Category: Writing

Hack the Future Part 8 ( Steven Schaufler & J Dark )

A near fifteen centimeter long ear, curving upward and out, tapering to a needle like point. He tried eyeing Blade again, just in time to see one of those pale hands grip his partner’s, and as her father’s old S&W was almost gently pried from her fist, his own P7 was pried from his. Her face twitched in discomfort as her hands held the steel weapons. She tossed them underhanded into the kitchen. „We have to take the children’s toys from them, lest they hurt someone.“ She glanced at the two then intoned, „I have come, to discuss with you a job.“

Blade sat as still as she could. The magic was a mental command, one that she’d practiced herself when her mother was still alive. She knew the spell, and had mentally focused on its brittle link, and taken it down a few seconds after she was hit. The problem was not the mage, but the two other elves behind her. They were dressed in military style fatigues, with olive drab shirts and pants. Their black boots worked halfway up their shins, and the green belt had knives and bottles hanging in small web-like pouches. Each carried a stick that was about thumb-sized in thickness, and as long as her forearm. Each wand was graven with runes for energy and flight. Missile mages.

Missile mages were the magic world’s answer to guns and bullets. The wands had to be carefully made, using the caster’s own life force. The wand would not work for anyone other than its creator. One of her mother’s extended family had been a missile mage for an infamous kingpin back in Belfast. Blade thought she remembered that he’d been killed in a shootout with local police during a riot in the slums where most elves had been relegated to.

Her throat began to itch. Blade kept herself as still as possible. The mages were alert, and primed to fire. She had no doubt that any movement would get her lungs blown out of her chest and through the sofa to decorate whatever would be left of it after the mage blew her to smithereens. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she did her best to appear trapped by the spell. If any looked at her with mage sight, it’d be all over.

Elves loathed half-breeds, seeing them as an affront to their racial purity. She was a half breed that could cast spells, which was doubly reprehensible. The elves valued their magic as their religion, and that a half-breed could wield it would go against all the talk of elven superiority. Half breeds were not supposed to do magic, their blood was too mongrel for magic to exist in them. That was what the elves had told the world.

The elf priestess gestured, and a dark green bottle appeared in her right hand. The low coffee table slid back a half step from the sofa where Blade and TJ were currently sitting. Five glasses of different sizes and colors floated free from a small cupboard in the open kitchen by the wrecked doorway, then dropped soundlessly onto the coffee table. The woman upended the bottle, and five streams fell from the mouth, and filled each glass precisely. It was an amazing display of control to Blade. She risked a glance over at TJ, whose eyes stared at the woman like she was simply a target. She’d have to watch him to make sure nothing happened when the priestess dropped the compulsion.

Despite his mild paunch and unkempt appearance, she knew he was a lot faster than his looks might imply. She knew about his Mettinger reflex upgrade. Twice the reaction speed of a human, half again faster than an elf. She was certain there was more to TJ beyond that, but he’d been very closemouthed about anything to do with upgrades. Her cybernetics were easy to see. A nest of cables for a left hand that were used for system hacking and charging. Her left arm and shoulder had been fully replaced with cybernetics with a open lug roughly where her wrist used to be to mount a pistol.

Hack the Future Part 7 (Steven Schaufler & J Dark)

Even at home, Blade went about her business with uncharacteristic silence, and it was only after she came back into the living room, with traces of the same substance he was applying to his wound visible on her lips, that he cursed himself for a fool. She probably can’t talk after that crazy spell of hers… he thought. He also knew that she wasn’t just smart when it came to hacking into things. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if her mind were treading a few of the same avenues as his; trying to figure out how something as straight forward as this particular job could get so horribly FUBARd.

He shook his head slightly and sucked in a thoughtful breath through his teeth -something that looked almost comical with that old fashioned and silver streaked Van Dyke he chose to adorn his face with- then he chuckled „Hell of a mess. Wonder how our patron’s gonna take all this?“

Blade grinned at him and shrugged, then opened her mouth to respond but, whatever she said was lost in an explosion of splinters, as the door to their flat disintegrated not unlike the one at Dayner had. However, even as both he and his partner went for their weapons, what came walking -no, not walking, more like sashaying through the erstwhile door wasn’t a Vampire. Though he couldn’t quite be sure what it was, either. Well, aside from the fact it was clearly female. And a good head or two taller than even his 185 cm.

„Sit!“ She said in a voice that sent shivers down his spine. …and not in a good way.

This person hadn’t meant it as a suggestion. That one word was uttered as a command. A command spoken with the same casual, if not contemptuous annoyance one might use for an over-eager puppy. Still, even while his mind tried to come to terms with what just happened, his body simply /obeyed/, and he found himself sitting on the couch next to Blade, both of them still with their guns pointed at the hooded intruder. It was only once they were seated, that he noticed two more hooded figures standing just outside the ruined door. Though where the two -guards, obviously?- wore simple brown, the woman who stood before them wore a robe of such a dark red that it almost appeared to be black.

He tried to turn his head to see if Blade might be faring better than him but, the only thing he could move were his eyes, and from the grimace on his partner’s face, she was in the same situation.

„Good!“; their uninvited guest all but crooned. „Now that I have your undivided attention, we may begin. But first…“ The woman paused and two bone-white hands reached up to pull back her hood, and he was pretty damned sure Blade’s strangled gasp was even louder than his own. Long, blonde hair spilled down from one side of her head, while the other side was shaved so short as to almost be bald. And he was pretty sure he had ascertained why, for there were several runes adorning the side of her head; both tattooed and branded, with even more, smaller tattoos along her high, angular cheekbone. He knew runes, but he had never seen any like these. Not that he really paid much attention to anything else, after he noticed the most distinguishing feature. What was hidden by hair on one side, was blatantly presented on the other.

Hack the Future Part 6 ( Steven Schaufler & J Dark )

“He’s gone, we’d better get scarce too.” Blade nodded, and focused on the alcohol. Her burned lips and tongue mumbled out the spell once more. The plastic bottle started softening in her hand and she immediately threw it at the glass. She and TJ darted back to the other side of the narrow room, barely avoiding getting splashed. The window, made of Lexan, melted quickly, but for Blade, it was a glacial process. TJ took the time to re-store the plastique, and the detonator back in the hollow heels for later. He grabbed the chair he’d sat in and a hard yank tore the corroded legs in half. Hefting it, he threw it with all his might and the window splattered outwards, giving them a gaping hole to dive through.

TJ was already more than just a little irate about how this job had gone down but, as they both barely managed to not get splashed by Blade’s acid projectile, watching his jacket melt away was the icing of today’s cake. It pissed him off so much that he threw the chair with such force that Blade’s acid might’ve been superfluous. However, after a quick once over of the killed guard, they’d managed to not only retrieve their guns from his corpse but, surprisingly, he’d also had the polished aluminum cube tucked in one of his pockets. „Not a total loss…“; he muttered to Blade over the blaring alarms.

They both cleared the hole cleanly, and managed to avoid any of the melted spatter. The alarms blared their shrieking warning through the whole facility. They grabbed their weapons, and then headed down to the garage. Miraculously finding their vehicle still parked and unmolested, they drove quickly away, the alarm still blaring behind them. The garage security door had been torn off its mountings and thrown aside, leaving them a clean exit, which they took.

As uneventful as their way to the garage was, he couldn’t help but wonder if the alarms were going crazy over them leaving, or that damned Vampire running amok somewhere in the building. And if it was the latter, what the hell was that thing doing here? Something, he decided, that they’d have to think about when they got home. As the black 1980 Quattro sped out of the garage, he smirked a bit; Vampires have /some/ uses, it seems. Racing away from Dayner like a bat out of hell, albeit to a different song blaring over the speakers, he had to eventually blend in to normal traffic. At least until they made it out of Spandau and hit the A 10. Then all bets were off, and coaxed every last bit out his old Audi.

…and it was also time to at least try and lighten the mood a bit after this fiasco. Leaning over to open the glove box and stow their hard earned prize, he got the first good look at the sad state Blade’s leg was in. He knew all about her ‘special upgrade’ but, he’d never actually seen the hefty price that came with using it. „Remind me never to ask you for a footjob.“; he muttered with an insolent grin on his face. But when he didn’t get a response, he shrugged and concentrated on putting as much distance between himself and the Dayner building as fast as possible.

TJ drove like a madman on the A10, slowing only enough to match traffic and avoid any attention. It was a long, tension-filled trip back to their flat in downtown Oranienburg. Once there, Blade ran to the bathroom and grabbed the bentonite clay suspension, swallowing a mouthful as she focused on a healing spell. The agony in her mouth slowly subsided as the clay absorbed the remaining acid, and healed the burned tissues. She walked back into the small living room as TJ poured some bentonite on his burn. The whole job had gone pear-shaped. Depending on their employer, they might have a contract on them by tomorrow if he, she, or it decided they were a loose end.

 

Hack the Future part 5 (Steven Schaufler & J Dark)

Some parts were still fuzzy, though much of the things he wasn’t even consciously aware of after being hit in the shoulder, came back with surprising clarity. He still had questions, of course but, for now, he was all business. Had anybody watched him move about the room, they might have believed he was ignoring his partner. They would’ve been mistaken. Every little snippet of information Blade gave him was stored away in his brain, either to recall or to cross reference with observations he made himself, as he took stock of their situation. It wasn’t /all/ bad. Their guns were gone, sure, but the morons who tied them up were seemingly of the arrogant or overconfident variety, if not both. So not only did he still have his trusty semtex to work with, but the idiots had locked them in a room with what could only be called a treasure trove.

“No audio, no video. Guess they wanted it quiet for us. Sorry TJ, it was the only thing I could think of.” TJ glared at the half-elf, the hitched up his pants around his paunch. He looked over at the guard who was suddenly on alert as a red light flashed silently outside of the security room. “They’re going to be busy, methinks. What kind of door is it?” He nodded his chin at the metal door at the end of the room.

“No security pegs like a bank vault. I only saw one lock, but there are two others attached to the handle that fit into place. I think the window’s our best bet.” Her voice was raw and hoarse from the acid. TJ sat down, removing his heels, and rolling the plastique into a long thin line. “How thick you think it is?” Blade looked at the guard, who for some grace or luck, hadn’t turned to look at them. “Thick enough I barely heard him bump his head on the glass.”

TJ scanned the room, then slowly move to the locked wall cabinets. He grabbed his jacket, gingerly maneuvering the still active spit and carefully wiped it on the lock, which began hissing. “What the almighty hell did you conjure up?” Hydrofluoric acid. Burns anything except quartz. The lock parted, and TJ flipped it off the cabinet, and opened them. Various pliers, wire-cutters, alcohol bottles, what looked like kinky ball gags, and a surgical kit lay on the shelves. Blade saw the bottle, and said “Bottle, gimme.”

TJ tossed it to her, sparing a quick glance out to where the guard was. The man had shifted, raising his weapon, and gaping at the pair. Then the door blew in. The guard spun in a crouch and fired at the open door as a reddish grey mist rolled into the room. “Oh Christ!” TJ grabbed the wire cutters and snipped Blade free. They both dropped to the floor as a faint thump sounded on the glass. Blade’s heart was racing. A vampire! They were dead if it found them. They had no way out of the room. “Fucking bloodsucker”, TJ growled. His eyes were wide and he was panting. He still had the plastique in his hand. The detonator was back on the shelf under the cabinet. “Wish you was a priestess right now”, he muttered.

Blade stayed silent as both of them hugged the wall under the glass. There were a few more thumps, barely heard, against the glass, then silence. TJ did a slow count to thirty and raised his head to barely peek over the edge of the glass. The vampire was nowhere to be seen. He raised his head a little further and saw that the room had been torn apart in a fast frantic search. The body of the guard lay in the middle of the floor, his throat nearly chewed in half by the vampire’s attack.

Hack the Future part 4 ( Steven Schaufler & J Dark )

“Well” ‘Hanson’ said thoughtfully, “Do it. We can always flatline ’em later.” Blade looked down as strong hands slid along her arms and knees. She didn’t struggle as she was lifted by three men. The front two held her by the armpits, while the one wrapped a metal limb around her knees. As they turned, she caught a glimpse of TJ. Her captors felt her stiffen.

“No squirming, or we change our minds and flatline you here.” She felt the press of a muzzle between her shoulder blades. “You two”, ‘Hanson’ growled, “Get that meat sack up and to security.” TJ was picked up like a sack of wet cement, and carried between the two men, leaving two unencumbered and armed.

They were moved to a security office, then zip-stripped by the elbows and ankles to a metal chair bolted to the floor. TJ, while pale looking, didn’t have the death-warmed-over caste to his face that she’d seen when he’d been shot. The door to the security room closed with a heavy thud. She saw one guard through the near one-way glass. He was leaning against the glass wall, weapon hanging from a shoulder sling. He reached into his pocket, pulling a thin stick-like tube that he brought to his lips and inhaled. He leaned his head back against the glass, blowing a waft of vapor into the air.

She tried focusing her own abilities. Her ears were normal human, because they had been sculpted that way to hide her in human society. A half-elf was generally spurned by both races. She leaned forward, letting her long hair form a curtain around her face as she focused on her power. She aimed her intent at the zip tie on her left arm. The spell wafted out, then recoiled away. The backlash created a stabbing pain between her eyes. She closed them, and waited a few moments before opening them again. The dim light stabbed at her eyes like icepicks, and she closed them hurriedly.

After a few minutes she felt centered enough to risk opening her eyes once more. The room swayed as she fought to focus, and slowly came back to normal. She looked over at TJ. His brown duster was splashed with blood from the shoulder wound. His black Tee shirt and dark blue body armor under the trench coat had a similar dark blotch of blood on them. Their weapons were outside of the security room, leaning against the far wall.

“TJ? Can you hear me?” she whispered. She focused again, shutting her eyes. She built the spell in her mind, felt it form, settling in place, making her eyes itch. She slowly opened them, and gazed slowly around the small room. Her gaze returned to TJ. His head was still tilted forward, his body trying to follow his head, hunching over only to be stopped by the tight zip ties at his elbows. She could see his noise amplifier in his right pocket, the holdout pistol up the heavy leather sleeve of the duster, the spring knives in each boot, the small blob of plastique in his hollow left heel, and the electronic detonator and control in the hollow right heel. Satisfied the spell was working she slowly scanned everything she could, finding two tiny cameras, one over the door, the other atop the wall shelves to her right. Neither had the bright glow of an active unit, meaning they could be passive, becoming active if sounds rose above a certain level.

Focusing on the one over the door, she said in a normal speaking voice, “Teej, you awake?” The dull color never changed. She rocked back and forth as much as the restraints would allow. No color change. The unit was turned off. She closed her eyes, and let the spell fade as she focused on a new one. TJ hadn’t twitched since they been trussed up in the security room. If they were going to get out, TJ had to be awake. She bit her lip nervously and nearly lost the spell. Regaining her focus, she nervously gathered saliva in her mouth, then activated the spell, spitting quickly. Her mouth burned from the burn of the acid. The spittle arced through the air, landing on TJ’s coat just above the zip tie on his right arm. The leather began smoking immediately, and the spittle ate through the coat, then attacked the plastic as it ate its way down the leather.

„Teej, you awake?“; came Blade’s barely audible whisper. He wasn’t. Not quite yet. Besides, he was curious just how far his partner would take her current teasing. Up until now it had always been strictly verbal; more often than not related to his near non-existant lovelife. So why /she/ would suddenly try to wake him up by nibbling on his arm was beyond him.

 Did we go out and get drunk last night? No, that couldn’t be it. They’d gotten bloody well wasted before, and managed to get home to their own, albeit spinning, beds. What the hell did we do? As he tried to remember, her biting became more insistent, painful even. Opening his eyes just as he jerked his arm away, he started to growl „Damnit! That hur…“; then memory -and awareness- kicked in. TJ started to growl, then jerked again at the restraining tie, and parted it. He flexed his arm, getting his holdout knife  to hand as the pain acted as incentive, and worked at sawing the other zip tie in twain. He gritted his teeth against the pain as the acid continued to eat away at the coat and his skin. Blade kept an eye on the guard, who hadn’t turned around yet. Once free TJ tore his coat off, wiping frantically at the dime-sized ulcer in his skin.

Blade kept spitting at the floor as her saliva continued to shift to acid. She finally managed to cancel the spell after receiving painful burns in her mouth.

Hack the Future Part 3 (Steven Schaufler & J Dark )

Blade watched as TJ lurched sideways, spinning in a grotesque pirouette as the bullet took him high in the shoulder. “SHITASS IDIOTIC DUMBJIZZ ASSHAT!” She dropped to her back, and aimed her heel at the shooter. He stood partially covered behind a cream-colored Cadillac. The high powered rifle nestled against his shoulder in a classic upright stance. He saw her movement and dropped behind the car, rolling away as fast as he could. Blade pulled a break dance move, swiveling up and back to her feet. She ran as fast as her bare foot and booted one would let her.

Three seconds was all it took to reach him. He was prone, eyes glassy from shock. Blood pumped a bright scarlet rope from his shoulder, arcing to land three feet away in a splash of crimson under the harsh fluorescent landscape. Oh god the blood, his artery got cut. He’s bleeding out! What do I do? I can’t stop this. I can’t… She tore off a strip of cloth, and viciously poked it into the wound. He gasped like a fish out of water, weakly flailing at her hands as she gritted her teeth and pushed more of the ragged strip of cloth into the open wound. I gotta stop it, pack it so tight the bleeding slows. I

“We surrender! We surrender! Help me! He’s bleeding out!” she held up one hand as the used the other to keep pushing the cloth into the wound. The gush of blood had stopped on this side. The exit wound still bled, but sluggishly. She’d pushed her metal finger full length into the wound to pack the cloth in. He wouldn’t bleed to death soon, but he would bleed out without some kind of help, and soon. She couldn’t leave him behind, and she couldn’t carry him out. He was the one who’d made the deal, and hired her to do the hack. “We surrender! Help us! Help him, please!”

The guards slowly advanced, weapons out. The nearest one had a nameplate Blade could barely make out. ‘Hanson’ was spelled out in white against the black of the badge. The huge four limbed star that made up the Dayner logo on his left chest below the badge. She held one hand up, the other resting firmly on the bleeding gunshot wound of her partner.

“On the ground, face down. Spread your arms and legs wide.” ‘Hanson’ punctuated his commands with an aggressive pointing of his rifle at Blade. She lowered herself slowly to the ground spreading her limbs out as the guard asked. One of the other guards stepped forward and put a heavy knee between her shoulder blades. He pulled both arms back, and placed a zip strip around her wrists, locking her arms behind her. Another guard flipped her partner over with a boot. He groaned painfully as he was rolled to his stomach, his long brown trench coat spattered and soaked with blood.

“Some professionals. First sign of blood and they quit. Spuds.” The speaker laughed harshly and another voice Blade could hear joined in. What’s next? Will we be turned over, or tortured and killed, or just killed? I don’t like the odds, but keeping him alive was more important. We were screwed the minute he got shot. They were waiting for us. To get in place they had to have advance warning we were coming, or we got spotted right off the get-go. I didn’t see any spotters, my sniffers didn’t spot any active surveillance. I didn’t miss anything. We had to be set up. Why though? Why us?

Blade kept quiet, unwilling to be subjected to any kind of abuse. She was close to panic. Her hands were restrained and she had no way to free herself. The helplessness threatened to overwhelm her mind. “So, we shoot ’em now, or find out what they’re doing here?” Blade’s mouth was dry. She tried to swallow, then tried to roll over. The man’s foot pressed down harder as she shifted. “Uh uh uh, no moving. Not unless you want to get hurt.” She froze in place, her breathing shallow and rapid. “Looks bad. I think the artery got nicked. Lookit how far he shot blood.” She heard shuffling behind her near TJ. “Can you clean him up a little, Hash?” A few more shuffles. She could see him walking slowly around TJ, sizing him up. “Yeah, not a big problem. I can’t do anything about the blood loss. He’ll be out for a day or two.”

Hack the Future part 2 (Steven Schaufler & J Dark)

Despite the annoyed retort on the cusp of exploding into his microphone, it was the doors finally opening which made him pull it back only to be forgotten with the countless others she’d more than deserved, but never heard, over the course of their working relationship. And it had been one that was not only mutually beneficial but, also, quite lucrative. If that meant he had to take her sass along with her skills, then so be it.

Now he winced. Not only because ninety seconds was cutting things way closer than he would have liked, especially with his paunch not allowing him to slip sideways through the door before it fully opened like he would have a few years ago, but because Blade’s last impatient urging was cut off by a gunshot. Cursing a string of expletives under his breath that would make even the hardiest sailors blush, he wasted precious seconds by considering whether to prioritize the job or his partner… Then he moved, and he hated himself for it.

„Blade, I’m going for the prize. Don’t get your pretty little ass shot!“ He all but cried into the headset, not knowing whether she heard him or not.

It wasn’t nearly enough to clear his conscience if she did get herself killed but, it would have to do for now. He had reached the display case at the end of the cavernous and mirror paneled room and, while under normal circumstances he would’ve checked for any secondary alarms, he neither had the time for it, nor really the need for secrecy anymore. The glass case shattered after just one quick and precise application of his P7’s grip, and the polished aluminum cube which had been on display beneath it found itself in his free hand. He would’ve worn a self-satisfied smile, if not for the fact the door was beginning to close a good fifteen seconds before it should have.

Acting on pure instinct and trusting luck more than skill, he didn’t even tuck the newly liberated container into his satchel but merely took three long strides, before taking a leaping dive onto the mirrored floor and letting his momentum carry him forward like a skater on ice. And it was that momentum, along with a generous helping of luck, that saved his hide. He’d slid across the smooth surface so fast, that when his shoulders touched the carpet outside, it was almost like hitting a wall. His legs had nowhere to go but up, so he barely managed to clear the door before it shut and, whoever it was that fired at him didn’t factor in the sudden stop either, for the projectile which was no doubt meant to pop his head like a melon, buried itself into the carpeted, concrete floor a few centimeters in front of him.

„I’m getting too old for this shit!“ He yelled into his headset. Though the ways things were going, it likely was a futile gesture. Ever since he heard that initial gunshot on Blade’s end, all he’d gotten from the damned thing was static. Rolling over and zig-zagging along the narrow hall in a crouched run to avoid getting hit by whomever was shooting at him he somehow managed to make it to the stairwell unharmed.

Unlike his partner, who had to hack into the system several stories up, his objective had been on the sub-level. As such, he decided that if he was going to even to try to attempt getting to Blade, he had to first grab something better than his P7 from the car. Though once he opened the door to the garage, that became a moot point. Directly across from him, albeit separated by a good thirty or more meters, Blade was already hobbling towards the car. Grinning wickedly, he called out to her „I think we…“ and whatever else he’d meant to say was lost to the thunderous echo of a single gunshot tearing through the garage as violently as the projectile tore through his shoulder.

Hack the Future part 1 ( Steven Schaufler & J Dark )

She flipped her straight black hair back with a light toss of her head, then grunted in annoyance as strands floated like black silk back in front of her eyes. Grumbling, she took an alligator clip from her open kit with her right hand, and used it as an impromptu barrette to hold her hair. “Come on Blade, where’s that hack?” She muttered something low and scathing as the wires leading from her left hand continued to send signals, attempting to finesse the security login. “Hey! What’d you….”, the voice growled. She snapped back, “Shut it, spud. It’s hard enough hacking with a dog yapping.” The angry growl at the other end of her earbud promised a long talk when they got done. The last electron pattern for the security code dropped into place, the yellow ‘query’ going to a green ‘proceed’.

“I got it, I’m in. Doors opening now. We got ninety seconds before Dayner’s pet ‘runners find the hack.” She started feeding spoofers, small programs designed to randomly look, and act like a virus attempting to hack a program. Spoofers used a random algorithm to choose targets, then attached themselves to the program, and replicated, attempting to absorb all available memory. It was a slight variation on a distributed denial of service attack, but one that was internal rather than the archaic method of overwhelming the link to the ‘net.

Blade watched the spoofers take off, and watched the speed that the ‘watchdogs’, the company’s personal security runners isolated the spoofer swarm and began to deny them expansion. “It doesn’t look good, these guys are sharp. Pick up the pace. I…”, she started to say then dropped flat on her back as a soft scrape reached her ears. Three impacts hit just above her, the bullets pockmarking the wall and spalling ceramic dust into her eyes and nose. She brought her foot up, aiming the heel at the security guards in dark brown uniforms. Both carried silenced StGS Wasps, the stubby assault pistol with a silencer longer than the snub barrel. The guard to her left dropped to a knee to brace, the right guard leaned against the corner, only his head and right shoulder seen.

She lifted her left leg, tightened her toes a certain way, and the heel-mounted pulse laser fired, obliterating her boot, and the kneeling guard from the sternum up. The cauterized remains flopped and twitched as the body began to realize it had died. The other guard had ducked back around the corner as she’d fired. I got to get out of here. They found me way too fast. “They found me, I have to bail. Abort. Abort abort abort!” Dammit, there goes our payday. Angry at the shift in fortune, she pulled her father’s old Smith&Wesson Model 29 from the shoulder holster, and snapped a quick shot at the corner where the other security guard had slipped behind. The thunderous boom of the old .44 magnum raised the settling ceramic dust and she sneezed. The bullet tore a fist-sized chunk of cement and ceramic from the wall. She smiled grimly as she heard choking and coughing from around the corner.

She hobbled to her feet and ran clumsily, reaching the stairwell door, and yanking it open. It was second nature to slap the big D-ring around the steel railing and leap over the edge, using the rappelling wire brake to slow her descent. Landing at the bottom o the stairwell, she slapped the rappelling rig’s quick-release and sprinted out the doorway into the underground parking garage. Where is he?! I’m screwed if he gets caught. He’s got the keys.

Interviewing the Father of ‘Building Baby Brother’ part 2

Here is the second half of my interview with Steven Radecki, the author of ‘Building Baby Brother’.

Here’s a question about choosing a topic to write about. Do you feel that a story needs to have relevance in society?

I think that having some kind of social relevance helps to deepen a story. The trick, though, is to do it in such a way that it doesn’t feel preachy or pedantic to the reader. That can turn them off to the message (and story!) very quickly.

Comics are used at times to offer controversial subjects in stories. In ‘Civil War’, the idea of registration comes up. Do you feel ‘Building Baby Brother’ has touched a subject that could become more important as robotics and Artificial Intelligence become more sophisticated?

I think it raises the point that we probably need to re-examine our preconceptions about AI, much of which is driven by popular science fiction films, television, and literature.

It’s been said that all great stories like BBB are built on previous works the writer had read. In that vein, who, influenced your vision of the story?

There are several influences to this story, some of which are even subtly referenced during the course of the story. One of the inspirations that kept coming to my mind as I wrote and edited it was David Gerrold’s When Harlie was One. (I still prefer the original edition. Sorry, David.) Other conscious influences were the movie A.I. and, of course, Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m certain that there were many, many unconscious influences as well, such as Mycroft Holmes from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but none I specifically set out to emulate.

Were there any books that helped solidify your idea, or an author you enjoyed reading that might have given you ideas on style and presentation?

As mentioned in my answer to your previous question, I think David Gerrold with When Harlie was One was a major influence, both thematically and stylistically. Finding the right voice for this story was definitely a challenge—and one of the reasons that I very rarely tell a story from a first-person point-of-view. I felt that this story, though, demanded a first-person narrative perspective. Other than that, I can’t say that any specific storytelling style influenced the one used in this story. I’m not saying that it isn’t there, just like that I don’t recall using any other author’s particular style as an inspiration or template.

Interviewing the Father of ‘Building Baby Brother’

Hello all!

I’m J Dark, author of ‘Best Intentions’, book one of a series I’ve come to call ‘Glass Bottles’.

I’m here to interview the author of a story I really have wanted to see in print since I first critiqued it. That story is ‘Building Baby Brother’ ( BBB ), by Steven Radecki. What we’re going to do today is a little Q&A about his story.  This is a two-part series, with the second portion tomorrow.

I’m really honored to be the one to do this interview. So to jump right in, thank you Steven for sharing your time with the readers.

My first question is probably the one all authors get at least once every time your promoting a book. That question is: Where did you get the idea for BBB?

To be honest, I don’t remember where the actual idea for the plot came from. The story itself started as part of an exercise that, well, kind of got out hand. My son’s charter had planned to sponsor an event to help foster reading and writing skills by asking students and willing family members to write a short story and then read it out loud at this event. Always willing to write, particularly for a good cause such as that one, I started pondering possible story ideas. I knew I wanted something kind of “Twilight Zone”-ish—something short, entertaining, but with a fun twist at the end. From there, the basic concept of the story was born.

Every author develops their stories differently. In your case, did you create an outline first, or just choose a direction, or something else?

I rarely work from an outline for a short story. They are usually based on some concept I want to explore and I kind of see where the characters involved take it. In case, since it was originally only supposed to be 2,000 words, I felt a full-fledged outline might be overkill. As a result, though, the last third or so of the story went a direction that surprised even me.

No story ever flows smoothly as it’s created. What parts, or scenes were the hardest to develop?

I always have trouble with the middle. They say that maintaining the story and pace in the second book of a trilogy is often difficult, and I think the same thing is true about the middle of any story. I usually know how to start my stories and have a pretty good idea how it will end either when I start it or before I get a quarter of the way through it. In this story, probably the most difficult scene was scene with the police because I needed something that would transition the story from its setup to exploring the implications of the actions performed in its first half. I had a really tough time coming up with a scene that would work that would get me to where I wanted the story to go.

Another question I’m sure authors get asked all the time is, what made you decide to be a writer? With all the professions around, why get into writing?

Why not? I’ve always wanted to create—whether it be writing or filmmaking. There’s immensely satisfying about “putting on a show” and presenting it to an audience. With writing, perhaps even more than with filmmaking, you can have full control over your production: all the way from set design, costuming, and casting. Of course, when you sell the movie rights, you tend to lose those.

My last question for this series is, where and when do you like to write? I know that David Weber has said that he prefers the evenings, as it allows him to relax and concentrate. What are your favorite conditions for writing?

Peace and quiet—and good luck getting that! My preferred writing environment is where were I’m unlikely to be interrupted. I prefer to be able to get mentally lost in the world that I’m writing about. I find that the characters tend to be more vivid in my mind and are more to behave as they should so that mostly all I have to do is transcribe as they take whatever action the story requires of them. I’ve written in a lot of places: home, work, coffee shops, libraries, airports, hotel rooms…I’m pretty good at tuning out external distractions. Still, a quiet environment is my preference. Also, I don’t write with music on in the background; I find it too distracting.