Here we are a week later and I have beefed up the word count to 4292. I took the two scenes from the first postings of “The Great Space Race” and added in the back story. While I pressed out words, the number of characters increased and plot changed. I will post it here in the roughest form.
In an old western saloon with triple X jugs of rotgut displayed on the top shelf the last thing you want to hear is the piano has stopped. The end of the music means the player has retreated in the face of a free for all bar fight. Harry knuckles attached to little bow peep dress collided with Mick Red’s skull. That was life with Herb, his partner in what ever it was they were presently doing. Herb set up the dominoes in life to fall squarely on Mick’s head.
Mick fell back against a round wooden table and sent the piss yellow glasses of draft beer onto the floor. His fingers grabbed the last bottle before it hit the ground and broke it into a 1000 pieces over the transvestites 5 o’clock shadow. He dogged a drunk and caught sight of Herb in the fray. Mick ran towards Herb and picked his body up on the way by. Both men, full of youth, stood the same 6 Feet tall. Mick took Herb through the front window and cracked his partner’s head off the wooden rails.
“Jesus, Mick, my head.”
Mick held on to Herb’s jacket lapel in the face of his recoil.
“You stupid dolt. We are cooling our heels. Do you define “Cooling our heels” as throwing your voice to insight the rage of local transvestite?”
“Well, I wasn’t throwing myself on the line.”Mick’s fist cracked against Herbs jaw. Followed by the twang of a six shot pea shooter. A faint ring of smoke appeared from a new hole in a plank of wood by Mick’s head.
“Let the boy go, son” Her voice was dark and smokey like whiskey at 3 in the morning. Mick looked up and caught sight of the reflection off her golden badge of authority. A long thick main of strait black hair ascended off her shoulder and stroked the horse back. A ten gallon hat placed upon her head tilted back to revile her eyes, almond in shape and color.
A number of marshals stormed the steps and enter into the brawl. The clatter of random noises began to diminish as one by one patrons were dragged out from the swinging doors. Herb struggled in Mick’s grasp and Mick let him go under the watchful eye of the sherif.
“Get off me you.” Herb said as he got to his feet. “I sure thank you for coming along Mama.”
“So you boy’s don’t know each other?”
“Why No, Mama, I know him as far as any man knows another.” Herb said before Mick could answer. “But I don’t want to press any charges against him.”
“Aginst me!?!” Mick said.
“Why no sir. I like to live my life like my own lord. Forgive and forget.”
“From this vantage point your looking mighty Christian.”
“I know my ways might seem strange and native, but I like to live a simple life.”“Boys, why don’t we cool our tongues. I wore my nice boots, today.” The sherif said. “We are going to have a conversation with everyone involved and sort out this whole mess.”
“Becky, that is the asshole who started it all.” The last person escorted out of the saloon was the harry knuckled tranny, his dress torn in the wrong place to hide his masculinity. He was drunk and hurt by the outbreak of violence. His face was red and his eyes shot beads of death towards Mick. “Shoot him now or give me the gun to do it myself.”
The harry knuckled tranny ran to the horses side and it was soon apparent who shared the sheriff bed. As the attention centered around the couple, Herb slowly side slid away from Mick.“Jesse, don’t go and make any rash decisions.” Becky said as her love reached for the leather strap of the shotgun.
“Don’t give me no sass. You want to play sherif, then you have to be person enough for the job. This Homopobe called me a Faggot. I might dress like a woman but I am no Faggot. Let’s see how he likes it with a shotgun barrel shoved up his ass.”———
The night sky showed two blue moons that shown bright in the blanket of night. From the prison bed, Mick could see the night sky through the prison bars. three bars set into the mixture of adobe clay and wood. The prison guards had searched him for weapons but let him keep the harmonica, they called it a mouth harp. These were the world and their diffrences. Out there in the night sky lay the gateway to space. He didn’t even like this planet, it was a out of date time, and Mick never enjoyed westerns. Saddle soars and splinters, the way of a barbarians who shoot inadiquit weapons with the air of gods. Mick took the harmonica to his lips and wailed out a bit of sorrow to the night’s sky.
“Mick.. psst… Mick….” Herb said in a whisper.
Mick got off the cot and went the small window. Outside, Herb stood with set of chain hooks in his hands. He saw Mick’s face in the window. He placed the iron claws in the window and looked to his friends.
“Is there anyone in the place?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m breaking you out buddy.”Mick went back to the doors and looked out. He could only see one guard and his body was slumped in slumber with the daily news over his eyes. Mick hurried over the window.
“One guard, but he is asleep.”
“OK, Stand back” Herb slapped the two hooks onto the bars and hit a button on his watch. The face ignited the darkness with light and a disembodied head floated into the watch’s face. “Orby, We are set down here, pull the cart.”The first noise was the groan of the claws as their attached chain became taunt but the noise to wake up the neighborhood was the collapse of the jail cell wall. Adobe and wood shattered as Mick was free, with a two story drop. Herb swung into the cell as the guard outside the door, fell over in his chair. Herb strapped Mick into the harness and both lines began to recoil. Outside Mick looked up to the silvery shell of the Orb, their space ship, salvaged from an intergalactic junk yard. Below the light of the many wooden window sills opened and the guard stood in the open wound in the police station.
“Orby, make with the light show.”
“Stop calling him that, You know he hates it.”Ports opened in the side of the Orb and flares shot into the sky. A bright snow of light burst filled the sky and crackled in the static electricity. Below the tiny town match the star lit sky as the light show grew the attention of the whole town. Herb spoke into the watch and his voice was amplified over the loud speakers.
“We are the All mighty. Gaze upon our light and fear us.”
“Herb, stop screwing around and let’s just get out of here.”
“You have incurred our mighty wrath, Knell before your God!”
“Orby, just get us in and out of here.”As soon as it had appeared, it disappeared into the night sky for all the towns folk to witness. The round orb in the night sky would become a legend of this land. The receptacle of the chosen ones, the profits who once graced the land. So, as the story would go, the pair returned to heaven to leave their rejectors to survives amongst themselves. This was the legend of the profits Mick and Herb.
“Boys, if I was given the choice of a handful of your common sense or a hand full of bull excrement, I might choose the bull excrement.” Jeb said. He was broadcast over a intergaltic feed from his location on Saltare. Saltare a planet of Frog like people, Jeb was a credit to the breed and looked like Kermit the frog, if Kermit the frog could your kick ass. Jeb was a good old boy and the crew of the Orb’s current employer. “ I said to keep a low profile. That planet is a no go and you go in with blazing. You got the hoople heads all up in a roar.”
“Jeb, they had Mick locked up. I couldn’t leave him behind.”
“Boy, in the movie where you got your escape plan, did the cowboys use a starship to crumble the wall of the prison cell?”
“They might have if they had one available.”
“Mick, what the hell is going on? Who let Herb in charge?”“I was rather tied up at the moment, Jeb.” Mick spoke and it was the first time in the transmission.
“Well now, you found your voice. Now, besides your little stunt bringing in the Intergaltic federation. What the hell do you think happens when you shoot out the flairs. It don’t just show off a pretty light show for all the hoopel heads, but also sends out a distress signal. These signals are picked up by the nearest ship, but as you were on a off limits planet, your distress signal alerted the local grays. They are in route to clean up your disturbance. Not what I call keeping a low profile.”
“So what do you want us to do now? We have the cargo. Where do you want to meet?”
“Mel’s Cabbo Canteena, I’m uploading the coordinates now and do us all a favor and get the hell out of that solar system, Stat.Jeb’s face faded to black as the transmission broke. The view screen was taken by the same disembodied head that once appeared in Herb’s watch.
Becky’s spurs creaked on the wooden planks outside her door. It had been a rough week on this side of the law. In the wake of the escape, the town had turned crazy. The town newspaper sent out reports of a flying saucer under the headline “Are they Aliens or Profits?” Reports of the escape went out for miles over the message lines. A series of dots and dashes unleashed a headache upon the tiny western town and every wack job came to make a statement.
Back home, Jesse had moved out. He was hit the worst as he was the one to hit the profit, as if anyone could believe those two bumbling idiots could be profits. The hoopla had gotten to him. He took on the guilt of the righteous who scorned him for not only wearing a dress but for a right hook across the jaw to their imagined idols. He ate their line and swallowed the hook. the boy’s words became his sacrament. Dubbed a faggot by the all mighty, he became reobsessed with his sexuality.
The pair had a life in this two horse town. A partnership that ran the town, but now all that was left was a poorly decorated empty house. A construction of wooden planks that stood on the ashes of dreams and sweat nightmares to the summer heat. Jesse left to find himself, when she knew he was found. but his passion bullheadedness rejected her pleas. She needed him, more than he needed her and in the absence of fonder hearts, she could see the red door painted black.
If angels they be, than from the depths of hell they came. From a pit of sorrow to unleash their helterskelter madness. They were angles of chaos but Becky couldn’t put any faith into their supernaturalness. They were too stupid and foolish. The whole mess reeked and she returned to the scene of the crime to look for clues. The empty house left her empty and she craved answers. The blanket of stars above, the heavens? Space men? How could any of this be posable.
She returned to the cell to find the door open and two men inside. They wore three piece suits and held strange instruments against the wall.
“You guys looking for something?”
At the sound of her voice, the two gentlemen turned and hid their instruments. Both men wore odd shaped, dark tinted glasses and the one on the left put on a wide smile to meet the sherif. She had seen this con a million times from double dealers. They were lawyers, liars, or one and the same. Becky had seen them on the outskirts of town, away from the crowds, watching, observing, always with a notebook in hand. Aside from their spectacles, these men were odd. They wore suits slighty odd.
“Well Howdy sheriff, Pleased to meet you. ” The wide smile said as he took a piece of paper from the docter’s bag on the small prison table. Decorated with a official seal, Becky didn’t recognize the name or signature. “As you can see, we are here on official business.”
She looked over the papers and felt a pang of doubt in her gut. She tossed the paper aside and took a seat on the cot.
“Listen boys’ it has been a long week. My town is in shambles, my life is in shambles, and I am not suited to be lied too. Now if you want to explain this whole mess then be my guess.” A quick draw by nature, Becky pulled her six shooter and aimed it at the wide smile. “Now I am going to take a wild stab in the dark and say you are not so much different from those two boys, who flew the coop. Unlike the crazies around here, I am going to gather you bleed. I’m going to leave the choice up to you. Spill the beans or spill what ever kind of life blood spills out.”
Becky tilted back on the prison cot. She took a long pull from the bottle of whiskey with her free hand and kept a her iron on the black suits.
< Open Transmission >
“You are going to What? This is not an option, we in the scientific community do not allow sub species to be transported off sub planets.”
“Sir, given the level of breach, who ever these two life forms were. We are out of options. This planet has no photography, no keeping of records. We have two names out of the universe. If this department is ever going to find the two culprits , than we need her personal identification.”
“This is out of the question Agent O. Out of the Question!”The fact became the idea was not out of the question and like the many rules of governing bodies, rules could be bent. Becky went back to the empty house and gathered a small amount of her belongings. Nick Nack hid ghost and she left them on the mantel. She was younger when she walked into town with a hobo stick on her shoulder. The years of tumble weed brought the definition of wrinkles but little else. As she took the same road she came in on, her face full of youth and her back a tension of sorrow.
She past a graveyard and bid goodbye to the fallen, both vultures and victors. Pale white sticks shoved into the rocky earth. She looked to the setting sun and sky beyond. She wasn’t quite sure how to comprehend her destination. The stars, planets, space, the mere thought of it all made her feel small, insignificant, another game to play the country rube in a intergaltic space city. She put her world behind her and walked the long road out of town. Up the steep hill to the plato out of the desert. Agent O stood in his black suit in the middle of the plato and held out a hand to Becky as she approached.
“Glad you could make it Sherif, our ride awaits.”
Agent O swung his hand back and from thin air a giant machine appeared out of thin air. The back of the metal Goliath opened in half and Agent O stepped inside and turned back to Becky. She couldn’t understand the ship with wings that looked with the stars reflected in her eyes. The moment became real and no some delusional dream. She was faced with the reality of her future. She had played out an act that a small part of her wished was a dream. She was now faced with an unknown she could have never fathomed.
“This is your space ship?”
“Oh no, this is only the transport.”She felt the rush as the hulk of metal jumped off the ground.
Chapter 2
The Joint, a drive bar on outer rim of Mel’s Cabbo Canteena, changed from a cat house roar to church pew silence as another set of harry knuckled fists collided into Mick Red’s head. Mick recoiled from the tranny’s blow and stumbled against the metal bar. He was the center of attention as he picked up the bottle neck in his paws. That was life, react to the blows and struggle to keep alive. Mick had fuzzy ideas over the dispute and, as the bar erupted into all out free for all of bloodied knuckles and black eyes, he opted for another dive out the front window.
He landed in a bed of shattered glass on the diamond grooved floor of the level’s cat walks. Street dwellers gave him a wide birth as a second body was thrown through the window and landed on Mick. The jolt of extra weight slammed Mick’s body against the diamond shaped groves and dug into his skin. A predator by nature, Mick snapped into action and reversed the position. He grabbed the body by the lapels and looked into the face of his objection.
Herb Indigo, if there was a friend in this void of space, Herb was the closest Mick had. As teenagers, the pair had found each other floating in the same orphanage. Together, they had hijacked a food ship and escaped into the blackness space. Space offers it’s namesake, but the element of oxygen kept a reign on the human population. The two became smugglers out of survival. Years had past but the pair had yet to shrug off their boyish humor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mick said. His hand shook Herb’s lapel. “Is this your new thing, find a tranny and get them to punch me?”
“Calm down, Red, you can take a hit from a tranny?”
“Did you see the guys in the corner? Badges of Authority. They run our identities and we pop.”
“Really I don’t know why I go to the trouble of having Orby write you a daily memos if you aren’t ever going to read them.”
“He doesn’t like to be called that.”
“He is not even a he. He is a program and will be called what ever the hell I want to call him.”Herb said.” This is besides the point. If you had read Orby’s memo, you would know we are on Mel’s Cabbo Canteena. It’s no man’s land here. Mel lets one outlaw get taken off this boat and he losses all his business. Look at this place. It’s nothing but casinos, cafes, and bars.”Mel’s Cabo Cabana is a neon speck in the emptiness of space. The history sold to the general public tells of a rose colored Mel in the midst of serendipity. He was a simple junkyard worker, when the Cabo Cabana was pulled into his junkyard. Once a pride of her fleet, the rigors of space had left her a gyro curser ghost of her former glory. Mel looked upon the ship with a lovers eyes. He saw her inner beauty hidden under the layers of time and knew her hull was of solid build. He had the technology, he could rebuild her. Mel gathered his two sons got to work. They built and programmed worker drones, who did the real sweat and tears, and redesigned her interior in googie architecture. The result is a space craft ripped from the celluloid of black and white sci-fi flicks. Each level appears a Hollywood Cafe version of Hades, filled to the brim with the scum of intergalactic society. There are many chances to sin and little in the way of salvation.The real history involves a touch more blood in a mixture of insurance scam.
“Why Mick and Herb, is that you, boys.” Jeb “The Saltire” Profit said as he pushed his way through the crowd.
Mick pulled himself together as he hears a familiar throaty voice. He picked Herb off the floor and turned to find the short stature of Jeb. Saltare is a backwater swamp planet, where the top of the food chain evolved from a off species of frogs. Saltirian’s children look like Kermit the frog, if Kermit could kick your ass, and Jeb Profit is a credit to his race, if a race of inbred hillbillies can have a credit. A bootlegger by breed and creed, Jeb was no racer but a player in the cosmic game. He would rather be a French man’s supper than caught with the general public.
“Why if it isn’t Jeb Profit. We heard you got caught and dissected by a pack of scientists.”
“That would explain the flowers. You boys gave my wife quite a scare.” Jeb said. “Lovely arrangement thought and she was quite touched by the note.”
“Well I do have a gift with words.” Herb said.
“I see the event on the last planet did no harm to your sense of adventure.” Jeb said and nodded to the bar fight in full swing.
“You’re not kidding.” Mick said.
Jeb nodded them away from their location and walked down the packed halls. the trio of men were there for the “Great Space Race”, which on the face was a race upon the galaxy but racers could also make money from smuggling certain items from one plant to the next. Some racers
“What is up with the circus in the hallways?” Mick said to deflect Jeb’s wondering eye.
“Well, the answer to your question is a bit involved, you see.” Jeb said.
He eyed the bag on Mick’s back. In the silence of space information is never free, it’s a currency of it’s own.
“Ah, well I might know a thing or two about a Cruiser somewhere worth checking out.”
“See here now! I am quite offended by your assumption. Boy, I got out of the raiding game. I stand before you a bonafided agent of the state.”
“You jumped sides of the law?”
“Boy, you have been out in space for too long. Remember there is a war going on. The lines of law blur in the lines of war. Saltare might seem a backwater planet filled with hicks, to guys like you, but it also a strategic location on the current political stage. Under our former government, we were treated like a nuisance, as if we were a planet of outlaws.”
“Saltare is a planet of outlaws.”
“A fact that is quite besides the point. Our new government understands the importance of Saltare. They see the traits and resources of our humble planet.”
“Traits and resources!?! Saltare’s number one export is Bufu, a psychedelic drug milked from the venom gland of a bother race, your people enslave.”
“Exactly my point. Though, I would have chosen a less crass explanation. Our new Government sees the importance of Bufu. Of course, the government could never make the drug legal, they have to save face and all. However, we are a free planet and choose our own laws. We can make Bufu legal and if the cargo bay of a military ship is full of Bufu, well, there is not much we, as “Saltarians”, can do.”
“So instead of running drugs against the government, you run drugs for the government?”
“ Well it’s all in the name of Communism… er Capitalism. Which ever dang economic system is on the brochure.”
Final Chapter
“But don’t you get it, Becky. That is the fucked up conclusion of it all. We are humans, too err is human. Our lives are another cog in the chaos theory. The Greys slaughtered your whole town. Back on Earth, Jamestown, same thing. They whip out a whole village to protect their experiment. Them, the Men in black or what ever badge throw on their chest. Now you got a gun pointed at me? You traveled cross space to put a bullet in my back.”
“Our whole exsistantance is a great race controlled by them. The evolution of our own kind. The loss of their pinky finger by evolution is met by wild questions of why. They lost their pinky finger because their race didn’t use them. If you don’t use it, then eventually, over generations, you lose it. But that is not how they think, they want to find a planet of carbon biased life forms and watch the hoople headed population till the hoople heads lose their pinky fingers.”
“So Boo Hoo. I made your boyfriend go crazy because he though I was a God who called him faggot. Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds? They gave you the gun and the way to protect their experiment. There is no injustice here, I committed no moral offense against anyone. They want you to bring us in to enforce their reign. So Go ahead shoot me, join up and sing your name on the dotted line to damnation for the rest of the population.”
Becky pulled the trigger. She was a marksmen by birth and Herb was dead by the time he hit the floor. Herb was right, she was now a cog in their machine of the great space race. The Grey’s had exterminated her home, but Herb was the domino piece of the chaos theory. Her choice to become a tool in their machine. Herb deserved to live and Becky deserved to grow old in love as the sheriff of her one horse town. The fairness of chaos theory rarely plays a role.
THE END
All 4000 words spill over to the other chapters but also contains the design of the first chapter. We have two antagonists, in Herb and Mick, and we have a protagonist, in Sheriff Becky. As I read this for a third time, I relize the rough in this rough draft, the jagged edges start to make my ego deflate. But before I give into the realm of self denial and hate, I can work the mess of the story into a digestible.
Like the theory behind Modern Mythology, as a writer I seek to subvert from within the current cultural movement. The current popular mediums for entertainment are movies and television. For this I will gleam my strategy from the new age nanny. As “The Great Space Race” is meant to be an episodic adventure, I will want to take a look at how television scripts are written and gleam clues to help me construct my story.
The common format for a 30 hour show goes Teaser – Act 1 – Act 2 – Tag. The rule of thumb for television shows format is written 1 page per minute, 2 pages per scene, and in a 22 page format.First, we forget the page numbers, as writers are given the luxuries to expound or decrease the length of their description. We aim to look at the end product and how the story is constructed. A teaser is it’s namesake. It teases the watcher into the story. It’s a big bang that grabs their attention. Act 1 is normally the longest act as it finishes the job that the teaser started. The teaser gives them a goose and Act 1 sweet talks them in. The following Acts will wraps up the story and and the tag is normally a place that leaves the main characters all laughing with a final joke. Que ironic line from Snarf.
Now from this bit of information on the construction of a television script, I know my story need about 11 scenes, it needs an opening that sucks the reader in. It need 2 or 3 acts, and maybe to finish with a joke. From the overview, I know the current chapter has 8 scenes. I took a piece of paper and cut it up into 16 equal sizes pieces and wrote down a general sense of each scene. Laying them out on the table, I can construct how my story might gel together.
For the opener, I have the bar fight, written on the tenant that “Getting hit by a tranny is a reader grabber.” Our anti-heroes, Mick and Herb, find themselves in the middle of a bar fight and the reader might be interested but how did they get there and why. In the overview draft, I made a mistake and never gave the reader a reason from them to be on the planet. So I take a blank slip and write “Reason: Plato Pick up”, to describe the scene I will need to write there. I choose the plato as it would offer a bloker from the surrounding areas.
The next card is “Outside the Bar”. Here we meet Sheriff Becky and I know this section needs work. It needs to be filled in on the the relationship between Becky and Jesse, so I write a card with both their names and place it below outside the bar.
Which brings us to the “Jail Break” and the story. I want to introduce the Men in black before the end of the chapter and decide to write a card Becky back on the plato, where the boys picked up their cargo, for a first encounter with the Men in Black. The Boys picked up their cargo on the Plato and both Sheriff and the Men in Black will meet first on the Plato. In a crime novel they would call that “returing to the sceene of the crime”. In television production this helps to cut down on the number of locations by reusing the same ones.
Then comes the Jeb Profit “Space Bitchout” where Jeb informs the heroes that they ignited the intrest of the Gray’s and their agents in the Men in Black. Then we go back to Becky in the jail cell with the men in Black. Then Transmission to the Greys, and end with Becky on her way to meet up with the boys.
With my sceen cards, we now have the constructs to build the story. I have the outline and a rough map of my steps forward. Before next time, we will have a new draft, a seperate draft that represents the entirety of our story. Fom there we will learn a couple tricks to turn the drab into the rad. Keep burning the midnight oil.
Tags: W.E.S. Contest
WHAT TO DO NOW?