re: Where Do We Go From Here posted by Martin

I too am happy with our final choice. It’s interesting how the option that I wasn’t the most passionate about is indeed the one I’m most excited about writing.

I like the idea of Points of Conflict, and I think we should incorporate that idea in our writing and outlining, but first I wonder if we shouldn’t do a brief one-page treatment each just to put some plot sketches on the table and see where we are.

At this point, I think it serves the story better to see it from the 10,000 foot elevation before we zoom down. Previously we’ve had character outlines that are not necessarily about the story itself. Let’s put some story on the table and see what happens.

Then, I would also like to have a discussion about mood and tone — what other movies feel the same? What’s the pace going to be like? I’m still all-for starting with a very violent opener where the husband gets snagged and killed. What say you?

Oh, and one last thing:

(apologies to the Alan Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft.)

Never apologize to the Alan Parsons Project. They should be apologizing to us.

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Where Do We Go From Here posted by kza

…now that all of the nominees have shrunk to one / and how do we spend our time, knowing we have to make something work?

(apologies to the Alan Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft.)

First, though, I want to mention how incredibly happy and relieved I was when we made our choice for the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas. I only mention it because the feelings of happiness and relief took me by surprise — sure, I expected to feel some relief, but I also expected to feel a little bit of buyer’s remorse, the sense that “yeah, we picked a good story, but…” This did not come to pass. Instead, I felt an enormous weight disappear from my shoulders, a weight that I wasn’t even cognizant of, and there was a definite thrill, a giddiness, instead of the expected “whew, that’s over with.” After thinking about it, I realized that unexpected excitement came from the fact that we picked the right story.

But that was then, this is now. We have some decisions to make about how to proceed. What is the first stage of development of Time To Die going to look like? Do we begin to outline the story in more detail? More character work? World-work? When do we know we’ve done enough to actually start writing the script?

Of course, we’ll need all of the above — outlines, character sketches, world details — before and/or during the actual writing. But where to start? What kind of Needlessly Complicated Rules do we want to use to creatively constrict ourselves?

Here’s my thought: As Grymz (and possibly anyone else reading this blog) knows, I have a thing, almost a neurosis, about plot. “What actually happens?” is my usual cry. I’m concerned about it because I consider it, rightly or wrongly, my weakest point. Often, I try to work this problem out ahead of time by coming up with all the events in the story, from the beginning to the inciting incident (or whatever we’re calling it these days) to the rising action and all that all the way to the end. But as I’ve found out the hard way, a simple creation and recitation of Things That Happen In The Story simply doesn’t work. It reads flat. It’s missing something.

What’s missing is both character and conflict. Who is doing these things, why, and most importantly, what conflict caused these events come about?

As part of the process, I submit this idea: Points of Conflict.

A Point of Conflict is a sentence that describes how a character comes into (duh) conflict with one or more characters, or an inhuman obstacle (like a mountain or a storm). It doesn’t immediately resolve the conflict, although there can be a clear suggestion as to the outcome of the conflict. Points of Conflict are not scenes, however. The point of writing a scene is to answer the implied question of the PoC, and potentially set up the circumstances regarding the next PoC.

An example: “September Rose wants the Warden to release her husband’s body to her custody, but the Warden feels it’s too dangerous to try and get the body in the midst of the prison riot.”

Note that the PoC doesn’t immediately resolve the conflict, although there can be a clear suggestion as to its outcome. Nor are they scenes, per se — more like the seed of a scene. The point of writing a scene is to answer the implied question of the PoC, and potentially set up the circumstances regarding the next PoC.

The idea is to come up with as many of these as possible, put them in chronological/plot order, and have a kind of map of the story, expressed entirely through conflicts. This would not supplant a straight-ahead prose description of the story — that still seems necessary to me, at least to fill in blanks that might not be covered by a PoC list — and I see the list as continuously evolving; some PoCs would be discarded in favor of others. But it seems like a good way to capture potential good story ideas, especially ones that seem necessary or obvious but where it isn’t clear how they’d fit into the overall picture.

(Another example: While doing some preliminary work on my novelization of Little Black Stray, I came up with a character, a Ted Bundy-esque serial killer, the dark side of Griff, the protagonist. This character will take over as the eldest of the prisoners when Geezer leaves, and is one of the primary reasons that Griff wants to protect and hide Kamara. So how the fuck do I not include a scene where Kamara and this maniac are locked in a room together? I’m not sure at this point how to get there, but It’d be a betrayal of drama to avoid it.)

Anyway, while I don’t feel I’ve answered the question — Where do we go from here? — here’s a tool we could potentially use. What say you, Burley?

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Get Real posted by Martin

Both Shockah and I use 37 Signals products, and found their book Getting Real inspirational. They just released the complete book for free on the web, and in addition to the original PDF version, you can now buy a printed copy.

The focus is software design, but a lot of their advice translates to writing as well.

Here’s the HTML version for all to read.

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Behind the Music...er, 'In A World': Time to Die posted by Martin

Wherein we investigate the history of our winning idea, a dark horse that kept the race slow and steady while others surged or faltered.

I’m honored to write this post, as I am currently the first official Spitball! Employee of the Month. I’d like to thank Shockah, my peers, and the readers who read what we write, which would be you right now, eh? I’m very much looking forward to my doughnut reward.

So, Time to Die: It made its nameless debut on January 21, 2006 as part of our synopsis inspired by random songs. The song that inspired this story is Charlotte Hatherly’s brilliant twisted pop masterpiece ‘Kim Wilde’, whose lyrics can be read to see if you can find the inspiration I somehow found in it. Mostly it was these lines:

I can feel my honey, oh yeah! Don’t fall under my wheels Run over, just like a juggernaut Oh yeah! send his body back to me

although there are others that led me to the story too. Here’s an iTunes link (full disclosure: we are an iTunes affiliate, but this link is not an affiliate link). I’m actually a little pleased with this story winning, because this song is one of my all time favorites. In a stroke of perfect pop irony, Charlotte Hatherley performed a duet of ‘Kids in America’ on Kim Wilde’s new album. We are, after all, kids in America.

Time to Die next appeared in a January 22 post, where it was titled and ranked (as Shockah mentioned, #10 for me). Shockah then voted (#6) for the story on January 23.

The initial playoff rounds were announced that same day, with Time to Die going up against a Shockah story called Reminiscence (#3 for me, #13 for Shockah).

Shockah delivered us a statistical analysis in which our winning story faired poorly, coming in at 12 out of 16.

We dug into the story first on February 12 with my pros and cons list in round six. Shockah offered up his on February 14.

We gave Reminiscence its fair due, at my insistence, in rounds 6.3 and 6.4, where both of us laid out potential plots for the story.

Shockah pushed a vote on February 18, voting (of course), for a story you all know now. I cemented its win later that same day.

Shockah named the Heat #2 stories, which were then ranked (mine and his) and Time to Die was pitted against Rasputin the Translator.

We picked up that round on April 11 with my character sketches. For Time to Die, I looked at Rose St. Germain, our protagonist. Shockah followed on April 24 with his character sketch of our antagonist, James Crowley Okkervil (bonus points for anybody guessing who Shockah was listening to at that time).

On April 24 I also posted to talk about a conversation Shockah and I had at a coffee shop about these ideas we had for Time to Die (and, I haven’t forgotten the essay yet, my friend). Shockah followed up with this post

On April 30th I had a crazy idea to enable both stories to move forward if they were so capable, and we discussed that idea at length.

Round 10 discussion on May 30, with the two stories once again pitted against each other. It continued, and continued and then we started to vote, and we both were in agreement that Rasputin and Time to Die should move forward.

Since the Summer and Fall have been slow around here, we decided to speed things up and just list our favorites in order, assign points based on order and then let the winner win. We had six semi-finalists, and after Shockah cast his votes, and I cast mine, pushing Time to Die into the winners circle.

Thanks for coming along on this whistle-stop tour. We hope Time to Die will make a fun story to watch progress on.

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Time To Eat Sugary Fried Dough posted by kza

You are the Spitball! Employee of the Month. I owe you donuts.

(Bonus trivia: the winning story idea was ranked #6 by me and #10 by you.)

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Burley Grymz votes with a rhyme posted by Martin

I read your post first, but I promised myself it wouldn’t make an impact on my voting. Am I right? You be the judge.

I asked myself which ones I really want to write. What I’m really excited about? Here’s my list: 6. The Atmospherist So yeah. My blog with Andre. This is where our rules and our head-butting encounter our patience. Guess which one won?

1. La Commune Planet Good concept — it made it this far, after all — but we’re confused about it, I think, and the work toward creating it would be arduous, I think. I would rather have ardor.

2. Rasputin the Translator I love this story. It’s a novel, not a screenplay.

3. The Scabs I love this story. It’s a novel not a screenplay. I think I am going to attempt it as a novel.

Shit. Now I have a touch choice. I can tie us, or I can cast a vote that will put a clear winner in office and we will be on our way to writing. And writing this, I realize I know how I’m going to vote…

1. Little Black Stray Sad to say, I love this story too fucking much to write it and release it into the public domain. I want to own it. Plus, I think Shockah will rock the motha in NaNoWriMo. Steve: do with it what you will, sir. I would like to read your version too. Which means:

2. Time to Die Wins. This story is one I love and am interested in, but feel good about placing online for all to have. Out of all the ideas, though, the core of this one has never wavered, always been clear, and we’ve always agreed on it. I understand the motivation, it’s not overly tricky, and would make a solid action piece. I think we’ll be able to nail it, both the action side, and the character side. I’m thinking of Pitch Black in terms of pace and feel, but that’s a conversation we’ll start having now.

So, for the tally conscious, here’s the final points spread:

Atmospherist: 2 points La Commune Planet: 4 points Scabs: 7 points Rasputin: 7 points LBS: 10 points Time to Die: 12 points

Ladies and gentlemen — it’s only taken us 10 months. We have a winner. We will be writing Time To Die. Three cheers!

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Urban Shockah Votes With A Bullet posted by kza

I have a feeling this list would look different if I wrote it a day later, a day earlier, or even just at a different hour. An idea that sounds good in the morning looks uninspired in the evening, then looks fresh again the following day. So who knows what this list would look like a week from now? But as we have to check and see if the cat is dead or alive, the stories have to get slotted into an hierarchy. Here’s mine.

6. The Atmospherist. Basically, a joke entry. Potentially a good joke, or at least a fun joke, but I’m not feeling particularly funny today.

5. La Commune Planet. I like the idea of a cross-class comedy of unrequited love; I’m not sure this is the best place for it, ultimately. And right now, I’m wary of the challenges and hassles of “big concept SF” — a not very good name for the kinds of stories we’ve been coming up with, the really interesting world or concept (in this case, a Pleasure Planet that goes into revolt) that is waiting to be populated by characters, conflicts, and incidents. I’m looking for those kinds of things to be already there, up front and in my face.

4. The Scabs. And so The Scabs gets kind of a low rating as well, despite my fondness for the concept. As Grymz and I discussed offline, it’s a bit “thinky”, perhaps better suited for a novel — something that can accommodate all sorts of political and philosophical musings, while still telling a story. But a 120 page screenplay? Maybe, but I’m not ready for it yet.

3. Rasputin the Translator. I’ve surprised myself by ranking this one so high — IIRC, the last time we talked about it, we never came to terms as to what actually happens in this story. It’s still a pretty big blank slate. But we came up with some interesting characters (while keeping the Rasputin figure mysterious), and the basic situation is still intriguing. We’re still circling this one, and I smell gold at the middle — we just haven’t dug deep enough. (Mixd metaphorz rool)

2. Little Black Stray. Remember what I was saying about how capricious I could be about making this list? This was originally slotted at number one when I started this post, but I’ve had a change of heart. It’s still one of my all-time faves — in fact, I’m seriously considering using it as the base of my NaNoWriMo. I love the situation, the contrast between the hard machismo of the inmates and the soft, vulnerable woman, and the potential to flip those qualities. I really like my conception of the prison planet, and I like Grymz’s background for the woman, and the different plot twists that could come out of it. So why only #2? Well, I’m still having reservations about the prison planet itself — the “big concept SF” problem again — and how to incorporate that into the potentially explosive character relationships. And at any other time — like five minutes ago — it would’ve been #1 easily. But I feel like “up front and in my face” is the mood of the moment, and with that in mind…

1. Time to Die. One woman, one dead husband, one charismatic killer, one hard-assed warden, and one thousand rioting prisoners. See, the poster almost writes itself! I’m feeling this one is even more straight-forward than Little Black Stray — the goal of the protagonist is about as clearly defined as one would want — and isn’t as Big Concept as the others. (There’s a prison on a planet, and it’s the future so there’s lots of fancy gizmos, but there isn’t any real “paradigm shift” required on the part of the reader. If you know about prison movies, then you know about this story.) There’s still a lot to define here; there hasn’t been as much work done on it as Little Black Stray or even Rasputin for that matter. But with such a strong through-line (Woman wants to retrieve her husband’s dead body from rioting prisoners, and how do we make that hard for her each step of the way?), it seems like the ideal choice for this experiment.

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The semi-finalists posted by Martin

Herein lies the six stories that made it to the very end. My last post contained one mistake — I thought there were five stories. So, each story should be placed in order, and then assigned points based on their rank. #1 gets 6 points, #2 gets 5 points, and so on to #6 getting 1 point. Then we add them up and see where we are.

In any case, here are the six semi-finalists, listed in alphabetical order: The Atmospherist In a world where autistic youth believe they are not living on earth, one religion proves itself useless when the methane atmosphere changes into scientists. Also known as My Blog with Andre.

La Commune Planet In a world constructed for the pleasure of the ultra-rich, every vice can be had — for a price. But beneath the smiling exterior of the friendly staff, there lurks a growing resentment. When a group of ascetics destroy access to the planet’s hidden inter-dimensional gateway, the employees seize the chance to declare independence from the government and its backers. But as they take the profits and the pleasures for themselves, pressures and conflicting desires threaten to blow the planet to smithereens.

Little Black Stray In a World where violent male offenders are sent to labor camps on the remote prison planet, one crew of hardened men finds something impossible: a young woman in tattered clothes, mute and frightened. A small group protect and feed her, keeping her out of sight of the guards and away from those who would use her mercilessly. As she gains in strength it seems that she has an agenda — and the truth of what she was doing on a world where no women stepped before might be a big enough secret to shatter the whole planet of forced labor.

Rasputin the Translator In a World contacted by a sentient and potentially violent alien race, one man — bearded and wild eyed — is the only person on earth who can translate between the languages of humans and the language of the aliens. But this strange man is not only hostile to both sides of the debate, he is also untrustworthy, and possibly manipulating the negotiations to his own ends. With all of Earth being turned into a prison as the stakes, one government has a very limited time to not only unravel the mysteries of the alien language, but also the history of the interpreter.

The Scabs In a world designed by engineers to be a self-sufficient, endlessly exploitable resource for the rest of the known galaxy, robots toil tirelessly in the fields, the forests and the mountains, providing food and raw materials for a rapidly expanding market. But when a series of accidents destroys some of the mining robots, the rest of the metal workforce decide to strike and power off, leaving the humans that depend on the planet in the lurch. A taskforce is assembled to get the planet up and running again while a negotiator tries to get the robots back online. While the taskforce tries to relearn the long-forgotten principles of farming and manufacturing, the negotiator accidentally reveals the existence of the taskforce… and the robots, realizing that their existence could be usurped by the humans, decide to go on the offensive.

Time to Die In a World where death itself is beaten by genetic regeneration, a guard is killed during a riot on the prison planet. One woman — his wife — faces sure death to retrieve his body in time to bring him back to life. It’s a race against time, with one nearly resourceless woman willfully fighting like a juggernaut against the prisoners who are holding his body hostage, and the powers that be that think she should just give up. All to simply save the man she loves from eternal death.

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Re: Two guys walk into a blog -- you'd think the second one would've ducked posted by Martin

Huh? What? Is this thing on?

Sorry folks — I was gorging myself in San Francisco last week, and I’m only now staring to move again, like a wet bug that needed to dry out before coming out of stasis.

Anyway, where were we?

What say you, Burley?

Right! I say that I vote for both as well, although really in my mind the two could be easily combined. Is that always my answer? Combine the stories?

Also, I have a challenge: since I want to dig in and start working on the actual screenplay we will be writing, I say we set aside needless complexity™ and we do a speed round to find our final pick. What say you to this?

I say we list the remaining stories in order of preference, and award them points based on their position on the list. So, the number one pick would have five points, the number two pick four points, and so on until the fifth pick with one point. Then we’ll add them together and see what the order is. If we agree on the outcome, then we’ll take the top story. What do you think?

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Two guys walk into a blog -- you'd think the second one would've ducked posted by kza

Hey everybody — voting time!

I, Urban Shockah, vote for both The Scabs and La Commune Planet. I’ll admit, I was a little sketchy about LCP coming into this — it was interesting, certainly, but it seemed like there were better ideas out there. But Grymz’s character sketch gave me a more concrete idea of what the story and the world was like, and I feel like my contribution helped me latch onto the concept more strongly. Don’t know about Grymz, but I like the idea of a cross-class unrequited romance on board a space station that’s quickly going to hell. I don’t necessarily think that this is what the screenplay’s about — it’s probably just one part of it — but it is, for me, the one tiny thing I can emotionally hold onto and will get me through the rest of the development process.

It’s interesting — for me, The Scabs was clearly a comedy, and LCP clearly wasn’t, but they seemed to have switched places. I’m still not entirely sold on The Scabs as a drama, although it’s coming more into focus. Again, the key for me was to find a human character with a conflict that wasn’t directly about the robot uprising (which, right now, for me, can only be Futurama-hilarious or Terminator-horrific) but about issues that orbited that: job dissatisfaction, dreams deferred, the character’s slow realization that he has more in common with the “cold” robots than the humans around him, despite his protests to the contrary. That’s all interesting to me, and that’s what I’ll be holding onto if and when this story is expanded upon.

What say you, Burley?

When I was born, the world was much different than what it is today. It was on the verge of collapse. There wasn’t enough for everyone. Famine killed millions. War killed millions more. Economies collapsed and even the mightiest giants were felled, a victim of their own excess and ignorance. It seemed like the end to my family, but I was a child, and the concept was foreign to me. I didn’t have any realization of death, really, despite the bodies we passed everyday on our journey towards our imagined safe destination. Death was an abstraction; the idea that I could’ve been one of those bodies never really sank in until I was much older, and it’s been difficult to dislodge ever since. Examining the historical record, it’s clear that my family’s survival was just as much luck as anything else; were we forced to travel for longer than we did, it’s likely I would’ve taken my place amongst the corpses.

But then the astronauts returned with word of a new planet, one that could provide what we had taken, used, wasted from our own. It was the promise of a new start, or perhaps more accurately, a blank slate that we could attempt to write a new story for our race upon. It would be decades before the world could lift itself out of the quicksand in order to take advantage of this new world — it was named “Miracle” by one of the astronauts, in a spontaneously display of awe, but quickly adopted by the sponsoring government as its official designation. But even though nothing could be done right away, just the appearance of this new planet was enough to get us through, it seemed. It brought us together, gave us something to focus on, work toward. Our world stabilized. Within fifteen years, the first colony landed on Miracle. I was eighteen years old when I saw the broadcast.

My parents were adamant about my career choice. Miracle opened up the need for new technologies and new people to administer those technologies. One of those technologies was in the field of robotics and artificial intelligences, and I enrolled, at my parents’ great expense, in school. I learned the language of robots and computers, how they were built, the things that ail them and the things that cure them. I was told, continuously throughout my four years, how much I intuitively understood the artificial mind. My career and future were secured, locked-in, like the graduation photo that sits on my mother’s nightstand, a frozen, uncertain smile on my face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think my photographic doppelgänger could see the plastic frame that surrounded him.

The truth is that I dreamed about being a writer. I’ve kept a journal since I was ten, and found no satisfaction greater than putting pen to paper, creating and detailing the thoughts of imaginary people. Despite my successes at school, the notion that I understood the artificial mind was an insult. I didn’t really care about how the robots thought — how could anyone really care? The human mind was the one that was limitless, the one that proffered mysteries that beckoned to be solved. However complicated the AI may be, it’s still, at base, a series of gears and levers, a Rube Goldbergian simulacrum, as predictable as a light switch.

After I graduated, I was quickly swallowed up by the Miracle Development Project (Earthside), where I worked for several years, quickly moving up the ranks until I qualified for Miracleside and flown off to the planet itself. Despite the mythology built up around the planet — PR departments churning out poster after poster of Eden-like lushness — it’s really just a big mudflat, at least of what I’ve seen. The MDP have done their best over the years to make the place hospitable, but the priority is for the reaping the resources and sending them back — the staff is secondary, perhaps even tertiary behind the robots. Our quarters are cramped, the remnants of the original colony, haphazardly expanded as needed. (Everyone here can program in binary, but no one has the slightest architectural knowledge.) Privacy is difficult. I have plenty of “free” time, but the closeness of the quarters impinges on me, mentally and emotionally, and writing has been intermittent. Confinement creates two kinds of people: those who want to be left alone, and those who lose inhibitions and decorum like a snake loses its skin. The latter have only recently ceased propositioning me — they now know how I look down on them.

I’ve finished my letter of resignation, but it sits on my computer, waiting for me to release it. My parents would be quite angry if I quit; the pay is quite astronomical, and I’m guaranteeing the future of my children and grandchildren by staying on. But it’s become too much. I have enough to live on for several years, which should be plenty of time to find my success. I cannot let anymore time slip by. I must leave this place.

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Round 12, Part Four [La Commune Planet v. The Scabs] posted by kza

The Scabs

In a world designed by engineers to be a self-sufficient, endlessly exploitable resource for the rest of the known galaxy, robots toil tirelessly in the fields, the forests and the mountains, providing food and raw materials for a rapidly expanding market. But when a series of accidents destroys some of the mining robots, the rest of the metal workforce decide to strike and power off, leaving the humans that depend on the planet in the lurch. A taskforce is assembled to get the planet up and running again while a negotiator tries to get the robots back online. While the taskforce tries to relearn the long-forgotten principles of farming and manufacturing, the negotiator accidentally reveals the existence of the taskforce… and the robots, realizing that their existence could be usurped by the humans, decide to go on the offensive.

Character Sketch: Camelot “Cam” Nkrumah

Relationship to story: The human negotiator (definitely a major character, probably the protagonist, but then again, maybe not)

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Re: [9] Round 12, Part Two [La Commune Planet v. The Scabs] posted by kza

I think you’re right. It is closer to suspense, and possibly does border on horror. But, then the questions are raised, what is the suspenseful situation, and what is horrible about it? I see it more as dramatic, but then the thing is less formed and more amorphous in my head. We’ll work on that. I’m sure we can come to terms over this. So long as coming to terms means doing exactly what I want.

It’s funny — as I’ve been working on my latest character bios, I’ve made the switch: I can see La Commune Planet as a comedy and The Scabs as a drama. The key for me on the latter was to forget about the robots and look more deeply into the human character — not to put too fine a point on it, but what’s his angst? Maybe it has to do with the robots, but maybe it doesn’t. The more I can think of this guy as the subject of a drama, the more I can take the situation/story seriously as a drama. (It’s tough, admittedly — the situation just sounds more comedic than dramatic to me, but I think I can do it.) I don’t know if that quite dovetails with your approach, but I don’t think it’s contradictory, either. If that makes any sense.

To me, that’s the heart of collaboration, and my segue into mentioning that I’m working on a few posts about collaboration and how we work, which I think is kind of interesting.

How’s that coming, btw? I’d like to read that. I might learn something :-P

I didn’t sign up for this. Well, yeah, I signed up, but not for this. I was the middle manager of a Stuckey’s Fun Station, for Buddy’s sake. I haven’t gone through the training program for running a pleasure port. You know the time and effort it takes to keep one of these things running, let alone smoothly? And one of the size of Chanel #5? Of course you don’t, few people do. Hell, I wouldn’t even know myself if it wasn’t for Wes. That bastard.

Wes called me a month ago. We came up the ranks together, but Wes was always a top dog — a little smarter, a little smoother, a little luckier. He graduated the head of his class, and was pursued by everyone. It was a no-brainer; he immediately signed up with FritoGoogle2 and got the pick of assignments. I was about twentieth or so, and only McExxon had any interest whatsoever. That’s okay; I was only pushed into this by my parents and I just wanted to skim by, without any need to put in effort. Clock in, clock out, clock dollars, spend, repeat.

And that’s how life was for a long while. It was good. And then like I said, Wes called. I hadn’t heard a peep from him since graduation, yet here he was ringing me up out of the blue. But when the top dog calls, you answer. He tells me he’s running Chanel #5, recently promoted, would I be interested in heading up Housewares & Domination?

Well, no, not really. What do I know about housewares? And I didn’t need the money. Money meant responsibility, and at the Stuckey’s, I just fill out paperwork all day, and eat at the buffet for lunch. Why change that? But Wes was persistent, so I flew over there to give the place a once over. Let him think I was interested, let him think the FritoGoogle2 charm still worked.

The place was slick, I’ll give him that. A tight ship. The employees were well-trained and well-behaved. I saw this one big fat guy come out of a room, totally naked except for a Mickey Mouse hat, and he started ripping into one of the hostesses about this and that, how the oils weren’t the right temperature and the straps didn’t chafe the right way. And this girl was just totally red star. Dude was back in his room doing whatever he was doing within a minute, smile on his face like he got what he wanted, and I’m not even sure he did. And she was like it was no big thing, totally expressionless.

So then Wes lays out the offer, and I’ll admit, it’s a good one. But I went in with a mantra — “Thanks, but no thanks” — and kept it going through the entire tour. Thanks but no thanks. You pulled this shit all through school, Wes, this sweet talk, but we’re not in school anymore. Thanks but no thanks. So he wants my answer, and I open my mouth, and in my head I see the girl, the one with the expressionless face, and I hear myself say, “Sure thing” and my heart sinks. Bastard.

So then I’m in charge of Housewares & Domination at the biggest pleasure port in the system, and the girl, Gertrude, is my employee. What was I thinking? There are rules in place — I can’t even shake her hand. She and the others report to me every day, and every day I’m greeted by the same lack of expression. It’s a mask that I want to rip off her face and It kills me.

But I can’t worry about that now. Wes and the other department heads left for a two-day conference, leaving me in charge. Shouldn’t have been a big deal — the place can kind of run itself for awhile, even with no head, and they’d be back soon enough. Then, six hours after they left, something happened. Asceticists bombed the New Los Angeles International/Interstellar Teleport. Chanel #5 was cut off from Earth and all the other stations. It’d take a decade to fly to the nearest one, the rest of your life to get back to the planet. The reality of it hasn’t fully hit everyone, but already I can hear the murmurs: We’re alone. It might be a long, long time before anyone comes for us. Why are we working for this idiot, again?

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Round 12, Part Three [La Commune Planet v. The Scabs] posted by kza

La Commune Planet

In a world constructed for the pleasure of the ultra-rich, every vice can be had — for a price. But beneath the smiling exterior of the friendly staff, there lurks a growing resentment. When a group of ascetics destroy access to the planet’s hidden interdimensional gateway, the employees seize the chance to declare independence from the government and its backers. But as they take the profits and the pleasures for themselves, pressures and conflicting desires threaten to blow the planet to smithereens.

Character Sketch: Davis McExxon

Relationship to story: Also a primary character.

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