Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 51

Two Medieval Monks Invent Writing

"Sometimes a guy just wants to have a wet pen."

Corona Gale, nightly build 1.2.2

Kate Foley snored alone in bed, deeply asleep in a way her boyfriend never could snore, who shared the bed and in fact owned it, in fact owned just about everything in the apartment, had still not in months become used to the noise or gravity of that mountainous inhalation. It came from nowhere he could ascertain, not her throat or chest or deeper. He stood barefoot twenty feet from her, his back to her and a wall between them, his downturned sleepily half-watching the foggy brim of water turn from still to feverish, half-watching his phone [Ollie always has a phone in his hand.] in the other hand, flicking, flicking, flicking. He’d been awake since the snoring broke through his dreams, as it did every morning she stayed over, which was invariable as of late, since he asked her to basically move in and she basically did even though she brought basically nothing, which caused a suspicion he brought up during third-beer rants about privacy and trust, her defense being she didn’t like to own things, as if that was a rational stance. 

Nightly Build: Corona Gale: 1.1.1

Kate Foley snored alone in bed, deeply asleep in a way her boyfriend never could snore, who shared the bed and in fact owned it, in fact owned just about everything in the apartment, had still not in months become used to the noise or gravity of that mountainous inhalation. It came from nowhere he could ascertain, not her throat or chest or deeper. He stood barefoot twenty feet from her, his back to her and a wall between them, his downturned sleepily half-watching the foggy brim of water turn from still to feverish, half-watching his phone [Ollie always has a phone in his hand.] in the other hand, flicking, flicking, flicking. He’d been awake since the snoring broke through his dreams, as it did every morning she stayed over, which was invariable as of late, since he asked her to basically move in and she basically did even though she brought basically nothing, which caused a suspicion he brought up during third-beer rants about privacy and trust, her defense being she didn’t like to own things, as if that was a rational stance. 

Stars & Hearts: iTunes' new ratings options explained

Love these explanations on what all the possible ratings mean, now: 

Five stars, no heart: A rating that says, "Yes, I understand Radiohead is great, but please leave me alone."

Precisely. 

As a longtime Zune user (yeah, yeah), I really love a simpler rating system: A heart, a broken heart, or no heart. If iTunes had added a broken heart to their system, it would have been perfect, a feature-complete inhalation of everything great about Zune (they did add a $9.99 streaming/downloading service this month, as Zune had in 2008). iTunes' 5-star system always seemed messy, and I'm glad they're finally simplifying it (or at least giving the option). 

Of course, Windows Phone has zero way to rate a song, other than the "delete" button. So.

Working through Corona Gale and my other unfinished novels

Corona Gale started out as the next chapter in this thing I'm making. I don't consider it all that successful, in that I didn't work it through before getting started, and wasn't able to course correct before it became a bit of a tangle. It's confusing, and only partially meant to be. I like the story, or at least the story as it exists in my head. But I don't like how it exists now.

In my head, the story goes like this: Kate is sent on a mysterious mission by her job. She has a conflict: there's this guy she's been getting on really well with, but she hasn't been working for a while and has been able to more or less hide what she does. But she fears being stuck so far away and for so long will blow that, and their relationship. She's never been able to make anything work because of her job, but she wants to be with this guy.

In my head, we get to know the guy really well, and want to root for them to work out, and for her to be happy.

In my head, she doesn't die. There's still a calamity, but it's an intermission cliffhanger. It's not the end of anything. The calamity happens at around the end of the first act. The second act is about Kate pulling everything together, solving the mystery, and saving the day. The second act is about Kate as a hero, because for her to be the protagonist of this book, she needs to show a different side of her than I showed you in No Chinook, where she was more or less the villain.

The third act is about the choice of whether or not to tell Ollie what she does for a living. Does she put her chips on the table, or does she continue to try to deceive him? I'm not even sure what direction I want to go, and this book has been in my head for nearly two years.

But even with that, the plot is rather thin. I need to beef up the actual mystery. I need a better villain. And I need a B-story.

This is where Album Yukes comes in. A Record Year for Rainfall was the next chapter after No Chinook, and Corona Gale is the next chapter after Rainfall. I want to insert him in the story in a natural way. It's been five years since he shut down his blog to be a political journalist, and I think readers of that story would agree that couldn't last very long. I think he's actually on a beat here, looking for the truth about a thing he feels could profit him. Album is a great scumbag, and since he was more or less the antagonist of Rainfall, I think it would be fun to put my two villains together to try to save the world (or at least a boat).

People who have put up with my stops and starts since 2012 know that I'm trying to put together a narrative that weaves through several titles. Two of those titles are finished (Chinook and Rainfall), and four of them are at different states of completion (Corona Gale, The Moonbow Easy, Skypunch, and Sprites Jets & Elves). I haven't forgotten about any of these stories, and they're all important to me. I'd like to think I'm finally in a state where I can get back to work on them.

But why haven't I finished these? I think part of it has to do with where I stopped at Corona Gale. I didn't have an ending (or even a middle) in mind, so I felt I had to leave that one and go somewhere else for a while. These stories all take place in the same "world," and they should connect (if only slightly). I couldn't finish Gale until I knew where things would go. And now I know. I know where this is all headed.

Corona Gale, 13.1.1

Note: this is an alpha release of Corona Gale. Much like Sprites, Jets, and Elves, it only exists as a first act with no ending and has a lot of rough edges. You can see other chapters by following the Corona Gale tag. 

Kate left a husk beneath her. He was unconscious. If she’d failed, at least she failed spectacularly. Her knuckles were raw and sore, but the adrenaline too care of much of the pain. She breathed heavily, not from exhaustion but fight or flight. What was she going to do now? She’d read the clues as they came. She’d found the man responsible, and punished him. She did her best with what she said. 

Self-doubt crept in, in the last few seconds of her life. What if she’d barged into the man’s cabin right away? She’d been right to linger, to hear him. She heard about the Corona Gale right away by trusting her gut. But it didn’t make sense then, didn’t feel connected. One instance can’t make a coincidence. Why did she waste so much time with that girl? Why did she try to think about her relationship while she should have been piecing the mystery together? What if she’d done it all right?

She closed her fist. She found the door. She walked out to the deck overlooking the bow. It had been horrifying, but for thirty seconds Kate watched the water rise and rise, beyond where she could see. There was still no way to know exactly where the ship was, whether it be below sea level, above, or still on it. There was no way to know where the water went. There were still so many questions that Kate would never know. But there were questions that would be answered. 

Would she ever see Ollie again? Would she ever see anyone again? Would she finish what she started with this job, or would it consume her? Was there enough time to do everything she wanted to do?

How would she die?

Kate knew all the answers to these questions. 

The corona gale was beautiful, like an undiscovered country. Kate cried. She gasped. She laughed. She didn’t know what to do so she let it out. She planted her feet, closed her fists, and screamed out against it all. 

The water closed in. 

The ship contracted, then buckled, the noise unbearable. It did not take long to capsize and cease being. Kate’s footing was lost, and she was hit by the wall of rushing water, knocking her out immediately. There was only darkness after that. The sea resumed. The ship sank down, to depths no one has seen, to the deep black unknown earth. The crew, the staff, Stellen the Swedish bartender, Magelina the worried wife, Sam the victorious villain, Kate the failed hero, they all fell forever, until there was nothing to see, nothing to feel, and nothing to be. 

 

***

 

It is the autumn of 2013 when a ship disappears off the coast of Vancouver. It is in the news. People talk about it. There are worried about global warming, but for the most part nothing comes of the event. Family members mourn the losses. The ship company is sued. But cruises continue to go out, funerals are held and families move on. Time passes, and the ship’s crash becomes an anecdote, maybe a light warning, but little more. These things happen. Even the most independent and radical conspiracy thinkers conclude it was a freak accident, and nobody could have seen the storm coming, and that sometimes we just can’t see these things, because we are small, and the world is still larger than we know. We may know its parameters, but we do not know its appetite.  

No wreckage is ever found. No bodies are recovered. Nothing ever washes up. 

Kate hadn’t told anyone at work about her boyfriend, Oliver, so nobody notifies him that she has died. Through a mutual friend, he tracks down Kate’s mother. Her father had been dead many years. The death had caused a rift in the family, and they had not spoken in a long time. That Kate was nowhere to be found did not surprise her mother when Oliver told her. 

Oliver would eventually piece together that there had been a freak crash around the same time she went missing. He calls the cruise company and is given access to the list of occupants. Kate’s name does not appear[Kate’s name was not in the ship’s list.]. After that, he made some calls, and dug around online, but found himself helpless. It was as if she simply vanished. He gives it as much time as he can, and then he moves on.

One day, he throws out her alarm clocks. 

Some years in the future, an exploratory vessel submerges to a new depth four hundred miles west of Vancouver island. They uncover a watch. It is lodged under a small rock. The time and date on the face are frozen on the date the ship disappeared. They also find evidence of wood, some steel, and and a layer of soot on the rocks that would indicate an explosion. The lab on sea level takes its time with these artifacts, but conclude that they could not come from the cruise ship that sank in 2013. Even though the date on the watch is from exactly that time, the fragments were found to be far older, at least by fifty years. Their official report suggests that the type of steel and wood recovered could not have come from a cruise ship built in the 21st century, as the cruise ship had been. 

As for the watch, it was a much older model, but people wore old watches all the time, and this was disregarded as evidence of a different ship. They thought it might be a clue, but it elicited little more than passing curiosity. It could have come from any ship, sunk or not.  

The scientists conclude that another voyage would be needed to study the area again, but they would have to wait for technology to progress to the point where they could sink lower. 

In the future, our tracks are tracked better. There is less unknown, but what remains is feared, much like it is in the present day. But fewer people go missing. In fact, the cruise ship was one of the last, and stood as an example made by those who pushed this new technology on us as something that would never happen again. Oh, ships would crash, they said. But we would know who was on it. We would know the moment they died, and we could tell you. You wouldn’t have to wait and wonder for weeks. You would have this information immediately. And this is better, they said. And most people agreed with them. 

In the future, you know your best friends’ heart rate. You know if they are exerting themselves. You know if they are in pain. You know if they are lonely. You know if they need you. In the future, we have more information, and we believe that we care more than we used to. But it took Oliver a long time to throw away those alarm clocks, and one reason is that he didn’t know. He suffered, and it was in the not knowing that there was pain, confusion, and maybe some sense of betrayal. But in not knowing, there was also hope. Because there wasn’t an answer, optimism had a chance. In the future, we know more things. There is more understanding. But there is also less magic. In the wind, in the ocean, and in the hearts of young lovers and old fools, there is less. 

Corona Gale, 0.13.1

Note: this is an alpha release of Corona Gale. Much like Sprites, Jets, and Elves, it only exists as a first act with no ending and has a lot of rough edges. You can see other chapters by following the Corona Gale tag. 

Kate left a husk beneath her. He was unconscious. If she’d failed, at least she failed spectacularly. Her knuckles were raw and sore, but the adrenaline too care of much of the pain. She breathed heavily, not from exhaustion but fight or flight. What was she going to do now? She’d read the clues as they came. She’d found the man responsible, and punished him. She did her best with what she said. 

Self-doubt crept in, in the last few seconds of her life. What if she’d barged into the man’s cabin right away? She’d been right to linger, to hear him. She heard about the Corona Gale right away by trusting her gut. But it didn’t make sense then, didn’t feel connected. One instance can’t make a coincidence. Why did she waste so much time with that girl? Why did she try to think about her relationship while she should have been piecing the mystery together? What if she’d done it all right?

She closed her fist. She found the door. She walked out to the deck overlooking the bow. It had been horrifying, but for thirty seconds Kate watched the water rise and rise, beyond where she could see. There was still no way to know exactly where the ship was, whether it be below sea level, above, or still on it. There was no way to know where the water went. There were still so many questions that Kate would never know. But there were questions that would be answered. 

Would she ever see Ollie again? Would she ever see anyone again? Would she finish what she started with this job, or would it consume her? Was there enough time to do everything she wanted to do?

How would she die?

Kate knew all the answers to these questions. 

The corona gale was beautiful, like an undiscovered country. Kate cried. She gasped. She laughed. She didn’t know what to do so she let it out. She planted her feet, closed her fists, and screamed out against it all. 

The water closed in. 

The ship contracted, then buckled, the noise unbearable. It did not take long to capsize and cease being. Kate’s footing was lost, and she was hit by the wall of rushing water, knocking her out immediately. There was only darkness after that. The sea resumed. The ship sank down, to depths no one has seen, to the deep black unknown earth. The crew, the staff, Stellen the Swedish bartender, Magelina the worried wife, Sam the victorious villain, Kate the failed hero, they all fell forever, until there was nothing to see, nothing to feel, and nothing to be. 

 

***

 

It is the autumn of 2013 when a ship disappears off the coast of Vancouver. It is in the news. People talk about it. There are worried about global warming, but for the most part nothing comes of the event. Family members mourn the losses. The ship company is sued. But cruises continue to go out, funerals are held and families move on. Time passes, and the ship’s crash becomes an anecdote, maybe a light warning, but little more. These things happen. Even the most independent and radical conspiracy thinkers conclude it was a freak accident, and nobody could have seen the storm coming, and that sometimes we just can’t see these things, because we are small, and the world is still larger than we know. We may know its parameters, but we do not know its appetite.  

No wreckage is ever found. No bodies are recovered. Nothing ever washes up. 

Kate hadn’t told anyone at work about her boyfriend, Oliver, so nobody notifies him that she has died. Through a mutual friend, he tracks down Kate’s mother. Her father had been dead many years. The death had caused a rift in the family, and they had not spoken in a long time. That Kate was nowhere to be found did not surprise her mother when Oliver told her. 

Oliver would eventually piece together that there had been a freak crash around the same time she went missing. He calls the cruise company and is given access to the list of occupants. Kate’s name does not appear[Kate’s name was not in the ship’s list.]. After that, he made some calls, and dug around online, but found himself helpless. It was as if she simply vanished. He gives it as much time as he can, and then he moves on.

One day, he throws out her alarm clocks. 

Some years in the future, an exploratory vessel submerges to a new depth four hundred miles west of Vancouver island. They uncover a watch. It is lodged under a small rock. The time and date on the face are frozen on the date the ship disappeared. They also find evidence of wood, some steel, and and a layer of soot on the rocks that would indicate an explosion. The lab on sea level takes its time with these artifacts, but conclude that they could not come from the cruise ship that sank in 2013. Even though the date on the watch is from exactly that time, the fragments were found to be far older, at least by fifty years. Their official report suggests that the type of steel and wood recovered could not have come from a cruise ship built in the 21st century, as the cruise ship had been. 

As for the watch, it was a much older model, but people wore old watches all the time, and this was disregarded as evidence of a different ship. They thought it might be a clue, but it elicited little more than passing curiosity. It could have come from any ship, sunk or not.  

The scientists conclude that another voyage would be needed to study the area again, but they would have to wait for technology to progress to the point where they could sink lower. 

In the future, our tracks are tracked better. There is less unknown, but what remains is feared, much like it is in the present day. But fewer people go missing. In fact, the cruise ship was one of the last, and stood as an example made by those who pushed this new technology on us as something that would never happen again. Oh, ships would crash, they said. But we would know who was on it. We would know the moment they died, and we could tell you. You wouldn’t have to wait and wonder for weeks. You would have this information immediately. And this is better, they said. And most people agreed with them. 

In the future, you know your best friends’ heart rate. You know if they are exerting themselves. You know if they are in pain. You know if they are lonely. You know if they need you. In the future, we have more information, and we believe that we care more than we used to. But it took Oliver a long time to throw away those alarm clocks, and one reason is that he didn’t know. He suffered, and it was in the not knowing that there was pain, confusion, and maybe some sense of betrayal. But in not knowing, there was also hope. Because there wasn’t an answer, optimism had a chance. In the future, we know more things. There is more understanding. But there is also less magic. In the wind, in the ocean, and in the hearts of young lovers and old fools, there is less. 

Corona Gale, 12.1.1

Note: this is an alpha release of Corona Gale. Much like Sprites, Jets, and Elves, it only exists as a first act with no ending and has a lot of rough edges. You can see other chapters by following the Corona Gale tag. 

“Fuck, you look like an asshole,” Kate quipped. 

He sipped his cocktail. Kate smelled bourbon. The man indicated toward the glass. “Would you like one?” He smirked. 

The ship shook. It rocked them both, but he seemed disaffected. Yeah. That was the word to describe every inch of him. He was definitely the bad guy.

“I’m not the bad guy,” he said. “My name is Sam Kingsley. And I’m doing something very important. I’m enjoying it, but that’s besides the point.” 

Kate grabbed the collar of his shirt, gripping tight as if to raise him off the ground, his drink spilling out of his hand as he fell somewhat limp, submissive to her aggression.

He stymied, coughed, then bragged. “There’s not really much point in attacking me now. Not now that it’s all over.” 

The ship appeared to agree with him, shaking violently. The bridge had windows from waist-height to the ceiling, curling around the entire outer wall. She could see the water, still impossibly lifting up, still held by something. 

Kate let the man go. He dropped to his knees, but picked himself up quickly. He was a light man, spry and young, and cool in a situation that couldn’t call for it. Kate began to feel panic. She searched for something on the bridge. All the computers were down. She found a phone but there was no dial. The lights flickered, and finally shut off for good. One bulb burst, creating a trail of dust and thin glass in the air underneath. “Whatever you’ve done, you have to stop it, or everyone on this ship is going to die.” 

“Why don’t I tell you what I’ve done,” he said, lifting his glass from the floor. He walked over to a bar table, where he had a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket. He dropped the bourbon glass on the table and picked up two champagne flutes. He poured them both, and handed one to Kate. She refused, and he was stuck holding both. “And I’ll let you decide if I have to stop it. If everyone here is going to die.” 

“How much time do we have?” Kate asked. “If you’re responsible for this, you know when it ends, don’t you?”

“Trust me,” Sam said. “We have time. Fourteen minutes, thirty seconds, to be exact. And I do like to be exact.” 

“Well, get on with it then,” Kate said. “If I hear something I don’t like, I will kick your head in. I kicked your guards’ heads in. They didn’t like it.” 

“I assume not,” he said. “It sounds fairly nasty. Very well then, I’ll try to make this plot polite. I was hired to do a job. You probably have a job, right? Is it normal?” He didn’t stop, but Kate shook her head. “Mine isn’t normal. It pays a lot. It’s very dangerous. It isn’t the kind of thing you go to school for, you understand. I’m very good at a very specific thing, and people who want it will pay me quite handsomely.” 

“Who hired you?”

“Why, don’t you know? I work for the cruise company.” 

“You what?” 

“This is all part of the deal,” he said. “You paid for my services with your ticket. That’s the promise of the cruise line. To make people feel young again, as if they were in the volley of youth. They get to relive their lives over, with just enough knowledge that they’re doing it, but not so much as to try to change things.” 

Kate felt a migraine growing. “What?”

“I’m really quite surprised you aren’t aware of this. I mean, I’m surprised you woke up, but some of them do. This is why we have to keep a crew to roam around and knock them back out. It doesn’t matter if they’re awake or not. It makes no real difference, objectively, but it’s a far more pleasant experience if they don’t know what’s happening. Customer’s needs come first, of course.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Kate said. “I would very much like you to start making sense, before I—

“Yes yes, before you take me to the cleaners or whatever. Fine, yes. I’ll tell you in the plainest English I can muster. I work on this ship, and my job on this ship is to send people back to when they were happy. Don’t you see? Because of me, this ship becomes a time machine of sorts. It’s really rather remarkable. You should look more impressed.” 

Kate said, “I’m not impressed by bullshit. Time travel doesn’t exist. Whatever you’re doing is just going to kill people. You may think you’re doing them a favour. I can believe that. I can absolutely buy that you believe this to be true. But I’m here to tell you that it isn’t. You somehow steered this ship into a storm, and we’re in the eye of a hurricane, and we’re all about to be destroyed.” 

“A storm? My dear, this is no storm. This is my corona gale, and,” he snickered. “But Of course you would come to that conclusion. That’s a reasonable one. But I assure this is all real. All you have to do is have a little faith.”

“A little faith in what? Science fiction? This is the real world.” Kate remembered her training, remembered what she was good at. “If things are going to work, then why am I here? Why am I standing here, doubting you?”

“That’s easy enough,” Sam said. “You’re not supposed to be here, and something went wrong. We missed something. You slipped through. But it really doesn’t matter. You just won a free trip, lovely.”

Kate’s shoulders began to tense up. The floor beneath her vibrated heavier, and she soon lost her balance. Sam Kingsley fell with her, and they both scrambled to find either footing or something to grab onto. 

“My calculations are always correct,” he said. “We have five minutes until it happens. It’s certainly preferable to sleep through it, but there’s a total thrill of going back fully cognizant.”

“I’m not listening to you anymore,” Kate said. “If there’s no way to stop this, and if you’re right about the time, then we’re fucked. That’s okay, I’ve been fucked before. You know what I did last time? I beat the fuck out of the guy, and I took him down with me. I’m standing here today, about to die in the same room as you, because I’m Kate Foley. And I win.” 

Kate got her feet under her body and pushed towards Sam, locking arms with the man. She grabbed one arm and tied it around his neck, choking him with his elbow. She got behind him, stood over him, and kicked out his knees. His right arm flailed and she kicked it, grabbed it behind, and yanked. He screamed in pain, but also tried to laugh. 

“It’s no use,” he said, muffled. “Hurt me all you want. This won’t matter in two minutes. None of this will have happened yet.”

“Will it happen again?” Kate asked, tightening her hold, tying up his arms in a way that gave her a free hand.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But who knows? It hasn’t happened before. It’s a little different every time.”

“If it happens again, at least I’ll enjoy doing this more than once.” She began to rally right-hands to his liver. She attacked his body with a ferocity of a prize fighter, feeling the end near, wanting to exert it all. Whatever adrenaline, blood, and violence in her body went through her fists, breaking his bones, puncturing his internal organs, until blood spurted from his mouth and he collapsed in a hump. He cried. He couldn’t laugh. His ribs were cracked. Kate’s knuckles were bloody and bruised, and she’d never, ever felt better in her entire life. 

Corona Gale, 0.12.1

Note: this is an alpha release of Corona Gale. Much like Sprites, Jets, and Elves, it only exists as a first act with no ending and has a lot of rough edges. You can see other chapters by following the Corona Gale tag. 

“Fuck, you look like an asshole,” Kate quipped. 

He sipped his cocktail. Kate smelled bourbon. The man indicated toward the glass. “Would you like one?” He smirked. 

The ship shook. It rocked them both, but he seemed disaffected. Yeah. That was the word to describe every inch of him. He was definitely the bad guy.

“I’m not the bad guy,” he said. “My name is Sam Kingsley. And I’m doing something very important. I’m enjoying it, but that’s besides the point.” 

Kate grabbed the collar of his shirt, gripping tight as if to raise him off the ground, his drink spilling out of his hand as he fell somewhat limp, submissive to her aggression.

He stymied, coughed, then bragged. “There’s not really much point in attacking me now. Not now that it’s all over.” 

The ship appeared to agree with him, shaking violently. The bridge had windows from waist-height to the ceiling, curling around the entire outer wall. She could see the water, still impossibly lifting up, still held by something. 

Kate let the man go. He dropped to his knees, but picked himself up quickly. He was a light man, spry and young, and cool in a situation that couldn’t call for it. Kate began to feel panic. She searched for something on the bridge. All the computers were down. She found a phone but there was no dial. The lights flickered, and finally shut off for good. One bulb burst, creating a trail of dust and thin glass in the air underneath. “Whatever you’ve done, you have to stop it, or everyone on this ship is going to die.” 

“Why don’t I tell you what I’ve done,” he said, lifting his glass from the floor. He walked over to a bar table, where he had a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket. He dropped the bourbon glass on the table and picked up two champagne flutes. He poured them both, and handed one to Kate. She refused, and he was stuck holding both. “And I’ll let you decide if I have to stop it. If everyone here is going to die.” 

“How much time do we have?” Kate asked. “If you’re responsible for this, you know when it ends, don’t you?”

“Trust me,” Sam said. “We have time. Fourteen minutes, thirty seconds, to be exact. And I do like to be exact.” 

“Well, get on with it then,” Kate said. “If I hear something I don’t like, I will kick your head in. I kicked your guards’ heads in. They didn’t like it.” 

“I assume not,” he said. “It sounds fairly nasty. Very well then, I’ll try to make this plot polite. I was hired to do a job. You probably have a job, right? Is it normal?” He didn’t stop, but Kate shook her head. “Mine isn’t normal. It pays a lot. It’s very dangerous. It isn’t the kind of thing you go to school for, you understand. I’m very good at a very specific thing, and people who want it will pay me quite handsomely.” 

“Who hired you?”

“Why, don’t you know? I work for the cruise company.” 

“You what?” 

“This is all part of the deal,” he said. “You paid for my services with your ticket. That’s the promise of the cruise line. To make people feel young again, as if they were in the volley of youth. They get to relive their lives over, with just enough knowledge that they’re doing it, but not so much as to try to change things.” 

Kate felt a migraine growing. “What?”

“I’m really quite surprised you aren’t aware of this. I mean, I’m surprised you woke up, but some of them do. This is why we have to keep a crew to roam around and knock them back out. It doesn’t matter if they’re awake or not. It makes no real difference, objectively, but it’s a far more pleasant experience if they don’t know what’s happening. Customer’s needs come first, of course.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Kate said. “I would very much like you to start making sense, before I—

“Yes yes, before you take me to the cleaners or whatever. Fine, yes. I’ll tell you in the plainest English I can muster. I work on this ship, and my job on this ship is to send people back to when they were happy. Don’t you see? Because of me, this ship becomes a time machine of sorts. It’s really rather remarkable. You should look more impressed.” 

Kate said, “I’m not impressed by bullshit. Time travel doesn’t exist. Whatever you’re doing is just going to kill people. You may think you’re doing them a favour. I can believe that. I can absolutely buy that you believe this to be true. But I’m here to tell you that it isn’t. You somehow steered this ship into a storm, and we’re in the eye of a hurricane, and we’re all about to be destroyed.” 

“A storm? My dear, this is no storm. This is my corona gale, and,” he snickered. “But Of course you would come to that conclusion. That’s a reasonable one. But I assure this is all real. All you have to do is have a little faith.”

“A little faith in what? Science fiction? This is the real world.” Kate remembered her training, remembered what she was good at. “If things are going to work, then why am I here? Why am I standing here, doubting you?”

“That’s easy enough,” Sam said. “You’re not supposed to be here, and something went wrong. We missed something. You slipped through. But it really doesn’t matter. You just won a free trip, lovely.”

Kate’s shoulders began to tense up. The floor beneath her vibrated heavier, and she soon lost her balance. Sam Kingsley fell with her, and they both scrambled to find either footing or something to grab onto. 

“My calculations are always correct,” he said. “We have five minutes until it happens. It’s certainly preferable to sleep through it, but there’s a total thrill of going back fully cognizant.”

“I’m not listening to you anymore,” Kate said. “If there’s no way to stop this, and if you’re right about the time, then we’re fucked. That’s okay, I’ve been fucked before. You know what I did last time? I beat the fuck out of the guy, and I took him down with me. I’m standing here today, about to die in the same room as you, because I’m Kate Foley. And I win.” 

Kate got her feet under her body and pushed towards Sam, locking arms with the man. She grabbed one arm and tied it around his neck, choking him with his elbow. She got behind him, stood over him, and kicked out his knees. His right arm flailed and she kicked it, grabbed it behind, and yanked. He screamed in pain, but also tried to laugh. 

“It’s no use,” he said, muffled. “Hurt me all you want. This won’t matter in two minutes. None of this will have happened yet.”

“Will it happen again?” Kate asked, tightening her hold, tying up his arms in a way that gave her a free hand.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But who knows? It hasn’t happened before. It’s a little different every time.”

“If it happens again, at least I’ll enjoy doing this more than once.” She began to rally right-hands to his liver. She attacked his body with a ferocity of a prize fighter, feeling the end near, wanting to exert it all. Whatever adrenaline, blood, and violence in her body went through her fists, breaking his bones, puncturing his internal organs, until blood spurted from his mouth and he collapsed in a hump. He cried. He couldn’t laugh. His ribs were cracked. Kate’s knuckles were bloody and bruised, and she’d never, ever felt better in her entire life. 

Corona Gale, 11.1.1

Note: this is an alpha release of Corona Gale. Much like Sprites, Jets, and Elves, it only exists as a first act with no ending and has a lot of rough edges. You can see other chapters by following the Corona Gale tag. 

A gale was a storm. Easy. One less thing to figure out. Her google search earlier came up with no real alternate meanings, nothing mythical or sinister. She moved forward. Her feet fell light as she jogged toward…what? She jogged toward what? She wanted to beat what? She wanted to smash in what? She wanted to save what? She wanted more of what? What was she doing here? What was she trying to prove? Why hadn’t she just quit already? 

Of course, she knew the answer to that. 

Kate checked a map. The bridge was a room away. She would get there in two minutes. She could almost see the door. She slowly turned the last corner, wary of a last guard. She peeked. She saw the door, oak, large, and probably bolted. Could she kick it in? She felt like she could. She hadn’t felt better in weeks. Kate only ever got this contact high when she fought. There was nothing else like it. Old relationships sometimes got her temper up to this level, but with Ollie she’d been calm. He was perfect. 

“Ollie,” she said. “I’m coming home to you, you patient son of a bitch.” 

She saw the door, and knew whatever was on the other side, that’d be it. Either she would beat it and win, or she would lose and die, along with everyone else on the ship, as soon as the water decided to stop lifting up and away. The ship vibrated all over now, the water’s roar almost deafening, even on the inside. 

She thought of Ollie. She wanted to kiss him, and hug him, and feed him, and call him George. She wanted to be at him, on him, as close as possible. She wanted him to make her feel like fighting did, and she would transfer that feeling to him and never need to fight again, never take on another gig, never put her life in danger, never stop another manic street preacher, just let them go and burn themselves out. Let someone else do it. Let someone else try to be half as good. 

Kate decided, right then and there, to make it work with Ollie. Even on the brink of death, in the middle of a scientific damned impossibility, facing down some kind of magic—whatever was happening, she sure as hell didn’t understand it—all she wanted was to let him in. Her reception was dead, but she sent him a text anyway. 

—I don’t want the last text you ever get from me to be an emoji, so, here goes

—I love you

—I love you in numbers. I can count the ways and I can make lists of things to compare it to but I’ll let you decide. 

—I love you in feelings, in images I can’t describe and won’t try because it’s magic

—I love you and I want to be with you, and before right now I didn’t think that could work

—I love you and I am in trouble and you can’t save me

—You don’t even know. I can’t even begin to tell you

—But it’s okay. I will explain all of this away. I will put on my disguise and you will be convinced

—I’ll say I was just tired. I was so tired. Shhhh. 

—I love you so much I come up with my best lies just for you

—I love you in onomatopoeia. I’m making a noise right now that you would laugh at. I promise. 

—I love you in technicolor. 

Her fingers hurt, and the ship rocked, so she put her phone away in her inside breast pocket and took a knee. She was going to rush the door, shoulder it down, get the jump on whoever was in there, and somehow save the entire goddamn day. 

Kate rushed forward, nerves of adrenaline hitting steamed carpet Her favourite workout song played in her head. She saw red, alarming, bloody, total, siren on a lost level.

The door creaked. These fucking designers, man. They cheap out on materials. The bridge was supposed to be accessible. It was locked, though, and Kate felt the steel on her shoulder, which throbbed after impact. Still, she got most of it. She took another run at it and burst through, landing on half the door, cracked thin plywood. It was almost like a stage door, meant to look good and impress people barely paying attention. 

Kate picked herself up, dusted off her jacked, and pulled a few shards of wood splints out of her hair. It didn’t take her long to spot the man. He was looking right at her, sipping a cocktail. 

“I could have let you in,” he said, his voice echoing in the small room full of dials and radios. “All you had to do was knock.” 

Kate stood agape. The man she saw was shorter than her, thinner. He was dressed in a dark, fitted suit, with a white tie and mauve shirt. His shoes were wingtips. His pocket square was folded in a way that would have been too difficult for most people born in the last fifty years. His hair was slick back, black, with a sheen. 

“Fuck, you look like an asshole,” Kate quipped. 

He sipped his cocktail. Kate smelled bourbon. “Would you like one?”