“I’m just saying it would be nice to have a better idea of what to expect here,” Epic said. “I know our people don’t know a lot, but they know more than nothing, and right now I know less than that.”
“Maybe there’ll be a brief at the bunker.”
“Yeah, maybe. Hey, hold up.”
She came to a stop at a street junction, at one of the first places Opie would argue constituted an actual block, meaning it had buildings on both sides of the street and around the corner of the cross-street. Other than the surprising existence of manmade structures in close proximity, it didn’t seem in any way interesting.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Thought I saw something.”
The road was pressed dirt. Very little out on the edge of the colony appeared to be paved, or all that well defined. There was no curb here, for instance; the side of the road was untended tall grass.
The scene reminded Opie of the old Westerns from the Earth-Eden history archives. He tried to remember what those bundles of hay that used to blow across the road were called. Turboweeds or something like that.
Epic popped the spotlight off the vest and into her hand.
“What did you see?” Opie asked.
“If I knew I’d tell you. Something shiny.”
“Not a lot of shiny things out here.”
“Well yes, that’s why it stood out. Lightning played off it. Probably my eyes just playing tricks.”
She kept walking along, though, as if she had seen something and her eyes were not playing tricks at all.
“Come on, we should keep moving,” he said. “Get out of this rain.”
“You worried you might not be following orders fast enough, soldier?”
“Little bit, yeah. And I’m starting to smell like boiled greens.”
“There it is, did you see?”
She waved the light back and forth over a section of roadside grass. Something did flash back.
“Yeah, I see it.”
Holding the beam steady, Epic ran to the spot and dug around while Opie put his hand on the butt of his blaster. He couldn’t explain why he did that; it just felt right.
“Someone lost their light,” she said.
“One of ours?”
“Yeah, same gear.”
“So it fell off a vest on the way down or while they were running. Shove it in your pouch and let’s get moving.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She stood, and raised her discovery up, so Opie could see the rest of the story, which was that while someone had indeed lost their spotlight, they’d also lost a portion of their vest.
“It was torn?” he asked.
“You tell me. These things, they don’t tear, right? What’s the tensile strength of this material?”
She tossed it to him.
He ran his light along the tear, which was jagged. The cloth looked shredded. Or bitten, maybe.
“I know this is crazy, but this looks like…”
“Shut up,” she said, cutting him off.
She drew her blaster and then they stood there for a while and waited for something to happen. Nothing much did, other than the rain.
“What did you hear?” he asked, after a respectful silence.
“Don’t know. A squeak or something.”
“Chasing rats?”
“Not that kind of squeak.”
“You sure? I bet they got rats out here, same as us.”
“Positive.”
The vermin problem in the city was well-known, and seemed to be a persistent problem with every colony. When humanity first traveled the stars, it was by using long-distance haulers and a cryo-frozen crew. But cryo never got much better than a 20% mortality rate, and nobody much wanted to be the one-in-five who never woke up again. Still, back in those days there was no chance of a stowaway rat. Then the hub system was discovered—something people found and learned how to use, but didn’t invent—and suddenly the galaxy was available, without costing three lifetimes to get somewhere interesting. Only then did the rats figure out how to stow away and discover the same new worlds as people. More than once, Opie had heard someone joke that if they ever did encounter an advanced alien species, that species might have trouble figuring out who the dominant Earthlings were.
“Well what did it sound like?” he asked.
“Like metal rubbing up against metal.”
“So you heard a machine somewhere, or a… I don’t know, a pinwheel or something. Do they have windmills out here?”
“I said that’s what it sounded like. Didn’t say that was what it was.”
“Epic, you’re not making any sense.”
“Bet the guy who owned that vest said the same thing.”
“Maybe he did. How about we bring it back to the bunker and let someone smarter than us have a good look at it and…”
There was a loud shriek. It came from above, and to their left, a little up the road. Something was on top of a roof.
The sound was, on the one hand, pretty similar to the noise of two stripped gears rubbing together. On the other hand, it was undeniably a vocalization made by something with a mouth.
“Did you hear that?” Epic asked.
“Yeah, that I heard.”
He shoved the torn piece of vest in his sack and armed himself.
“Came from there. See anything?”
She pointed in a direction that differed from where he thought he heard it. He checked where she was looking, then where he thought he heard it coming from, and both times there wasn’t really much of anything to look at. Their eyes were still iffy from the regular lightning flashes.
He switched his goggles to infra and tried again. This was not a good idea on a night with lots of bright flashes, but made for a decent enough spot-check.
“There’s nothing there,” he said, flipping the goggles back to normal.
“Think they’re invisible?”
“I think I want to go back to what I was saying before. Let’s get to the recon point.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do. Double-quick.”
They high-tailed it back to the junction, caught a right, and headed down the road as fast as they could safely do so. This wasn’t all that fast, because of the rain and the dirt roads.
Opie wanted to ask Epic what she thought happened to the guy who was wearing the vest, and maybe if she thought it was weird how alone they were at this point. The townspeople hiding inside in the middle of a downpour he could understand, but an entire squadron had chuted to this point. They saw a few folks in front of them earlier, but now there was nobody, in either direction. If they’d been the last to jump it would have made a little sense, but they weren’t.
They’d gone about a kilometer before they heard the sound again—in front of them.
Epic, who was leading, pulled up.
“What the hell is it and where the hell is it?” he asked, as she looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t know, keep moving… DROP!” she shouted.
He did, just before she filled the space he’d been occupying with energy from the blaster. The hand cannon made a familiar THUP-WHOOSH sound: the first from the aperture at the end of the barrel opening and closing, and the second from the air as it surrendered to the rock of hard plasma sliding through.
Epic fired twice, and both sounded like they hit their mark. He tried to get up and have a look, but she’d already grabbed him by the elbow.
“We have to move!”
“But…”
“Now, soldier!”
So he did. It wasn’t the order he’d just received (she technically outranked him) that did it, though; it was her expression. He’d never seen Epic look afraid before.
He just really wanted to know what she thought she saw that warranted two rounds, and if that thing still existed after having absorbed them. Not many things could. If this had, maybe that was why she looked so frightened.
They didn’t get far. Another few house
s, another block, another turn, and then there was a new howl. Again, it came from in front, but since the last shout presaged a rear assault—multiple enemies, working in concert, showing effective deception techniques—the first thing Opie did was check their six.
Nothing there.
Then, from the rooftop to their left, an actual alien dropped to the ground…
There was a restaurant not too far from Oliver’s apartment that specialized in something called ‘gastro-pub’ dining. It was really just pub food with fresher ingredients and real chef, but since every fifth eating establishment in the city featured a variant of the same concept, it appeared to be working well for all concerned.
This particular restaurant—it was called Four Horse, which was meaningless—was a favorite of college students. There were ten universities in the metropolitan area, and five of them were within walking distance of Four Horse, so it was well attended almost all the time. The same could be said for the twenty or thirty other bars and eateries along the same strip of road.
Oliver, whose education included community college at a regional campus, had never been to Four Horse, right up until Wilson invited him there.
The invite came one day after he’d submitted The Battle of Hockspit, and the dinner landed two days before the next TAWU meeting. It was such a weird occurrence, Ollie could hardly say no, even if it felt like he was in some sort of trouble.
“Oliver! Hey!”
The entrance to Four Horse was below the service floor. One had to go up a short flight of stairs to reach the tables, which also meant some of the tables looked down on the entrance. Wilson was at one of them, shouting over the alt-rock station playing everyone through their meals.
Ollie waved awkwardly and stumbled around past the hostess desk and through the small perpetual crowd occupying most of the standing areas, until he got to the table. The place felt a lot like a regular bar, and since Ollie wasn’t terribly fond of bars—he wasn’t great with crowds unless there was a counter between them and him—it wasn’t a welcoming experience. He did take note that all of the employees were wearing plaid, which he thought was helpful. If there was a fire, he’d know who to follow.
Wilson gestured him to a chair, and a second later a plaid waitress was there, and a few minutes after that Ollie had a hard cider chosen at random (they had five to pick from) and there was a plate of tater tots covered in cheese and bacon resting in the middle of the table.
“I thought we should talk,” Wilson said. “Outside of the group.”
“All right.”
“Oliver, I think you’re a good writer.”
“Oh.” This jibed with what Minnie insisted, but hearing it was still a surprise. “Thanks.”
“And, I’m not going to share your latest piece with the group.”
“Okay, now I’m not sure what’s going on. Are you kicking me out?”
“No, no of course not.”
Wilson had a dark beer with a thick head, which he took a sip of. Ollie just assumed it was intolerably bitter. It seemed like something a person drank because he wanted to acquire the taste for it, rather than something a person enjoyed.
“Look,” Wilson said, “I think you can do better.”
“I thought that was the point of workshopping.”
“Oh, it is. But… okay, let’s talk about the latest one. I think you did a lot of good things there. You threw in a little omniscient narration, which is a first for you.”
“Did I?” Oliver wasn’t a hundred percent sure what the difference was, but he was willing to believe Wilson did.
“Third person, but not from a character’s perspective. You understand the difference?”
“I guess I do, sure.”
“Transitioning from third omniscient to third close is tough, but you did fine with it. But that’s not… What I’m trying to say, Oliver, is that technically you have all the tools. It’s your choice of subject that I want to push you on.”
“What does that mean? Technically I have the tools.”
“Not a lot of people can sit down and string together words in an order that makes people want to keep reading. You’re a pretty good storyteller, and that’s something that I don’t think can really be taught. When I was getting my MBA, trust me, I met a lot of writers who didn’t have that. You also find different ways to tell stories, and that’s all good.”
“But you don’t like the stories I’m trying to tell.”
“I honestly think they’re beneath you. I think you should be striving for more.”
Oliver grabbed a tater tot and popped it into his mouth. The cheese had already cooled, and room temperature fried potatoes were never quite right, so the combined flavor made for an unpleasant experience. However, it turned out he was hungry, so he took a second and third, while trying to assess exactly what he was being told.
“All right,” he said finally. “So I should be aiming higher. But what am I aiming for? I just want to write stories people like.”
“Right, I get that. I want you to write stories people need.”
Ollie smiled.
“Who’s to say people don’t need a good space opera?” he asked. “Or a horror story? Or an epic fantasy?”
“I think need is too strong a word. People want romance novels. They don’t need them.”
“I think need is too strong a word for any piece of fiction, Wilson.”
“Of course it isn’t. All right, it’s a little pretentious, but a good work of fiction can be important, and important things can change the world.”
“It isn’t pretentious to think fiction can change the world. It’s pretentious to think you’re the one who can write it.”
Wilson laughed.
“I like that. All right, let me reframe this for you. I don’t expect you to write the great American novel. I do expect you to try to write it.”
“But I don’t want to write that kind of thing. These are the stories I want to tell.”
“They’re beneath you.”
Oliver didn’t think they were beneath him. He didn’t think there was any story that fit that description as long as it was a story he wanted to tell. He did think they were beneath Wilson, and he wondered if someone had this same talk with him once, when he was getting his Masters. And, once he was through wondering all that, he wondered once more what Wilson was actually working on. Was Wilson writing his own great American novel? If so, why was he pressuring Oliver to do the same? Surely, there can be only so many great American novels, and Wilson was supposed to be the important generational voice at this table.
“All right,” Oliver said. “So what do you recommend?”
“I’d like to give you more specific assignments. See if we can force you out of your comfort zone and flex those muscles some. I was on the other side of a lot of these same exercises, and since you can’t… sorry, I’m assuming you can’t jump into an MBA program yourself, but maybe I can bring some of it to you.”
For a second, the fact that Wilson annoyed the heck out of Oliver fell away and he was touched. Flattered, even. He didn’t think his writing was nearly as good as Wilson did, apparently. Maybe that was reason enough to go along with him and see where it led.
He suspected it would end badly, because writing something someone else thought he should write, instead of what he wanted to write just seemed like a bad idea all around. It was a lot like the dark beer Wilson was drinking, actually. Sure, with effort Oliver could probably learn to appreciate it, but he would never get rid of the bitter aftertaste, and he might end up quitting beer altogether.
“Sure, what the hell. I’ll try it.”
“Great!”
Wilson held up his dark beer, and they toasted.
“Oh, and before I forget, Minerva wanted to know what the alien looks like.”
Oliver almost choked on his cider at the mention of her name. “She wants to know…” he repeated.
“Yeah, you stopped before describing the alien. In the story. She w
ants to know what it’s supposed to look like.”
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “That was the problem.”
“That’s why you stopped?”
“Yes. I mean, I want to create something new. All the alien species in these stories are variants of pretty normal creatures we can all relate to. Lizards, or, you know.”
“Bugs,” Wilson said. “Giant bugs. They’re always giant bugs.”
“But that’s why these stories are more than you make them out to be, I think. These are archetypes.”
“Sure, sure, I get all that. Put a bug under a microscope and it’s terrifying. But you’d be the thousandth writer to get to that same place if it ended up being a giant bug.”
“That’s why I stopped. I wanted something like that, but different. It’s the same reason I couldn’t keep going with the horror story. By the ending, it’s the same ghost story tropes all over again. I wanted something new, but couldn’t think of it.”
Wilson grinned.
“This is why we’re talking at all, Oliver. This is your instinct. You don’t want to do the same old thing.”
“There’s value in those same old things.”
“Yes, yes. But you’re resisting it yourself. That’s why you haven’t finished anything.”
“I could.”
“You don’t know what the aliens are going to look like, and you don’t know who the ghost is or what she wants, and I’m nearly certain you’ve no idea what this Kingdom is all about. All you do know is you want these things to be new and different and something nobody ever thought of writing before, and you’re stopping because you can’t find that thing. Your need to write something great and original is preventing you from being one of those people who just churns out another genre story.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with…”
“Yes, I know, I’m not being dismissive of genre as a whole. I am being dismissive of tropes, and expected beats and outcomes. But Oliver, if you want to blaze a new trail, it’s that much harder if you start down the same path as everyone else.”
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