Afterglow, an old idea yet to come to fruition

This post may contain some bitching and moaning, so stand firm. I am almost drunk.

I have had this idea washing around my brain since High School. It's working title is "Afterglow". The point of it is that it's the future, there is a police state ruling the known galaxy and there is this majorly kickass drug called "afterglow", hence the working title.

The main character, I forget the name I had come up with, is an addict, as are most people- it would be analogous to "Can-D" in PKD's "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" and many of his other works, in that everyone is on it. But doesn't help you interact with a Perky Pat setup, it's just a drug. It would be better compared with "Substance D" in "A Scanner Darkly". It's highly addictive and highly illegal.

I have pages and pages written out in story and planning and ideas and whatnot, but I don't want to make this a thousand page entry. I'll go through roughly...

The main character is the captain of a smuggling ship. He's an addict. He seeks escape from his troubled and tormented past. He has a crew, also. Each crew member has their own problems, but they're probably not important. The main character is connected with a crime syndicate and he is given cargo to move. It's a major shipment of the drug. His mob boss is out to get rid of him, so he tips off the authorities. At a moment of crisis, the main character has flashbacks and gets stoned and eventually learns a valuable lesson.

Yay.

Now that I have mapped out my plan in rough shapes, some fuckhead will steal it. Well, be warned- I have six or seven people who visit regularly and they'll gladly say that I copied you, not the other way around.

I'm even closer to being drunk.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, I'm still alive

Cheers

Black Utopia, pt1

Wind blew dust in small tornados, picking up trash from the roadside. They cut a path over the highway until a long-haul truck flashed by, scattering the discarded fast food wrappers and soda bottles across the oncoming lanes.
James watched this over the roof of his car. Aside from the wind and the semi, the only sound he heard was the ticking of the fuel pump, the muffled rush of gasoline and the slow, shuffling steps of the gas station attendant. He turned to face the old man who started his gas pumping only minutes before. The old man, denim overalls stained with motor oil and filth, held a blue credit card at arms length.
“It ain’t workin’.” He said. He half-smiled, revealing the gaps of several missing teeth. The remainder were stained from smoking and the gums had receded, leaving them appearing to be far too long and loose.
“How many times did you try it?” James squinted in the sun, leveling a questioning gaze at the old man.
“Four‘r five. Machine won’t work.”
James took the card back and reached for his wallet. “I guess I’ll pay cash. But, I’ll need a receipt.”
“No prob’em, sir. Yer nigh ‘bout finished.” As the old man said this, the fuel pump clicked off.
James paid the man. As he was getting in, the old man coughed to get his attention.
“Yeah?” He asked.
The old man leaned on the open car door and asked, “You that ‘splorer what all the noise was ‘bout some while back?”
“No, I’m not. That was my twin brother.”
The old man guffawed. “Sure.”
“Seriously. Eddie Stuart was my twin brother. I’m James.”
“Well’en what you doin’ out here?”
“I’m on my way to Utopia. Ever been there?”
“Naw. But, I hear once the streets are paved wit’ gold, there ain’t no crime an’ everything free. Don’t see how it’s better than around these parts. Sure, the streets ain’t paved wit’ no gold, but there ain’t no crime cause there’s ain’t nothin’ to steal and things might as well be free for you can get jus’ ‘bout anything barterin’. Why you ask?”
“I’m a private investigator and I’ve been hired to find a tourist who went there on vacation and never returned. Rich family.”
“Yeah. Well, you keep yerself safe, ya’hear?”
“Sure.”
James pulled his door shut and drove away. A road sign he passed read, “Utopia: 109 miles”.

James turned the cruise control on and set it for 70mph. He sat back and daydreamed a bit. Eddie. It had been a long time since James had given him any thought.

Edward Ulysses Stuart was the first of the twins born. Their mother had said he climbed his way out of the womb; that he couldn’t wait to explore the untouched corners of the world. And he began exploring at a very young age.
James and Edward were the distant relatives of some of the more wealthy families in New England and the distant prosperity translated into their parents owning large tracts of woodland. James was content to build a fort in the trees, but Edward wanted to find the best place to fortify. He found an abandoned mineshaft on their parents’ property and claimed it as his own.
For weeks, he spent all day, every day, in the dark seclusion of the mine. Every morning, he’d go down with lanterns and food and would come out in the evening covered in dirt and grime. After a week or so, he began taking tools with his. Shovels, pick-axes and wheelbarrows. The country house they lived at was soon without any labor implements.
When quizzed about his behavior, Eddie would try to change the subject.
After four weeks, Eddie left the mine alone and never went down it again. When James would ask about it, a look of terror overtook him and fear took his voice.

When the twins were 18, Eddie left for the University of Chicago, while James opted for a smaller local university to acquire his education. Archaeology was Eddie’s subject and history was James’. The day Eddie left was the last day the twins would be together.
Eddie left Chicago with a doctorate in Archaeology five years later, a feat of considerable academic and intellectual prowess. James tried for his PhD, but decided better of it and took an opportunity to start a career as a police detective.
James’ first case involved a missing girl and he was shocked to learn that she was missing in the woods that his family owned until just a few years before.
By some freak brainstorm, he knew where to look for the girl- the mineshaft his brother lived in for so many weeks.
He ordered the area cordoned off and he and two officers ventured into the mine.

Their flashlights illuminating narrow shafts of darkness, they relied on their hearing to determine what was ahead of them. As James pointed his flashlight down the mineshaft, the two officers searched around them. One grunted and gestured to an old mine cart overturned. It said “Arkham Copper Mining Corporation” in large white letters. The beam shifted from the cart to one of the supporting beams and a rather out-of-place electric lantern. James gingerly walked over to it; his flashlight aimed at the floor of the mine, and turned the switch. It lit. One of the officers gasped.
James spun around and saw nothing in the dim yellowish light cast by the aged panes of glass in the lantern. “What?” he asked.
The officer, his face pale white, pointed down the shaft. “Something moved down there. Something not human.”
The other officer chuckled, “Looks like Pemberton’s got a case of the willies.”
“I’m serious!” he shouted, “I saw something.” His voice echoed in the mine.
James nodded, “I believe you, but it’s not there now. Let’s-” He was cut himself when he heard a voice from down the mine.
“Help…” the voice cried, “I’m down here! Help me…please hurry! They’re here!”
“We’re coming!” shouted Pemberton as he drew his gun. The other officer did the same.

They followed the voice down a side tunnel, unsupported by the usual timber frame you see in mines and the passage seemed…newer. Every few yards lay a discarded and broken pick or hammer and chisel. The walls turned from dirt to loose rock. The tunnel opened up into a deep, dark room. The three police stopped.
“Hello?” asked James into the room.
“I’m over here!” shouted the voice, very close now. They worked their way to the right along the wall. Their flashlights couldn’t reach far into the inky blackness.
Soon, they found a wooden shack and heard sobbing from inside. Breaking their way in, they found a teenage girl in a fetal position, crying. It was the girl they were looking for.
She looked up with teary eyes and said, “They’re coming. Can’t you hear them.”
James listened carefully and sure enough, he heard scratching and dragging of feet. A wet breathing sounded from the outside of the shed. Pemberton aimed his gun alongside his flashlight and slowly scanned the outside through the door. Carefully, he poked out and scanned around, then left.
A few seconds later, gunfire erupted and the girl screamed. But her scream was drowned out by a shrill, inhuman scream of pain and torment. It died as quickly as it started and silence took the shed.
“Pemberton?” asked the other officer, “Pemberton, you out there?” He mimicked Pemberton’s scanning of the outside and almost instantly began firing. After emptying his clip, he grabbed the door and flung it shut and backed himself against it.
“I saw it,” the officer said, terror breaking up his voice, “blood on its hands. We gotta get out of here.”
“What was it?” asked James.
“Satan.” The girl answered.
“Yeah, yeah sure,” said the officer, “but I think I killed the one I shot. But, I saw others. Must be the every devil out of hell out there.”
“Ok,” said James, “how do we get out of here?”
The two police began searching the shed with their flashlights. James stopped as his light illuminated some drawings on the one rock wall. He stood and looked closer.
One depicted a person being devoured by a squid. Another was a dozen stick figures bowing to a star with a flame in the middle. Letters were scrawled beneath it.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Ia Cthulhu! Ia Shub-Niggurath!
As James tried to figure out what those words meant, a pounding began on the wall next to him, opposite the door.
The remaining officer sighed, “Detective, you run with the girl. We follow the wall until we find the tunnel. You get the hell out of here, I’ll cover us and meet you outside.”
James just nodded and turned to the girl. She was sobbing again. The pounding on the shack’s wall got louder and the boards began to loosen. James pulled the girl up and slung her over his shoulder. He nodded to the officer, who yanked the door open and fired into the face of the creature on the other side.
Not stopping to look at what it was, James ran as fast as he could. Every few steps, the officer would pause and fire a few shots behind him. They quickly came to the tunnel and James ran through, without stopping to see what became of the officer. As he entered the main mine, he heard gunshots telling him the officer was still back there. He ran towards the distant light of the lantern and then outside.
The police outside grabbed the girl from him and took her behind their barricades. James stood just outside the mine and listened.
He heard footsteps and grunting and knew the officer was coming. Suddenly, he heard a yelp and gunshots. The shots ended in a scream and then there was silence.

James ordered the mine entrance blown up with dynamite, sealing it forever.

That was the first he had thought of his twin brother in years. Were those…things the reason why Eddie stopped going in the mine and why he seemed to terrified by it? What were they? And what was so special about that writing?
For months, James found himself preoccupied by the events in the mine. He unconsciously doodled strange designs which reminded him of the drawings on the wall. He also contacted one of his university professors about the writing and he had never seen such strange words before. It wasn’t any spoken language.
He became so obsessed, that he quit the police force and went into business for himself, hoping to discover something about the strange writing.
Then, James got some news about his twin brother. Everyone got it.
It was the lead news story for every major network. “Famous Explorer Disappears Underwater!”
Eddie had discovered a sunken city in the Caribbean and was diving in a submersible and he just disappeared. The small submarine he was using surfaced with the entire crew and Eddie gone.
The networks played a clip from a press conference he gave a few days before.

Eddie stood at a podium and said, “It has always been my calling to explore what hasn’t been explored yet, to see what hasn’t been seen, to illuminate the dark areas on this planet. There is no terra incognita, not in this era of technology.”
The camera zoomed away from him, showing Eddie’s team.
“We have discovered an ancient city sunken deep below the Caribbean Sea- a city perhaps tens of thousands of years old and yet modern in many ways. Our data isn’t very clear, but we think this could be what Plato called ‘Atlantis’.”
Murmurs went through the gathered media.
“In three days time, we dive on the city and humanity will learn more about her own past in that one dive than has been learned in the last thousand years.”
The network cut the clip.
It’s said that when one twin dies, the other feels like he lost a limp. But, James felt nothing. He hadn’t seen his brother in years and no longer knew him. He was far more concerned about the mine.

James kept searching for the next few years, financing his quest with odd detective jobs. Then his current contract came before him and he accepted it and the money it would bring in.

James snapped back to reality when the road he was on ended in a parking lot. There must have been a hundred cars parked, most of them had thick coats of dust on them and were faded from the sun. Beyond the parking lot was a vast sparkling ocean. James knew that it was man-made and not very deep, but it was still beautiful. Sitting on it, slowly approaching was a white ferry.
James pulled into a parking space near the back of the lot and walked to the ferry dock. A man stepped out of the dock house and said, “I knew you were coming, so I called the ferry for you. You’d best change and get ready to leave.”
James looked at the man skeptically, “Change?”
The man smiled, his teeth were perfect even if the rest of his body was weathered and wrinkled like an old pair of boots. “Your outsider clothes and belongings are not allowed on the island. They would pollute the society. You’ll understand when you get there, now hurry, he’s waiting.”
“He?”
“You’ll find out when you get there. Change.” The man pointed to a bank of lockers. “Open one and take out the clothes inside. Put your outsider clothes inside and lock it. Don’t lose your key, you’ll need it if you come back.”
“If?” James was bewildered.
“You’ll find out when you get there. Hurry, the ferry is almost here and the ferryman is impatient.”
James walked down to an open locker and removed the clothes inside: plain un-dyed, unbleached cloth pants and shirt, sort of a tanish color and slippers of the same material with leather soles. He changed in the open air and locked his “outsider” clothes in the locker and removed the numbered key. He slipped it in the single pocket he had, on the front of his shirt.

The ferryman looked him up and down and grunted. He then went to the pilothouse and started the ferry.

I was standing before the window

I was standing before the window
Peering into the featureless night
silence
I had the distinct feeling that someone was waiting
waiting in the inky blackness
waiting with a gun
aimed at my heart
Fear crept into my soul
I stood
In defiance I stood before that window
An extra fifteen seconds I stood
To allow the hidden sharpshooter time
Time to aim properly
Fifteen seconds up
My veins afire with fear
I closed the blinds
And stood
A silhouette on the blinds
Mocking him in my defiance.
Then I left.
Left to pursue other interests
Besides my death
For today was not the day
Not the day to die
That day if fifty years in the future
In the dark future.
When, eaten alive by congenital cancer
I take my life on film
Bloody bloody

I am going to live forever!

Sleep Deprivation: The Great American Myth

The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.

This blog is not yet dead

I have just been very very busy with classes and papers at the university and distractions elsewhere.

I will make a concerted effort to get something new up within a week or so.

The thought has occured to me that water is the next oil, if you get my meaning. So, I'm storing my urine in jars for later purification. Not really, but yes.