scenario .....

[Preacher]

Suppose you have a guy, deserted by his family, who is a brilliant virologist, geneticist, and so on. In lieu of family, he makes his own. Over the years he has worked different experiments and created "family" He has never made a complete success, keeping the rejects locked away. One day, he discovers the blood of the Medusa and creates the Medusa Virus, which first hardens the skin and body to as hard as stone. Then it kills, reanimating the subject as basically a stone zombie. Virus is spread through blood and so on and so forth. So out mad scientist has created these "things."

What else could he do with them? I envisiones a scenario something like the video game Resident Evil. Maybe one of the "Children", meaning stone zombie, escapes the facility and gets into a small town and infects and turns them all. That would cause my new special unit of soldiers called Aegis to be called into action to investigate what happened. I still think i would need my mad scientist to have some endgame or have some plan that would need to be stopped. I am trying to avoid a straight up terrorist cell, too easy and too real.

What could this mad man be after? What could he do with the virus? What is he after? Or, if this isnt viable, then what event with this virus could spark the involvement of my Aegis unit? Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks Guys

[polymath]

I think the answers are in what's given, if they're examined from a different perspective. What do zombies symbolize? for example. They're living undead sleepwalkers, right? They're the emotionally indifferent masses of humanity we secretly wish would pay attention to us and give us the approval we so needily deserve, and when they don't do as we want, go on a big game hunt and slaughter them all. A darkness normally supressed by social beings greater need for reciprocal acceptance.

Zombies compared and contrasted with other revenants: like vampires, social parasites exploiting the blood, sweat, and tears of humanity. Werewolves: otherwise well-adjusted, sane, calm, and collected, episodically deranged people baying at the madness of existence, wreaking mayhem and havoc timed to the cycles of the moon. We can endure about a month of life's everyday pushmi-pullya's before we need to decompress.

So your mad scientist is estranged from family. His doing? Or theirs? Probably both since they spring from the same family trees with all their ghostly maladjusted personality, identity, and behavior haunting legacies. Regardless, he's estranged from his society. Might not his mission be to create his ideal if demented society, companions he can order to his liking? Living undead baby dolls and tin soldiers he can play with and delude himself into feeling like he belongs to a society larger than himself, with him in control, of course.

[Preacher]

Yes, the family problems are definitely a combination of family members, the family being completely deranged. So, then, maybe he actually killed his real parents. Or, maybe he experimented on them and keeps them locked up in a secure chamber with his other "real family members" like his blood parents and siblings.

Also, yes, i considered the idea of a socially unadjusted genius who talks to his creations and places himself at the head of this "family" he is making. The thing that bothered me or, more to the point, nagged at me was is that general idea enough to support a nove? Can i turn it into a big novel, and by that i mean to say novel in general?

I have this guy who discovers this virus, as he is always looking for something new to play with, and he creates these stone zombies. He considers himself the patriarch of this new society. He even creates these reanimated soldiers to defend his little realm. Then, what happens? I need that event. Does a family member escape and turn a town into more "Children" or does he, on purpose, release a subject somewhere who turns everybody?

[Nicole R]

Cool concept! Take a closer look at the stakes you want to create for your protagonist - by the way, do you want the protag to be the mad scientist or one of your Aegis soldiers? I could see it going either way. Maybe these questions will help spark some inspiration:

- What if the scientist DID find a human he loved or cared about, but his zombies got jealous? That would force him to balance the human and zombie sides of his family.

- What if the scientist isn't the instigator of the "bad event?" Maybe one of the zombies escapes or the virus mutates far beyond his original intentions and suddenly he has to fight to stop it against creatures of his own making.

- What if one of the experiments is done on a family member of one of the Aegis soldiers? They would fight to get that person back, and you'd have a more personal battle between the soldier and the scientist.

- What if the scientist contracts the virus himself? Would he be eager about his transformation because he can finally join his zombie family? Or would he race to find a cure before he's fully infected, thereby also producing a cure for everyone else he's experimented on?

There are a lot of great options, and I think your choice will depend on understanding your characters motivations.

Good luck!

[Claudie]

Oh, I love Nicole R.'s ideas. Here are two other:

- If the zombie escaped on its own, what's the scientist reaction to it? Will he seek to protect his Children, someone from his family, or will he want to help contain the spreading infection? Just because he created these zombies doesn't mean he's evil. He might not want to destroy everything. Doubly true if he meets a human he loves (or becomes friend with).

- What if the scientist, convinced his new family will be wildly accepted, is the one to bring a Children out? He could go to a social event accompanied, and everything goes out of control from there.

***
By the way, you want your scientist to be a genetic engineer. It is the generally accepted term for those whose work involves manipulating DNA. And... I'm not sure if you wouldn't be better off with a bacteria rather than a virus. I'm a biochemist, and the first thing my mind did was try to reason to science behind a virus hardening skin, and I'm not sure how you do that. A virus will infect your cell, and either it remains there undetected, waiting for a stress to duplicate, or it duplicates immediately and kills the cell when there's hundreds of copies.

Destroying skin cells won't harden the skin. There is, however, one way you could do it.

There are multiple proteins holding the skin cells together into a tissu. Unless I am mistaken (it's been a while since I studied skin), collagen is the one giving it strength and rigidity. If you had a bacteria feeding from the other types of proteins (such as keratin), you'd leave behind the solid protein, which would "stonify" your skin. These'd be more likely to spread through tiny cuts and such.

Now I'm working from memory here, so you'll want to double-check anything I've written. Or you can just ignore it. I highly recommend having a sensible explanation for the skin-hardening, though. You're not stretching the reader's suspension of disbelief as much when it feels like you know what you're doing, even if what you are doing would never happen.

Good luck with this! I love the premise. :)

[Preacher]

Thanks, Nicole and Claudie. The protagonist is going to be the leader of Aegis, an ex-Marine called Lucas St. Paul. Lucas, during an off the books op in Columbia loast his brother to a "creature" Lucas never found the creature and left the Marines. Years later, he is recruited by the leader of Aegis, an off-shoot of the NSA created to deal with "abmnormal threats" to the security of the nation. The General and head of Aegis, of course has a connection with St. Paul, as he was his commander then. The General recruits St. Paul to lead this new unit. There will be a few other soldiers in the unit, maybe a total of 4.

The "mad scientist", in the very end, may get infected but will not resist the change as he will finally find what he thinks he has been looking for, an understanding of his "created family." I would think his goal is to propogate this infection and make everyone his "children" Of course, as he witnesses that Aegis is taking down some of his "children" maybe he can send in the reanimated soldiers he has made and maybe even another cryptid he has managed to clone, baby dragons or Wyverns are the first that come to mind. So in town i could have stone zombies and reanimated soldiers and wyverns. They find out the ultimate goal and then maybe the final big battle would be something that could take place in his complex, maybe something in or under a mountain. There, they find the ultimate goal, that the infection is set to be spread in a place like Times Square.

Maybe, as i thought, one of the "stone zombies", as i want to call them, escapes or is planted in a town to start turning people. I had a vision of a first scene where the sole survivor in the town races to close the bridge, the only way in and out of the town, so no "stone zombies" can escape. He then hides and ends up possibly getting off a distress call before sucking wind. The NSA picks up on it and passes it off to Aegis. Aegis goes to the town and see what theyre up against.

Ultimately, the "mad scientist" is going to send "his family" to crowded areas to start to turn, maybe one destination is Times Square or something like that. The reanimated soldiers could be the bad guys defense force or something.

A bacterial mode is definitely the way to go and as you suggest, Claudie, that would probably work best here.

Thoughts? And thanks a bunch, guys for helping me try and brainstorm thig thing. Questions and suggestions get me thinking and the wheels keep turning.

[polymath]

The thing that bothered me or, more to the point, nagged at me was is that general idea enough to support a nove? Can i turn it into a big novel, and by that i mean to say novel in general?

Presumably, the mad scientist creates his stone zombies from living persons. Won't somebody investigate what happened to them? Missing persons would mean a police investigation. Perhaps investigators are afflicted too. Then somebody is gonna really want to investigate. Escalating investigation, escalating causation, tension, and antagonism. Local, state, federal, then Aegis gets involved. In that sense there's plenty of fodder for a novel.

By the way, NSA isn't an especially logical agency for Aegis to be associated with. NSA is mostly involved with signals capture and processing, cryptography. DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is more logical. Their mission is twofold, develop tactical surprise technologies for friendly forces and prevent technological tactical surprises by enemy forces. Aegis fits the latter mission.

[Preacher]

Perfect. Aegis could be one of the military arms of DARPA, created for these kinds of threats.

Yes, investigation. Maybe from the small town a distress was sent to State Police, who investigate and then get trapped there and turned to Stone Zombies. From state level, they kick it up and it land with Aegis, who then have to go to this place to investigate, where they will find State Police turned along with the rest of the small city folk. Naturally after they finish, they might order the town sterilized and take a "sample" back for their scientists to study and figure out what is going on. Something like that anyway.

Other pockets of infection might be discovered and as they take on the threats they investigate to find out who is behind this and try to unfurl his master plan.

Lots of fierce combat in different locations with a possible topper in Times Square. Or, i was also thinking maybe a place where a lot of kids will be at one time, as our evil geneticist is looking for more "children" to help evolve into his ever-expanding family.

[polymath]

Good. And DARPA has a domestic mission as well as missions abroad. They're not bound by Constitutional prohibitions from operating domestically. Aegis being a civilian paramilitary force might also have ties to a federal law enforcement agency with sanction to operate with military weapons, FBI, ATF, Department of Justice, DEA. A nebulous nature for Aegis' parent agency is a credible scenario for a secret paramilitary unit operating domestically.

A suggestion, Aegis' mission and St. Paul need to be introduced up front so readers have a reader surrogate to bond with. So start small and build. Say, Aegis is aware of the mad scientist but he's not quite on their call for action radar. DARPA would probably be aware of him as a biological agent researcher, since the time he presumably attended college. They might have considered him as a project prospect, but decided he was too emotionally unstable for their purposes, though they keep an eye on him because of his instability and education.

[Preacher]

Funny you mentioned the DARPA tie-in with the Geneticist. After the last post i thought about having him as a former project manager for some fringe project but his ideas and methods were much too radical and he was dismissed altogether, retreating to some underground complex he had been building all along while working the DARPA project. He used them as a means to procure otherwise unattainable equipment.

St. Paul will be a former special ops Marine who lost a brother during a special op in Columbia to what he could only describe as a "creature" He quit after that and as the story starts he will be about to be recruited by Aegis. His backstory about his brother will come out early.

As for the beginnings, i was thinking about starting with the town, the last resident maybe drawing the bridge to close the place off and then maiing the call to state police.

From there, i wanted to jump to the recruitment of St. Paul. A guy in a givernment Suburban comes and gets him to go for a ride, where he is taken to the new Aegis facility to meet the military leader, who may also have been a former commander of his in the Marines. Maybe St. Paul talked to him about the "creature" that took his brother and the General dismissed it as combat fatigure or something. Now he has had a change of heart and is recruiting St. Paul for this group because he is a believer and the right man for the job.

[polymath]

Looks doable to me. And if the novel's not about an overarching life-defining character transformation for St. Paul, there's potential for an ongoing saga as new threats arise for Aegis to handle.

[Preacher]

i was definitely thinking of having more stories with different threats and such. I have go other thoughts with this to work out. For instance, the head of Aegis or maybe their DARPA liasion will know about the geneticist but St. Paul will not be given that information to work with. He will find out about it at some point which could lead to some inner Aegis turmoil. I am thinking maybe they recruited St. Paul in hopes he would end up going in and kill the geneticist to wipe some black and blues off their faces, but he finds out and then there could be investigation of his DARPA partners, checking his old offices and labs and other things like that.

[polymath]

I caution against creating a side scenario that detracts from the main action. If Aegis is ignoble and St. Paul is noble, it would taint his self-sacrificing heroism with a distracting negative association. St. Paul's private mission should either be for Aegis or against Aegis in order to complete one central dramatic action. Completing both defeating the villain within and the villain outside the agency would be difficult and complex. I don't feel it would suit an action-adventure genre novel. Character genre is another matter. However, an overarching storyline for an ongoing saga could leave the villain within open ended but mostly finalized for each installment until a later final confrontation.

[Preacher]

That makes perfect sense. I can keep the connection but keeping it aboveboard will keep the heroic missions synchronized as opposed to creating an adversary within as well as one without. Got it. How about there being a connection between st. Paul and the head of Aegis? Would that fit? I think it would.

[polymath]

Nepotism is supposed to be a no-no in government hiring policies. It is for family relations. HIring acquaintances and friends isn't illegal, per se. Cronyism and patronage are areas of ongoing corruption suspicions. On the other hand, better to work with someone you know and can get along with than work against someone you don't and can't get along with. Besides St. Paul's superior running a deep security background check on him, knowing him personally and recommending him can credibly be part of the recruitment process.