Johnny Winger...A Brief Biography

In my last post, I promised to provide a little background detail on my recurring main character Johnny Winger.  Winger shows up in all my stories in Tales of the Quantum Corps and also will be the main player in Nanotroopers.  So, here goes…

Age: 20 years (at the beginning of Nanotroopers)

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 180 lb

Build: stocky, broad shouldered

Face: chiseled, sharp nose, high cheeks, prominent chin

Distinguishing Features:  Piercing blue-green eyes, heavy eyelids, has a somewhat sleepy, droopy look

A Brief Biography:

Johnny Winger (JW) was born 6 June 2030, Pueblo, Colorado, the youngest child of Jamison and Ellen Winger.  He has an older brother Brad and older sister Joanna.

From his earliest days, JW loved outdoors activities.  He started rock-climbing, hiking and caving almost as soon as he could walk.  By the time he had become an adult, JW was a very experienced caver.

In his early school years, JW was an indifferent student.  His best subjects were American History and World History.  Science too.  He showed an early interest in Biology.   His earliest career aspiration was to be a surgeon.

JW’s Dad, Jamison Winger, was a farmer-rancher, and self-taught engineer/inventor, who loved to design and tinker with small unmanned aerial vehicles (drones, UAVs, etc). One of his more memorable accomplishments was to build a series of drones he called Baileys to remotely herd cattle, buffalo and sheep on his ranch, the North Bar Pass Ranch. 

As a youngster, JW learned how to operate and tinker with the drones himself.  He developed a love for gadgets and tinkering from his Dad.

JW’s best friend in early childhood was Archie Hester.  Hester was a tiny dynamo of a guy—a red-haired mop with green eyes and a perpetually sly smile.  Archie Hester was trouble personified.

When JW and Archie were 10 years old, they went caving one afternoon after school in the Dorado complex south of Pueblo and got lost in a dark branch that had never been well explored or marked.  This was March 2040.  Their families went looking for them, but it was Bailey, the drone, who finally sniffed out the boys inside the caverns and brought them out, leading them through dark, wet, caverns by following his winking red safety light up and up toward fresh air and freedom.

Bailey the drone was also one of JW’s constant companions, sort of a flying robotic pet.  Unknown to his parents, JW often opened his second-floor bedroom window and by remote control tele-operated Bailey right into his room.  Bailey spent many a night in JW’s bedroom, either hovering gently in the corner, or whirring in sleep mode on the trunk at the end of JW’s bed.

Throughout his high school years at Pueblo High, JW’s only real crush was on Katie Gomez, an e-learning assistant who worked with Johnny over the Pueblo WorldNet local school grid as a sort of long-distance tutor/learning coach.  Katie was the best ‘wizard’ Johnny ever had and he fell in love with her over the screen.

They met several times a semester at Pueblo High’s learning lab; JW often dreamed for weeks about each meeting.  Katie was very young herself and partially Mexican.  It was a one-way love affair that could never amount to anything, but JW lusted after her nonetheless.  But it did ultimately lead to another love-interest at Pueblo: one Linda Lamont.

Linda was actually Katie’s niece.  A brunette stunner, she wound up on a class history project with JW in ninth-level World Cultures class.  They had to team up with others to build a Greek theater, to scale, then put on a play by Sophocles or Aeschylus.  Linda had dreams of playing Helen of Troy and even spent time being self-tutored via (neuro) patch in rudimentary Greek.  Her old man spent a fortune on patches and lessons for Linda.

JW was attracted to Linda because she also loved outdoors activities, especially horses.  She was a top- caliber rider.  She even taught JW some basics until the day her gray Arabian mare Misty threw JW for a few loops at the Lamont ranch about ten miles away from the North Bar Pass Ranch.  Johnny decided he wasn’t cut out for riding as well as Linda.  But the two of them did love to spend time on horses, climbing the high passes around Pueblo and stopping for quick lunches and furtive gropings in windy intermountain meadows.  This was 2042 to 2045.

Johnny Winger graduated from Pueblo in 2047, a year earlier than normal, owing to his excellent work for WorldNet wizard Katie Gomez.

Two days later, his mother Ellen was killed in an auto accident driving back from Colorado Springs.

 

I’ll detail what happened to Johnny after this horrific accident that shattered the Winger family in my next post to the Word Shed.  Suffice it to say, that Johnny Winger’s life was turned upside down and from that point on, took an unexpected direction.

The Word Shed will take a week off for Thanksgiving. I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday.  Look for the next post, continuing basic details of Johnny Winger’s life prior to joining Quantum Corps on 7 December, 2015.

See you then.

Phil B.

 As I mentioned in my last post, I will be starting a new serialized science fiction story in January 2016.  It’s called Nanotroopers, and will consist of 22 episodes.  Each episode will become available on various platforms (probably Smashwords) approximately every 2-3 weeks.  Each episode will be about 15-20,000 words.  Here’s the probable schedule of uploads:

Episode # and Title	Start	Upload	Comments
1   ‘Atomgrabbers’	12-28-15	1-18-16	2 parts
2   ‘Nog School’		2-8-16
3   ‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’		2-29-16
4   ’ANAD’		3-21-16
5   ‘Table Top Mountain’		4-11-16
6   ‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’		5-2-16
7   ‘Hong Chui’		5-23-16
8   ‘Doc Frost’		6-13-16
9   ‘Demonios of Via Verde’		7-5-16
10   ‘The Big Bang’		7-25-16
11   ‘Engebbe’		8-15-16
12   ‘The Symbiosis Project’		9-5-16
13   ‘Small is All!’		9-26-16
14   ‘The Serengeti Factor’		10-17-16
15   ‘A Black Hole’		11-7-16
16   ‘ANAD on Ice’		11-29-16
17   ‘Lions Rock’		12-19-16
18   ‘Geoplanes’		1-9-17
19   ‘Mount Kipwezi’		1-30-17
20   ‘Doc II’		2-20-17
21   ‘Paryang Monastery		3-13-17
22   ‘Epilogue’		4-3-17

 

The intent with Nanotroopers, as with any serialized story, is for each episode to stand alone as a story, but also to mesh with the overall story arc so that some plot issues will continue from episode to episode and will only resolve over the length of the serial. 

So why a serial?  A number of reasons, actually.   First, my stories are available more often to readers.  There’s nothing more frustrating than finding an author or a story you like and not being able to find anything else by that author.  When I was a child, I enjoyed reading Tom Swift, Jr. books. While not exactly a serial, they did come at regular intervals of about one per every four to five months and the publisher would work the title of the next story into the last paragraphs of the one I was reading.  I was hooked.  So this is one way an author can hook his readers into reading more of his work.  If Charles Dickens can do it, so can I!

Second, this serialized story will serve, I hope, as an introduction to the broader world of my Tales of the Quantum Corps stories, all of which are ebooks now available at Smashwords.com, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks and other fine ebook retailers.  The story environment is the same, the fictional world and the main characters are the same, but the stories are variants or offshoots of the existing Tales.  In effect, I’m coming at this fictional world from a different direction and I hope readers will enjoy these new stories, or enjoy having a different perspective on Johnny Winger and his nanotroopers. 

What is this story about?  Here’s a brief description:

You’ve just joined a UN agency called Quantum Corps.  Your buddy is a nanoscale robot named ANAD.  Once he’s commissioned, Lieutenant John Winger leads his beleaguered nanotroopers into combat, on battlefields across the globe and inside the world of atoms and molecules…but his troopers are robots the size of atoms.  How do you train and discipline soldiers like that?  In his first mission, Winger fights off an intelligent virus created by the Red Hammer cartel.  He has to learn new ways to command...and fast.

You can find out more about the world of Nanotroopers and backstory to Tales of the Quantum Corps by visiting my other blog at: http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com. 

The main and primary continuing character to both of these series is a fellow named Johnny Winger.  In my next post at ‘The Word Shed’, I’ll shed a little light on this unusual fellow.  He’s from Colorado.  He likes being outside.  And he needs a little adventure in his life, something more than just shoveling hay on a ranch.  So, we’ll look at his background and personality and just why John Winger, at the age of 20, decided he wanted to apply to this UN agency called Quantum Corps. 

See you next week.

Phil B.

 

The Farpool is, as I have said, a work in progress.  Now that Chapter 1 is public, what did I have in mind as I translated my Notes into actual story text?

First, Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam are American teen-agers circa early 22^nd century.  They live in Scotland Beach, Florida.  They see something extraordinary on a little canoe trip offshore to an isolated cove and they can’t convince any adults or the authorities that they actually did see what they know they saw.   So right away, we know something’s up. 

One of my key goals in Chapter 1 was to establish Chase and Angie’s relationships, to each other, to their families and to the town.  Eventually, the story will take them to a place and a time that is a long, long way from Scotland Beach.  In order to make this credible, I want to make them believable and likeable people that readers can identify with.  Where they are going and what they will do and see is so incredible and so different from anything else they’ve ever seen and done before, that I figured the best way to bring that home to the reader was to experience it through someone they like and trust, people like themselves.  This was priority number one.

In other words, I want them to seem ordinary, so that when the truly extraordinary things begin to happen, it’s more believable.  Novelists do this all the time, especially in fantasy, horror and science fiction stories, all of which place readers in really unusual places.  It’s almost like a canon of the field: the more extraordinary the setting, the more ordinary the people should be…otherwise there is too much for a reader to absorb.  And readers don’t really like to work that hard.

A second goal I had in writing Chapter 1 the way I did is to set the stage for the alien encounters that are coming.  Much of The Farpool takes place in two places: 22^nd century Earth (Florida) and an oceanic world 6000 light years distant and hundreds of years displaced in time.  To do that, I had to introduce some basic descriptions of the aliens, what they look like (to Chase and Angie), what capabilities they have, how they act and react around humans and around Chase and Angie.  I wanted to initially guide the reader’s reactions to the aliens (they’re called Seomish) so that the reader will have some foundation on how to experience what is coming.  Specifically, I want the reader to experience the Seomish and their world and their ideas, language, behavior, etc through Chase and Angie; that’s why the teenagers are in the story.  In effect, they are a vehicle to guide your responses to this alien world and its people. 

There is an ancillary goal I have in exploring the growing relationship between Chase and Angie by contrasting it with the relationships among the Seomish.  In fact, there will be two main Seomish characters, one male and female, relatively young in age.  I intend to highlight Chase and Angie’s relationship by putting them in situations where they have to act and explain themselves to the Seomish and vice versa.  The story possibilities are endless here. 

Along with explaining their relationships to the Seomish, the fact that Chase and Angie will have a relationship with these primary Seomish characters and will in fact travel to their world for an extended stay, gives me the opportunity to show how two 22^nd century American teenagers react to this strange world and the even stranger predicament the Seomish find themselves in. 

Chase and Angie don’t expect to be thrust into the role of heroes.  But fate and the firm hand of the author will put them in that situation.  Read The Farpool to find out how they do and what happens to them. 

But enough.  I don’t want to give away everything just yet.

 The next post, coming on or around November 16, will detail a new series I am starting in January 2016.  It will be a serialized story, occurring over 22 episodes and it’s called Nanotroopers.  I’ll provide a little background and some info on what readers who enjoy serialized science fiction can expect over the approximately year and a few months it will take to unfold. 

See you in a week. 

Phil B.

Following is an excerpt from my newest work in progress.  It’s called The Farpool and this is Chapter 1:  After you read it, over the next few posts, I’ll deconstruct how this was developed and point out some things that any good novelist should know about and attend to…

 Chapter 1

Scotland Beach, Florida

June 5, 2121

8:30 pm

 

Angie Gilliam squirmed a bit more but it was no use.  Something sharp was pinching her butt.  The weight of Chase Meyer on top of her made it hurt like crazy. 

“Ouch…that hurts like hell…what the hell are you doing?”

“Sorry…just trying to…it’s the Cove.  Water’s choppy today—“

Angie twisted and contorted herself to ease the pressure.  That was better.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, huh?”

They had packed a lunch and grabbed a boat from Turtle Key Surf and Board—that was Mack Meyer’s shop, Chase’s Dad.  They had puttered along the coast off Shelley Beach until they came to Half Moon Cove—they always did it in Half Moon Cove—and found a secluded spot a few dozen meters off shore…right under some cypress trees.  Always smelled great there.

Then Chase and Angie wolfed down their sandwiches, dialed up the right music on Chase’s wristpad so they could slam some jam properly and settled down to business.

That’s when the wind fetched up and the Cove got way choppier than it usually did.  Most of the time, you could lay a place setting on top of the water and have dinner like home, it was so placid.  But not today.

“Ouch…look…let’s give it a rest, okay…something’s not quite right…”

Chase groaned and pulled out of her, cinching up his shorts as he did so.  He lay back against the side of the boat, and turned the volume down on his pad…whoever it was screeching on that go-tone needed a few more lessons.  He checked the growing waves beyond the Cove and that’s when he spied the waterspout.

“Jeez…look at that!” 

Angie pulled up her own shorts, ran fingers through her dark brown page-boy hair and sucked in a breath.

“Wow---that’s so wicked--“

There was a strange, wave-like agitation on the horizon just beyond the Cove, maybe a few kilometers out to sea, past Shell Key, easily.  For a few moments, a slender multi-hued waterspout danced just above the waves, like a gray-green rope writhing and hissing on the horizon.  It only lasted a few moments, then it collapsed.  There was a calm period, then the ocean began seething again and became more agitated than before.  Waves piled into the Cove, nearly upending the little boat.  Before long, another spout had formed, all in an odd sort of rhythm.

Angie shuddered, wrapping her arms around her shoulders.  The air had become noticeably colder and a breeze had picked up, blowing onshore.  “Maybe we should get out of here…you know, like head back—“

Chase shook his head.  “This is weird…I never saw anything like that.  Could be a storm or something.  Let’s go check it out.”

“Don’t be an ass—just let’s go back to the pier, before that thing starts up again.”

But Chase was already firing up the outboard.  He untied the boat from the cypress knee they always used as an anchorage and steered her out of the Cove, heading for open water.

“Chase—what the hell are you doing…you can’t get near that thing…it’s a tornado, for Chrissakes!  Go back to the pier.”

“I just want to see what’s causing all those waves…that’s not normal…just a little further out…I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Yeah, like I never heard that before, Angie told herself.  She knew better than to argue.  They’d already argued that afternoon anyway, mostly over little things.  Angie told him she wanted to go full time with Dr. Wright’s clinic when she graduated from Apalachee.  Chase just shrugged.  I want to make something of myself, she told him.  What she didn’t say, because she didn’t have to was: you should too.  But that was a lost cause.

Chase steered them further out to sea, through heavier chop, and Angie got more and more nervous. 

“Chase, I’m sorry I said what I did…if you want to work at the shop—“

But his eyes were on something else.  “Hey...what the hell is that?” 

A pair of silvery shapes nosed out of the water just a few meters off their starboard bow.  Rounded humps, slightly scaly, even plated like some kind of suit. 

“Dolphins?” she offered.  “At least, they’ve got enough sense to leave the area.”

“Those aren’t dolphins…too big.  Maybe some kind of whale—there they are again—“ He stood up, letting the tiller go for a moment and pointed.  Waves nearly knocked him overboard and he fell heavily right into Angie’s lap.  They both rolled and scrambled to get back up. 

Two glistening humps were less than ten meters away, riding along the surface.  They were easily twelve to fifteen meters long, multiple dorsal fins, but the skin was all wrong.  It wasn’t like anything Chase or Angie had ever seen.  The skin wasn’t smooth, but textured, almost plated, as if the creatures were encased in some kind of armor.  Spouts of air blasted into the sky as they glided along.

“What’s that…some kind of cage--?” Angie spotted something following the creatures.  She realized it was attached; they were towing some kind of enclosure. 

Chase saw it too.  “I don’t know…but that’s a dolphin…look inside the cage.”  He steered the boat alongside the convoy, holding off about five meters.  Thrashing about inside an open-grill enclosure was a bottle-nose dolphin, maybe a calf, perhaps two meters in length.  It banged and crashed inside, trying to get out.  The other creatures in the armored suits were towing it, toward some kind of seething vortex that was churning up the surface of the Gulf, less than fifty meters away.

“Chase, maybe we ought to—“ But before Angie could complete her sentence, the convoy stopped dead in the water.  One creature circled back, managing the cage with its beak and forepaddles.  The other creature nosed further up out of the water, showing its entire forebody.  It had forepaddles like a dolphin but the paddles had fingers, and grasped in the fingers was some kind of barbell-shaped device.  The creature slapped back down in the water and began circling their small boat, now rising and crashing down on waves spiraling off the vortex nearby.

“Chase…Chase, what’s happening—“

Chase Meyer stood up and struck out at the creature with the end of his paddle.  He missed and nearly went overboard.  The paddle slipped out of his hand and went into the sea.  “I don’t know…maybe they’re some kind of shark—I never saw anything like—“

That’s when the circling creature reared up again and aimed the barbell at their boat.  There was a bright flash.  Angie fell backward into the boat, landing on the picnic hamper, which crumpled.

Chase staggered, then was blinded again by another bright flash.  Everything went dark.  He pitched forward, clipping his chin on a bench and fell awkwardly into the bow.   A dark tunnel opened up and he quickly lost consciousness.

***

A loud horn kept blaring and bleating and Chase fought his way back to something like a dull stupor.  His chin hurt, and there was dried blood—he could taste it and feel it as he wiped his face.  He sat up, wobbling around as the waves bounced the little boat back and forth.  A big wall blocked out the early evening sun, now setting to the west.  The wall had a big red stripe on it.

With a start, he realized he was staring at the gunwales of a Coast Guard cutter.  He could dimly make out the words Medford on her sides.

Moments later, Angie came to.  She sat up with a jolt, wide-eyed at the ship hove to less than twenty meters away.

“Jeez…what happened…where are we?”

That’s when they saw the raftbots circling their small boat.  The drones circled them for a few minutes, gauging distance, then closed in and looped towline over the bow end of their boat and took them in tow. 

Five minutes later, the raftbots had towed them into the cutter’s well deck.  Crewmen secured their boat and helped Chase and Angie out.  They were whisked above decks to a sick bay crammed with beds and equipment.  Corpsmen checked them out, head to toe. 

After the examinations, Chase and Angie were escorted by two bearded yeoman to a room along a narrow passageway on the Medford’s main deck.  It turned out to the captain’s stateroom. 

“Stay here and don’t try to leave,” one yeoman told them.  “Cap’n will be by in a few minutes.”  They shut the door.  Chase tried the lock—it was unlocked—but he could hear movement just outside.  They were under guard.

“Guess we’re stuck,” he muttered.  Angie was pale, still groggy from passing out.  They sat down in adjoining chairs.  She leaned her head on his shoulders.

“I don’t feel so good,” she admitted.  “Everything’s swimming…just kind of dizzy.”

“I wonder—“ Chase stopped in mid-sentence.  The door opened.  It was Captain Rainey.  The Medford’s commander came in, shutting the door behind him.  He was tall, with a buzzcut and gray temples.  A faint line of moustache arced over his lips.  The moustache twitched like a mouse.

“Corpsman said you two will be okay…mind telling me what you were doing out in such rough seas?  There were all kinds of weather warnings this afternoon.”

Chase started to tell them about the whirlpool and waterspout they had spotted, and the two armored fish with their cage and their—device, whatever it was—but something made him stop. 

“Must have been the current, sir.  We were just picnicking—“

“In the Cove,” Angie added.  “We were heading back and—“

“Yeah, it was that current—“ Chase looked over at his girl friend.  His eyes said: Don’t…not yet. 

Captain Rainey took a peek out a nearby porthole.  “We’ll be docking in a few minutes.  Both your parents have been notified.  I want you to make a statement when we get to shore.  My exec will take you to Security—you can have something to eat and drink there--“ With that, Rainey left the stateroom, shaking his head.  “Teenagers….”

The Medford put in at her dock at Apalachee Point Coast Guard Station ten minutes later.  The ship’s executive officer was a jolly, barrel-chested nearly bald officer whose name plate read Dennison.  Lieutenant Dennison was mainly interested in food, from his description of what awaited them.

“Oh, you’ll love it,” he told them, as they headed down the gangway to the pier.  “This time of night…wow…doughnuts, bagels, sandwiches, Coast Guard coffee, that’ll grow hair on your chest…excuse me, ma’am…just follow me—“

They wound up at the Security shack, a small cabin just inside the main gate off Spencer Road.  Lieutenant Melvin Betters was the base Security Officer.  Just as Dennison had said, a table full of sodas, coffee and cookies and sandwiches occupied one corner of the conference room.  Chase wondered if everybody rescued got the same treatment.

Chase and Angie’s parents occupied the other corner.

Maggie Gilliam was a chestnut-haired woman with too much makeup.  She melted when she saw Angie and ran over, crushing the daylights out of her daughter. 

“Oh, honey…honey…are you all right?  Are you hurt?”  She looked over at Betters.  “She’s gonna be okay?  My baby—“

Betters nodded.  “They both checked out fine aboard ship.”

Chase smiled sheepishly at his Dad and Mom. Mack Meyer had a full black beard-it was something Chase was still working on, unsuccessfully—and tattoos up and down his arms.  Mom Cynthia was tall and wiry, short blond hair, almost ascetic—she did marathons and triathlons almost every weekend, it seemed to Chase.  Mack frowned, his arms crossed. 

“Did you mess up my boat, son?  I told you to take care of that boat, didn’t I?”

Chase swallowed.  “The boat did fine, Dad.  Nothing’s wrong with the boat, okay?”

Cynthia Meyer brushed Chase’s hair back from his eyes.  That one lock would never stay back.  “Are you hurt?  Are you okay…you did check them out--?”  Her eyes went from Betters to Dennison and back.  “They’re not hurt--?”

“No, ma’am. The ship’s corpsmen did the exams.  They seemed to be fine.”

Mack studied his son.  “Mm-hmmm…mind telling me what happened, son?”

Chase described what they had seen: the strange whirlpool and churning in the ocean, the waterspout, the armored fish and their captured dolphin, the device-thingy that had flashed at them.  “I blacked out after that,” he told them.  He looked over an Angie, whose fingers groped for his and entwined their hands.  “Her too—I don’t know what it was—“

“Oh, Chase, you can’t—“

Mack wasn’t buying it.  “You were drinking, weren’t you?  Or doing scope or something---that’s what it was.”  To Lieutenant Betters: “You find any drugs or beer on board my boat?  And where is it anyway…I rent that thing out three times a week…this is going to cost me a bundle, isn’t it?”

“Dad, listen, will you?  We saw some kind of…I don’t know…fish, creatures—“

“They weren’t dolphins,” Angie added.  “But they had captured a dolphin…it was in that cage…did you see the cage?”

Betters shook his head, picked up a paper from the table.  “Report says nothing about a cage.  Your boat was towed in, Mr. Meyer.  You can get it back, after we do an inspection, the usual paperwork.  It’ll be down by the dock.”

Mack Meyer scowled at Betters, then shook his head as he studied his youngest son.  “I thought I taught you better than that, Chase.  You don’t go fooling around at sea, especially when the weather’s so dicey.”

“But Dad, we saw creatures…they had a gun or something.  They fired at us…you should be checking that out….” 

“Maybe they were drug dealers?”  Maggie Gilliam said.  “Maybe they blundered into some kind of drug deal…that happens, doesn’t it?”

Betters chuckled.  “It does, ma’am.  But we checked the boards.  There hasn’t been any activity like that around here for weeks.  No, most likely they saw the waterspout that stirred up around Half-Moon Cove earlier this evening…had lots of reports about that…it was pretty impressive.”

Chase looked from Mack and Cynthia to Maggie Gilliam to Betters and back.  “You don’t believe anything we’re saying.”

“Okay, son…” his Dad challenged him, “what did you see?  Or think you saw-“

“I told you…two fish…they looked like dolphins but they were bigger.  I don’t think they were whales or orcas or anything.  Their skin was different…it was like they were wearing armor or a suit or something.”

“And that gun—“ Angie added.

“Yeah, it was…it looked like a barbell, two globes, one on each end of a bar.  They aimed it at us…I don’t remember anything after that.”

Mack Meyer’s eyes met Lieutenant Betters.  “Your men see anything out there?”

Betters shook his head.  “Just the boat, floating around.  There were some strong rip currents about two kilometers off shore of the Cove…that’s normal when a spout comes through.”

“But we saw it!’ Chase pleaded. 

“You’re going to see the inside of your bedroom…that’s all you’re going to see,” Meyer warned him.  “You’re grounded, for a month.”

“But, Dad—“

“You too, Angie,” decided Maggie Gilliam.  She liked the Meyers.  Chase was a good kid, if a bit impulsive.  It didn’t take much imagination to figure what they had been doing. 

Angie’s face was a mask of pain.  “Mom, we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“There’s something out there that needs investigating,” Chase told them.  “That’s what you should be doing…not persecuting us for just telling the truth.”

Cynthia cut in.  “Chase, nobody’s persecuting anybody.  It’s just that—“

“Eight hours a day in the shop,” Mack decided.  “Every day and I mean Sundays too.  That’s what this little affair comes down to.  First order of business tomorrow: clean up that boat and get her shipshape to rent out…that’s money, son.  That’s food on the table and you’re an employee.  Start acting like one.”

Betters signed off their releases and shook hands with the Meyers and Maggie Gilliam.

Mack Meyer said, “Sorry to have bothered you, Lieutenant.  My son knows better.  Or he will know better after this.”

Betters said, “I’m just glad they’re safe.  This is what we’re here for.”

The kids were hauled out of the Security shack and off into waiting cars.  As Chase climbed into the back seat of his Dad’s Jeep, he said, “Dad, will you listen to me?  Something’s out there…something weird.”

“Yeah…well, it won’t be you…not for the next month.  This ain’t Jaws, kid and I’m not buying it.  You work for Turtle Key Surf and Board, you conduct yourself like an adult.  Maybe after some hard work and long hours, you won’t be seeing any more armored fish with ray guns.  Just tourists and their dollars, that’s all that matters now.”

Chase sank back in the seat, glum and dejected.  He watched Angie and Maggie Gilliam speed off in her convertible.  Their house was a bungalow-cottage kind of place, up by the Gainesville Highway, on Fairwinds Trail.  The Meyers occupied a ranch style prefab on Rainbow Court, maybe a fifteen minute walk from the shop. 

Chase Meyer closed his eyes as they drove home.  Mostly it was to avoid having to look at his mother, who just stared at him over the back of the front seat, like he was an exhibit or something.

Waiting to see if I’ll grow horns or something, he decided.  Physically, he knew he and Angie were okay.  They were just fine.  But what had they seen?  Had he imagined it after all…maybe all the waves and the winds and the excitement over the spout?  Maybe it was a small pod of orcas, after all.  That had to be it. 

But even as he said that to himself, he knew it wasn’t true.  First chance he got, he was going to grab a boat, maybe even some scuba gear from the shop, and check out that area outside Half Moon Cove for himself.

He wanted to have a closer look at that barbell weapon too…sport fishermen would just die for a gadget like that.

 

Now, in the interest of not allowing this post to become too long, I’ll show you my original notes:

1.     CHAPTER 1 (June, 2121)  Scotland Beach, Florida

 

The story begins on Earth, circa 2121 AD, in the coastal hamlet of Scotland Beach, where two teen-agers Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam, have secreted themselves on a small canoe in a secluded cove.  They are girlfriend and boyfriend, and making vigorous love in the canoe but their encounter is interrupted by strange wave-like agitation on the horizon, just beyond the cove.  For a few moments, there is a multi-hued waterspout dancing across the water.  The sea surface becomes very rough.  Then it calms, the spout collapses and the ocean seethes and becomes rough again, in some kind of strange rhythm.  They paddle out to investigate and encounter at the surface two fish (they think they are fish) struggling to breathe.  The fish are unlike any they have ever seen before in the ocean.  Like dolphins and wearing some kind of armor or environmental suit, they have captured other fish in some kind of enclosure pod and they are wrestling this pod along the surface of the ocean.  When the armored fish realize Chase and Angie are nearby watching, they are startled and use some kind of weapon to cause the teenagers to lapse into unconsciousness.  The armored fish move off into deeper water and disappear.

Chase and Angie awake hours later, still in the canoe, with a small Coast Guard cutter alongside, trying to hail them.  In time, they are rescued and taken back to the nearby Apalachee Point CG station (taken to the Security Shack), where they meet both sets of worried parents.  Chase and Angie try to report what they have seen, but the Coast Guard officer in charge (LT Melvin Betters) and their parents scoff and believe kids have been drinking or doing scope or some other drug.  Mr. Meyer tells Chase he’s grounded for a month.  Mrs. Gilliam does likewise.  The kids are distraught.  They haven’t done anything wrong and they’ve seen something that needs to be investigated.  LT. Betters informs everyone that the kids “likely saw the waterspout that stirred up around Half-Moon Cove earlier this evening…it was pretty impressive.”

But Chase and Angie believe it was more than just a waterspout.

 

In my next post, next week, I’ll give you an accounting of how I got from the Notes above to the actual Chapter 1…what I was thinking, what I was trying to achieve.

 

See you next week….

 

Phil B.