Anyway.
I've fallen back in love with my story! Yay! Let's see how long this lasts. Hopefully for twenty-six more days, at least.
Advice: To fall in love with your story again, keep writing it. If you ever loved it, writing it will remind you why.
Enjoying my characters again is making the words come easier, which is nice. There was an outline rearrangement that happened tonight when I realized my first plot point wasn't a plot point at all, so I shifted some things back a chapter or two then moved up an event that was supposed to happen later. What's going to happen later now? Hell if I know.
Advice: Don't be afraid to change your outline. You might have gotten it wrong the first time (actually, you almost probably did).
I feel like I'm being boring. So in order to entertain you I will give you....
...
...
(pause because I'm trying to think of something and pass it off as dramatic effect)
....
THE BEGINNING OF JUNK SQUAD. (Not that I'm writing Junk Squad anymore right now, but I still think the beginning is kind of cool.)
This is what happens when they flip your switch the first time: you wake up. There’s air in your mouth and colors in your eyes. The people around you are celebrating. They drink wine and toast to each other.
You don’t remember what you were before. You’re not sure there is a before. You wonder: am I real? am I human?
You don’t know.
You know that there are seven people in the room and five hundred and thirteen rooms in the compound. They programmed that into your head. You know nothing outside of the compound.
This is what happens when they flip your switch the second time: you die. The end.
My muscles burn against the pressure of my brain pushing them faster, faster.
“Flash?” Genona stands beside the treadmill, her white lab coat mostly covering a #CC0000 red dress. The muscles of her mouth stretch into a smile, but it’s only the voluntary ones. It isn’t a real smile. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
“There are fourteen hours and forty-seven minutes left in the day,” I say. “I’ve been running for forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds. If I run for five more minutes there’ll be fourteen hours and forty-two minutes left in the day.”
Genona’s mouth turns down. “Aren’t you tired? Don’t you have anything you’d like to do? You’re wasting the daylight.”
“There are nine hundred and seventeen lights in the compound and zero windows.”
“I’m getting Patrick.” Her heels click on the concrete as she walks away. I focus on the wall in front of me. Stat likes to watch a screen while she runs, but I prefer this blankness. My legs keep running. I wait for Patrick.
I hear Genona whispering to Patrick as they walk in. “Might be a programming loop.” She casts a furtive glance at me.
“I’m sure it’s fine.” Patrick steps in front of me. I don’t look at him. “Flash, how are you feeling today?”
I know he’s smiling a voluntary muscle smile. I know this because they all smile that way. “I’m ninety-eight point seven degrees and my body is in working order.”
“Good, good.” Patrick tilts his head to try and meet my eyes. I look down at the treadmill. The thin sheet of rubber loops under my feet, making me dizzy. “Don’t you want to join your friends at lunch?”
“My stomach is at capacity.”
“Genona says you never ate breakfast.”
Genona is a tattle tale. I don’t say that out loud. “What you don’t see might still exist.”
Patrick hits the manual override on the front of the treadmill. I slow to a stop, my lungs aching with the loss of movement. “Pettiness is unbecoming, Flash.”
“Bossiness is unbecoming, Patrick.” I grab my towel and water bottle from the machine.
“Be more appreciative,” Genona says, “You wouldn’t have an exercise room if it wasn’t for Patrick.”
“I know.” He gave me a treadmill, some running shoes, and my own room in the compound, all for the low, low price of my mind.
My ‘friends’ are gathered loosely around our table in the otherwise empty cafeteria. For as close as they study us you’d think they’d know better than to loosely apply such words to us. The only thing we all have in common is them.
Stat is slightly off to the side, doing her nails. “The prodigal daughter returns,” she says as I slide into my seat beside Ware.
“I was never gone,” I say.
She snorts.
Card sits on the other side of the table with his tool attachment fingers, fixing a jammed screw in Tera’s hand. Knowing Tera, there was probably a boxing accident. “Are you functioning?” He asks me. He flips a look at me through his shaggy blond hair.
“Yes,” I say.
Card is in charge of keeping all of us in working order. The normal technicians couldn’t keep up with the job, so they made Card.
Ware doesn’t say anything, but he never does. The plates in his arms gleam in the cafeteria fluorescents. Ware was the first of us, and the most human. They only altered him into being physically superior. He still remembers what he was before this. Not that he talks about it, but you can tell. It’s in the way his eyes look, like he’s lost something.
I pick at my meal. Turnip soup with a side of turnips.
I know where I fit into this medley. I’m the youngest, the most advanced. They scooped out half my brain and replaced it with chips, wires, hard-drives. I’m a walking, talking database for every secret they want stored away. I remember nothing from before they did this to me, and everything from after.
Genona asked me once what it feels like to have a mind so clear and sharp. I told her it feels like I can never escape myself. She told me she wished she could program maturity into me.
“Ow.” Tera yanks her hand away from Card. Her metal nails clack together. “Be more careful, geez.”
Card shrugs and reattaches his fingers. “Are we going anywhere tonight?”
“Nothing from the tops yet,” Stat says. “I think they’re holding us in until they’re sure poor baby Flash doesn’t have another breakdown.”
I stab a turnip. “I never had a breakdown.”
“Do you have another word to describe vomiting all over yourself in the middle of a mission?”
I don’t look up. Stat is only trying to provoke me. I’ll never win if I get into it with her.
“Leave off, Stat,” Tera says. “You weren’t so hot on your first mission, either.”
Stat opens her mouth to retort, but whatever she meant to say is blown away by sirens. The lights above us turn red. Tera jumps to her feet.
“It could be a malfunction,” Card yells above the sirens.
Stat must think so, because she doesn’t even pause doing her nails. I notice her hands shaking a little, though.
There are two doors that lead outside the compound. The doors are reinforced steel with nine different locking mechanisms, three of which are manual. Each door is guarded by four rotating guards, not that they’ve ever had to do anything. Nothing breaks into the compound. Ever.
The door to the cafeteria bangs open. I can hear men shouting outside in Russian. I know this because I know thirty-eight different languages.
One of the guard stumbles in, his #990000 blood staining his #3300FF blue shirt. “To the safe room!” he gasp/yells at us.
Stat’s face goes white. Ware calmly pushes to his feet.
“But no one can break in here,” Card says.
A muscle jumps in the guard's cheek.
He’s dying. It’s in the glaze of his eyes, the skittering of his hand. That’s proof enough that someone can, indeed, break in here.
“We should go,” I say.
“We don’t need to follow you,” Stat says.
I walk to the door. The guard blinks at me. “The safe room,” he says. “The general said to get the kids to the safe room.”
Now that we’re in mortal danger we’re kids. Brilliant.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You did your job.” He slides down the doorframe. I check the hall. Empty.
----
And that's all!
Wait, was that actually really mean because if you actually read it all it's sort of like a cliffhanger?
Oh well.
Wait, was that actually really mean because if you actually read it all it's sort of like a cliffhanger?
Oh well.
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