Angel
Second Set of Notes
Really, an Analysis

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

• The basic concept is there are matched pairs of beings, lovers if you will, who are near immortal.
• If one dies, the other dies.
• Very powerful beings.
• They age naturally, unless:
  • The feed off of humans.
  • Pain, suffering, etc.
• Male has decided he wants to grow old.
  • Romantic
  • Tired of death, i.e., killing.
  • Tired of life.
• Female wants to live.
  • Sick of indecsiveness of male.
  • Has gone through this midlife crisis before.
• Male has gotten old, has a tumor.
• Female is younger, more vibrant.
• Male has forgotten about his past life.
• Prepared to die.
• Female needs to get his blood lust up.
• The concept being explored is the Hollywood theme of monsters wanting to become human. Why is that such a good thing?
• The male really wants to fit in - he wants to return to that innocence he had back when he was mortal.
• What if he was never mortal? Is he yearning for that he can never have? A family??
• They can go years without feeding. It is the safest way to blend in - there are ways to kill them.
• The female gets mad because he puts her life at risk. She wishes he could be more like her.
• But, if she gets him mad enough, hungry enough, he can be more than she can handle.
• She is scared of him when he is awake - when he remembers everything.
• Another cliche would be to place them at the center of Nazi Germany.
• The goal of the story is to unwind the above.
• The reader starts out like the male - unaware of what is going on.
• The female has most of the answers. Another poke at current story themes where the hero knows nothing and has to discover their powers.
• The goal is to shock the reader as the male starts to understand, to recall who he is and what he needs.
• In any event, by the end, he wants to live, he wants to go hunt.
• Perhaps the struggle with the female gives him some energy? Perhaps he feeds a bit off of her? The tumor gets a little cured.
• He has to get excited, he has to dominate her.
• He has to get in a state where she thinks he might kill her.
• Not really a sexual dominance, more of a power struggle.
• She is lonely. Others of their kind have been killed or just died. Also, without him feeding with her, she doesn't get the full effect. The taste is off, the thrill is muted.
• The ending should invoke a vision of hunters preparing for a bloodbath:

  The full moon back lights them as they perch on a skyscraper. He stands tall, his hand on his sword hilt. Where did he get a sword? She is bent over, sniffing the winds. Wings unfurl, beastial screams errupt, and they launch themselves into the void.


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Angel
First Set of Notes

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 2005,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

• He never speaks.
• Some conversation to work in:
  • "What about what I want?"
  • "I'm sick of dieting, I want a real meal." or "... some meat."
  • "Don't you love me anymore?"
  • "I'm hungry."
  • "Are we there yet?"
• Hearing her say "I love you." has to be the catalyst:

  "I ", she grunted and lashed out with her boot.

  "Crack!" replied the arch in my left foot.

  " love ", she snarled and swung her left hook, the sun glistening off of the brass knuckles.

  "Crack!" went at least 3 bones in my left hand.

  " you!" she cried, a tear actually streaking down her right cheek. I almost missed it, I was so intent on the elbow rushing at my face.

  "Crack!" went my nose. Strange, I could have sworn she broke it earlier. Oh well, it was a mushroom now.

Angel
How do you Spell Wussy?

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 2004,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

It was a beautiful day, I was in the park, the mothers were out with their small children, the squirrels were mugging food off of little old men, and I was at peace with my fate. I had just seen the doctor and found out the tumor was cancer.

The weight hit me from behind, a boot to the back of the head. I fell as the pain blossomed out from my skull. I was too old, I couldn't get my arms in position to break the fall. I'm pretty sure my left wrist was broken. I couldn't feel the throbbing, but I did feel the fingers grabbing my hair. I could hear the mothers screaming in the background.

The fingers slammed my face on the gravel path, back and forth. The blood spewed from first my nose and then my lips. Teeth crunched, splintering on the solid grape nuts. "Why the hell do you have to make it hard on me?" It was a female voice and it sounded familiar.

She was straddling my back, pinning me to the ground. "You stupid man, why do you have to be such a wussy?"

Something bubbled up from deep inside my inner child and slapped her. I don't know how I managed to twist about, I saw a clump of my grey hair in her right fist, blood dripping from the piece of scalp still attached. But slap her I did - it rocked her back. She raised her other hand to her mouth, the lips were swollen, and some blood slithered a trail down to her chin. She wiped her fingers across, the blood didn't smear, it stuck to her hands. She grinned and started licking up the blood. She paused on the last drop, her tounge extended, as she scooped up the blood from her finger.

"You don't deserve me and I don't deserve to die. Take the damn treatment." She was the specialist I just been to see. But instead of the demure lab coat, glasses, and practical dress she had in the examinationb room, she wore leathers. It struck me, it was for defense, she was scared of me. That pleased me.

Batter Up

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 20003,2004,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

We got back to the base and the pilot squealed his guts out. I think things would have been okay, i.e., shooting your own was the norm in the Company, except their psychs finally realized they couldn't get rid of my humanity. I was in the stockade and the Ranger survivors were being debriefed. They were being obstinate, they wouldn't buy the blood crazed manic routine about me, they knew the real score. Hell, they remembered what had happened when I was their LT and saved their asses back then. The Company was going to sit this one out and put me in front of firing squad.

Unfortunately, they forgot about the LT in the hospital ward, well hell, who wouldn't, we all thought he was going to die pretty soon. He didn't, he woke up just as Geraldo Rivera was slumming through the wards, looking for a story. When the LT woke up screaming, live on national TV, well, Geraldo had to get the story of the Captain who had come back to get his men, the one who had walked into the storm of bullets to break the Mexican standoff, yada, yada, yada.

I think the LT was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, I didn't recall it that vividly. Well, a deal was struck and the second Silver Star was accompanied with my Honorable Discharge. By the way, I think it was the shock of me never going to make it to Major which finally killed the old man.

The Yankees wouldn't touch a 24 year old has been with a questionable shoulder. I did a couple of months with a startup in Boston and one night, in a bar, I bet this jerk I could hit a ball off of anyone. That jerk was the pitching coach for the Red Sox and the next day I swatted fastballs off of several of his starters. The last guy I crushed several off over the Monster.

He scowled after the first one, but he was grinning after the third - it was Owens, whose clock I had cleaned in game 2 of the CWS my senior year - he had finally recognized me.

Owens convinced the GM to sign me to a one year minor league contract and to invite me to Spring Training. I think they mainly did it for the publicity, bring on a wounded vet and all, show the nation that the Yankees were not as compasionate and understanding. The contract was barely more than I was making at the start up. I passed the physicals and quit CoolEdge the day I signed the contract. I hustled in the spring and was sent down to the Portland Sea Dogs, the AA farm club. Then the starting shortstop cracked his knee on a routine double play, which saw me sent up to the Pawtucket clubhouse. I was doing fine there, watching the pennant races, and improving my chances at actually making it past Spring Training for the next season. I mean, the guy the Sox were starting got in a serious slump and couldn't get out of it. While they were trying to arrange a trade for a real replacement, they brought me up as a promotional campaign against the Yankees.

I hit .647 against them, with 5 home runs. Okay, 17 at bats isn't indicative for a career, but it was against the hated Yanks. I went on to win rookie of the year, batting .429. We squeaked in as the wild card, but lost to the Yankees in the ALCS.

I signed a two year $25 million dollar contract with the Sox in the off-season - they were still concerned with my durability and thought the first season was somewhat of a fluke. I swept the Triple Crown and took the MVP in my second season, we took the AL East, but lost to the Yankees in the ALDS.

My third year, well I hit for 103 home runs in the regular season and we ended up tied for the AL East with the Yankees. We had split the regular season meetings and had to play a tie- breaker in order to determine who would take the division. Jackson, who hit in the 5 spot behind me, was on the DL, so they pitched around me during my first couple of bats, but with the bases loaded in the seventh, a signal got crossed and I air- mailed one the opposite way. I think the Boss blew a heart valve then and there. Anyway, we ended up winning the East and home field against the Yanks in the ALCS. We took the Mariners in 3 and the Tigers had taken the Bronx Bombers all the way.

Blast from the Past

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 1999,2000,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

I rushed over to him and grabbed him by his cloak. Dead or alive, I was not leaving him for my father to gloat over. Gorgie climbed aboard our lead copter and started laying down a suppressive line over little brother's position. I got the feeling the mana bolts had come from that quarter. I did not want to leave the wand behind, so I grabbed it out of C'gull's hand. I could feel the weight of time and power that the artifact held. I was tempted to drop him and make off with the wand. Somehow, I could feel that he still lived.

With a rush of adrenaline, I hefted him across my shoulder in a fireman's carry. The load almost staggered me, I could now feel the armor I had earlier guessed at, but I headed off to the second copter. The first had taken off and Gorgie was still providing firepower from it.

Bit Brain was waving me on. I could feel the mana bolts behind me as they left the hands of their casters. I was so encumbered, that I would be able to do nothing other than die. Bit Brain would tell me later about how they arced up into the night sky towards the dragon. The first missed narrowly to the right and splattered across the last gunship, and the resulting fireball threw me to my knees. It also buffeted the dragon right back into the path of the last mana bolt.

I don't know if it was the lack of either the white light or the direction from the unconscious C'gull, but the explosion from the zombie dragon knocked me the rest of the way to the ground. Both the wreckage of the copter and the remains of the dragon impacted right were we had last seen little brother. I hoped he was directly under at least one of them.

I staggered back to my feet and stumbled the last few feet into the copter. I dumped C'gull into the cargo bay and climbed in right behind him. Bit Brain and the Kid secured both of us to seats. I could see their lips moving, but I could not hear a thing. I could feel us lift off towards our date with a certain Mr. Johnson.

Kinda sad, I just found out that some people aren't going to make Connectathon this year, like Albert. Kinda happy, it is easy to make new friends at the event, like Glenn. There is something about being stuck in a cramped room for 10 hours a day with a bunch of people.

I've had 2 people come up and ask why I went back to Sun. The answer is of course that this is my only tour of duty with Sun. I've had 2 people come up and ask me how they run a certain test against the filer. I just grin and point them to a current NetApp employee.

The Billboard presentation went well, there was the largest turn out that I've seen since I started coming to Connectathon. And of course I've been using that software forever it seems. How do you explain 'vi' to someone? I mean, you take so much for granted. You can show just a little bit and leave so much power open to be found out later.

One thing I learned is that while the Billboard scripts haven't changed in ages, they might need to in the future. Doing simple tasks like deleting duplicate entries, old entries, creating new categories, etc, is pretty hard with NDMP_File and its deprecated command set. I'm sure Spencer had issues in the past, but once you get back to the office, they fade away. For software used just once a year, it does a good job.

The testing has started, even with Kerberos. Getting results on the first day is a major milestone, especially with a shorter conference this year.

Well, the Reception is starting, so I'm off to have some fun.

I had a problem last night logging into the Connectathon machines. Someone had cut and pasted my entry from the corporate NIS databases. Any login attempt would yield up 'No Shell'.

Okay, I use tcsh. But wait, so does Rob and he was already logged in. I tried another machine - same problem. Hmm, my entry was /bin/tcsh and his was /usr/bin/tcsh. Both exist and /bin is actually a symlink to /usr/bin.

Alright, lets change my entry to use /bin/csh and then /bin/sh. Still no luck getting in. This is cutting edge Solaris bits, perhaps I need a .login or a .tcshrc file? So I copy one of those over and also at the same time find a blank space at the end of my /etc/passwd entry. I get in.

Okay, I heavily suspect that it was the blank space. The system can't find '/bin/tcsh '. But I made two changes at once. So I get Alok to make the change on sunnfs-2. And I get in.

The remaining question is whether the corporate NIS maps have the blank space or not. Also, the entry grabbed might have been from a lab NIS map. I suspect NIS just handles the blank space correctly. I'll need to track this down and see if it is bug.

Great quote from the Connectathon floor:

Does anyone have a paperclip?

The context was someone needed to reset some box.

A Wolf and his Boy

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 2000,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

The original piece is presented here as A Sketch. In thinking of where it goes from here, I brainstormed the following First set of notes..
Technorati Tags: Science Fiction

A Wolf and his Boy
A Sketch

by
Tom Haynes

Copyright 2000,2006 - All rights reserved by the author.

My mother was not dead, I knew that much. One day, when I was 5, my mother and aunt just disappeared. My neighbors think they are dead, but I know my dad is still looking for them in the back of the house. Our house is bigger than what the neighbors think. Sometimes at night, when I am supposed to be asleep, I can hear him prowling around some deserted corridor, searching for a clue as to which room they are being kept captive.

I can vividly remember the night they were taken, I was playing puppy when the strange men burst into the room we were exploring. Mom quickly tied her key around my collar and then threw a tennis ball, which I didn't know she had, across a small stream. My instincts took over, I guess if I had been older I would have been aggressive and defended them, but being a puppy, I was quite playful. I jumped the water and got the ball. I turned around and saw they were dragging both my aunt and mother away, out the door.

She screamed, "They can't cross the water, go to your dad." I would wake up some nights, wondering why they never jumped over the stream and saved themselves. I would ask my dad, but he never answered.

Anyway, I was scared to find him, he had never seen me as a puppy and I didn't know who was going to turn me back to a boy. I knew either my mom or aunt could do it, but I never thought he knew how. I ran through the halls, ignoring the scent of the strangers. When I found him, I sensed he knew they were gone. I tried to lead him back to the room, so that I could track them down for him, but he just shook his head, pulled off my collar, and held me as I shook and cried all night. That was the last time I ever cried. I thought he would take her key away from me, but he never asked for it.

I know he doesn't have to work and that we don't have to stay in this town, but he keeps up the pretense that we are like the others. He works his forty hour week and spends the rest of his time roaming the back halls. I think he just works enough to feed us, pay taxes, and to afford a housekeeper. Mrs. Murtle is nice, she minds after me as well as her own kids, but she knows better than to try and go past the second set of halls. She also never wonders, at least out loud, exactly where that set of halls is in relationship to the back yard. The first housekeeper couldn't mind her own business. Now everyone in town thinks she ran away to Mexico with the mailman, but I know better - they are in the third set of halls. I visit her every now and then, but she never notices. I don't visit the mailman, he was never nice to me.

Every start of summer, he gives Mrs. Murtle 2 weeks off and makes a big production of the two of us piling the car with gear to go camping. In the morning, the car is gone and the neighbors always think we got an early start. I never can figure out exactly what he has done with the car, but I know better than to think I will see him in the next two weeks. I never go into the front of the house, I don't want a neighbor seeing me, but I have food enough stored in the second set of halls. I can always feel someone, or something, watching over me. But I know it is not Mrs. Murtle and it is definitely not him. I can hear him, in the back halls, battling the rooms and their inhabitants, desparately searching for some clue. I know in normal times, he would give those unexplored rooms a wide berth. Sometimes, when you get past the 4th set of halls, a room will change on you. Once, an entire hall mutated into one I had never seen before or after.

After the two weeks of vacation is up, we spend an hour unloading the car, once it reappears, and then I wonder where the camping gear goes. It is a more mundane question, because there is plenty of storage space in the house. Mrs. Murtle doesn't know it, but the hall closet is bigger than her house. If you don't know what to expect in our house, you'd never know to look behind the coats to see what is there. I remember the first day I had preschool, I got stuck in the broom closet. I had thought there would be a shortcut in there to the other side of the school. It took some time to get used to the fact that other people's rooms fit in their houses.

Of course, that is how first kids, then their parents, then the teachers, and then the whole town starts to think you are strange. Throw in two sets of missing people with an alcholic father and you get pitying looks wherever you go. I've heard it in town and school enough times, everyone thinks my dad is an alcoholic. They never wonder where he gets it, that he has never stepped foot in a liquor store since after my mom went away. Even before then it was only to get the odd bottle of wine. My folks were hardly the partying type, not with all of the halls of the house to explore. You'd think people could put two and two together and get a rational thought, but no, not in this town. They used to say things about me, but that stopped once I reached junior high and went out for the track team. I know I have an unfair advantage, being a natural runner, but dad suggested I take up some afterschool activity. It gave him more of an excuse to search the lower levels.

Once I started winning my heats and beating the high school track stars in our joint practices, people started being nicer to me. I was only a 7th grader, but they could see 5 more years of glory being brought to the school and town. Sometimes I could hear them whispering that I should go out for the football team, but contrary to expectations, I am not one for a pack. I like it being me, something I can control, against the others. I don't like failing because others fail. They always wondered how and when I trained - in the third hall, I can run though never-ending fields, either as a teen or as a half-grown dog. I figured out a long time ago how to get the collar on and off without my dad's help - and needless to say, I know better than to ask Mrs. Murtle, regardless of how nice she is and how little she gossips when she is in town.

The endurance I get in either shape transfers across the collar. The muscles and posture are different, but the will and freedom are the same.

Things I pulled from the sketch

• Father is a werewolf.
• Son has no idea.
• He knows he himself can change into a 'dog'.
• He needs a collar to change.
• His father does not need a collar.
• He has spent years at school with the collar on.
• Dealing with social workers.
• Classmates.
• High schoolers
• Punks/Gothers
• Jocks
• Mother and Aunt were kidnapped.
• Why didn't they cross the water?
• The house is a tessaract... (time and space folded)

What is there to be discovered?

• What happened to his mother?
• His father is also a werewolf.
• That he doesn't need the collar?
• What does that do to his self image?
• Hates the collar, but it is uniquely him.
• Who built the house?
• How else is he different?
• What do werewolves do for fun?
• Terror.
• Books for kids.
• Does the moon effect him?
• Was his mother a werewolf?

What are the other plot elements?

• School
• Introducing a girl friend to his house...
• Perhaps she was his best friend from K?
• A friend from inside the house?

Brainstorming

• Burglar gets lost
• Sees him change
• Follows/taunts him
• Dad needs his help in a room.

I've got 4 story arcs in various stages and I've decided to document story development on each of them. I honestly don't how far I'll take this, good intentions and all.

• Angel - Strong plotline
• Wolf and his Boy - Nice characters, searching for a plot
• Gateling - Got a concept, but no clue where it is going
• Grubbers - Good research, plenty of potential

As I enter in the progress of the stories, I'll fill in the above links.