Revelations and Tensions: Unveiling Captain Dumont’s Sci-Fi Odyssey
Having spent a lot of words on character development and world building, I want to take a short pivot to share some of my own work in progress that I feel illustrate some of the concepts I’ve written about. These will be from works in progress, so may still need some editing and polishing before they ever get published. Comments and feedback are welcome.
Setting things up
I watched the man on the monitor, reading in his lavishly furnished apartment. Part of me was resentful. The view from his couch could have been a master’s painting with its fiery orange and pinks behind the spires of the city with just a hint of blue on the horizon from the ocean. Millions would kill for the view alone, but we had showered more than money on the home of the man I watched. His apartment had only the best. Modern appliances in stainless steel; clean white cabinets floating above the dark grey granite countertops; a genuine leather couch and matching chairs. The program had literally spared no expense in ensuring his comfort.
Of course, many would say he deserved such creature comforts. Some would argue. Personally, I was caught in the middle, but it did not hurt myself or the project to provide such opulence to the program’s heroes. The fact that giving them apartments we owned and controlled did give us certain advantages, including this vid feed allowing unobtrusive observation by a phalanx of psychologist and behavioral experts. If our six heroes had an observable difference from the others in the program, we had to learn what it was.
I was almost ready to ask what I was looking for when the man on the monitor stood and threw the reading tablet from him to smash against the sleek fireplace next to the doors to his private balcony. The violence of his action was shockingly unexpected.
“What was he reading?” I asked as the recording froze. His face was tight, as if he struggled to control some feeling.
Dr. Pamela Carmichael shook her head. “An ancient sci-fi title. He had two paper copies of it before the trip.”
“Relevance?” I asked.
“No direct ties, that we are aware of. It’s a tale loosely based on a plot similar to Rudyard Kipling’s tale ‘Kim’.”
I nodded. My implant provided a synopsis, just enough to refresh my memory of the story of the orphan boy coming into his own as an agent in the great game of intrigue.
“So why the scrutiny this morning? I do have other tasks needing my attention,” I added with the slightest hint of impatience in my voice.
“You asked to be notified of any aberrations in any of the crew’s behavior. Based on his profile, this is a significant break in discipline for Dumont. His background and training are all about control. He has thousands of flight hours as command pilot and it has been drilled into him to always be in control. Lashing out at something in a book is very peculiar.”
Part of me agreed, but my specialty was not in psychology. “He’s a man of action and adventure. How long has he been cooped up in his apartment?”
“Six days,” another lab-coated doctor said. “On the inaugural mission, they spent thirty days in isolation.”
“We also had sixteen survivors then, and we were actively debriefing them. This trip, they are more like lab rats than crew. I think I would be frustrated.”
“We’ve counted on some level of frustration. That’s why each of the six has been provided relaxation and comfort for the post-mission period.”
I snorted. “They’re more bored here than they were on the ship. Have we asked him why he threw the tablet? Do we know what he was reading specifically? Do we know anything other than this recording shows us?”
“No, sir, but it is a break in behavior.”
“Doctor, I have close to six trillion new dollars being spent in this quarter re-starting jump-ship production. I have the leaders of the world clamoring for progress reports. I must decide if our six heroes are going to drop over dead for no reason or if the next jump won’t see fifty percent of the crew dead like the last one did. I want to know if our survivors have a change or difference that might explain what in the hell happened on the mission. I don’t care if they get a little frustrated and throw a reader tablet.”
“It might be a sign,” the Dr. started.
“A sign would be something significant. I need something significant or some confirmation that we won’t have something significant happen. Adrien Dumont learning to fly would be significant. Adrien Dumont growing a new appendage would be significant. Throwing a reader is not.”
Before the doctor could marshal another argument, I paused and raised my hand.
“This last mission only had them inside the ship, correct?”
She nodded.
“The ship that had the same atmosphere and life support systems they lived in before departing the system, right?”
Again, she nodded.
“So, there is no physiological reason they should be in isolation?”
“No. It was part of the mission protocol we developed. We did not assume all six would survive and wanted to build time in the schedule to observe for differences. Frankly, we wanted to see some divergence in physiological readings. This ‘normal’ response means we’ve learned nothing with this mission.”
“Not true,” I countered.
“We’ve learned that six of the sixteen survivors of the first mission appear to be immune to whatever killed the others. We should expect to see differences between them and those less fortunate travelers.”
“Besides being not dead?” the doctor asked. “We’ve run thousands of samples and comparison panels. We don’t even have a working hypothesis yet. Hell, we don’t even have any real hints on what to look at.”
“Then we need to expand the sample sizes.”
“The risk….”
“The risk is something the program office will assess. We have the volunteers. We know early seeding with the jump ships is the best bet we have for long term species survivability. We need to try again.”
It was a decision we had been driving toward for the better part of a year. It was also a decision that I could only provide a recommendation on, but I felt I had seen enough. If we did not proceed with the risk to handfuls of individuals, we ran a real risk for all mankind.
“In the meantime, let’s end this charade. I imagine Captain Dumont is frustrated at the imposed idleness. Let’s get the man back to work.”
This is the opening scene in a planned novel. Without giving too much of the overall story away, it is a science fiction tale that will be heavily character driven with multiple layers of conflict before it is all said and done. This opening scene is intended to introduce the main character, Captain Dumont, without giving a full peek inside his mind and thoughts. At the same time, it should set up hints of the world the characters live in. Does it do its job? What do you want to learn more about after reading this first thousand words?
Comments are open.
There are no wrong answers.
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