was capable of moving very quickly if necessary, whether he was staring at Tom or not. Neither said a word, and no expression crossed their faces.

As Ellen pulled drove through town, Burly Dude #1 pointed at the camera Tom held and held out his hand for it.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Tom said, holding on to the camera. “I’m Tom. And you are…?”

Burly Dude #1 snapped his fingers and pointed again at the camera, holding out his hand. The finger snap sounded like a rifle shot in the quiet.

“We’re going to be like that, are we?” Tom was filled with a wild abandoned now that he had taken this leap of faith. Or maybe it was hysterical panic. Either way, he wanted to maintain some tiny shred of control. If he could manage to piss off these clowns in the process, so much the better.

“What about him?” Tom asked, nodding his head toward Burly Dude #2. “Does he have a name?”

Burly Dude #2 turned to Tom and leaned across their seats. He firmly grasped Tom’s arm with his left hand and grabbed the camera with his right. While Burly Dude #2 wasn’t holding on to his arm hard enough to be actually hurting him, he was holding it firmly enough to make it quite clear to Tom that it was an imminent option. Tom opened his hand and released the camera.

Burly Dude #2 handed the camera to Burly Dude #1, who put it in the SUV’s front seat center console. He then turned back to watch Tom. Burly Dude #2 had already turned to stare straight ahead again. Neither had uttered a sound.

Tom was too nervous or too stupid to shut up. “So much for them. Ellen, are you and I going to chat while you drive?” Tom asked. “If not, can you get something on the radio? Anything except for those radio televangelists, I can’t stand them.”

If Ellen had even heard him, she gave no sign. The awkward silence stretched onward.

“Okay, I give up. Turn on a radio televangelist, but try to find one with a real Southern accent, not one of those fake ones.”

Ellen continued to ignore him. The Burly Dudes could have been robots for all of the emotion and movement they had shown after taking the camera. Tom thought the robot theory might not be totally out of the question given how bizarre this whole affair had become.

Tom thought about continuing to be a smart ass in order to be a thorn in their sides, but it wasn’t clear that it would do him any good. They knew he wasn’t happy with the situation and being annoying wouldn’t inspire them to cut him any slack. So he shut up.

Tom realized he had better stop being reactive and start trying to be proactive. In other words, might be better off spending this time figuring out what he was going to say, what he was going to ask, and how he was going to handle this mess. He hadn’t planned on this being a suicide mission. He still didn’t.

It would help if he knew who these people were and what they were up to, but he didn’t. He only knew Aunt Annie, aka “Dahlia”, was with them, that Ellen had lied to him and fled when she found out he was looking for her, and their cult or organization had gone to tremendous trouble to hide their tracks and not be found.

On the other hand, Tom ran through his memory of his conversation in Colorado with Ellen. That was probably all they knew of him. There was always the possibility that with all of their tech and resources, they had better high tech toys than Jason did, in which case he was totally screwed. That could become obvious really quickly.

Until it did, Tom had to assume that they just saw him as a pest trying to find his aunt for reasons they didn’t understand or care about. He hadn’t mentioned Jason at any point, or the invisible thing in his house, or the fact that he and Jason were aware of the massive cover up of their secret lair. He would have to be careful not to let any of that slip.

As they drove Tom tried to keep track of where they were and how they were getting there, but he soon gave it up as futile. He didn’t know the area or the streets or the landscape well enough to follow anything. He could tell that they were heading north out of town. Soon they were on a two-lane state highway in what looked like the middle of nowhere.

As Tom tried not to be too nervous, he couldn’t help but fidget a bit. It was tough to find a comfortable position when you might be going out to the middle of nowhere to occupy a shallow grave. He didn’t really think that was where he was headed just yet, but that could just be denial at work.

As he shifted and crossed his arms at one point he felt something hard inside the left sleeve of his ski jacket. He immediately realized that it was the spare GPS tracker that he had palmed from his backpack. He didn’t have much time to figure out what he was going to do with it, and he would only get one chance.

Fortunately, at the moment it wasn’t obvious there was something up his sleeve. The down ski jacket that he was wearing was bulky and the tracker didn’t show as an obvious lump. But unless he did something, had some sort of plan, as soon as he took the jacket off the tracker would fall out. That would be bad.

(Chapter Nineteen to be continued)

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Some of you may be wondering, “Why did Paul put in that whole thing between Tom and Margaret as he was being kidnapped where Tom told her to give Jason a message about the “motorcycle” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and then never mention it again when Margaret’s trying to contact Jason and it should be a key secret code word that helps Jason trust Margaret enough to call her? Huh? What’s up with that?”

Exactly!! That’s what I said when I re-read a bit. It was a clever bit when I put it in, then I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT IT. This is what happens in a “zeroth” draft. Once it’s all done, then I’ll go back through it all and one of the big things to get done will be to spot things like that and patch them up. Either re-write the scene where Margaret is trying to contact Jason, or take it out of the scene where Tom’s being kidnapped.

To paraphrase Bismark, writing early drafts, like making sausages and laws, might be something you wish to know as few details about as possible.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (continued)

Once she was done at home, Margaret headed over to Tom’s hotel to see if somehow he had been released and wound up back there. She was really hoping to find him since it would make things so much simpler. When she pulled into the parking lot, the first thing she noticed was that his rental car was no longer parked where it had been yesterday.

That wasn’t a good sign, especially since she still had the keys to it in his backpack. She parked in the rear and then tried to open the stairwell door using Tom’s hotel room key. The electronic lock beeped and failed to open. She tried it again, just to make sure, and got the same response. Not wanting to try it a third time for fear that it would start tripping alarms, she grabbed the backpack walked around to the lobby.

There was a different front desk clerk on duty today. Margaret gave her a big smile and explained again how she was trying to return the backpack to Mr. Tiernan. Would she be kind enough to call his room and see if he was there?

“Sorry, it won’t do any good. He’s gone,” the woman said. “He called to check out a couple of hours ago.”

“I see,” replied Margaret, although she didn’t. “Do you know if he got the message that I still had this,” indicating the backpack, “and I was trying to get it back to him?”

“It doesn’t look like he ever picked up any notes, there’s still one here. He just called is to say that he had left before sunrise and wouldn’t be back. We were instructed to close out the bill and check him out.”

“Sure, I understand. Do you know if it was him calling or someone else calling for him? He had told me that he would be here another week.”

“It was a guy’s voice, said it was him, knew the room number, said he was gone. I don’t know that I would recognize his voice one way or the other. Housekeeping hasn’t said anything to me about lost and found, so I’d assume his stuff is all gone. It all seems routine. Is there a problem of some sort?”

“No, not a problem, I’m just trying to figure out how to get his stuff back to him. It should have been an easy thing but it’s turning into more of a hassle than I want to deal with. I just thought maybe he might have indicated where he was going or if he was going to be coming back, but it was just a shot in the dark. I guess I’ll just throw this stuff in my office and wait to see if he calls. Thanks.”

Walking back to her jeep, she went by the place where Tom’s car had been. There were no signs of anything unusual, no broken glass or signs that anything odd had happened. Margaret noticed a security camera discretely hidden on one of the parking lot light poles. Surely if the car had been towed away someone inside would have noticed and asked questions. Whoever had taken the car had to have done it quietly, but without the keys and without breaking in. Margaret took it as yet another sign of the technological skills and toys available to whoever was running this show.

She sent a quick email to Jason to update him on what she had found. She also mentioned the security camera in the parking lot, as well as the cameras in the hotel hallways and stairwells. One of the discussions they would have to have sooner rather than later would be what the rules of engagement were, if any.

Uncertain of what else she could check on or where else she could go, Margaret headed back to the hanger. As she was heading toward the highway she got stuck at a railroad crossing, the crossing guard arms lighting up and coming down just as a long freight train approached. As the engine got near, she heard the whistle sound a warning blast. Once it was past her, she heard it sound off again each time it got to a major street crossing through town.

Something that had been bothering her since last night finally clicked in her head. It had been close to 2:00 AM when she had been spooked by the cats in her parking lot. They had all fled just as the two train whistles sounded and Jason had told her that the invisible object had vanished at that same instant.

But there shouldn’t have been any train whistles. The first one came from the direction of town, where she was now. But for years the city had fought with the train companies over the noise of the train whistles in the middle of the night. They had reached a compromise with the trains agreeing to not blow their whistles between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM, and the city footing the bill for some more elaborate and technologically advanced crossing gates so that the trains wouldn’t be required by law to blow the whistles.

In addition, the train schedules through town were so precise you could set your watch by them. Everyone in town knew when the trains came through and managed critical trips around them. There were no trains that should have been on those tracks in town last night at 2:00 AM. Margaret couldn’t remember the last time she had seen an unscheduled freight coming through.

Finally, there was the sound of the second train whistle, the high pitched one off in the northeast. She had been too spooked by the insane, zombie cats to react to it, but that whistle came from a direction where there weren’t supposed to be any trains. Ever. Except that in that direction were the “abandoned” train tracks she and Tom had seen running right by the compound. The ones she thought were abandoned, but Tom and Josh thought were in use. The ones Josh had found to be hidden in all of the maps and photos out there.

Since everyone was still stopped waiting for the train to pass, Margaret pulled out her phone and sent a quick message to Josh about the significance of the trains and their whistles in the night. As she hit “send” and looked to see if the end of the train was in sight yet, a woman walked up to her passenger door and rapped on the window.

Margaret was startled. The woman was not anyone she recognized, but she also wasn’t Ellen. There wasn’t any reason to panic, at least not yet. Plus, with a train in front of her and cars behind and next to her, she wasn’t going anywhere. The woman was looking at her expectantly, so Ellen waved for her to open the door so she could see what she wanted.

To Margaret’s surprise, the woman took this as an invitation to get in. She quickly slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.

“We have very little time,” the strange woman said. “You’re Margaret Locke, the balloon pilot, correct?”

“What?” asked Margaret, confused and suddenly wishing that she still carried her old military sidearm in the car with her. “I don’t know what…”

“I’m trying to help you and your friend, Tom,” the woman said calmly but quickly. “You’re the pilot from his flight two days ago, correct?”

“Yes, I’m Margaret Locke and I was Tom’s balloon pilot. It was just a sightseeing tour so he could…”

“Save it, we both know that’s bullshit. I live at that place out in the desert. They’ve got him there. Don’t worry, he’s fine. They’re going to let him see his aunt. She’s out there too. I don’t know what will happen to him after that, I guess it depends on him. But I don’t think that they’ll hurt him, that’s not the way it works. At least, I’ve never seen them do anything like that. So don’t do anything stupid like going to the police or trying to ‘rescue’ him. It will just make a real mess. I don’t’ know what they would do if that happens.”

“I wasn’t going to the police and all by myself I’m not breaking in or rescuing anyone. Who are ‘they’? Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“No, I can’t. I’ve got to go, they don’t know that I’m meeting with you and I don’t want to know what they would do if they found out.” She started to open the door and get back out.

“Wait!” called Margaret. “Who are you? How can I get in touch with you if I need to?”

The woman stood outside of the jeep and stopped shutting the door. “If necessary, I’ll get in touch with you. I’m Morrison.” With that, she shut the door and walked back through the cars to the sidewalk.

Margaret desperately wanted to follow her or at least see where she went, but Morrison disappeared behind a truck just as the last cars of the train passed and the gates lifted. With a couple dozen cars lined up behind her, Margaret had no choice but to drive forward. She tried to find a place to do a U-turn, but there were cars backed up in the opposite direction for two blocks. By the time Margaret got back to the tracks, there was no sign of Morrison at all.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Has anyone noticed there isn’t really a title for this NaNoWriMo novel yet? In part that’s because I haven’t really decided on one yet. In part that’s because the titles I’m most likely to use could act as a major spoiler to anyone who’s read my other stuff here.

Assuming there are folks out there (other than The Long Suffering Wife, who has to read it, and possibly my kids) who actually read what I write here, is anyone starting to see where this is headed? As I’ve mentioned, there’s a destination for this story. I mean that in the sense that I really started with the idea of how the novel had to end. (I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about that when we get to the end.) From there, it’s all just been details to see if I can get there without a major plot crash or deus ex machina. So far it’s still heading in the right direction. There will be more major “directional signs” coming up in the next couple of days. In the mean time, any guesses?

As for yesterday, I really and truly was this close to just not bothering to write anything at all for the day. But I sat down about 21:30, tired, expecting to just write 500 to 1000 words — two and a half hours later I’m typing like hell to get that last scene finished so that I can post here and update on the NaNoWriMo website before midnight. I posted here at 23:56 and on NaNoWriMo at 23:58, which is cutting it pretty tight.

My other comment would be about the end of Chapter Seventeen. That conversation between Margaret and Jason wasn’t going the way I had expected to, but it was clear as I wrote it that Margaret would be buying Jason’s story, especially after she can’t see the apparition in the picture or on the urn. It wasn’t clear how I was going to keep her involved and get her back into the flow of the story until about two seconds before I wrote that chapter ending. Spooky.

What’s even spookier is writing that scene at about 23:45, on a rainy and windy night, alone with just the cat on my lap (not staring into space over my shoulder, fortunately), just one light on in the room, no music or television, just the clicking of the keyboard and the sound of the weather… And here I am writing a scene that’s seriously creepy and spooky in nature. Let’s say that I was not oblivious to the mood. Based on that small experience, I’m assuming that Steven King writes his stories in broad daylight in a brightly lit room. Because.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Margaret’s schedule was clear the next day so she allowed herself the luxury of sleeping in. Neil was still over at Bobby’s house and Margaret hoped that he would stay there and not find her here. She did not want to have to explain to him what was going on given how much she had doubted and what drastic measures it had taken to break through those doubts.

Cautious to the possibility that her home might be bugged, she spent an hour or so after breakfast “doing housework” while actually looking for anything that might have been tampered with. She found nothing, but given what Jason had told her about what they were up against, that didn’t prove that there wasn’t anything to find.

She followed the instructions that Jason had left on her phone to install his mystic security upgrade to her home network. Once that was done she found a place where she couldn’t imagine any kind of camera behind her to look at the monitor over her shoulder. As soon as she got online, several messages from Jason showed up.

The first one was a copy of the video from the security camera on the roof over the office door at her hanger. Margaret was almost hoping that she would see this invisible monster hanging over her when she looked at the screen, but as with the video from Tom’s house, she saw nothing.

Before she came into view of the camera, nineteen cats came in from out of the darkness. There were tabbies, calicos, a Siamese, and various domestic shorthair breeds. Margaret didn’t recognize any of them. They all came into the light in a matter of seconds, approaching from every direction. In perfect synchronization they jumped up onto her jeep. They spread out across the hood and roof and turned toward the sky just as Margaret came into the upper left of the frame.

The audio from the feed was faint, designed more to trigger the security system in the event of any loud noises. Margaret watched as her video image called Jason. After about thirty seconds, she could hear the sound of the first train whistle, followed by the even more faint sound of the second whistle. With the end of the second blast, the cats all jumped down and vanished into the darkness.

Margaret played the video three times, trying to play with different monitor settings to bring out any detail that she might be missing, but it was futile. There was no doubt in her mind, then or now, that one of Jason and Tom’s apparitions was present, but she couldn’t see any sign of it.

The next file from Jason was a hand drawn sketch of the scene in the security video. It was crude and Margaret guessed that Jason had put some tracing paper over the monitor to make it. In the sketch she could clearly see the giant disk. From the camera’s viewpoint, it almost blocked the view of where she stood and it partially blocked the view of the cats and her jeep. As seen in the other sketch that Jason had sent, the disk seemed to be filled with overlapping rows of teeth.

With that sketch as a guide she went back and watched the video one more time. It didn’t make any difference, she still didn’t see anything unusual other than the cats all acting in a seriously bizarre fashion. It was very frustrating.

The next file from Jason had copies of all of the pictures of the compound and mystery railroad tracks that Tom had taken on the balloon flight. Margaret flipped through them slowly and examined them for anything unusual, but they matched her memory of what they had seen.

The final file she received was filled with notes and comments from Jason. Several pages of notes were from the conversations he and Tom had had over the last few days, but the first page was full of his notes and comments on the event of the previous night. Jason obviously hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

Jason had already run the video from last night through his analytical software. Again, it had come up negative for any sign of manipulation or special effects. If it was fake in any way, Jason couldn’t prove it at all.

Finally, Jason had a list of suggestions for actions she could take this morning. Margaret didn’t see anything that wasn’t reasonable, although she had a few details that she would change. But in the big picture sense, Jason seemed to have an excellent grasp for tactical thinking and detail management. Margaret wondered what branch of the military he had been in, or if he had been a spook.

Jason had indicated that he would be at work for most of the day and only available for emergencies. Margaret sent a return message with her thoughts on his suggestions. She also added a few questions and suggestions of her own.

In particular, Margaret wanted to know why the computer software analyzing these images could see these objects while she couldn’t. That just didn’t make any sense at all.

Assuming the computer software could see these things, she also suggested to Jason there should be a way to have the security mainframes actively scanning all of the video being processed through it. Had it been an incredible stroke of luck that the object in Tom’s apartment had been seen, or were these things more common than they believed? Some solid data would be really valuable.

Finally, as much as she didn’t want to expose herself to the possibility of being locked up in a rubber room, Margaret knew they needed to bring other people into this investigation. If nothing else, they needed to know if other people could see the disks in the videos. Jason could come up with some cover story, maybe say they were test marketing a new horror film or something, but they needed to know if Margaret was the exception in not seeing the disk, or if Tom and Jason were the oddballs because they could see it.

(Chapter Eighteen to be continued)

After he took pity on our poor, pathetic, word-herding, NaNoWriMo-ing souls for the last two weeks, Chuck Wendig this week gave us this task in his Flash Fiction Challenge, based on last week’s micro-Challenge. (My response to last week’s micro-Challenge is here.) This week we’ve been instructed to write “1,000 words or so” using someone else’s first line from last week. I’m using the first line offered up by Kenneth Jobe (November 9th, 12:32 AM in the comments). As usual, I’m over the word count. This week, “or so” = 70 words. As long as I’m within 10% of the target, it’ll have to do. (First draft was almost 1,300 words, so, hooray for vicious editing!)

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

ZERO TO HERO

Fifteen minutes turned Pete Dodd from zero to hero. He had never been more miserable.

His Catholic school upbringing was the problem, of course. All of the holier-than-thou crap they had stuffed into his skull for twelve years had left him ill prepared for the real world. At least, the real world as represented by a Big Ten college.

The academics were a piece of cake. The Sisters of the Spanish Inquisition had made sure he knew how to study. They had built a firm foundation in math, language, history, and literature. A foundation in the sciences – not so much. As far as Pete could tell, they were still pissed off over the whole Galileo thing. Fortunately, as a journalism major, it didn’t matter if he knew the difference between cosmology and cosmetology.

The social aspect of college was where Pete had discovered just how badly the good nuns had failed him. They had thoroughly conditioned him to feel properly sinful and unworthy when confronted with unapproved urges and desires. He was a good boy, and pure.

So why had God chosen to put him into a co-ed dorm? And why had He in His infinite wisdom chosen to put Pete across the hall from Amber Paige’s room? Beautiful Amber Paige, with her long, golden hair, her full and ample bosom, her skimpy tank tops, her hourglass figure and shakka-boom shakka-boom way of walking, her tight, tight jeans…

For two months Pete had focused on his studies as if his life depended on it. All the while, the temptation that was Amber Paige was repeatedly flaunted in front of him. Pete searched high and low for some fault, some flaw in her makeup which would allow him to hate her, or at least ignore her.

To Pete’s dismay, Amber Paige was perfect. She was intelligent, charming, friendly, beautiful, and funny. She even offered to help him with his required freshman physics class when he was foundering. In her high school she had received a splendid science education, which she was now using to pursue a degree in aeronautical engineering. She was going to be an astronaut, she said, and Pete didn’t doubt she would be.

About the time Pete’s stunted self-confidence and atrophied social skills began to realize that he should be charming, friendly, and funny in return when talking to Amber, she began hanging out with Billy Omaha, the backup, redshirt junior quarterback on the school football team. Pete soon realized that “hanging out” meant torrid college sex, usually at high volume.

It got tougher to focus on his academics, especially physics. He got his first “C” ever on a test and sat waiting for Satan to appear to take him to Hell. Instead he got Amber offering again to tutor him. The conflicting feelings triggered by the offer made Pete wish Satan had appeared.

Caught between doctrine and lust, adrift on a sea of hormones, Pete was not thinking straight.

So when the fire alarms went off in the dorm, Pete should have headed out the door and down the stairs to his assigned check-in location. That’s what Sister Elizabeth would have expected of him. Instead, Pete assumed it was just another stupid drill and ignored the ringing bells.

When he saw the fire trucks outside, he realized his error and headed for the door. He opened the door and immediately slammed it shut as a wave of thick black smoke rolled in.

Being on the fourth floor it was too high to jump, but the stairs were only a few feet away. Pete tied a T-shirt over his nose and mouth, crouched down, and went out into the hallway, hugging the floor.

There was more or less clear air for a foot or so off the ground, so Pete wormed his way toward the stairwell as if he had barbed wire and sniper fire going over his head. He had only gone a few feet when he ran into the bodies in the hall.

A very quick exam by touch told him there were two people there, one male and one female, neither wearing very much. He grabbed Amber’s arm and started dragging her along the floor toward the stairs.

As he got to the stairwell and pushed the door open, he found an enormous figure coming up the stairs. The firefighter was wearing breathing gear, along with brilliant lights clipped to his helmet and shoulder. He saw Pete dragging Amber’s limp form and charged up the stairs toward them.

Without hesitating, the firefighter grabbed Amber and slung her over his shoulder. He leaned down next to Pete’s face so he could be heard through the mask and yelled, “Can you follow me down on your own?”

Pete was feeling slightly lightheaded from the exertion of dragging Amber, but he gave the firefighter a thumbs-up gesture. The firefighter immediately turned and began going down the stairs as fast as possible, Amber over his shoulder.

Pete should have followed him as instructed. It would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, Pete went back into the hallway, found Billy’s leg, and dragged him back into the stairwell. There were no more firefighters in sight and Billy outweighed Pete by over fifty pounds, but somehow Pete got Billy onto his back and down the stairs to the second floor, where other firefighters finally met him and took them both out for medical attention.

Pete was the talk of campus. His picture was splashed across the local newspapers and television stations. He was honored at the beginning of the next home football game. Right there in front of 90,000 fans, Amber gave him a hug and a kiss which prompted a whole new dimension of impure thoughts in the following days.

However, Amber and Billy became even more attached after their near-death experience. Soon she was wearing a ring.

Amber and Billy wanted to be Pete’s best friends forever. Amber was totally oblivious to Pete’s desire to be more than friends, and Pete was completely incapable of expressing his desire.

Zero to hero, but the hero doesn’t always get the girl. Sometimes he just gets to remember how wonderful she felt for those few seconds when he grabbed her to drag her along the floor. Somehow the memory just made him even more miserable. Especially since he knew that the smart thing would have been to leave Billy behind.