Intro to ‘The Nipper’

This is the Nipper – resident shuttle craft on board The Rocket.

Okay, here’s some mental imagery. Young Ones. Special Patrol Group. Hamster. Sans fur.

Nipper.

Yellow, oddly brick shaped (odd in the same way you’d expect a fish not to have wheels) with its sloping criminal forehead, The Nipper sat in an indecipherable state inside a holding hanger, hiding in the shadows. Two headlights gleamed watchfully whilst it produced meaningful ominous lurking, aided by the lightly glowing banks of screens and dials inside the cockpit that somehow conveyed a sense of menace akin to HAL or VOPR during their more ‘difficult’ phase.
Think Strider in the Prancing Pony, mix in a bit of Patrick Bateman, add a dollop of Begbie and blend together with 8 tons of metal, attitude, plexi-glass, attitude

– and weaponry
– and attitude.

Al wasn’t wrong when he believed that the Nipper wasn’t just an ex-military transport craft, and although he was a little off the mark in assuming it was possessed by the great red one himself [1] there was definitely something a little…off about the little yellow spacecraft.
It had, of course, a rudimentary AI, although its alien origins meant that on occasion the Nipper made odd choices, or indeed none. During the last alien attack [2] the Nipper had simply sat there and did nothing. Alternately the craft took it upon itself to launch an intensive and prolonged attack on the visiting dignitaries from a friendly planet on their first contact with an alien race[3], without any prompting whatsoever.
So yes, it was an AI or sorts. Al attributed to a similar vein as a chicken. The kind of chicken suffering post-war stress disorder and who is likely to pull a flick-knife out on a loving family member over an argument over whether to watch Songs of Praise or Antique Roadshow on a Sunday afternoon.

It also had, for many various reasons, a glasweigan accent.

And Al had never actually had a one to one conversation with it.

So things were bound to go well.

[1] completely, actually. Satan was busy in another dimension somewhere, although rumours persisted that he occasionally popped in on Larz
[2] face slurping evil motherfuckers the lot of ‘em
[3] and where much hilarity ensued

Sub returned

The Grand Station came back from The Dark Recesses as a negative.

Nice quick response, though.

Crumplezone ‘long listed’ at GUD

According to my good friend K at GUD Magazine Crumplezone has been long-listed, having gotten past the slush pile.

From what I can tell this means that they want it, but haven’t yet decided what to do with it. Watch this space.

Bits and pieces

I’ve partially transitioned over from my livejournal account [1] and am setting down in this account here.

[1] I say partially as LJ has an export feature which wordpress supports BUT LJ only exports month on month (unless I’m being dumb).

Al makes a call to Becky…

Chapter 4 – section 4 (roughly!)

“Hello?”
“Hi, is this, er, Becky? You’re a spaceship, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“I have a collect call from someone called Al from Percy 5 – will you accept?”
“Does he know the password?”
“The…uh…password?”
“Yes. Otherwise I won’t know it’s him.”
“I see. I’ll have to ask him. Please hold.”
“I need to know the password.”
“I know – please hold, er, Sir.”
Beat.
“Hello, Becky?”
“Hello.”
“Yeah, um, his reply is, and I quote ‘you have go to be fucking joking’”
Pause.
“That is not the password.”
“I realised that, Sir.”
“I need to know the password. “
“One second…”
Beat.
“Right, he says he has no idea what the password is – “
“ – I need to know know – “
“Listen listen – I get that. You need to know the password. That’s coming through loud and clear. I spoke to him and from what I can tell he knows who you are. How about I just put him through?”
“What makes you think he knows me?”
“He said you were an awkward bastard. I’m putting you through now…”
“Becky…is that you?”
“Alvin. Hello. “
“What the hell was all that about the password – “
“ – do you know the password – “
“ – no I don’t know the password. In all the time I have known you we have never once mentioned in any way, shape or form a password. Now I know I took a lot of drugs in my youth – “
“ – last week actually – “
“ BUT I’m very certain on this password issue. “
“Without the password I can’t help you.”
Beat.
“I’m so gonna kick your ass when I see you. Are you really telling me you aren’t going to speak to me unless I give you a password?”
“Correct.”
“Even though I suspect there’s a very good chance the only person who knows this password is you?”
“…Yes.”
“Right. Put me through to the Nipper then. And Becky?”
“Yes?”
“You best hope we don’t make this out alive.”
“If we’re talking about threats Mr Alvin then don’t expect to get on my ship without the password. Are we clear?”
“You son of a – “
“ – transferring you to the Nipper now…”

List of current submissions

Whilst I’m submitting: –

The Man Who Met Himself – Kaliedotrope
Undo – Aberrant Dreams
The Grand Station – The Dark Recesses

Bugger and The Grand Station

TMWHM came back from The Third Alternative. No sale.

Find another home.

I came across a small piece I wrote – called The Grand Station – for an Imaginaries challenge, and although I felt it pretty throwaway at the time I must admit on reflection it’s not a bad read. I think I’ll try and find a home for this as well.

Some script from Bullet With Butterfly Wings

Parked behind a moon the Iarth A Class Starship Rocket UBI-BECK 9 sits floating in a slightly unstable orbit around a small dark moon. Constantly adjusting the secondary thrusters in order to maintain a safe distance from the spiky-looking black rock below is the only thing stopping its resident AI from getting dangerously bored. Sure, it could have parked further into deep spare and just hung there, but it had done that already and ended up idling towards this moon for some action, however slight.

The concept of vacation hasn’t been programmed into the AI so while the crew has packed the Nipper with booze and tunes and have gone in search of the nearest habitable piece of rock, they have left Becky alone and with no idea what to do with its time.
The ship had been empty before, sure. But always while the crew were kidnapped, off-site on a mission or on temporary abayence during one of the hopper’s more adventurous jumps. Never for fun.

With Larz’s words of ‘just chill the beat, dude’ and after spending the first 8 hours deciphering just exactly what that meant Becky made a twofold decision: 1) Becky was an AI construct, designed to pilot a dimension-travelling starship, and thus the concept of ‘chilling the beat’ had not been too high up the implementation programme when its designers had laid out their roadmap and 2) Larz was a compulsive liar and could therefore not be trusted in any way, shape or form.

So, unsure of what to do Becky instead mooches up and down in the decaying orbit, muttering and kicking metaphorical dust in its wake. As it considers for the fifth time whether to pick a fight with some traffic on the local slow goods lane to relieve the boredom, it receives a collect call.

Undo – editing complete

Undo is pretty much done. I must have edited it in my sleep.

I wonder if I could get myself to do the same trick on the 20 or so other stories on my hard drive…

Anyway, time to sell. Let’s find a market

Undo edits

Jeez – sick of this already.

Ok, one more line level edit before I put this one up for sale. Even though I rate this story [1] and it has been published before (under a horrific title I fail to remember right now) my love for it has become exhausted.

Even though it is part 1 of Standoff [2] I’ve lost interest in doing anything but fix what I think is wrong.

What is wrong? Well, I’ve fallen into the trap of narrator voice vs narrative in that I struggle to keep the thin line between a diary entry by a character and an actual story without the reader become aware of either. It’s those little spots you’d read and go – oh yeah as if he’d write it down like that. Things of that nature. I’ve also become obsessed with adverbs and passive writing. Funny but I picked up a Jeffrey Thomas Punktown novel and it’s littered with the above so perhaps I am overthinking (not overwriting, though, huh?) about the technical aspects of writing over and above the actual writing itself.

This is very probable.

[1] wouldn’t be selling it otherwise, would I?
[2] coming soon!