Category Archives: Writing

We’re now in week two (of five) for this odd task in Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Last week I (and many others) wrote a 200 word fraction of a story, intended to be the first 1/5 of a story. This week, I’ll take Rebecca B’s first 200 words and add my second 200. I really liked my little 200 word snippet from last week, but to the best of my knowledge no one else on the site has picked it to use as the starting point for their second 200.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

THE SECOND TWO HUNDRED WORDS

(First segment written by Rebecca B. and posted here.)

Blustering winter wind was violently blowing her long brown hair back as she looked over the 103rd floor rooftop ledge. The rooftops were normally locked, but she had a pick and skills to undo them. Her internal fire and heat sinked clothing kept her warm where normal people would have felt cold. Her eyes scanned the darkening skyline and she rocked mindlessly onto the balls of her feet and back down.

She had lost sight of him just as he jumped over the edge of the roof, laughing in a way that told her he no longer cared about his own life, and so could not possibly care about others. After his leap he stopped midair to laugh at her, mocking her, screaming “You call yourself a super hero?! Come and get me if you’re so super!” He flew off, knowing fully well she couldn’t fly. She had to find him. Time was running short.

She stayed there until stars were popping out and she knew it was unlikely he’d return, and futile that she’d be able to see him in the dark. Heroic actions would need to be taken, and she knew just the girl to take them.

(Second segment written by Paul Willett)

As she opened the stairwell door the lights on the building’s helipad lit up, shattering the night. Above her she spotted either a very brave pilot or a very stupid one trying to land in the gale. Abandoning caution, she sprinted across the icy rooftop toward the helipad stairs. As the helicopter turned into the wind for its final approach she crouched at the top of the stairs, ready to move.

The chopper touched down with a thud and the pilot fought to keep it there. She could see he was alone, probably here to pick up some multi-billionaire pretty boy. Like a flash, she crossed the short distance to the pilot’s door and yanked it open wide.

The pilot was caught completely off guard. She popped his seatbelt loose with her right hand while grabbing his coat collar with her left. Her first jerk got him off balance, her second sent him skidding across the helipad and over the side onto the safety netting. She leapt into the cockpit and started to spool up the big turbine for her escape. In seconds, she was lifting off to brave the winds herself, risking all to pursue her mortal enemy.

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.

NaNoWriMo is hard. Running a marathon (to which I’ve been comparing NaNoWriMo all month) is hard. Getting ready for it, you may think you know how hard, but you don’t. Even if you’ve tried and fallen short once or twice, you still don’t really know. But if you keep going, you get through it, you meet your goal, you get to the end, then you truly understand how difficult it is.

Then… Then you think that you know, or at least have a better idea, how hard it’s going to be to go from having completed NaNoWriMo (or your 7:30 marathon) to actually having a novel that other people are going to read and enjoy (or your 6:00 marathon). Now you must get through editing, and rewriting, and re-editing, and shuffling, and cutting, and re-re-editing. You think you know now how hard that will be. But then you remember just how ignorant you were before, and before that, and you finally get a glimpse of how ignorant you might still be now.

You have learned to doubt, to question.

But… But wait, there’s hope.

When I trained for the LA Marathon, we started out with a three-mile run. I thought I was going to barf up a lung and die. I was praying I would barf up a lung and die. But I didn’t. The next week we did four miles. Then five the next week. After building up for a few weeks, we would have a “cut back” week where we would run a shorter distance and take it easy. Then we would start building up again.

Towards the end, when we had run twenty miles one Saturday, then twenty-two the next, and then had a cut back week to only run sixteen miles, we were chatting about what was a breeze that sixteen mile day was going to be. We were only running sixteen miles! We could practically do that in our sleep and, no, we were not being sarcastic or snide. We really felt that way.

Our trainers reminded us that four months earlier, we had wanted to barf up a lung and die after three miles. Yet now we were legitimately scoffing at only sixteen miles. How had that happened?

Here’s the really, really big point. It’s the reason that this marathon vs. writing analogy has rung so true for me throughout this adventure.

When we have doubts going forward in the writing process (and we will) we need to keep this example from marathon training in mind. On that first weekend, when we were dying after three miles, of course we would have literally died if we had tried to run twenty-six miles. It would have been even more ridiculous to think we could run a 3:00 marathon on that first day. If we had tried to do that, we would have quit after six or seven or twelve miles. But we would have quit. We would have “failed”.

Similarly, at this point in our writing careers and experience, we can’t simply sit down and have a readable and publishable novel flow from our fingertips on the first draft of the first try. It would be even more ridiculous to expect a flawless masterpiece to be produced. If we try to do that, we will get discouraged. We will quit. We will “fail”.

But if we train, if we are patient, if we put in the work — we can do it. If we write and write, even though we will often write utter crap, we will learn. Most importantly, we will keep trying, even though it’s utter crap. Because the next time, it will be a little better. And a little bit better the time after that.

We’ll learn to edit and re-write and probably hate it at times. Often we’ll wonder why we’re putting ourselves through this, but we’ll do it. We’ll do a lousy job of it. But we’ll keep on doing it, confident that it will be better next time.

We have to trust the system, trust what our mentors are telling us (THANKS, CHUCK!!), trust in our ability to learn, grow, and do better. We have to give ourselves permission to experiment, to fail, to make horrible, hideous mistakes. That will be how we will learn.

Right now I look at what I’ve written this month and posted on this blog and I’m proud of it. I know it’s a long way from perfect and it needs a metric shit ton of work, but there’s a spark in it, a possibility. Even if this particular story never goes anywhere more, I know that I’ve learned so much about characters and plot and dialogue and what my writing strengths and weakness are. I have no doubt that in ten years, or five years, or six months, I may look back on this and wonder how in the hell I could have ever been foolish enough to put this bilge slime out in front of the public. But right now I’m proud of it, and I should be.

NaNoWriMo is hard. Running a marathon is hard.

I’ve now done both.

If they were easy to do, everyone would have done it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (continued)

“I would prefer to let Annie give you those details,” Ellen said. “But as I said earlier, if you’ve just found out about the Disks in the last few days and you’ve had the sense to keep that discovery to yourself, there are things we’ve discovered that you haven’t had time to find out yet. For example, have you wondered at all why the Disks haven’t been all over the news? Why no one has ever reported seeing them before, even if it made them sound like they were insane? No conspiracy theories, no photos on the cover of National Enquirer?”

The questions gave Tom something new to think about. “No, I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way. I figured if I took my video to the press or to anyone else, they would figure it was some kind of movie special effects. If I insisted it was real, they would write me off as a crackpot. If I kept it up long enough and loud enough, I would get locked up as a loon. I hadn’t thought about fringe groups.”

“You would have discovered very quickly that you had a much bigger problem on your hands. You see, most people can’t see the Disks. At all. Period.”

“I couldn’t see them either, they were invisible to me. I only saw how the cat was reacting to them since they apparently can see them. I don’t know how that can be, but it is. I could only see it on the video for some reason.”

“What would you expect to happen if you showed that video to someone?” Ellen asked.

“I figure they would freak out just like I did if I could show them one live. Or like I said, if I showed them a recording, they would assume that it was fake, some kind of special effects. These days just about anything you can imagine can be made one hundred percent believable for movies or television. It’s not even that expensive or difficult.”

“That’s not at all what would happen. The person you showed it to would think you were either pulling their leg or psychotic. They would not see the disk. They would see the room or the setting where you made the recording, but it would look completely normal to them. No disk.”

“You’re kidding,” said Tom.

“Not at all, I assure you. Remember the recording of this room I showed a few minutes ago? If we showed it to anyone down in town and asked them to tell us what they saw, they would describe a dark, empty room where the lights came on for some reason, nothing more.”

Tom forced himself to maintain his best poker face. If Ellen was telling him the truth, Tom now had even more reason to not let her know about Jason. Jason could see the Disks in the video.

“Okay, assuming we’re putting our cards on the table and this whole affair just keeps getting weirder by the second, what are these things?”

“We don’t know,” Ellen said. “We have some theories we’re testing. We’re trying to establish a methodology for studying them but it’s tough when you they seem to appear at random times in random places. If you join our team, we’ll bring you up to speed on what we know and what we’re doing. Not before.”

“Why can the cats see them and we can’t?” Tom asked.

“We don’t know.”

“If only some people can see them in the videos and pictures, can only some cats see them in real time?”

“Good question, it took us a while to ask that. No, most cats can’t see them, but the percentage of those which can is much higher in cats than in humans.”

“Dogs? Horses? Dolphins? Ants? Any other critters that can see them?”

“We don’t know. Again, good ideas, but very difficult to test since we can’t create the Disks ourselves and we can’t predict where one will appear for us to experiment with. Personally, since they appear in the air, I would love to know if bats, birds, and insects see them. If they do, what happens when they touch one? We just don’t know.”

“What happens if we touch one? You indicated this was a ‘safe’ house. What is it safe from? The Disks? You showed me a video of one right here. Are the Disks dangerous to us?”

“We don’t know, exactly. We have some information on that, but it’s incomplete. That’s another thing that you should ask Annie about. For the time being, we recommend that you avoid contact with them if possible.”

Tom wanted to send the conversation off in another direction in order to see if he could rattle Ellen the same way she had kept him off balance. “Why did you build this facility out here in the middle of nowhere? Why not put it in an industrial warehouse in Los Angeles or Omaha, hide it in plain sight?”

“There is a very good reason, but Annie will have to show you. This spot was carefully chosen.”

“Are the Disks a recent phenomenon? Are they some kind of attack or invasion from Planet XQ17 or from the Nineteenth Dimension?”

“Again, we don’t know for sure. There are reasons to believe they have occurred in the past.”

“So why aren’t there pictures of them taken by accident from before there existed the kind of special effects technology we have now? If one of these things just happened to pop up in a scene from ‘Gone With the Wind’ most people wouldn’t have seen it according to you, but surely someone would have.”

“Video hasn’t been around that long. The Disks don’t appear on film, and before you ask, we don’t know why.”

“Not visible on film either, just video? Is there any particular kind of video format or equipment that works while others don’t?”

“We’ve tested that, we’re still working on it.”

“Can the Disks be detected by any other method? When one appears are there changes in the magnetic fields? Electrical? Infrared? Gamma rays?”

“We’re working on that,” Ellen said.

“You’re working on a lot of things. Is this your only location? How many people are here?”

“You’ll be told that later if you need to know.”

“Let’s get back to the video thing. Statistically, while video is relatively new, it’s all encompassing now. There are security videos covering a huge chunk of the planet. What you lose in historical terms you should more than overcompensate for with massive coverage. Someone has to have noticed these things.”

“They did, eventually. This group was established when Disks were seen by someone with access to massive amounts of security video data.”

That stopped Tom cold. It sounded like she was describing a security company. If someone prominent in the security industry already knew about these things, it was possible that Jason was vulnerable to being completely blindsided. Tom would have to find a way to warn him.

Tom pointed to the cameras around the room. “You’re looking for them from above. The video I got was from above. Is that the only way they can be seen?”

Ellen shook her head. “Yes and no. We know they appear to be some kind of two-dimensional manifestation in our three-dimension space. We managed once to get lucky and we were able to get pictures of a Disk from a variety of angles in the vertical plane. They’re far more visible from the top, but they can be captured on video from below. From the side, they’re completely invisible, like they were infinitely thin.”

“What are the grey shapes that are swimming around? And what are those rows of teeth?”

Ellen sat very still and stared at Tom. The pause went on long enough to make Tom start to get very nervous all over again.

“What’s going on?” Tom asked. “What did I say?”

“You really need to talk to Annie as soon as possible. It’s time for you to decide how you want to proceed. Do you want to join us and help find some of those answers? Or do you want to go back to your regular old life with memories and souvenirs of a ten-day binge in Las Vegas?”

“Really? Las Vegas? That was the best you could come up with?”

“Time to choose, Tom. No bullshit. Both paths are one-way trips. Make good choices.”

Tom leaned back and closed his eyes so he could focus. He didn’t doubt for a minute that they could make the last week disappear in his memory. The only problem was that they couldn’t make it disappear from Jason’s memory. Ellen had said he would be monitored if they released him, to make sure he didn’t cause future problems. When Jason contacted him, they would find out everything he had so far kept hidden from them.

If he went forward with this, would he be able to still keep in contact with Jason? Would he be able to function outside of the group while keeping those inside the group ignorant of it? Would he even want to after he found out what they knew?

There was only one way to find out. He had gotten this far for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He had to keep moving forward, even if it meant playing someone else’s game.

He opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at Ellen. “Okay, I’m in. What’s next?”

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.

One more day. It will be so nice to work on this because I want to instead of because I have to. I also recognize that being at 64K words with two days to go makes it hard to stay motivated. Back to the marathon analogy, if I had trained and busted my ass to get a sub 6:00 time and I’m now on the home stretch with less than a mile to go and I’m only at 5:15, am I still going to be going all out for the last mile in order to get a 5:25 time? Or am I going to be perfectly happy to dog it for the last mile and get a 5:45 time, because it still makes my original goal? It would be nice to think it would be the former, but the latter might sound really, really tempting.

Technically, especially having never actually done this before, I’m finding that keeping track of who’s doing what and when in two point-of-view threads like this is harder than I expected. In a good way, I think. The storytelling technique of splitting the story when Tom got kidnapped and following Ellen for a while, then jumping back to Tom for that same time period of time, that technique felt like it was the right thing to do at that time and it still does, but if (okay, when) I do another NaNoWriMo I might avoid it, especially if I’m not way ahead of my word count pace. I find that since I’ve done it I have to spend a lot of time every day going back and reading the previous chapters to make sure that there aren’t any discrepancies.

For example, when I got to where Tom had had the nap, wasn’t sure if he was being lied to about the time, and went outside to look at the stars, I had to go back to where I was describing Ellen’s night to see what I had said one way or the other. I had mentioned that it was clear and cold as she was walking while talking to Jason, so that worked. I’m not sure what I would have done for Tom if I had described the night as cloudy and rainy.

It’s a learning process. If anything that Chuck Wendig and Neil Gaiman and others have preached is true, it’s that you can read every “how to” article in the world, but the only way to actually learn how to do it is to do it, making mistakes along the way, and learning from them. Give yourself permission to suck and be terrible. It’s only by sucking and being terrible that you have the opportunity to learn and get better and grow, so that someday you will not suck or be terrible. It’s not a goal that’s achievable by osmosis or divine intervention.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tom was stunned, his brain in danger of shutting down. He knew he couldn’t allow that to happen. He needed his brain to be active and functioning well, not crawling into a hole and pulling the hole in after it. He had to think.

Ellen was correct, of course. He hadn’t thought of Annie in decades, let alone tried to reach her. The only reason he needed to find her now was to see if she knew anything about the invisible disks. He had been in the presence of one, been scared out of his mind by it, and the only clue he had was that Annie had spoken to him of weird things like this when he was a child. Part of his determination over the last week had been fueled by his fear she wouldn’t know anything at all about the disks or she would be dead and unable to answer his questions.

That lingering, unspoken doubt had now been swept away in seconds by Ellen’s pictures and her accusations. Ellen knew about these things. That almost certainly meant Annie knew about them also. There had been one in this room. The answers he had been chasing for the last week could be right there for him to take.

There was one huge problem. Those answers were in the hands of a shadowy group with unknown motives and goals, a group apparently with tremendous power and influence, a group that had with kid gloves kidnapped him off of a city street. He and the answers were being held by a group which had spent tremendous effort to stay hidden and maintain tight security. And now they knew that he knew about one of the big secrets they were hiding.

Did that mean the answers he had been seeking were there for him in some way? Or did that mean that he was a serious security breach to be silenced and disposed of? He was balancing on an extremely dangerous knife-edge with no guidance about which way to go.

In addition, it finally registered with Tom that Ellen had described this as a ‘safe house’. Since the beginning he and Jason had wondered over and over if the invisible disks were dangerous or not. They most certainly were terrifying and horrible to look at. Ellen’s tone and comments seemed to confirm that serious danger was associated with the disks.

Tom looked around the suite and saw how Ellen’s story fit the facts all around him. It had never made sense to have that many security cameras to cover every inch of the living space. He had assumed that it was overkill on the group’s part in watching his every move, but it could have been done with far less equipment. More importantly, the equipment could have been hidden. Tom had assumed it was being done this way in order to be intimidating, but Ellen’s story also fit the facts.

And they hadn’t harmed him, when they could have at any time. They had in fact taken pretty good care of him so far. He hadn’t actually been kidnapped, technically, although the threats against him if he hadn’t complied had seemed real enough. But perhaps he actually had had an option yesterday in that parking lot.

Still reeling from what he had just learned, Tom looked back at Ellen, who was patiently waiting for him to process what she had said. “What do you want from me?” was all he could croak out.

“Do you admit that you’ve seen these things?” Ellen demanded.

Tom didn’t see any point in trying to deny it at this point, but he still desperately wanted them to not know about Jason. “Yes, there was one in my home a week ago. It terrified me.”

“Did you see it with your own eyes?”

“No, it showed up on a video camera I was using. My cat was acting weird and I was recording him. I don’t know, maybe I thought that it would be a hit on YouTube. Then when I played it back… Wait! That’s why you have so many cats around here.”

“Very good,” replied Ellen. “What happened at my place in Colorado?”

“Again, I didn’t see anything, but your cat was acting the same way that mine had. I didn’t know if one of those things was there or not or where it might be, but I was afraid that you might stand up and touch it. I didn’t know what would happen if you did. I didn’t know if those things are dangerous or not, but they sure look ugly. I still don’t know if they’re dangerous.”

“Neither do we, unfortunately. Remember yesterday when we said this was a research facility, not a cult or a commune. That was the truth. These things are what we’re researching.”

Tom’s world was shifting all around him. What he had known about the world a week ago had been turned topsy-turvy by the thing in his home. Now the new reality that he had cobbled together trying to find Annie had been flipped upside down again.

“Again,” Tom said, “what do you want from me?”

“We want your help. We want you to join our team. We need you as much as you need us.”

“I’ll ask you the same thing you asked me. Why didn’t you just ask me days ago?”

“When you saw that thing, did you tell anyone about it? Of course not, because you would be in a rehab center or a psychiatric ward if you did. There’s more you don’t know yet. Trust me, if you had tried to tell anyone, you wouldn’t be here. This is not exactly the kind of thing you go to the newspapers about.”

“Right,” said Tom, “I thought all of that through a week ago. I didn’t want to be locked up so I kept it to myself.” At least that part of what she was telling him fit what he wanted her to believe. As long as he didn’t trip up and say something stupid, Jason should be safe for the moment.

“That’s why we didn’t approach you in town or in Colorado. We couldn’t be sure if you had actually seen one of these things, and until we were confident that you had, we couldn’t let you know what we knew.”

“I can see that,” said Tom, “but what if I had just given up after you stood me up? What if I didn’t have the skills or the resources to track you down? What if I made it to Farmington but then lost your trail and gave up? You say that you need my help for some reason and want me to join your team, but I don’t understand why you made it so hard for me to find you if you wanted me here.”

“That’s something else that we can get into if and when you join the team. Suffice it to say we had to make it difficult in order to know you had what it took to join us. It was in some ways a test. The fact that we’re having this conversation means you’ve passed several milestones so far. There are more to come.”

“It’s a strange little system you have here. Now that the cards are on the table, what are my options, especially if I don’t want to join your team? Maybe I can figure out a way on my own to prove that these things exist, which I assume you would not want me to share with anyone? You can’t take that chance, can you? You would have to either keep me against my will for a long time, or you would have to simply get rid of me as a threat.” He knew the latter option probably meant that he would be killed, but he couldn’t force himself to say the words.

Ellen smiled at him. “We’re not the C.I.A. or some drug cartel. We really are a research group. We need and want your help. If you choose not to help us, we have procedures we can follow that will leave you essentially unharmed but not remembering anything of the last two weeks. After that, we’ll monitor you very closely to make sure you don’t make any further problems for us. But we’re not going to put you in a shallow grave out here someplace.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Tom said. “You’re a research group. Who are you associated with? Who runs all of this, and who pays for all of it? I think I understand what you’re researching, but I don’t know why.”

“I can’t give you all of the details, they’re on a need-to-know basis and you obviously don’t rate access to that information yet. I can tell you that we’re private, not associated with or funded by any government agency. We’re not part of any military group or think tank. There are some very wealthy individuals who fund us. As an organization we work very hard to be invisible.”

“I still don’t understand why you need me, why you want me to join your group. Enlighten me if you would, please.”

(Chapter Twenty-Two 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.

Whose bright idea was it to put a major holiday right here in the middle of NaNoWriMo? Am I not supposed to be stuffing myself with a third piece of pie and watching football right now?

This scene is one that will need some serious tweaking in the next draft. It’s really a pain to keep track of who knows what and how they know it, so I’m sure I’ve got at least a couple of major continuity / factual errors buried in here. But this will get the first pass at it out of the way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (continued)

“A device which you just happened to have with you? Is that standard equipment for science reporters these days?”

“I had it because the only plan I could come up with was to find your car. I had picked it up as a contingency in case I succeeded.”

“So why were you wearing one as well?”

“By the time I bought them I had figured out I was into something bigger than I had expected. I got one for myself as a backup and insurance, in case I was still underestimating the trouble ahead. You had me pretty paranoid by that point. Congratulations.”

“Who do you have doing the tracking at the other end?”

“Only my home computer system. All of the data is collected and stored there.”

“Really? How does that work to keep you safe?”

“Really?” Tom threw back at her. “It’s a software dead man switch. Programmers have been building and using them for forty years. If I don’t check in every so often and reset it, it goes off and starts calling for help.”

“So you’re telling me the clock is ticking. When does this alarm go off?”

“We have roughly two days,” Tom said. “I guess it’s up to you to see that we don’t get close to that deadline.”

“How did you know to come to Farmington to look for me?”

“You called out here from your store phone. The phone number shows it’s somewhere in this area, even if I didn’t have an address.”

“So how did you know that I called here from the store? I don’t believe in lucky guesses.”

“The woman at your store told me you called someone but she didn’t know who. I used some aggressive investigation techniques to find out what the number was. That led to Farmington.”

“What do you call ‘aggressive investigation techniques’?” Ellen asked.

“Those would be a tool in a reporter’s toolkit. Utility records can be obtained if you know how to look.”

“Not legally, they can’t. Do you want me to believe you did this as a science reporter?”

“I never used them for a science job, but I worked for decades with plenty of other reporters who did know how to get private information when necessary. One of them owed me a favor.”

“So you interrogate my employee, violate my privacy, stalk me to here, find my car, illegally bug it, and then spy on us from the air. At that point, why didn’t you contact us by normal means?”

“Your actions in Colorado gave a pretty good indication that you were less than friendly. Plus, you demonstrated yesterday that it’s not trivial getting out here. I doubt my rental car could have made it.”

“Yes, your rental car. Why did you change cars in Pueblo?”

That confirmed to Tom that they had put a tracker on his first rental car. “How did you know about that? What does it matter? There was a problem with it, some mechanical issue. I was heading cross country over three hundred miles in bad weather and I didn’t want to take a chance of getting stuck.”

Ellen thought about that for a minute before moving on. “Even if you would have had trouble getting out here from town, why couldn’t you have just called us or gotten in touch some other way? What was stopping you?”

“What other way? Should I have dropped a note from the balloon? I was afraid if I called this place you would… Well, that you would do what you did yesterday.”

“You could have talked to Emerson when you put the tracking device on my car.”

“Emerson? When I planted the tracker I never saw a driver, just the Tahoe. I assumed you were driving. I didn’t know who you might be with and I didn’t know how you would react to being surprised by me in the parking lot. What if you had been with the Burly Dudes?”

“The who?” Ellen looked confused.

“The Burly Dudes? Our two companions from yesterday. You know, about so tall and so wide, their sense of humor surgically removed?”

“That’s Edward and Kevin. They’re good guys.”

“I’ll take your word for it. What would they have done if I had surprised you in a parking lot with them tagging along? That’s why I didn’t just ask nice.”

“By your own admission you had the phone number. You could have just called.”

“And I would have tipped you off so you could run even further and hide even better. Good plan.”

“Alright,” said Ellen, “that explains how you got here with a minimum number of lies. It doesn’t tell me anything about why you are here.”

“I’m trying to find my aunt, obviously. That’s all I’ve been trying to do since the beginning.”

“Why do you so desperately need to see your aunt?”

“The family hasn’t seen her for years, we were worried. The holidays are coming up and after I had talked to everyone I thought that I would try to get back in touch with her.”

“You’re going to all of this time, expense, and trouble just to find Annie and give her an invitation for a Christmas party? You don’t think that’s just a little bit far-fetched, do you? Most folks would have given up in Colorado. You might have been pissed off at me and you might have been confused, but you would have dropped it at that point. Instead you turn into Junior James Bond and start messing in things you’re really not supposed to be messing in. Why is that? Enlighten me, please.”

“I’m getting stubborn in my old age. I’m tired of taking crap from people.“

“All of this rage and obsession comes from not being able to talk to your aunt? How many times in the last ten years have you tried to contact her by any means? The last twenty years? In the last thirty years have you ever even once tried to find Annie and talk to her?”

“No, when I was a teenager she got told by other members of the family to stay away. I hadn’t thought of her in a long time, but now I have and I wanted to get in touch. Why do you think that’s so unusual? It’s not.”

“No, it’s not unusual, not in and of itself. What is unusual is why you’re in such a tremendous rush, why you are so frantic to talk to her immediately. Tell me why you can’t take normal routes to track her down or talk to her in a month, or three months? Sure, she would miss the holidays, but there are other holidays, birthdays, other events she could come to. Why are you so driven to do this immediately, almost at all costs?”

“You pissed me off,” Tom said, starting to get angry and frustrated. “I’m retired. My wife died five years ago. It’s not like I had to be back at work or home in forty-eight hours. I got tired of being pushed around and decided to push back.”

“That’s an amazing mid-life change,” Ellen said. “But it still seems implausible to me. People don’t do what you’re doing for the motives you’re telling me about. I have to wonder if there isn’t something more, something that you’re just not telling me about.”

“You’re right, there is more,” Tom said with a bit of sarcasm creeping back in again. “I ordered a whole load of chocolate from your store. I was going to use it for Christmas presents. Since you had bailed on me, I wanted to see if the order was going to be filled or if I needed to cancel it and keep shopping. Now are you happy?”

“Since you brought it up, let’s talk about our conversation in Colorado. Do you remember? We were sitting at the table by the window and you were drinking chocolate, telling me about your aunt. I think that my cat was on the counter behind me. I started to stand up to get something and you grabbed my arm and pulled me down. It startled me. Why did you do that?”

Tom had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, but did his best to hide it. Up until now he had hoped that Annie might know something about the invisible disks that only the cats could see, but he had no idea that Ellen or anyone else out here might know about them.

“I saw that the cat was acting weird and it looked like it was about to jump on you,” Tom lied, hoping it didn’t show too badly on his face. “You remember, I asked if she might be hitting the catnip. I didn’t want you to get hit by the cat. It could have hurt one or both of you.”

“Bullshit,” said Ellen. “I think that there was something odd going on in that room, something that you couldn’t see, buy my cat could. I think it was something that you had seen before, something new that you had seen recently, something that scared the crap out of you. I think you were looking for Annie because you remembered her telling you stories when you were a little kid.”

“That’s crazy,” Tom said, trying to sound convincing. “What do you mean, something that the cat could see that I couldn’t. What are we talking about here, ghosts? And you think that my story doesn’t make sense.”

“Why do you think that there are so many cameras in these rooms?” Ellen asked.

“What?” Tom was thrown by the sudden change in the topic of conversation. He looked up at the cameras, then back at Ellen. “They’re here to watch me in this glorified prison you’ve got me locked up in. What else?”

“Wrong, Tom. They’re here to protect you. This isn’t a prison, it’s a safe house. The cameras aren’t here to watch you at all, but to watch for things that you can’t see. Let me show you something.”

Tom started to have icicles trickling down his back as Ellen got up and walked over to the computer. She entered an access code of some sort and called up a video on the screen. It was the room they were sitting in. A time stamp in the lower left corner indicated the images were from over a month ago.

The room was dark in the picture with just a bit of light coming in from the window. No one was visible. It looked like there was no one there at all. Suddenly something dark appeared in the middle of the room and the lights came on. The disk-like object hovering in midair expanded rapidly to be over two yards wide. It hovered for a moment, vague grey shapes swimming about inside. In an instant, rows of teeth started converging from the edges toward the center. When the teeth filled about half of the disk, the disk vanished in a blink and was gone.

Tom tried to look calm and blasé as he sat looking at the now-blank screen. “Okay, what in the hell was that and why are you showing it to me?” he asked.

Ellen came back to stand in front of Tom as he sat on the couch. “Let’s not get into the ‘what’ yet. You’re way, way too calm to have seen that for the first time. Can we cut the crap now? You’ve seen those before. You thought there was one in my store in Colorado. You think that Annie can give you answers. That is the motivation for your obsession with getting here and finding her.”

For this holiday week, Chuck Wendig has bestowed upon us this odd task in his Flash Fiction Challenge. Not the usual “1,000 words or so” this week, but 200 words. Not a 200 word story, mind you, but a 200 word fraction of a story, intended to be the first 1/5 of a story. Next week, I’ll take someone else’s first 200 words and add my second 200. I hope that someone else on the site picks my first 200 words to use as the starting point for their second 200. In five weeks, we’ll see what we have.

An interesting idea. For the record, I really, really like this little 200 word snippet.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED WORDS

The first time I saw it snowing in Los Angeles it was the sixth day of a three-day juice cleanse. Snow was definitely not something one normally saw down in the basin, at least, not then.

Because of my need to purify my body and aura, the news and media, filled with nothing but anger and pain, had been cast away along with the other toxins. My base aural color had always been a lavender or sky blue. Recently though, it had started to get muddied and dark. I would have thought my third eye would have seen the unusual weather coming, but it didn’t, so I was caught off guard.

When I first saw the falling flakes I thought I might have overdone the cleanse. Last time I had seen Elvis riding an ostrich on the seventh day. My transmundane counselor had resolved the issue with some orange juice, chocolate, and a sandwich, but that solution didn’t work on the weather. It was still snowing on the pier.

In Santa Monica we only got three inches, but of course it was more than enough to spread gridlock all the way to Riverside. Then, of course, things got much worse.

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.

As far as the NaNoWriMo part of this adventure goes, I verified today that I “won”. I got to go download my “official certificate” (a PDF where I can fill in my name, title, and date), I get lots of offers for T-shirts and coffee mugs and loot, and I got to download some icons:

It’s pretty “Super Mario Brothers” for me, but given how much I paid to join NaNoWriMo (i.e., nothing) I don’t have much room to bitch.

I don’t know what anti-motivation will knock me off track for a day (probably tomorrow or Friday) first: the holiday, putting up Christmas lights, working on the bedroom painting (yeah, that’s still dragging on), or just the letdown from having hit at least the NaNoWriMo “finish line”, even though the book is only about 2/3 done (I think).

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When he woke in the morning, Tom was confused at first, not sure where he was. He had spent a moderately restless night and waking up in a strange place didn’t help his mood. But as he started to move around in the bed and then stood up, the room lights came on. The previous day’s events flooded back.

He staggered through his morning routine and shower, still acutely aware of the security cameras. He would have to ask if they could be covered or removed, at least in that room.

It was still not fully light outside when he got to the kitchen and started fixing breakfast. He was half expecting Ellen and Morrison to burst in again so they could interrogate him as he ate, but he was left in peace. After eating he decided to wash the dishes and make the bed. The odds of there being housekeeping service seemed slim.

It was frustrating to be without his watch, wallet, and phone. They were things he always had with him. It felt odd to be reaching for his phone every five minutes for some need or the other, only to remember he didn’t have it. Lacking that, he really would like to have a notepad and pen at least, but even though he looked through every drawer and cabinet, he couldn’t find a thing.

It probably wouldn’t do to prick his finger with a knife and use the blood to write on the walls. But it was tempting.

About the time that he was going to start a second pass through the suite to try to find something to make notes with, he heard voices outside the front door. He looked out through the window and saw Ellen talking to Morrison. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked like an innocuous conversation. Over by the SUVs he could see Burly Dude #1 in the driver’s seat of one vehicle, while Burly Dude #2 was putting some sort of suitcase or tool box into the back.

Ellen and Morrison ended their conversation and split up. Morrison walked away toward the SUVs, which prompted Burly Dude #2 to open the passenger door for her. Ellen turned and headed toward Tom’s guest house. Tom went to the front door and opened it when he heard her footsteps on the gravel outside. She looked slightly surprised to find the door opening as she was reaching for the knob, but quickly hid it.

“Did you sleep alright last night?” Ellen asked as Tom shut the door behind her. She took off her coat and hung it on a hook by the door.

“I’ve had better,” Tom replied. “You?” He might as well keep it pleasant if he could.

“Thanks, but not so much. Your presence has made things…complicated, I guess. I’ll live. We need to talk now.” She moved toward one of the living room chairs.

Tom followed and sat on the couch across from her. “Sure, I’ve got a few things to bring up as well. For example, what’s with the security cameras in the bathroom? Can I get a roll of duct tape or a hammer so that I can get some privacy?”

“The security cameras in the bathroom are not there to watch you. I promise you that no one is watching the feeds from those cameras. They’re simply being monitored by an automated system. The computer doesn’t give a damn what you look like in the shower or on the toilet, nor does anyone else here. Sorry, but they stay.”

“What about my wallet, phone, camera, and the other stuff you took? When can I get all of those things back?”

“That’s still to be determined. Those are things I need to ask you about and then we’ll see where we go from there. First of all…”

Tom cut her off. “First of all, I have a couple more quick questions, if you don’t mind. If I can’t have my phone, can I at least get something to write with, a pad and pencil? Can I get a coat so that I can go outside and get at least a little exercise without freezing to death? And you said that I would be able to meet with Annie today. When will that be?”

Ellen sighed, then caught herself and regained her neutral attitude. “You’ll be getting a coat later when Annie comes over. It should be in about two hours, she’s not up yet. I’ll have someone bring you some pens and paper if you wish. Is there anything else?”

Tom could see that Ellen was really tired. He had gotten at least some concessions from her, but hesitated to push her any further. Tired people became angry people easily, and he was still locked up out here. Getting her angry with him wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing.

“No, I think that answers my questions for the moment. Thank you.”

“My turn then,” Ellen said. “I’ll try not to beat around the bush or play games. I would appreciate it if you could do the same.”

“I’ll tell you what I can,” Tom said, hoping that was an answer that left him some wiggle room. “Remember, I’m still here not entirely of my own free will. That makes it difficult to be completely trusting and open.”

“Let’s see if we can clear away some of that distrust,” Ellen said. “You have quite a collection of pictures on your camera, almost all of them from your balloon trip two days ago. Seven hundred and eighteen of them, in fact. But the only ones that show up on your phone are the forty-two that show this site. We do not believe that to be a coincidence. Can you confirm that your flight was to reconnoiter us and this site, or would you like to offer another explanation?”

Tom knew he was going to have to play a very delicate tightrope act here. He was going to have to take some guesses on what they knew and what they didn’t know. If he was correct, he might be able to feed them a mixture of truth and plausible lies. But he had to hope they wouldn’t catch him lying.

“You are correct. I was trying to find out what was out here and what it was for.”

“Why were you spying on us?”

“I believed, apparently correctly, that Annie was out here.”

“How did you even know of the existence and location of this facility?”

Tom saw his chance to “reveal” something to Ellen which she already knew, that her car had been tagged with a tracker. However, while he knew that she already knew about the tracker, she didn’t know that he knew.

“I didn’t know about this facility, that’s what I was trying to find out from the balloon. The online maps and photos show nothing out here but desert, yet I knew that your car was here.”

“How did you know that?”

“I had put a GPS tracker on your car.”

Ellen did her best to look surprised and shocked. “In Colorado? You were spying on me already and put a tracker on my car? That’s outrageous.”

“So is kidnapping. I guess that makes us both guilty.” Tom needed to get her back to the story he wanted her to believe. “I didn’t put the tracker on your car in Colorado, I fell for your lies there hook, line, and sinker. I put the tracker on your car here in New Mexico.”

“How did you know that it was my car?” Ellen asked.

Whatever Tom said, he did not want to say anything that might reveal the existence of Jason as his tech backup or provider of tech toys, especially when they might not yet know that he was using that level of technology.

“The lady at your store told me about your car when I showed up to meet you. Once I was here I got lucky and spotted that model and color with Colorado plates. I took a chance that it was yours. I waited until you were in a store and planted the device.”

(Chapter Twenty-One 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.

After ranting in yesterday’s introduction about how I’ve done no outlining or plotting, I spent an hour last night laying out an outline for the remainder of the book. Like almost everything involved with this project, that wasn’t planned either, but I’m glad that I did it.

I started out with just a couple of notes that I wanted to leave myself about the next two or three chapters. Then there were some other notes. And more. And then I shuffled them all into order, realized that I should move a couple of them around in terms of sequencing, and then started realizing that for Event A to happen in Chapter X, I also needed to have Event B happen some time well before Chapter X. As in, it should probably happen in Chapter 21 or 22. But that meant that…

It tumbled out of my head onto the screen. I didn’t really mean to do it, honest! And there are still four or five things in bold red that are the equivalent of “And Then A Miracle Occurs!”.

But the end is in sight, I think. At least the proverbial dawn is on the proverbial horizon. (I’m mixing my metaphors I’m afraid.) I’ve “won” NaNoWriMo, but this zeroth draft will go on into December. But it will get done.

CHAPTER TWENTY (continued)

By the time Tom awoke, it was dark outside. The lights in the room had dimmed, apparently on some automatic system, probably to conserve energy since they had appeared to be dependent on their solar panels and wind generators. It was still warm in the room. Tom was surprised that there wasn’t some automatic override or remote control on that as well. As he started to shift and sit up, the lights came back up to normal.

Ellen had taken his watch, but there was a clock icon on the computer. It showed that he had been asleep for over three hours. He actually felt better now than he had before, calmer and less frantic, as well as more hungry. He got off the couch and went into the kitchen to fix some dinner.

Looking in the freezer for something to microwave, he noticed the ice cream. He picked one up and looked at it closely, opened it up and checked for anything unusual. He wondered again if he had been drugged. Since he had only slept for a while and had woken up unharmed in the same location, it didn’t seem as likely now. The only way he could think of testing the theory would be to eat some more and see what happened.

Tom stopped suddenly, replaced the ice cream, and closed the freezer door. He was making assumptions; he would have to watch out for that. The computer told him he had slept for three hours, but was that accurate? He assumed he hadn’t been touched, but had he? He assumed he was in the same place, but was he?

First, how did he know it had been three hours? He hoped it was still clear outside as he went over to the front door. The door was still unlocked and he slipped out into the cold, making sure to leave the door open a crack. This was no time to accidentally get locked out somehow.

The compound was dark. There were small lights near the ground between buildings, but they were dim, a reddish-orange tint, and aimed low to give a minimal level of illumination for anyone walking around. It was freezing cold, literally, and there was a moderate breeze that made the cold worse.

Above, the sky was clear and the stars stood out like beacons. Tom walked around the corner of his building so that he could see the eastern horizon. There, about thirty degrees over the mountains, was Orion. High overhead was Jupiter. To the west, a three or four day old moon was setting, along with Venus.

He hustled back into the warm building as quickly as he could. He had seen enough. Compared to the sky as he had seen it just two nights ago with the telescope, it had to be somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 PM. He had slept for three hours.

Once inside, Tom checked out the rest of the suite. As far as he could tell, everything was exactly as he had left it, down to the clothes and shoes missing from his bedroom closet and dresser. Relieving himself in the bathroom, acutely aware again of the security cameras above, he checked to see if he could feel any injections or other physical changes, but he came up blank.

Satisfied, he went back into the kitchen and started going through the selection of frozen dinners. Picking one, he started the microwave on its cooking cycle, and then took a soda from the refrigerator.

There was a quick knock on the door. Before he could move toward it, the door open and Ellen came in, accompanied by another woman and four cats. Tom recognized the other woman, but did his best not to show it. She was the woman who he had seen picking up the mail when he had put the GPS tracker on Ellen’s car. The two women came in, pulled out chairs, and sat down at the kitchen table. The cats began to explore the suite.

“Come on in, make yourself comfortable,” Tom said. “Are you here for dinner? I can zap something for you if you would like.”

“No, thank you,” Ellen said. “We just came from dinner. Did you enjoy your nap?”

“Yes, it was fine. Thanks for letting me sleep, I guess. Did anything exciting happen while I was out of it? Chips implanted in my head, maybe, or body cavity searches?” He stopped, reminding himself he had decided his best course was to be more polite and less snarky.

Ellen considered him silently before deciding to ignore the question. “Tom, this is Morrison. She works with me.”

“Glad to meet you.” The microwave dinged and Tom started preparing his dinner for the next round of cooking. “Is ‘Morrison’ your first name or last name?”

“Both, neither, it’s just a name.” She sounded very tired as she answered.

“What is it that you do out here, Morrison?”

“I’m a researcher,” Morrison said. “I was originally trained as a veterinarian, but I’m now doing clinical trials of a sort.”

“Interesting. Out here?”

“You sound surprised,” Ellen said. “Perhaps we can start with you telling us what it is you think that we do out here.” Tom couldn’t tell if it had been a suggestion, a request, or an order.

The microwave dinged again, the dinner done. Tom took it out and moved it to the table quickly as it started to burn his fingers. “Do you mind if I eat while we talk? Between one thing and another I didn’t get lunch today.”

“You should have had something else before you had the ice cream,” Ellen scolded, “maybe some fruit or a sandwich. And no, there wasn’t anything funny in the ice cream. We didn’t drug you, you just fell asleep.” One of the cats, a calico, came over jumped up into her lap.

Tom had a mouthful of hot mashed potatoes, but his expression must have betrayed him.

“We’re not morons, Tom,” Morrison said, “and we’re really not your enemy, believe it or not. Would you like us to eat some ice cream for you to prove it? Would you like to pick which ones? Or should we taste test your dinner? It’s too late for the mashed potatoes, but maybe I can test the green beans and Ellen can take a bite of the apple cobbler. Would that help?” She was not really laying on the sarcasm, but there was definitely an undercurrent of it there.

Tom stopped eating and looked at the two women, then down at his dinner. He glanced up at his “guest quarters”. He would have made a lousy prisoner of war, or maybe the folks running this place had made breakthroughs in psychological warfare. He was going to have to stick to his plan and watch every word and every action, but there was a tiny crack of resignation in his shell of obstinacy.

“No, that’s not necessary,” Tom said. “I don’t have a clue what you’re doing out here. I was guessing it was another commune of some sort, since that’s where Annie was back in Colorado. But it’s pretty professionally built, where most of the communes I ever heard about were more ramshackle. So I’ve entertained the idea that it’s some sort of cult or religious group.” He stabbed a forkful of green beans and shoved them into his mouth to shut himself up.

“You’re not even warm, Tom,” said Morrison. “We’re not a cult and we’re not a bunch of hippies. The best description of this place is that it’s a research station.”

Tom took that in as he was chewing. “What kind of research station? What do you research?”

“That’s something we can’t discuss with you at this point. Perhaps later, depending on how things develop after you talk to Dahlia. I mean, Annie.”

“Does Annie know that I’m here?”

“Yes, we told her this afternoon,” Morrison said, “but she also was extremely tired after her work earlier in the day. She is in her mid-eighties, after all. That’s one of the reasons we let you sleep in.”

“Will I see her tomorrow then?” One of the cats, a jet black Bombay, trotted in from the living room and started rubbing around his legs.

“Yes, we’ve cleared her schedule so she can see you tomorrow.”

“What exactly does she do out here that keeps her so busy?”

“We’ll let her tell you what she wants to tomorrow if that’s alright.”

“Okay, you’re in charge,” Tom agreed. “Can anyone tell me who you are? If you’re not a cult, are you with some government agency? The military maybe? This site didn’t get built cheaply.”

“That’s another thing that we can’t give you too many details on yet,” Ellen said. “I can tell you that we’re not associated with any government agency or the military. As you can see from my companions this morning, some of us have worked for the military and other government agencies in the past, but we’re not part of any such group. We’re privately funded.”

“It’s good to have wealthy friends.” Tom had finished his dinner, so he stood, put the silverware in the sink, and started to put the plastic tray from the dinner in the trash. He stopped and looked back at the women. “Do we recycle here? I don’t want to violate any local mores.”

“We do, but it will be taken care of later. You don’t have to worry about it, but thank you for being aware and observant. We appreciate it.”

Tom sat back down and looked at Ellen. “I’m really not here to make trouble, I don’t do that. I just wanted to find my aunt and talk to her, see her again. Why did you freak out when I showed you her picture?”

“Well, as I said in Colorado, your aunt had left instructions about what to do if you ever showed up. You may not realize it, but she’s one of the more important people in this project. I did what I had been instructed to do once I realized who you were.”

“You were instructed to lie to me, bail out, and lead me on a wild goose chase across two states? By my aunt? That’s pretty hard to believe.”

“The details weren’t laid out, but when I let the people here know who you were, those were the instructions, yes.”

“Why? Why in the world would you do that to me instead of just bringing me here to her? That makes no sense at all.”

“You’ll have to ask Annie that, tomorrow. For now, we need to get these four,” she indicated the cats, “back to their homes for the night. We’ll be over about nine tomorrow morning. If you need anything, you can contact us through the terminal, someone’s on duty all night. If you need an alarm set, you can do that through the terminal as well.”

Ellen got up and Morrison followed her lead. They began to walk toward the front door and one of them gave out an odd, warbling whistle. The black cat rubbing up against Tom’s legs took one more swipe at him, then went to join the other three cats following the women outside.

Tom just sat there, more bewildered than anything. He had expected a lot of things after being abducted, but this was not anywhere on the list.

What the hell was going on out here?

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.