Edit: I've posted an updated first 5 pages later in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1111&p=12130#p12130
I'm very close to sending out my modern fantasy novel, MEETING OF THE WATERS, to agents and publishers, and I would love to get some reader responses to the first five pages. Comments and suggestions are certainly welcome; I realize the set-up might be a bit odd to many readers.
(If you're interested, my proposed query is here - viewtopic.php?f=13&t=925&p=7084#p7084)
(Added the rest of the first chapter, highlighted in blue.)
Chapter One
I awake to the opening notes of my leitmotif, coming from my ex-girlfriend’s speakers. Chelsea watches this shit in surround sound.
I’ve carved out a nice warm patch on the living room floor, so I only peel open one eye to see what episode she’s watching. The title – Fleet of the Broken Cross – sears into a treasure map, and then the parchment burns away to reveal a scene I played two weeks past.
There I am, or at least my character: Captain Jonathan Bluff, clinging to the bottom of a leopard shark. I clench in my teeth a little shark-shaped voodoo doll, with which I aim my ride, cocking my head back and forth to swing us between the caravels and galleons of the Royal Navy of Caribbea. Their moon-silhouetted hulls ripple the sea overhead, casting bottomless shadows to either side of my stealthy approach. I nudge the black magic carnivore I’m riding up to the surface so I can gulp air and get my bearings, then dive again.
In the real world, I, Jaime Adricks, glance over my shoulder at Chel. She sits on the couch, her feet inches away from the sleeping bag where I crashed after last night’s rehearsal dinner.
“Good mor-” I mumble.
She shushes me. “Just watch.”
I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, so I lock my bleary eyes on the screen. It takes a moment for my half-asleep brain to register what event from my character’s history I’m watching. When I do, I blanch.
I sit up. “I really should get-.”
“Watch the show. You’ll like it. Do you want to upset a woman on her wedding day?”
I relent and lie back down, but only because arguing would force me to explain that I’ve been lying to her for two-and-a-half years.
On screen, the cuts come quickly. Red-coated sailors look forward as I – the ‘Captain Bluff’ I – sneak to the aft of their armada. The pirate fleet of Commodore Quindon Sabriel lurks a mile away, and all the soldiers, even all the bloated corps of officers and mercenaries logged in for the special event, expect another four or five minutes of dramatic build-up before the battle begins.
I – the I on the floor – remember the epic, let’s-go-to-war music that blared in the digital sea breeze every time I broke the surface, and how the game’s soundtrack would switch to a spooky voodoo death-is-coming-for-you blues-rock whenever I dove under the waves. But the editors who transferred the scene from video game to online machinima series opted for a new arrangement of my Bluff theme song. It feels like reopening a fresh wound.
The me on the screen swims alongside the fleet’s battleship, and the camera lingers over the ship’s name, His Majesty’s Law. Salt water slides off my smile as I step off the back of my selachimorph steed and clamber up the shadowed side of the oversized warship. I tuck the fishy voodoo doll into my coat, its spot between my teeth replaced by my six-loa saber.
Climbing the beergut backside of a galleon would be impossible for anyone less famous than Captain Jonathan Bluff, but I do my best Spider-Man impression without alerting the hundred-man crew. I even manage to sneak a quick peek through the aft windows of the main cabin to make sure Admiral Jarvis hasn’t begun prowling the ship yet. But there he sits at a broad table. Thin, bewigged in white, and a total fabrication of video editing software, the admiral sips his wine and peruses a thick, ancient sea charts.
The camera teases, hovering over the words “Biblioteca Fratris Filipi” on one of those fictional maps. Then it cuts back to my hungry, narrowing eyes.
Next we see of me, I’ve climbed up behind a sailor on the aftcastle. Dozens more mill on the deck, slaving away at tending rigging, checking cannons, chatting mutely under the soundtrack, basically doing everything but looking at the back of their ship to see the pirate who’s about to ruin their night.
Hands free, sword in teeth, I whip out a weighted silk scarf and sling it around the neck of the nearest sailor. He gets out the slightest mutter of confusion before I grab both ends of the scarf and tug tight, strangling the words just short of his throat. He flails impressively for a few seconds as I build up the leverage to hurl him over the aft railing. Just as he splashes I duck into shadows so no one will see me, and while I hide I casually aim my voodoo-controlled shark buddy to make sure the night’s first victim doesn’t come back up to scream for help.
I creep forward to the ship’s wheel at the fore edge of the aftcastle, where a middle-aged woman mans the wheel. Having done this dozens of times before against other clueless helmsmen, I step up behind her and pull the pistol out of her belt. Instead of holding her hostage or shooting her in the back, though, I just press the gun into her hand.
“Captain,” she whispers back with a smile.
“Doctor Trines,” I say.
From the sofa, Chelsea giggles. She, like half the fans of this show on the internet, assumes Margaret Trines and I – that’s Captain Bluff I, not Jaime I – need to hook up. If Chelsea knew Bluff was me, I doubt she’d feel so adamant that my alter ego needs some loving.
Hiding in my disguised first mate’s shadow, I ask, “Where’s Lucius?”
“Belowdecks,” Margaret says, “waiting for our signal. He needs two minutes to rig the magazine to explode.”
I peek over her shoulder at all the people on the deck.
“Hm. The two of us against a hundred? That should take about two minutes.”
“As long as the rest of the fleet doesn’t get involved,” Margaret warns.
I smirk. “Will you do the honors?”
Margaret nods in the direction of a musket leaning against the ship’s wheel. I grab the longarm one-handed and then aim it without letting go of my sword. Margaret grabs the wheel and aims her own pistol. The music tenses, hums with bass, then explodes with screeching strings as Margaret slams the wheel and lurches the ship to starboard. The crew balks and turns to see us, and we fire.
My musket stills the heart of the sailor nearest the fore hatch, and he collapses atop the trap door, blocking one path belowdecks. Margaret goes for dynamism, and she gut-shoots a man in the rigging, sending him careening and caterwauling to land atop the aft hatch. His bones snap audibly, and his dead weight completes the two-part trick of sealing off the lower decks.
The sailors of His Majesty’s Law sound the alarm and draw swords, and Margaret and I lunge into battle.
I groan and crawl out of my sleeping bag.
“Jaime!” Chelsea yells. “Dammit! Out of the way!”
She rewinds so she doesn’t miss anything. I head to the bathroom, lock myself inside, and face my reflection. I don’t want to watch any more, to be reminded of why I quit the game. Or worse, to remember how much I loved playing it. But I face myself and shake my head at how silly I’m being. It was just a game, after all.
I come out of the bathroom, drying my hands on one of her fiancé George’s towels, just in time to see my internet alter ego thrust my six-loa saber into a sailor’s ribs. I use him as the axis of a whirling kick, stamping across the faces of a circle of seven other sailors who had tried to catch me. I jump off the final sailor’s nose, wrench my sword free of the first man’s chest, grab onto a belaying line, slash the rigging rope, and lift up to the mizzenmast crow’s nest, where I take out the look-out who has been firing down at us from the high ground. I leave my sword in his groaning body, snatch the musket out of his hands, then cling to the rigging line with my legs as I turn upside down. I shoot out the knee of the latest man trying to remove the dead weight covering the hatch to belowdecks.
I bend up, retrieve my sword, flip the musket to grip it by its barrel, and let go. I somersault as I drop, and a convenient pile of eight sailors breaks my fall.
Meanwhile, Margaret has cut down a score of sailors with her loa-loading pistol and various daggers and poisons. She leaps up the stairs to the forecastle, intent on clearing out the crew, but a huge longshoreman hidden behind a stack of rum casks steps out and grabs her. The towering man crushes her into his chest, and a fistful of sailors rush to strike her before she gets free.
“Margaret, eyes!” I shout.
She clenches her eyes shut, and I thrust out my saber toward the huge grappler. A corkscrewing cascade of shrieking voodoo spirits fly from my swordtip to the longshoreman’s face. He reels as a loa crawls through his eyes into his soul. Then he releases Margaret and turns his mighty fists upon the other sailors, shouting victorious African curses as he thumps them down. Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, flicking a knife as she goes to open up the jugular of another sailor who tries to grab her.
Distracted by helping Margaret, I don’t notice the two officers moving to flank me. One actually slashes me across the back.
On the couch, Chelsea gasps. I take a seat on the couch’s arm.
The I on screen trips over a limp body, and I barely manage to dodge a pair of swords aimed for my neck. I can’t keep parrying both officers, but Margaret saves me the trouble when she jams a knife in one’s shoulder before planting her pistol into his spine and sending his heart out across the deck in a spray of moon-lit red mist.
The remaining officer waffles on which of us to attack, then decides to block my upswing with his jowls. He runs and cries in panic, and I let him go as he jumps off the side of the ship to save himself.
Blood attracts sharks, anyway.
I stop to get my bearings and call upon one of my blade’s loas to heal the gash on my back. Scores lie dead or wounded, and the few remaining sailors on deck either know better than to come after us, or are too busy being pounded into pulp by a possessed longshoreman.
I say, “What’s taking Lucius so long?”
A small tremor shakes the deck, and the fore hatch explodes upward in a shrapnel blast of wood slivers and sailor bits. Margaret and I wait, expecting Lucius to stride up through the black smoke. And up the stairs he does indeed come, a lit cigar tucked in his breast pocket and a sword at his throat. The soot-streaked Admiral Jarvis follows, holding Lucius hostage. Worse, a handful of distinctively-dressed officers limp up after them, sporting burns and splinter wounds, but still battle ready.
“Captain Jonathan Bluff?” the admiral scoffs. “Why the hell are you trying to blow up my ship?”
I lower my sword and swagger forward.
“Give me what I want,” I say, “and I won’t have to.”
Admiral Jarvis sneers. “Why should I bother negotiating? Every ship you’ve ever set foot on has sunk, Bluff.”
I smirk, both of me.
“Your fleet thinks it’s about to put an end to Sabriel’s pirate fleet,” I say, “but he’s hiding most of his ships. His armada outnumbers you two to one.”
“I don’t fear pirate flotsam. You stand no chance against us.”
“Excellent. Perfect. We’d both love it if Sabriel never sailed again. I want you to sail on and go broadsides with him. But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, you haven’t figured out how to kill the immortal bastard. I have an idea, but we’re going to have to work together to defeat him.”
Behind me, Margaret clears her throat. “Um, John, if you were going for the ‘let’s be friends’ approach, maybe we shouldn’t have started by killing half his crew.”
I glance around, feigning surprise.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Lucius, you left a skeleton crew?”
Lucius, unfazed by having a sword at his throat, says, “Like you asked, sir, most are just stunned.”
“Good job. Now Admiral, give me what I want, and you’ll live, and you can even keep your ship. Tell me where the Library of Brother Philip is.”
The officers around the admiral murmur in surprise.
Chelsea frowns. “Wait, did that quest get unlocked?”
“No,” I, Jaime, say.
I grit my teeth at my slip, but Chel is too engrossed in the show to have actually heard me.
“Even if I told you,” Jarvis chuckles, “you’d never have a chance to find it. You and your lawless friends will soon go down to feed Old Tomalley.”
“Ugh, arrogant longcoat fuc-” I sigh and shake my head. “Let’s ignore history, alright? Right now, without you in command, the R.N.C. doesn’t stand a chance, and if Sabriel sinks your fleet, he can take as long as he wants to find the library. My crew and I are your best bet to defeat him.”
The music has died, leaving a soundtrack of just wind and distant alarm bells ringing from the rest of the fleet, but now a new song arises, something I never heard in the actual game. Militant, modern, bombastic, ominous, electric, it rises as the admiral begins to laugh.
“I think not,” he says.
He throws his arm out toward starboard.
“We have reinforcements!”
We all turn to look, and there, in the white gleam of the moon, a steel shaft like a flagpole rises up from the sea. Higher it ascends, followed by a massive structure of metal like a shark fin. And then the electric floodlights filter up from beneath the surface as the deck of this industrial monster breaks the surface, illuminating the crimson square, white circle, and black swastika emblazoned on the side of the U-Boat’s tower.
“Kill them!” the admiral shouts, taking advantage of my perfectly reasonable confoundment at seeing a Nazi U-Boat in the middle of a 17th century Caribbean adventure game.
Three officers draw swords and charge, two draw pistols, and none of them make it to us. A black shape detaches from the night shadows, visible only for the hole its silhouette cuts in the scene, and for the shining silver arcs its katana cuts through the air. The five officers fall to pieces, their limbs and blood exploding ridiculously across the deck. Above them stands an angular figure clad head to foot in black, except for his milky, slanted eyes.
None of my crew move, uncertain of who to fight. Then, off to starboard, a white line that modern men would recognize as a torpedo contrail sprints underwater toward us. The admiral gasps and rushes to the railing, shaking in denial.
“What’s this?” Admiral Jarvis shouts. “Betrayal? But we- we are allies!”
The ninja – it pains me, but I cannot deny that that’s what has just stepped into my Caribbean world – turns to the admiral. With thickly accented English, and a mouthful of pulp genre conventions, the Japanese assassin delivers his pre-mortem one-liner.
“No, admiral. We are Axis.”
He hurls a red swastika shuriken, and it thunks into the admiral’s head with a wild crackle of electricity a half second before the torpedo strikes the hull. The ship erupts beneath us. Wood shatters aflame, and flames ignite magazines of black powder, which turn His Majesty’s Law into a Caribbean Krakatoa. Planks turn into missiles, masts heave, and two torrents of fire roar up from the fore and aft hatches. Backlit by a rising sun of burning wreckage, the ninja bows, then lunges at me.
On the couch, I grimace and almost turn away from the screen. I know how this ends, but I force myself to watch.
This ninja tries to decapitate me, and I parry left, then kick at his leading knee, but he jumps and actually runs up my body, slamming his knee into my face and vaulting off me at Margaret. The backwards pirouette I fall into is gracefully embarrassing, but I manage to grab the ninja’s foot. His momentum jerks to a stop in mid-air.
Margaret aims her pistol, but another of the ninja’s swastika shuriken cuts the bullet and gun barrel in half before lodging into her hand. The ninja doesn’t even fall, somehow producing a chain and grapneling the skewed, half-shattered mainmast that hangs drunkenly in a billowing column of smoke. I swipe at the foot I’m holding, but my saber chips off his black leg greaves, and he kicks away in a Tarzan swing across the deck, swooping out twenty feet as geysers of sea surf spray up around us. What little remains of the ship lurches, and planks wrench and groan as His Majesty’s Law begins to fold in on itself in preparation for its plunge under the sea.
I charge after the ninja, snatching a new musket as it slides down the sloping foredeck. The ninja has grabbed the jibsail rigging, and I leap and dodge and block a trio of sparking shuriken as I bound up to the forecastle to join him, then fire back from the hip. He swipes his sword and the musketball ricochets off with a loud clang. I toss the spent musket away.
I haven’t bothered to shout orders, but one of Lucius’s black spheres arcs over me with a short fuse, and it explodes precisely to shatter the ninja’s footing. As his perch snaps away and tumbles past the figurehead into the sea, the ninja leaps at me, and we meet in a clash of island-wrought blades.
I swing for his neck and he blocks close, slamming our hilts together. Gripping his katana in two hands, he presses the shining edge close to my face, and with my one-handed grip I struggle to hold him back. But fighting with a saber has advantages. I snap out my pistol with my free hand and gut shoot him.
Or I would, except he spins away at the last moment, pulling our blades apart and avoiding the shot with only a graze.
I feint and chop at his leg, and when he parries the low swing I call upon my sword’s greedy loa. Our blades chime beautifully with the impact, but they don’t rebound. He tugs, but our weapons stick together like lovers, and I wrench the stupid samurai sword out of the ninja’s hand, then toss it overboard.
I decide I’ve earned swaggering rights, and am about to offer him surrender, but he kicks me in my smirk, then yanks me off my feet with that damned chain of his. I tumble back and fall into the baluster at the back of the now dangerously-steep forecastle. Three lightning shuriken fly at me, and I curl to dodge two, but take the third in my leg. The jolt sends me spasming in a way no one who lives before the invention of the taser ever should, and I can only watch for five seconds as Margaret leaps into melee to defend me, while Lucius snaps fastball explosives into their midst.
Five seconds is more than enough time for me to recognize how ridiculous this is.
“Where’s he going?” Chelsea asks.
I, Jaime, shrug as I, Jonathan, stagger away from a vicious knife fight between my first mate and a pajama-clad anachronism. At the edge of the deck I look out at the prowling U-Boat as its deck machine gun and streaking torpedoes reduces the panicking Royal Navy of Caribbea to smoking flotsam, and I sigh and shake my head. Then I dive into the sea and vanish.
The soundtrack tries real hard, curious strings and despairing bass guitar in a minor key, but I can’t make myself care.
The episode continues for a few quick cuts. The ninja skewers Margaret with her own poisoned dagger, then wordlessly tosses her paralyzed body to Lucius and lets them board a rowboat as the waters swallow the galleon. Ominous notes of the soundtrack rise to crescendo as the ninja poses proudly atop the sinking mast, the moon shining him into silhouette as a slow fade turns Luna into the white heart of the Nazi flag.
Smashcut to black, and the mandatory advertising begins.
“Wow,” Chelsea giggles. “Okay, Steve was right. I need to load up my old account and play that mission.”
I smile the way my mom used to when I would say I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. I did not know what I was getting into, and my mom didn’t have the heart to tell me I was wasting my time.
Chelsea pauses the commercials and turns to me.
“Okay,” I say, “the game looks cool.”
“Oh, that’s not the game,” she says. “That’s Ages of Action, the machinima series. I play Ages: High Seas, the game. This group called Voyeurz takes in-game events from popular players playing on the History servers in- . . . It’s complicated. But yeah.”
I nod like I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“The main game,” Chel explains, “is just like any other MMO, honestly, but, y’know, pirates are cooler. But they have these ‘History events.’ They take a popular mission, tweak it a bit, and run it as a one-time dealy where whatever you do actually affects the storyline of the game. I was actually in the first one they ever had.”
“Yeah,” I start, “you told-.”
She interrupts, “I know you had that whole ‘thing’: no dating and gaming. But since we actually get along pretty well when we’re not sleeping with each other,” she smiles that goofy way that always makes me laugh, “I thought maybe you’d finally give the damned game a try.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I mean, yeah, it looks cool, except for, are there normally Nazis in the 17th century?”
She chuckles. “No, the Nazis are new. It’s a crossover from another game, Ages: World War.”
She looks terribly excited.
“Wait wait wait,” I say. “Wait wait wait wait. You liked it?”
“Oh yeah. That was seventeen shoes of awesome.”
“Oh, come on. Time traveling Nazis? With ninjas? How can you take the game seriously now?”
“Take a game seriously?” she says, switching to her snarkcastic voice. “That shit’s for losers and larpers, but I repeat myself. Look, I play this game to stick swords in people. I could give you a trial membership.”
“Ah, thanks, but no. I promised myself no video games until I find another job.”
She frowns, turns back to the screen, and restarts the commercials. I relax, relieved that she’s not pressing the issue. We’ve finally gotten back on speaking terms, and I don’t want to have to break the news that I sort of stalked her in the game after she broke up with me. Anyway, I already regret deciding to quit, but I don’t want to talk myself out of it.
My brief celebrity as Captain Jonathan Bluff has come to an end. I just wish I had a chance to smack the idiot who decided to have a time travel cross-over.
Chel says, “I bet Bluff’s just going to swim onto the U-Boat and sneak on board.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” I mutter.
“Hm?”
“Nothing.” I pause. “Thanks for showing me that, though. But hey, I gotta get dressed, and so do you.”
“Eh, I’ll get married after the episode’s over.”
I chuckle and excuse myself to the kitchen, leaving Chel to watch the targeted ads. I pluck my phone from atop my luggage, and I’m almost back to smiling when I see that Afiong has left a message.
I put in my earbuds to listen. The first few seconds, I hear nothing, but I know one of her nervous pauses when I hear it.
“Give me a call,” Afiong says, softer than usual.
That’s all. She wants to talk.
For some reason, I don’t feel comfortable chatting with one ex-girlfriend in the presence of another, so I grab my computer and scout out a quiet place to take the call. In the kitchen, I wave hi to Chel’s fiancé George.
“’Chops, man?” he asks, gesturing to last night’s left-over pork chops.
I shake my head no thanks and head out to the back porch, where I plop myself into a plastic chair not yet warm from the sunrise. I drag the patio table over and set down my computer, then dial up Afi.
The screenloader spins as the internet tries to track her down, and then my earbuds ring once, twice.
I yawn and squint at the other backyards, full of the little dark shapes of abandoned flower gardens, crippled and cracked clay gnome wannabes, and dirty kiddie pools where now only mosquitoes frolic. Long angular ruins that could be swing sets or laundry lines toppled by the latest hurricane peek out of the grass. The sunrise filters through air that smells of cajun cooking, and leaves the morning dark enough to create shadow plays and mysteries out of the imperfections of the fanciest slum in New Orleans.
A third ring, and she says, “Jaime?”
“Afi,” I say. “What brings you out of hiding?”
“I’m still hiding,” she says in her smileless, sardonic way.
Her shirt is soaked, and she wears beads of sweat across her face like she’s in a sauna. She’s lost all the weight she gained in college, but now she looks haggard, and in the eight years since high school she’s gained permanent worry wrinkles above her reddened eyes.
Behind her I see the edge of something like a tree house, with a canopy of tropical leaves hanging overhead.
“So. . . ,” I start.
She says, “What are you doing for the next month?”
“It’s nice to hear from you too.”
She shrugs. My Afi never was one for small talk.
“Grady downsized again,” I say, “so I guess for the next month I’m looking for a place that can afford to hire an EMT. Why?”
“I’ve been working on something I want you to check out. You can search for jobs and stuff online, right?”
“Where are you? I can’t roam too far. Though I’m in New Orleans now. Hey, guess who’s getting married tomorrow?”
“That ex of yours.” She sounds completely disinterested. “I still check Roster. Do you have a passport?”
I frown and glance at her status. It says, “Brazil,” followed by a string of coordinates.
“Where are you?”
She lifts her computer and spins it so the camera picks up a sweeping view of a giant forest and what must be the six-story high tree house she’s transmitting from. The camera briefly locks onto a monkey in the trees when its face-recognition software tricks itself into thinking the thing is part of the phone call. Afi sets the computer back down, and the camera auto-zooms to keep her face full in frame.
“I’m in the Amazon,” she says.
“What?”
She gets up and walks away. The camera tracks her to a woodfeign cooler from which she pulls out a huge paper carton of Diet Coke. She sits back down in front of the computer and setts down the carton just at the edge of the frame, like Coca-Cola’s paying her for the product placement.
“Afi?”
“They don’t like it if we brings cans in here,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m sure they wouldn’t like you littering the Amazon. You’re not serious, are you?”
She shrugs and takes a drink.
“I work for Tachyon,” she says. “You know them?”
“Heh. Yeah.”
“Do you play any of the Ages? You used to be into that stuff back in high school.”
“I gave it a try,” I say. “I don’t play it anymore. Wait, what are you doing in the middle of Brazil working for a video game company? The news has been going crazy about Brazil ever since that oil tanker thing. You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. But I can’t say what. The pugs made me sign an NDA, and . . . eh, they’re already pissed at me. Things aren’t going well. I can tell you in person. Wanna come?”
“To Brazil? You’re not a spy, are you?”
“Well, yeah, but only for Canada.”
“Great.” I scoff. “I’ll just call my private jet, brush up on my Portuguese, and fly down to a hostile nation. Be there tomorrow.”
“No rush,” she deadpans. “It will probably take you a few days to get a visa.”
“I’m not going, Afi. Shit, we might have a shooting war down there soon, and I’m sure the Brazilians aren’t really a fan of having Americans around.”
“We get along.”
“Maybe you should think about getting out of there.”
“You never took me on that road trip we planned after high school. Instead you took a cruise and had some Caribbean flings.”
I wait, not sure where she’s going with this. She hasn’t been making eye contact, but now she stares straight at me.
“Have you ever wondered how things would have been different if history changed just a little?”
“Afiong,” I say, “I’m not going to fly halfway around the- . Ugh. Is this because Chel is getting married? Are you jealous or something?”
“I thought you might be interested to see an old friend. You were always so good helping other people, and yeah, you never helped me, but I never thought I was worth it.”
“Come on. That’s unfair. I never-”
“I just wanted to remember what you used to see in me. That’s all I ever wanted. I’m sorry, Jaime.”
She looks away. I wait for a few seconds, unable to see her face to know what’s going on. Finally I sigh.
“We barely talk for years,” I say, “and now you ask me this when I’m unemployed. Did you call me to talk, or just to make some sort of point?”
We’ve had this dance so many times before. I expect her monotone-but-furious voice, but instead she sounds defeated.
“You’re right,” she says. “I knew I shouldn’t call you.”
She stands up and bumps the table with her leg, and the computer begins to tilt backward and up. The camera strains for a half second to stay locked on her, but then it flips wildly as the computer slips off the table and tumbles.
“Ah fuck,” I hear Afi say.
The jungle cartwheels past me as her computer locks for brief instants on monkeys, workers on the ground below, machinery in the distance, and then just blurs of green and brown as it falls down the side of Afiong’s wooden tower. It jolts to a stop, the one last image of the muddy ground flying toward the camera lingering for a few seconds as the connection comes to grips with the fact that the computer on the other end just shattered into hundreds of pieces.
“Real smart,” I mutter.
I discreetly check my own computer to make sure I haven’t left it too close to the edge of the table.
I shake my head and wonder for a few minutes whether I owe Afi a new computer for pissing her off. I replay the conversation in my head, and then on my computer, and I don’t feel any better. God knows I’ve found plenty of ways to unnecessarily stress myself these past few weeks, but that’s no excuse. I was rude.
The sun has risen a bit, and all the spooks and goblins hiding in the back yards have gone running off, leaving no mystery for me except why Afi called. Sure, I haven’t talked to her much since freshman year of college, but I know how her depression works, and this seemed worse than usual.
I flip through my address book to find her father. Savannah’s a time zone ahead of New Orleans, but it’s early, so I don’t call, just leave a voice message.
The response comes too quickly.
“This is an automated message from the account of Derek Whitehead. We regret to inform you that Mr. Whitehead has fallen into a coma after a recent car accident. Please contact the customer service desk at Sadie Bookman Outlook Hospital for more information.”
I don’t know when she’ll be able to read it, but I send Afi a message. “I just found out about your father. I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I’m coming to help. Just let me know how to reach you.”
First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Last edited by ryanznock on April 26th, 2010, 7:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
I play computer games and WoW, but I'm unfamiliar with "leitmotif" and "loa" ... so I'm assuming a large portion of the potential audience isn't going to understand these terms either.
Also, I'd find it hard to believe that his ex-girlfriend wouldn't know he played the game or was this character if she follows it so closely and was close to him during any of that time. Just my two cents :)
Overall, the writing is tight, the action is good and you've done a very nice job here. Good luck with it!
Also, I'd find it hard to believe that his ex-girlfriend wouldn't know he played the game or was this character if she follows it so closely and was close to him during any of that time. Just my two cents :)
Overall, the writing is tight, the action is good and you've done a very nice job here. Good luck with it!
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Leitmotif - a recurring musical theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. Basically, theme music.
Loa - spirits of the Voodoo religion, somewhat akin to saints or angels in Christianity.
And Jaime only started playing after Chel broke up with him. The explanation for why comes up in the next five pages, but maybe I should move some of it forward, if that oddity is pulling you out of the story.
Basically, when he was in high school he had a relationship fall apart due to gaming arguments, so he refused to game with Chel, his college girlfriend. After college, Chel decided to move away and leave him, and Jaime started playing in an effort to keep together and keep in touch. But then he found out she was seeing another guy already, so he was too embarrassed to tell her. He really liked the game, but he wanted nothing to do with her, so his solution was to keep his identity a secret; eventually that became one of the quirks of his character -- no one knows who plays Jonathan Bluff.
Thanks for the comments.
Loa - spirits of the Voodoo religion, somewhat akin to saints or angels in Christianity.
And Jaime only started playing after Chel broke up with him. The explanation for why comes up in the next five pages, but maybe I should move some of it forward, if that oddity is pulling you out of the story.
Basically, when he was in high school he had a relationship fall apart due to gaming arguments, so he refused to game with Chel, his college girlfriend. After college, Chel decided to move away and leave him, and Jaime started playing in an effort to keep together and keep in touch. But then he found out she was seeing another guy already, so he was too embarrassed to tell her. He really liked the game, but he wanted nothing to do with her, so his solution was to keep his identity a secret; eventually that became one of the quirks of his character -- no one knows who plays Jonathan Bluff.
Thanks for the comments.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Okay, that makes sense. I guess the thing that threw me with her not knowing was his statement about lying to her for two and a half years. I was assuming that he referred to the game so that's where I was coming from with it. As far as the other stuff, my vocabulary just increased by two. Ignorance is truly bliss. I would suggest explaining the Loa somehow since you use it more than once to describe the weapons.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
I loved the setup, then found it a bit too much action for so soon into it.
I do like the voice a lot. Several minor glitches I don't think will dissuade an editor from appreciating the originality.
I do like the voice a lot. Several minor glitches I don't think will dissuade an editor from appreciating the originality.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
I clench in my teeth a little shark-shaped voodoo doll - this phrase would read more smoothly as - In my teeth I clench a little shark-shaped voodoo doll - great image
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
ryanznock,
Pretty nicely done. There are a few stumbles of awkward phrasing but the story itself is pretty good. I like the loa, so I was hoping, when the sabre was first introduced, that they would inhabit it. I'm going to geek out a little bit and ask if you chose 'voodoo' (New Orleans) purposely over 'vodou' (Haitian) or 'vodun' (West African). They're all related, obviously, and using the most common form of the word might just be an easy way to get your point across to the reader. If you choose to go with vodun, the spirits are orishas instead of loa; vodou does use the term loa, of which the plural is also loa (you used loas at one point); voodoo usually just calls them spirits. I'm a nut for world religions, though, so ignore the differences if they're not important to the story.
I wonder if you're putting a little too much energy into the fight scene. It's very cinematic, but I was sort of hoping to get a little better look into what was going on with Jaime and Chel. If you can find a graceful way to fast-forward some of the battle and come to the relationship, I'd be interested.
A couple of lines that might use a little touching up:
"Captain," she whispers back at me with a smile.
...Margaret slams the wheel and the ship lurches to starboard.
Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, a flick from her knife opening the jugular of another...
Anyway, only you know what you're going for, so take it all as you will. Also, be careful with your commas. They're not always necessary where we think they are (such as preceding certain ands or buts) and can result in an interrupted flow.
~Serzen
Pretty nicely done. There are a few stumbles of awkward phrasing but the story itself is pretty good. I like the loa, so I was hoping, when the sabre was first introduced, that they would inhabit it. I'm going to geek out a little bit and ask if you chose 'voodoo' (New Orleans) purposely over 'vodou' (Haitian) or 'vodun' (West African). They're all related, obviously, and using the most common form of the word might just be an easy way to get your point across to the reader. If you choose to go with vodun, the spirits are orishas instead of loa; vodou does use the term loa, of which the plural is also loa (you used loas at one point); voodoo usually just calls them spirits. I'm a nut for world religions, though, so ignore the differences if they're not important to the story.
I wonder if you're putting a little too much energy into the fight scene. It's very cinematic, but I was sort of hoping to get a little better look into what was going on with Jaime and Chel. If you can find a graceful way to fast-forward some of the battle and come to the relationship, I'd be interested.
A couple of lines that might use a little touching up:
"Captain," she whispers back at me with a smile.
...Margaret slams the wheel and the ship lurches to starboard.
Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, a flick from her knife opening the jugular of another...
Anyway, only you know what you're going for, so take it all as you will. Also, be careful with your commas. They're not always necessary where we think they are (such as preceding certain ands or buts) and can result in an interrupted flow.
~Serzen
Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous. --Voltaire
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
This was exactly my point, and nicely put.Serzen wrote:I wonder if you're putting a little too much energy into the fight scene. It's very cinematic, but I was sort of hoping to get a little better look into what was going on with Jaime and Chel. If you can find a graceful way to fast-forward some of the battle and come to the relationship, I'd be interested.
I think the fighting goes on one or two paragraphs too long, or too energetically/stuntmanly and detracts from the story flow. Indeed, I'm ready to know more at that juncture (not see more violence, I've gotten the point of that). If the pitched battle must go on, maybe interpose another element somehow.
Otherwise, I agree. A good, engaging beginning.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Thanks for the comments, even if they are a tad worrying. I think I'll add in the rest of the chapter (highlighted in blue) for those willing to take a look. I get that there's a lot of combat, but I was striving for over-the-top Hong Kong action flick style, where sometimes it's alright to just have people fighting because it's fun to watch/read. I think that in the scope of the first chapter, the balance works.
And yes, the comma. I definitely use it too much, so if there are some places you spot it in excess, please let me know. See, I had two in just that last sentence.
As for voodoo/vodou/vodun, I too love me some world religion, obscure mythology, Sumerian demons, and all that jazz, and another story I'm working on treats the real world with more respect. This novel, though, uses magic in the context of a video game, and I felt it would almost be inaccurate to have video game designers accurately distinguish the different beliefs. For their purposes, voodoo is that stuff you see in Live and Let Die or Pirates of the Caribbean, and dagnabbit if we aren't going to have a submarine of zombie pirates commanded by two guys with Jamaican accents named La Croix and Cimetere show up somewhere in this story.
Thanks for pointing out the plural snafu with loas. That mistake was unintentional. Ditto your other revision suggestions; much appreciated.
And yes, the comma. I definitely use it too much, so if there are some places you spot it in excess, please let me know. See, I had two in just that last sentence.
As for voodoo/vodou/vodun, I too love me some world religion, obscure mythology, Sumerian demons, and all that jazz, and another story I'm working on treats the real world with more respect. This novel, though, uses magic in the context of a video game, and I felt it would almost be inaccurate to have video game designers accurately distinguish the different beliefs. For their purposes, voodoo is that stuff you see in Live and Let Die or Pirates of the Caribbean, and dagnabbit if we aren't going to have a submarine of zombie pirates commanded by two guys with Jamaican accents named La Croix and Cimetere show up somewhere in this story.
Thanks for pointing out the plural snafu with loas. That mistake was unintentional. Ditto your other revision suggestions; much appreciated.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
I definitely appreciate the camp style you are going for. Just an old non-gamer commenting on where it sticks for me.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Revised Version
Chapter One
I awake to the opening notes of my leitmotif playing on Chelsea’s TV. She watches this shit in surround sound.
I’ve carved out a nice warm patch on the living room floor, so I only peel open one eye to see what episode she’s watching. The title – Fleet of the Broken Cross – sears into a treasure map, and then the parchment burns away to reveal a scene I played two weeks past.
There I am, or at least my character: Captain Jonathan Bluff, clinging to the bottom of a leopard shark. In my teeth I clench a little shark-shaped voodoo doll, with which I aim my ride, cocking my head back and forth to swing us between the caravels and galleons of the Royal Fleet of Caribbea. Their moon-silhouetted hulls ripple the sea overhead, casting bottomless shadows to either side of my stealthy approach. I nudge the black magic carnivore I’m riding up to the surface so I can gulp air and get my bearings, then dive again.
In the real world, I, Jaime Adricks, glance over my shoulder at Chel. She sits on the couch amid torn wrapping paper and excessive amounts of linen, and has propped her feet on a gift box inches away from the sleeping bag where I crashed after last night’s rehearsal dinner.
“Good mor-” I mumble.
She shushes me. “Just watch.”
I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, so I lock my bleary eyes on the screen. It takes a moment for my half-asleep brain to register what event from my character’s history I’m watching. I blanch and sit up.
“I really should get-.”
“Watch the show. You’ll like it. Do you want to upset a woman on her wedding day?”
I relent and lie back down, but only because arguing would force me to explain that I’ve been lying to her for two-and-a-half years.
On screen, the cuts come quickly. Red-coated sailors look forward as I – the ‘Captain Bluff’ I – sneak to the aft of their armada. The pirate fleet of Commodore Quindon Sabriel lurks a mile away, and all the soldiers, even all the bloated corps of officers and mercenaries logged in for the special event, expect another four or five minutes of dramatic build-up before the battle begins.
I – the I on the floor – remember the epic, let’s-go-to-war music that blared in the digital sea breeze every time I broke the surface, and how the game’s soundtrack would switch to a spooky voodoo death-is-coming-for-you blues-rock whenever I dove under the waves. But the editors who transferred the scene from video game to online machinima series opted for a new arrangement of my Bluff theme song. It feels like reopening a wound.
The me on the screen swims alongside the fleet’s battleship, and the camera lingers over the ship’s name, His Majesty’s Law. Salt water slides off my smile as I step off the back of my selachimorph steed and clamber up the shadowed side of the oversized warship. I tuck the fishy voodoo doll into my coat, its spot between my teeth replaced by my six-loa saber.
Climbing the beergut backside of a galleon would be impossible for anyone less famous than Captain Jonathan Bluff, but I do my best Spider-Man impression without alerting the hundred-man crew. I even manage to sneak a quick peek through the aft windows of the main cabin to make sure Admiral Jarvis hasn’t begun prowling the ship yet. But there he sits at a broad table. Thin, bewigged in white, and a total fabrication of video editing software, the admiral sips his wine and peruses a thick, ancient sea charts.
The camera teases, hovering over the words “Biblioteca Fratris Filipi” on one of those fictional maps. Then it cuts back to my hungry, narrowing eyes.
Next we see of me, I’ve climbed up behind a sailor on the aftcastle. Dozens more mill on the deck, slaving away at tending rigging, checking cannons, chatting mutely under the soundtrack, basically doing everything but looking at the back of their ship to see the pirate who’s about to ruin their night.
Hands free, sword in teeth, I whip out a weighted silk scarf and sling it around the neck of the nearest sailor. He gets out the slightest mutter of confusion before I grab both ends of the scarf and tug tight, strangling the words just short of his throat. He flails impressively for a few seconds as I build up the leverage to hurl him over the aft railing. Just as he splashes I duck into shadows so no one will see me, and while I hide I casually aim my voodoo-controlled shark buddy to make sure the night’s first victim doesn’t come back up to scream for help.
I creep forward to the ship’s wheel at the fore edge of the aftcastle, where a middle-aged woman mans the wheel. Having done this dozens of times before against other clueless helmsmen, I step up behind her and pull the pistol out of her belt. Instead of holding her hostage or shooting her in the back, though, I just press the gun into her hand.
“Captain,” she whispers back at me with a smile.
“Doctor Trines,” I say.
From the sofa, Chelsea giggles. She, like half the fans of this show on the internet, assumes Margaret Trines and I – that’s Captain Bluff I, not Jaime I – need to hook up. If Chelsea knew Bluff was me, I doubt she’d feel so adamant that my alter ego needs some loving.
Hiding in my disguised first mate’s shadow, I ask, “Where’s Lucius?”
“Belowdecks,” Margaret says, “waiting for our signal. He needs two minutes to rig the magazine to explode.”
I peek over her shoulder at all the people on the deck.
“Hm. The two of us against a hundred? That should take about two minutes.”
“As long as the rest of the fleet doesn’t get involved,” Margaret warns.
I smirk. “Will you do the honors?”
Margaret nods in the direction of a musket leaning against the ship’s wheel. I grab the longarm one-handed and then aim it without letting go of my sword. Margaret grabs the wheel and aims her own pistol. The music tenses, hums with bass, then explodes with screeching strings as Margaret slams the wheel and the ship lurches to starboard. The crew balks and turns to see us, and we fire.
My musket stills the heart of the sailor nearest the fore hatch, and he collapses atop the trap door, blocking one path belowdecks. Margaret goes for dynamism, and she gut-shoots a man in the rigging, sending him careening and caterwauling to land atop the aft hatch. His bones crunch, and his dead weight completes the two-part trick of sealing off the lower decks.
The sailors of His Majesty’s Law sound the alarm and draw swords, and Margaret and I lunge into battle.
I groan and crawl out of my sleeping bag.
“Jaime!” Chelsea yells. “Dammit! Out of the way!”
She rewinds so she doesn’t miss anything. I head to the bathroom, lock myself inside, and face my reflection. I don’t want to watch any more, to be reminded of why I quit the game. Or worse, to remember how much I loved playing it. Hell, best not to think about it at all. If it weren’t for Ages, maybe I’d be the one marrying Chel today, not some smug hipster with a bass guitar. But well, the damage is done.
I shake my head at how silly I’m being. It was just a game, after all.
I come out of the bathroom, drying my hands on one of the aforementioned smug hipster’s ratty towels, just in time to see my internet alter ego thrust my six-loa saber into a sailor’s ribs. I use him as the axis of a whirling kick, stamping across the faces of a circle of seven other sailors who had tried to catch me. I jump off the final sailor’s nose, wrench my sword free of the first man’s chest, grab onto a belaying line, slash the rigging rope, and lift up to the mizzenmast crow’s nest, where I take out the look-out who has been firing down at us from the high ground. I leave my sword in his groaning body, snatch the musket out of his hands, then cling to the rigging line with my legs as I turn upside down. I shoot out the knee of the latest man trying to remove the dead weight covering the hatch to belowdecks.
I bend up, retrieve my sword, flip the musket to grip it by its barrel, and let go. I somersault as I drop, and a convenient pile of eight sailors breaks my fall.
Meanwhile, Margaret has cut down a score of sailors with her loa-loading pistol and various daggers and poisons. She leaps up the stairs to the forecastle, intent on clearing out the crew, but a huge longshoreman hidden behind a stack of rum casks steps out and grabs her. The towering man crushes her into his chest, and a fistful of sailors rush to strike her before she gets free.
“Margaret, eyes!” I shout.
She clenches her eyes shut, and I thrust out my saber toward the huge grappler. A corkscrewing cascade of shrieking voodoo spirits fly from my swordtip to the longshoreman’s face. He reels as a loa crawls through his eyes into his soul. Then he releases Margaret and turns his mighty fists upon the other sailors, shouting victorious African curses as he thumps them down. Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, a flick from her knife opening the jugular of another sailor who tries to grab her.
Distracted by helping Margaret, I don’t notice the two officers moving to flank me. One actually slashes me across the back.
On the couch, Chelsea gasps. I take a seat on the couch’s arm.
The I on screen trips over a limp body, and I barely manage to dodge a pair of swords aimed for my neck. I can’t keep parrying both officers, but Margaret saves me the trouble when she jams a knife in one’s shoulder before planting her pistol into his spine and sending his heart out across the deck in a spray of moon-lit red mist.
The remaining officer waffles on which of us to attack, then decides to block my upswing with his jowls. He runs and cries in panic, and I let him go as he jumps off the side of the ship to save himself.
Blood attracts sharks, anyway.
I stop to get my bearings and call upon one of my blade’s loa to heal the gash on my back. Scores lie dead or wounded, and the few remaining sailors on deck either know better than to come after us, or are too busy being pounded into pulp by a possessed longshoreman.
I say, “What’s taking Lucius so long?”
A small tremor shakes the deck, and the fore hatch explodes upward in a shrapnel blast of wood slivers and sailor bits. Margaret and I wait, expecting Lucius to stride up through the black smoke. And up the stairs he does indeed come, a lit cigar tucked in his breast pocket and a sword at his throat. The soot-streaked Admiral Jarvis follows, holding Lucius hostage. Worse, a handful of distinctively-dressed officers limp up after them, sporting burns and splinter wounds, but still battle ready.
“Captain Jonathan Bluff?” the admiral scoffs. “Why the hell are you trying to blow up my ship?”
I lower my sword and swagger forward.
“Give me what I want,” I say, “and I won’t have to.”
Admiral Jarvis sneers. “Why should I bother negotiating? Every ship you’ve ever set foot on has sunk, Bluff.”
I smirk, both of me.
“Your fleet thinks it’s about to put an end to Sabriel’s pirate fleet,” I say, “but he’s hiding most of his ships. His armada outnumbers you two to one.”
“I don’t fear pirate flotsam. You stand no chance against us.”
“Excellent. Perfect. We’d both love it if Sabriel never sailed again. I want you to sail on and go broadsides with him. But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, you haven’t figured out how to kill the immortal bastard. I have an idea, but we’re going to have to work together to defeat him.”
Behind me, Margaret clears her throat. “Um, John, if you were going for the ‘let’s be friends’ approach, maybe we shouldn’t have started by killing half his crew.”
I glance around, feigning surprise.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Lucius, you left a skeleton crew?”
Lucius, unfazed by having a sword at his throat, says, “Like you asked, sir, most are just stunned.”
“Good job. Now Admiral, give me what I want, and you’ll live, and you can even keep your ship. Tell me where the Library of Brother Philip is.”
The officers around the admiral murmur in surprise.
Chelsea frowns. “Wait, did that quest get unlocked?”
“No,” I, Jaime, say.
I grit my teeth at my slip, but Chel is too engrossed in the show to have heard me.
“Even if I told you,” Jarvis chuckles, “you’d never have a chance to find it. You and your lawless friends will soon go down to feed Old Tomalley.”
“Ugh, arrogant longcoat fuc-” I sigh and shake my head. “Let’s ignore history, alright? Right now, without you in command, the R.F.C. doesn’t stand a chance, and if Sabriel sinks your fleet, he can take as long as he wants to find the library. My crew and I are your best bet to defeat him.”
The music has died, leaving a soundtrack of just wind and distant alarm bells ringing from the rest of the fleet, but now a new song arises, something I never heard in the actual game. Militant, modern, bombastic, ominous, electric, it rises as the admiral begins to laugh.
“I think not,” he says.
He throws his arm out toward starboard.
“We have reinforcements!”
We all turn to look, and there, in the white gleam of the moon, a steel shaft like a flagpole rises up from the sea. Higher it ascends, followed by a massive structure of metal like a shark fin. And then the electric floodlights filter up from beneath the surface as the deck of this industrial monster breaks the surface, illuminating the crimson square, white circle, and black swastika emblazoned on the side of the U-Boat’s tower.
“Kill them!” the admiral shouts, taking advantage of my perfectly reasonable confoundment at seeing a Nazi U-Boat in the middle of a 17th century Caribbean adventure game.
Three officers draw swords and charge, two draw pistols, and none of them make it to us. A black shape detaches from the night shadows, visible only for the hole its silhouette cuts in the scene, and for the shining silver arcs its katana cuts through the air. The five officers fall to pieces, their limbs and blood exploding ridiculously across the deck. Above them stands an angular figure clad head to foot in black, except for his milky, slanted eyes.
None of my crew move, uncertain of who to fight. Then, off to starboard, a white line that modern men would recognize as a torpedo contrail sprints underwater toward us. The admiral gasps and rushes to the railing, shaking in denial.
“What’s this?” Admiral Jarvis shouts. “Betrayal? But we- we are allies!”
The ninja – it pains me, but I cannot deny that that’s what has just stepped into my Caribbean world – turns to the admiral. With thickly accented English, and a mouthful of pulp genre conventions, the Japanese assassin delivers his pre-mortem one-liner.
“No, admiral. We are Axis.”
He hurls a red swastika shuriken, and it thunks into the admiral’s head with a wild crackle of electricity a half second before the torpedo strikes the hull.
Chapter One
I awake to the opening notes of my leitmotif playing on Chelsea’s TV. She watches this shit in surround sound.
I’ve carved out a nice warm patch on the living room floor, so I only peel open one eye to see what episode she’s watching. The title – Fleet of the Broken Cross – sears into a treasure map, and then the parchment burns away to reveal a scene I played two weeks past.
There I am, or at least my character: Captain Jonathan Bluff, clinging to the bottom of a leopard shark. In my teeth I clench a little shark-shaped voodoo doll, with which I aim my ride, cocking my head back and forth to swing us between the caravels and galleons of the Royal Fleet of Caribbea. Their moon-silhouetted hulls ripple the sea overhead, casting bottomless shadows to either side of my stealthy approach. I nudge the black magic carnivore I’m riding up to the surface so I can gulp air and get my bearings, then dive again.
In the real world, I, Jaime Adricks, glance over my shoulder at Chel. She sits on the couch amid torn wrapping paper and excessive amounts of linen, and has propped her feet on a gift box inches away from the sleeping bag where I crashed after last night’s rehearsal dinner.
“Good mor-” I mumble.
She shushes me. “Just watch.”
I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, so I lock my bleary eyes on the screen. It takes a moment for my half-asleep brain to register what event from my character’s history I’m watching. I blanch and sit up.
“I really should get-.”
“Watch the show. You’ll like it. Do you want to upset a woman on her wedding day?”
I relent and lie back down, but only because arguing would force me to explain that I’ve been lying to her for two-and-a-half years.
On screen, the cuts come quickly. Red-coated sailors look forward as I – the ‘Captain Bluff’ I – sneak to the aft of their armada. The pirate fleet of Commodore Quindon Sabriel lurks a mile away, and all the soldiers, even all the bloated corps of officers and mercenaries logged in for the special event, expect another four or five minutes of dramatic build-up before the battle begins.
I – the I on the floor – remember the epic, let’s-go-to-war music that blared in the digital sea breeze every time I broke the surface, and how the game’s soundtrack would switch to a spooky voodoo death-is-coming-for-you blues-rock whenever I dove under the waves. But the editors who transferred the scene from video game to online machinima series opted for a new arrangement of my Bluff theme song. It feels like reopening a wound.
The me on the screen swims alongside the fleet’s battleship, and the camera lingers over the ship’s name, His Majesty’s Law. Salt water slides off my smile as I step off the back of my selachimorph steed and clamber up the shadowed side of the oversized warship. I tuck the fishy voodoo doll into my coat, its spot between my teeth replaced by my six-loa saber.
Climbing the beergut backside of a galleon would be impossible for anyone less famous than Captain Jonathan Bluff, but I do my best Spider-Man impression without alerting the hundred-man crew. I even manage to sneak a quick peek through the aft windows of the main cabin to make sure Admiral Jarvis hasn’t begun prowling the ship yet. But there he sits at a broad table. Thin, bewigged in white, and a total fabrication of video editing software, the admiral sips his wine and peruses a thick, ancient sea charts.
The camera teases, hovering over the words “Biblioteca Fratris Filipi” on one of those fictional maps. Then it cuts back to my hungry, narrowing eyes.
Next we see of me, I’ve climbed up behind a sailor on the aftcastle. Dozens more mill on the deck, slaving away at tending rigging, checking cannons, chatting mutely under the soundtrack, basically doing everything but looking at the back of their ship to see the pirate who’s about to ruin their night.
Hands free, sword in teeth, I whip out a weighted silk scarf and sling it around the neck of the nearest sailor. He gets out the slightest mutter of confusion before I grab both ends of the scarf and tug tight, strangling the words just short of his throat. He flails impressively for a few seconds as I build up the leverage to hurl him over the aft railing. Just as he splashes I duck into shadows so no one will see me, and while I hide I casually aim my voodoo-controlled shark buddy to make sure the night’s first victim doesn’t come back up to scream for help.
I creep forward to the ship’s wheel at the fore edge of the aftcastle, where a middle-aged woman mans the wheel. Having done this dozens of times before against other clueless helmsmen, I step up behind her and pull the pistol out of her belt. Instead of holding her hostage or shooting her in the back, though, I just press the gun into her hand.
“Captain,” she whispers back at me with a smile.
“Doctor Trines,” I say.
From the sofa, Chelsea giggles. She, like half the fans of this show on the internet, assumes Margaret Trines and I – that’s Captain Bluff I, not Jaime I – need to hook up. If Chelsea knew Bluff was me, I doubt she’d feel so adamant that my alter ego needs some loving.
Hiding in my disguised first mate’s shadow, I ask, “Where’s Lucius?”
“Belowdecks,” Margaret says, “waiting for our signal. He needs two minutes to rig the magazine to explode.”
I peek over her shoulder at all the people on the deck.
“Hm. The two of us against a hundred? That should take about two minutes.”
“As long as the rest of the fleet doesn’t get involved,” Margaret warns.
I smirk. “Will you do the honors?”
Margaret nods in the direction of a musket leaning against the ship’s wheel. I grab the longarm one-handed and then aim it without letting go of my sword. Margaret grabs the wheel and aims her own pistol. The music tenses, hums with bass, then explodes with screeching strings as Margaret slams the wheel and the ship lurches to starboard. The crew balks and turns to see us, and we fire.
My musket stills the heart of the sailor nearest the fore hatch, and he collapses atop the trap door, blocking one path belowdecks. Margaret goes for dynamism, and she gut-shoots a man in the rigging, sending him careening and caterwauling to land atop the aft hatch. His bones crunch, and his dead weight completes the two-part trick of sealing off the lower decks.
The sailors of His Majesty’s Law sound the alarm and draw swords, and Margaret and I lunge into battle.
I groan and crawl out of my sleeping bag.
“Jaime!” Chelsea yells. “Dammit! Out of the way!”
She rewinds so she doesn’t miss anything. I head to the bathroom, lock myself inside, and face my reflection. I don’t want to watch any more, to be reminded of why I quit the game. Or worse, to remember how much I loved playing it. Hell, best not to think about it at all. If it weren’t for Ages, maybe I’d be the one marrying Chel today, not some smug hipster with a bass guitar. But well, the damage is done.
I shake my head at how silly I’m being. It was just a game, after all.
I come out of the bathroom, drying my hands on one of the aforementioned smug hipster’s ratty towels, just in time to see my internet alter ego thrust my six-loa saber into a sailor’s ribs. I use him as the axis of a whirling kick, stamping across the faces of a circle of seven other sailors who had tried to catch me. I jump off the final sailor’s nose, wrench my sword free of the first man’s chest, grab onto a belaying line, slash the rigging rope, and lift up to the mizzenmast crow’s nest, where I take out the look-out who has been firing down at us from the high ground. I leave my sword in his groaning body, snatch the musket out of his hands, then cling to the rigging line with my legs as I turn upside down. I shoot out the knee of the latest man trying to remove the dead weight covering the hatch to belowdecks.
I bend up, retrieve my sword, flip the musket to grip it by its barrel, and let go. I somersault as I drop, and a convenient pile of eight sailors breaks my fall.
Meanwhile, Margaret has cut down a score of sailors with her loa-loading pistol and various daggers and poisons. She leaps up the stairs to the forecastle, intent on clearing out the crew, but a huge longshoreman hidden behind a stack of rum casks steps out and grabs her. The towering man crushes her into his chest, and a fistful of sailors rush to strike her before she gets free.
“Margaret, eyes!” I shout.
She clenches her eyes shut, and I thrust out my saber toward the huge grappler. A corkscrewing cascade of shrieking voodoo spirits fly from my swordtip to the longshoreman’s face. He reels as a loa crawls through his eyes into his soul. Then he releases Margaret and turns his mighty fists upon the other sailors, shouting victorious African curses as he thumps them down. Margaret jumps away and slides down the banister to back me up, a flick from her knife opening the jugular of another sailor who tries to grab her.
Distracted by helping Margaret, I don’t notice the two officers moving to flank me. One actually slashes me across the back.
On the couch, Chelsea gasps. I take a seat on the couch’s arm.
The I on screen trips over a limp body, and I barely manage to dodge a pair of swords aimed for my neck. I can’t keep parrying both officers, but Margaret saves me the trouble when she jams a knife in one’s shoulder before planting her pistol into his spine and sending his heart out across the deck in a spray of moon-lit red mist.
The remaining officer waffles on which of us to attack, then decides to block my upswing with his jowls. He runs and cries in panic, and I let him go as he jumps off the side of the ship to save himself.
Blood attracts sharks, anyway.
I stop to get my bearings and call upon one of my blade’s loa to heal the gash on my back. Scores lie dead or wounded, and the few remaining sailors on deck either know better than to come after us, or are too busy being pounded into pulp by a possessed longshoreman.
I say, “What’s taking Lucius so long?”
A small tremor shakes the deck, and the fore hatch explodes upward in a shrapnel blast of wood slivers and sailor bits. Margaret and I wait, expecting Lucius to stride up through the black smoke. And up the stairs he does indeed come, a lit cigar tucked in his breast pocket and a sword at his throat. The soot-streaked Admiral Jarvis follows, holding Lucius hostage. Worse, a handful of distinctively-dressed officers limp up after them, sporting burns and splinter wounds, but still battle ready.
“Captain Jonathan Bluff?” the admiral scoffs. “Why the hell are you trying to blow up my ship?”
I lower my sword and swagger forward.
“Give me what I want,” I say, “and I won’t have to.”
Admiral Jarvis sneers. “Why should I bother negotiating? Every ship you’ve ever set foot on has sunk, Bluff.”
I smirk, both of me.
“Your fleet thinks it’s about to put an end to Sabriel’s pirate fleet,” I say, “but he’s hiding most of his ships. His armada outnumbers you two to one.”
“I don’t fear pirate flotsam. You stand no chance against us.”
“Excellent. Perfect. We’d both love it if Sabriel never sailed again. I want you to sail on and go broadsides with him. But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, you haven’t figured out how to kill the immortal bastard. I have an idea, but we’re going to have to work together to defeat him.”
Behind me, Margaret clears her throat. “Um, John, if you were going for the ‘let’s be friends’ approach, maybe we shouldn’t have started by killing half his crew.”
I glance around, feigning surprise.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Lucius, you left a skeleton crew?”
Lucius, unfazed by having a sword at his throat, says, “Like you asked, sir, most are just stunned.”
“Good job. Now Admiral, give me what I want, and you’ll live, and you can even keep your ship. Tell me where the Library of Brother Philip is.”
The officers around the admiral murmur in surprise.
Chelsea frowns. “Wait, did that quest get unlocked?”
“No,” I, Jaime, say.
I grit my teeth at my slip, but Chel is too engrossed in the show to have heard me.
“Even if I told you,” Jarvis chuckles, “you’d never have a chance to find it. You and your lawless friends will soon go down to feed Old Tomalley.”
“Ugh, arrogant longcoat fuc-” I sigh and shake my head. “Let’s ignore history, alright? Right now, without you in command, the R.F.C. doesn’t stand a chance, and if Sabriel sinks your fleet, he can take as long as he wants to find the library. My crew and I are your best bet to defeat him.”
The music has died, leaving a soundtrack of just wind and distant alarm bells ringing from the rest of the fleet, but now a new song arises, something I never heard in the actual game. Militant, modern, bombastic, ominous, electric, it rises as the admiral begins to laugh.
“I think not,” he says.
He throws his arm out toward starboard.
“We have reinforcements!”
We all turn to look, and there, in the white gleam of the moon, a steel shaft like a flagpole rises up from the sea. Higher it ascends, followed by a massive structure of metal like a shark fin. And then the electric floodlights filter up from beneath the surface as the deck of this industrial monster breaks the surface, illuminating the crimson square, white circle, and black swastika emblazoned on the side of the U-Boat’s tower.
“Kill them!” the admiral shouts, taking advantage of my perfectly reasonable confoundment at seeing a Nazi U-Boat in the middle of a 17th century Caribbean adventure game.
Three officers draw swords and charge, two draw pistols, and none of them make it to us. A black shape detaches from the night shadows, visible only for the hole its silhouette cuts in the scene, and for the shining silver arcs its katana cuts through the air. The five officers fall to pieces, their limbs and blood exploding ridiculously across the deck. Above them stands an angular figure clad head to foot in black, except for his milky, slanted eyes.
None of my crew move, uncertain of who to fight. Then, off to starboard, a white line that modern men would recognize as a torpedo contrail sprints underwater toward us. The admiral gasps and rushes to the railing, shaking in denial.
“What’s this?” Admiral Jarvis shouts. “Betrayal? But we- we are allies!”
The ninja – it pains me, but I cannot deny that that’s what has just stepped into my Caribbean world – turns to the admiral. With thickly accented English, and a mouthful of pulp genre conventions, the Japanese assassin delivers his pre-mortem one-liner.
“No, admiral. We are Axis.”
He hurls a red swastika shuriken, and it thunks into the admiral’s head with a wild crackle of electricity a half second before the torpedo strikes the hull.
Re: First 5 pages - MEETING OF THE WATERS
Ryan,
Not a lot of advice to offer here. Well-written, pacing is good. It's more engaging than the first go-round. Which doesn't sound as enthusiastic when written out as it should, but imagine enthusiasm fonts or markup tags. With everything else they're jamming into HTML 5, context tags should be included.
You've done a great job of cleaning up the commas. To the point where you forgot one: "But, well, the damage is done." There are a couple of spots where I might not have used a comma prior to an and or but, but I've seen them used in just the same way in other work, so it's probably stylistic at this point.
You've got a good premise, and strong writing showing here. I hope you find representation and publication.
~Serzen
Not a lot of advice to offer here. Well-written, pacing is good. It's more engaging than the first go-round. Which doesn't sound as enthusiastic when written out as it should, but imagine enthusiasm fonts or markup tags. With everything else they're jamming into HTML 5, context tags should be included.
You've done a great job of cleaning up the commas. To the point where you forgot one: "But, well, the damage is done." There are a couple of spots where I might not have used a comma prior to an and or but, but I've seen them used in just the same way in other work, so it's probably stylistic at this point.
You've got a good premise, and strong writing showing here. I hope you find representation and publication.
~Serzen
Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous. --Voltaire
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