What could this be, now?

PS Yes I still do need to update the background

"Cass Screws Around"

18 Year old. Huh. Really? Would you look at that.
Exams have taken chunks out of my schedule, so my writing has slowed down, somewhat. Luckily I'm going to be going on an ~exotic~ Carribean cruise (details later) soon, leaving plenty of time to put words on figurative paper.
For now, here's an excerpt.
It's a part of Untitled that didn't make the cut, unfortunately. It takes place in episode 6, an already lengthy chapter, and really doesn't add much to the story that can't be summarized much for succinctly. It was difficult deciding to cut it out, especially after having written it in the first place, but hey, it's all part of the process.
--

Getting there had not been easy. She had been jettisoned out into space inside what was essentially a metal coffin with a rocket and a few magnets strapped to it. In cosmic terms, the escape pod was nothing: a dust mite in a universe of metal giants. No sensors could be tuned enough to detect such a small object floating in space, which made it the perfect tool for infiltration.

Post

I realized I don't enjoy blogging about my life. I'm going to try to be as least melodramatic as possible (good lord, that is a grammatical mess) in this hopefully brief post.

Maybe it's because I'm an author, but I feel that my own life is not worth writing about - it's just me, and it feels, I don't know, almost egotistical to make entire posts consisting of what I did today.

Now, this doesn't mean that I don't think anyone should blog about their lives. I'm fine with- in fact, I love reading other peoples' stories on their blogs; it's interesting and compelling, snapshots of the intricacies of life somewhere else. The trouble is me-and writing about myself. Others can get over that, and, in fact, that's great for them, because they can have these blogs and can have people that enjoy reading them. I'm sure there are people who are interested in the life I'm living (Actually, I've been told as much) but, y'know, I just can't do it. Can't write about myself. That's the issue. I'll see what I can do.

In the meantime, here's another new blurb from Untitled:

            “So then, when we all got off the shuttle, there were hundreds of us there, and we were all sort of just standing there, lost. War’s over, folks, time to go home, everyone was so excited. But now we’re home, and it’s like, now what? Where do we go from here? I lost two years of my life to this, others lost more. It’s not fair, you know? But that’s the Confederacy for you. They pet you with one hand and slap you with the other. I guess it’s supposed to toughen you up.

            It was me, her, and the other guy, the one from physics. It was us three, we were nineteen years old, and we had nowhere to go.”

Bit

Just one today; an extended scene with Weston and Samuel.
---

The DSCS-GANYMEDE rumbled through the fourth dimension, the noise of the engines echoing inside its halls. The viewscreens to the “outside” were all closed, minds of three dimensional creatures not constructed to understand the fourth. Corporal Weston Kerchow did not enjoy eating lunch during 4-D travel, as the closed viewscreens made the cafeteria even more claustrophobic than it already was.

                “And so I said to him ‘No way I’m touching that banana!’” Sergeant Samuel laughed. “Hah! Get it? The banana?”

                Weston gave a half-hearted smile, shrugging his shoulders. He kept staring at the plate.

                “Aw come on, Kerchow, what’s the deal? I come all the way down here to share a lunch with a pal, and this is how I get treated?” Samuel asked in mock offense.

                Weston could tell Samuel was joking, but he wasn’t in the mood.

                “I wish people would stop mispronouncing my last name.” He muttered.

                “Really? That’s what got you down? Grow up, Weston! I pronounce it right. Kerchow. Kerrrr-cho.”

                “I know that you can say it Sam, but no one else can. No matter how many times I tell them!”

                “Maybe you should ask the captain to make a ship-wide announcement?”

                “Are you kidding me? I’d die of embarrassment. Who makes a ship wide announcement for something like that?”

                “What is this, high school? Get a hold of yourself!”

                Weston groaned and hit his head on the table. The trip through the fourth dimension would last another hour.

                “Something ain’t right with you, man.” Samuel shook his head.  “What’s really grinding your gears?”

                Weston raised his head, looking around the cafeteria. Men and women sat at the tables, eating and chatting. His eyes were drawn to the closed viewscreens. Beyond them was what was only known as “the fourth dimension”. Although all “faster than light” travel was done through it, no one actually knew what the strange medium they were travelling through actually was. Samuel noticed Weston’s upward glance.

                “Four-Dee making you antsy?” He asked.

                “It creeps me out.” Weston admitted. “Haven’t you heard the stories?”

                “Everyone’s heard all the stories. You can’t breathe out there and you can’t look at it or your brain fries. We’ve known this stuff for hundreds of years, Weston.”

                “It’s not only that. You know what happens when you stay in there too long, right?”

                “Yeah, man, I know.” Samuel rolled his eyes. “But we’ve got computers to calculate that stuff now. We don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

                “You do know what happened, right? The time the Wheel sent a scout ship to straight to Pallas from their homeworld?  How it came out all torn up?”

                “Yeah, I know.”

                “And the time that freighter pilot forgot to set his exit point, and came out all crazy and babbling?”

                “I know, Weston.”

                “Well I’m just saying, what if the computer messes up, you know? We’ve been using this place for hundreds of years and don’t know the slightest thing about it.”

                Samuel leaned over the table, clasping a hand on Weston’s shoulder.

                “It’s out of your hands either way. I try not to think about it too much.” He let go, sitting back down in his chair.

                “You don’t think about anything too much.” Weston said. ”You’ve been here a lot longer than I have and you’re still only a Sergeant. The way they promote these days, you should be a Colonel at least.”

                “I find that NCOs have the perfect balance between survival rate and responsibilities.”

                “Heh.”

                “Besides, man.” Samuel said, checking at a digital clock hanging high on the cafeteria wall. “You should be worried about what’s going down at Kaisari.”

                Weston looked at the clock.

                “True.” He said. “True.”

The Fourth Dimension sure is a creepy place. The mechanics and structure of it plays a big role over the course of the novel.

Tomorrow, I'll post a legitimate blog post about my legitimate life, along with another byte.

Parts and Pieces

Who doesn't love flashbacks? This one is from Episode 4.
--

The man sat on a wooden crate along the wall of the trench, the rain pattering on the mud, his helmet, and himself his only companion. The storm clouds that had gathered overhead were here for the long haul, as he could see whenever he mustered up the courage to stick his head over the edge. His rifle stood upright against the wall next to him. He could not say he was cold, or even uncomfortable. The Confederacy took care of its soldiers by means of its combat armour, its black veneer gone and replaced with a thin brown layer of mud and dust. The Heads-Up-Display projected onto his reflective visor displayed idle statistics, largely inactive when not in combat so as to preserve power. Thanks to mental interfacing technologies he could, even in the heat of battle, turn on information on wind speeds, air currents, positioning of allies and enemies, distance to the nearest supply depot, and even target weak spots if he spotted a soldier of the Wheel. This man was eighteen years old.

            Someone tapped his helmet.

More Bits and Bites

Here we go.

Boots coming down hard in the snow, kicking down doors, animals, men, women, and children. A neon sign lay cracked, half buried in snow, the words ХОЛОДНОЕ ПИВО dim, lifeless within. Sergeant Garrett Scott and millions of others were alone in the middle of it. This was the punishment of disobedient children.

---

Garret's flashback this time. Still a sergeant, he participates in putting down a revolution on some cold russian planet. This place'll be very important in the future

---

Fire lit up the eyes of the Yeoman of the Wheel just as it lit up the forest around him. Fire was the ultimate cleanser, the only possibility to wipe a slate truly clean. This was the price savage worlds had to pay in order to be integrated with the Wheel.

In front of him, heavily wounded, lay a local man, barely clothed, his hair long and wild, baring his teeth and growling at the Yeoman before him.

Landover’s sword was at his side, extending to his right. This one was unrepentant, and he had no choice but to feed him to the fire along with all the others on this forsaken planet who had not submitted. He found it abhorrent how of their own accord the humans here, identical to him and all of the Wheel who had come here as enlighteners, had regressed to such a pitiful state. Landover aimed his sword at the wounded man and thrust forward, the blade taking him straight through the heart.

The fire around him intensified, burning brighter and higher as the world was brought within the fold of the Wheel. Soon, Landover the Yeoman, along with the entire planet, was engulfed within them.

--

Landover, in his days as an NCO, kills a poor half human. He's not the biggest fan of the Wheel's policies, but he does what he has to do. More tomorrow.

Untitled Bits and Bites

A few sections of Untitled that I've been working on. I've more or less finished re-writing episode five and am currently extended episode 6.
---

The coming and going of the surf is what woke him up. He stood up slowly, gathering his bearings. He was naked. He was on a beach. A mask lay in the sand a short distance beside him. He picked it up, fitting it over his face. Now he was clothed. He knew what he had to do.

Elsewhere in time and space, a man and a woman spoke in a darkened room. A desktop lamp was the only source of light.

“Well, that’s everything.” The man said.

“Jesus, that’s a thick file.” The woman replied, impressed.

“A lot of stuff happened. You know how many interviews we had to conduct, how we had to fight for every scrap of information.”

“And now it’s going to be stuck in a filing cabinet to gather dust?”

“That’s right. It’s kind of a shame.”

The woman sighed.

“Well, what are you going to do? Another day, another dollar. What are we going to call it?”

“Is there really one name you could give to something like this?”

“I think it’d be an even bigger shame to leave it as “REPORT NUMBER FOUR ZERO ZERO FOUR”

“That’s true… in that case, I think there’s only one word that could sum all of this shit up.”

“What’s that?”

UNTITLED

 ---

 So this is essentially the prologue to the work. I figure the masked man (Catalyst, his name might be) needed an earlier appearance so that people aren't as confused when he shows up later. It's also part of the explanation for the novel's title.

---

Surrounded by winds of an imminent winter, two teenagers stood in front of a prefabricated, nearly windowless slab of concrete. Much of the multi-storied building was covered up by a giant poster.

CITIZENS!

DO YOUR DUTY FOR YOUR WORLD AND THE CONFEDERACY!

DESTROY THE TRANS-GALACTIC MENACE!

On the poster, a stern-faced confederate marine thrust out a black gloved hand at the audience, beckoning them towards him. Above and behind him, a blood red wheel floated ominously. DSC-branded rifles pointed outward from the edges of the poster, aimed at the threatening Wheel. One of the teenagers, a boy, sighed. The other, a girl, looked at him with concern. The boy was tall, standing a head higher than the girl. His deep brown eyes matched his long brown hair perfectly, today mostly hidden under a toque. His jacket, dark grey, was fully buttoned, stopping just above his knees where it revealed white pants and boots. The girl’s black, shoulder-length hair covered her left eye, restrained by a pair of white earmuffs, matching her long white coat. Her eyes, bright blue, contrasted starkly with her pale skin.

“We can’t put it off anymore.” She said to him. The sound of her voice came over to him slowly, calmly, whispered words on a winter wind. The boy bowed his head.

“Seventeen…” He mumbled, raising his head, staring with contempt at the marine on the poster. “They made it seventeen…”

“Today’s the last day.” She said, lightly tugging on his arm. “We’ve gotta go.”

“Son of a bitch.” He muttered, walking with the girl towards the recruitment office. The blowing snow overtook them, taking the girl away and bringing the boy hurtling back into the tumultuous present.

 ---

This is a flashback in episode 2. A young Jay and a *~mysterious~* girl are conscripted into the Confederate Army. This is part of a series of flashbacks to flesh out Jay's character and his past - which is going to be expanded on much further in the mythical episode 7. 

I'll post some more of these tomorrow.