[Anselm's Scrapbook] Non-Sequiter

[Anselm]

Non-sequiter #1: About staying in character and playing nice with others. Anselm is a challenging character to play. That was my intention when I made him Nuit. I figured playing a four hundred year old dead guy would force me out of my real life persona and into my fictional persona. Giving him his own voice, which is (mostly) not my voice. Giving him is own quirks, which are (mostly) not my quirks. Giving him his own world view which is (mostly) not my world view. The problem is the “mostly”. I have not been entirely successful in keeping myself out of him. In many ways, Anselm is my alter-ego. Maybe that's why he's my favorite rather than Daske Baggywrinkle. Speaking of Daske Baggywrinkle: Daske is not like Anselm at all. He is a simple-minded, straight-forward kind of guy. Apt to act first and thing later, if at all. What you see is pretty much what you get. His voice is (definitely) not my voice. His quirks are (definitely) not my quirks. His world view is (definitely) not my world view. This is probably what makes Daske so much fun to play. The challenge with both Anselm and Daske is to always play them true to their character. In other words, to keep them IC. More often than not, I don't actually know how either of them will act in a situation they haven't been in before. So I have to start writing and let them show me. And that brings me to the point of this post. One of the “rules” of posting is that each post should move the story along, leaving it in a different place than it was before. It's also considerate to give your writing partners plot opportunities or hooks to play off. I call this “playing nice with others.” But what happens when the story is going in one direction and Anselm, for example, has no interest in going that direction? For example, in the quest “The White Obelisk” Anselm and company are investigating the mysterious white obelisk (duh). Anselm finds himself drawn into it auristically and is fascinated by it. He then asks himself, Why are there two obelisks? This leads him into a flashback of an internal philosophical dialog about monism versus dualism. I spent the better part of an hour writing it and was terribly pleased with myself until Echelon PM'd me with “Way to NOT move the story forward!” and “Does Anselm plan to tell Leigo what he has learned?”. He was right, of course. I had totally ignored my writing partners, had left the story exactly where it was before my post, and hadn't even provided any hooks that anyone else could play off. I confess my guilt! The problem I'm having with it is that I'm pretty sure this is exactly the kind of introspective path Anselm would have gone down in this situation. He doesn't much care about the other people in the boat, or about the scientific purpose of the investigation. He's just curious. The obelisk represents another puzzle to be solved or mystery to be unravelled. So no, he isn't going to tell Leigo what he has learned. Why would he? This illustrates, I think, the inherent conflict between “staying in character” and “playing nice with others.” I think it is one of the more challenging and interesting things about collaborative story-telling. Incidentally, I edited the post by adding a sentence in which Anselm says, “We can head back now.” Which at leasts provides something someone else can respond to.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

First, on the subject of your voice, let me say that I almost didn't recognize your writing here. Once I've come to recognize someone's style well enough, I can usually pick them out by their writing voice in any situation, even if they're playing a different character. But your scrapbook post had a completely different tone than Anselm's posts. You should take that as a compliment.

Second, for what you're talking about with playing with others, I know exactly what you mean. On the site I used to play on, I would frequently have problems where people gave me nothing to work with. They would go on and on about only their inner thoughts, and leave me with nothing to play off of. If it's just every now and then its no big deal; I'm sure I've done this to other people on occasion myself. The times I get frustrated is when the same person does this so consistently that I feel like I am having to carry the story myself.

This is part of the reason I do certain threads as solos. Most of my "building stuff" threads or Animating Golems have been solos. I find it better to do most of these like that because much of the writing ends up being very internalized on Tock's thoughts, the decisions she is making, and the way she is planning out the creation. Other times all the interaction is between Tock and her creation, and I would feel like I was not giving another player anything.

Of course, there are ways around this. In Along Came A Spider, for example, I started and ended with long montages of creation, leaving plenty of room for character interaction in all the time in between.

Anselm's "problems" (for lack of a better word) with character interaction seem to have a slightly different but related source. Instead of being so drawn into study of and interaction with a creation, he seems more focused on studying and interacting with his own thoughts and his past. I'm not sure what to advise to help bridge that gap. When I get stuck in Tock's past, I tend to pepper the posts with body language and facial expressions (such as frowns or winces when thoughts of her father come up). These mild reactions give people something to react to and play off of even if they don't know my actual thoughts. But Anselm has far more control of his emotions and expressions than Tock has. So people probably wouldn't be able to read him as well.

[Anselm]

Non-sequiter #2: About an unfinished book. When my adult son passed away last year, we were co-authoring a novel together. The preliminary title was “The Fragment”. It began with a brief preamble: This is the story of a being totally unlike us. It is rather young for its kind, maybe no more than ten thousand years old, and it has been on a long journey. It’s encounter with us will change everything. The opening sentence was, “The Fragment waited.” Personally I think that's a killer first sentence. Unfortunately I have to give credit for it to my son. Incidentally, it's also the last sentence of the book. I'll take credit for that. We had drafted about half the chapters when Josh died. Before he died, he asked me to promise him I would finish the book. I have tried to pick it up several times since, but it has been hard. That's one of the reasons I joined Mizahar. As a way to find my way back into writing, with the hope that I might also find a way back to “The Fragment”. One of the ways I develop a character is by writing a short story about him. Just like in Mizahar, I sketch out an initial character profile, create an interesting situation, and toss him into it to see what he does. I'm going to try a variation on this technique. I'm going to take several characters Josh and I sketched out for the novel and toss each of them into the same situation to see what each of them does. That strikes me as an interesting experiment. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Cascade]

That is a killer first sentence (and last sentence). I also have to say, the preamble definitely caught my attention. I do hope you finish the book someday and show it to all of us.

[Anselm]

Non-Sequiter #3: How I Met Holly Burton (a short story) I am considering submitting this short story for publication. I would welcome critiques from my friends on Mizahar. The first time I met Holly Burton ... yes, that Holly Burton, the most famous person in the world, the Fragment’s emissary, beloved by half the world, hated by the other half, the priestess of Mars (okay, only one small religious group calls her that) ... The first time I met Holly Burton was on the space station Tiangong and it almost got me killed. It was the first anyone had heard from her since the incident on Ganymede six years earlier, and she had arrived in a space ship so advanced that it had the world’s scientists drooling, not to mention the military people. And of course, that’s where the trouble began. I was asleep in my Manhattan apartment when the phone chimed. I tried to ignore it but it continued cheerfully chiming away until I grabbed it off the nightstand and looked at the caller ID. It was Theo. I squinted at the clock as I punched the Accept button and mumbled something that might have passed for “Hullo?”. The clock claimed it was 3:28 in the morning and I had a mild hangover, so I wasn’t at my best. “Adrian!” He actually sounded like he was awake. For a man pushing sixty, he had more energy than most of my twenty-something friends. “Theo. Why are you calling me at 3:30 in the morning? Not even God gets up this early.” “I need you at the office.” “Uhm, right now? I didn’t get to bed until after midnight. How about, uhm, a little later this morning?” “Right now Adrian. I’ve sent a car for you.” “Great. Looking forward to it.” I said trying to insert just enough sarcasm into my voice to express how not forward to it I was looking without sounding outright insubordinate. But he had already hung up. The Honorable Theo Dreyfus Peeters, Belgium’s ambassador to the United Nations, wasn’t the excitable sort. In fact, he was one of the most unflappable people I have ever met. So I figured something important must be going on. I had worked for him for two years and had another year to go before my assignment was up. I’d been incredibly lucky to have gotten this job right out of grad school. There couldn’t be a better way to learn the ins and outs of international politics than following a man like Theo around. Not to mention all the contacts I was making. I planned on using this experience as a spring board for launching myself into what I really wanted to do: Manage not-for-profit NGOs, Non-Government Organizations. What with record-breaking droughts, the Great Migrations, and a never-ending supply of regional wars, the NGOs were crying out for people who knew how to run not-for-profits efficiently. That’s what I’d trained for and that’s what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to save the world but I might be able to save some little part of it. My girlfriend Sophia had managed to sleep through the conversation. I shook her awake and explained that something had come up at the office and I needed to go in right away. “I’ll probably miss breakfast,” I said. “Let’s aim for lunch, okay?” “Whatever,” she said as she rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. I suspected she wouldn’t remember the conversation later in the morning and would be mad at me for not waking her up to tell her I was leaving, but I figured we’d get it sorted out. I dressed and left her snoring softly. As I headed out, I noticed that she and Harry the cat were now occupying the entire bed, which left me wondering where exactly I had been sleeping.

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) As promised, there was a car waiting for me outside. Alec was behind the wheel. “So,” I said to Alec as I climbed into the back seat. “He dragged you out of bed too. I don’t feel quite so bad now.” “Change of plans. I’m taking you to the airport. You’re going to Florida. Nobody told me why so don’t ask.” That was his entire contribution to the conversation for the remainder of the trip to the airport. Alec was good at a lot of things, but small talk wasn’t one of them. It had been raining and the lights from on-coming vehicles reflected sharply off the wet pavement. I hoped Alec still had decent night vision. He was a multi-talented man who had a knack for “fixing” things. That is, for making problems go away. He had worked for Theo for many years, following him from job to job. My guess was that his job as a chauffeur was a cover for something more interesting. Besides, I happened to know that he carried a gun in a holster under his left arm pit, hidden from view by a light-weight tan jacket he never seemed to take off. I was surprised by how much traffic there was this time of day. It always amazed me that we had figure out how to put a colony on Mars, but still hadn’t figure out how to solve traffic congestion. At least we weren’t burning up fossil fuels to get around anymore. We arrived at Teterboro Airport in twenty minutes, which I credited to Alec’s disdain for speed limits. The embassy kept a private jet at the small New Jersey airport because it was close to Theo’s Manhattan apartment but not very busy. Must be nice to be one of the movers-and-shakers. Theo was already on the plane. I waved goodbye to Alec as he drove off into the night. As near as I could tell, he ignored me. Then I climbed up the steps and on to the jet. It was one of those six-passenger jobs but tonight there was only Theo, myself and Juarez, one of embassy's regular pilots. “Florida?” I asked as I settled into one of the leather seats and buckled my seat belt. The jet was already taxiing away from the terminal. Somebody was in a hurry. “Sorry about the sudden change in plans. Couldn’t be helped.” Theo stuffed some papers into his briefcase, took off his reading glasses and looked at me for several moments without saying anything. Finally he asked, “Do you know who Holly Burton is?”

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) That caught me by surprise. Of course I knew who Holly Burton was. I enumerated the relevant points: “Astronaut. Stayed behind in the Jovian system when the rest of the Jupiter mission crew returned to Earth. The whole incident was shrouded in mystery. Nobody knows why she stayed behind or what happened to her. The crew was spirited away and disappeared when their jet went down somewhere over the Pacific before they had a chance to tell anyone what really happened. Conspiracy theorists had a field day.” Theo nodded. “She will be arriving at Tiangong space station in a few hours.” I don’t know if my jaw actually dropped open, but to say I was astonished would be an understatement. What did drop was my stomach as the jet left the runway and climbed steeply into the dense cloud cover. I have never liked flying. Which is ironic considering I’m the personal attache for a diplomat who does a lot of flying, which means I do a lot of flying. Several questions were tripping all over each other in my head. I picked one. “In what?” I asked. Okay, not the brightest question I might have come up with, but if you’re flying from Jupiter to Earth you have to be flying in something and I was curious about what it was. It’s not like we had a shuttle service running between Jupiter and Earth. “I don’t know. Not sure anyone else does either but it scared the crap out of a whole lot of people who don’t scare easily. Apparently very advanced technology. Nobody believes it was built on Earth. In any case, she requested that her brother and I meet her on the station when she comes in.” I’m pretty sure my jaw really did drop open this time. “Uhm,” I said profoundly. “Let me see if I have this right. Holly Burton, who disappeared somewhere in the Jovian system six years ago under mysterious circumstances, has turned up just as mysteriously and made a trip from Jupiter to Earth, which takes several years, in an unidentified, probably alien high-tech space ship, just to have tea with you and her brother.” I’d heard the rumors about Theo and Holly Burton, of course. But I’d never taken them seriously. Now I was wondering if I should have paid more attention. Theo smiled as he tucked his glasses into his vest pocket. ”There is also the small matter of a meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations tomorrow morning. But it is true that her brother and I are probably the two people she trusts most. My guess? She’s looking for allies.” A career diplomat for twenty years, Theo never took anything at face value. Professional hazard. Did I mention that I have never wanted to be a diplomat?

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) Two hours later we were at the Kennedy Space Center where we waited another four hours for Robert, Holly Burton’s brother. He was a lawyer and had come all the way from New Zealand in one of those new American military ramjets that can cruise at mach 8. I can’t even begin to imagine what strings must have been pulled to make that happen. He arrived with his paralegal assistant in a jet that looked like something you’d see on the cover of a science fiction book. Theo introduced us. I never was clear about how they knew each other. Robert Burton was a tall, gray-haired man, wearing a black suit and tie. Add to that his wire-framed eye glasses and a well-used brief case and you have the perfect caricature of a lawyer. I might have been tempted to think the whole thing was some kind of elaborate practical joke until I was momentarily deafened by the roar of the ramjet taking off, which moved the practical joke idea into the ‘highly unlikely’ category. His paralegal could not have been more of a contrast. She was a stunningly beautiful woman, maybe in her early thirties, with intense blue eyes and short blond hair. She was wearing navy blue slacks, a white blouse with a light floral pattern, a maroon scarf flung casually over her shoulder, and a black cardigan. Robert introduced her as Riki Lindstrom. It occurred to me that if this was what paralegals looked like, maybe I should have become a lawyer. A bunch of military types hustled us out to a space plane, which was prepped and ready to go. Two Secret Service agents were on the plane. They introduced themselves as James Spence and Todd Lemark. It took me a moment to figure out why they were here. The United States Secret Service is responsible for providing security for heads of state and other high-ranking dignitaries visiting the United Nations headquarters in New York. Apparently the world was taking Holly Burton’s visit seriously. I had never been in space before and I have always felt a bit cheated that my first experience happened so fast that I didn’t have time to get mentally prepared for it. I had just gotten buckled in when a gigantic invisible hand shoves me hard into my seat as the space plane accelerates along the launch loop at something like three G’s until it is finally thrown into the sky. Literally. I read up on this. The space plane is literally thrown into space. Stranger than fiction. Anyway, the acceleration abruptly ended and my stomach decided this was as good a time as any to throw up. (This, by the way, was my first inkling that space travel was not going to be one of my favorite things.) In retrospect I should have passed on the clam chowder at Kennedy. My stomach emptied its contents into two barf bags and then decided to throw in some dry heaves for good measure. In some ways dry heaves are worse. Eventually a steward - yeah, really - gave me a pill that promptly knocked me out. I am definitely a proponent of healthier living through chemistry.

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) Theo woke me up as we approached Tiangong, which means ‘heavenly palace’ or something like that. The Chinese have a way with imagery that we Europeans can’t even come close to. Over the years Tiangong had grown to be a small city, complete with a thriving tourist industry. Space planes and launch loops had made it so that pretty much anybody could go into space at a surprisingly affordable price. This was largely the result of two events. The first was the coming of the Fragment, which was before my time. That had kicked a heretofore moribund space program in the butt and suddenly everyone and his grandmother was interested in space travel. The second was the discovery of an asteroid that had collided with Mars a couple billion years ago, leaving behind huge deposits of rare earth minerals. This led to a Martian ‘gold’ rush, except it was mainly about platinum and palladium. This in turn led to the rapid growth of a sizable colony on Mars. There were two other space stations in orbit around Earth and one in orbit around Mars. Tiangong was by far the largest and was the de facto Earth space port. It had eight docking bays connected by corridors that together formed a ring around the station. From a distance it looked like a necklace with eight large, equally-spaced beads. Each bay had a docking ring with airlocks on the outer side and a corridor connecting it with the station hub on the inner side. There was a time when space ship pilots docked their own ships at space stations. It only took one errant docking attempt and a hundred million dollar repair bill to change that. Now incoming ships matched orbit with the station several hundred meters away and a space tug came out and towed them into the station. One of those tugs now towed us to a docking ring where we docked with a gentle bump. I would have liked to have looked around the station a bit, but the section we were in appeared to be under a lock down. In fact we were the only people there. The floor, walls and ceiling of the room were covered with low-cut, pale yellow carpeting. Floor to ceiling poles were strategically placed to afford leverage points for propelling yourself around in zero-G or simply holding yourself in one place. There were no chairs in the room since the phrase “Have a seat and take a load off” made no sense whatsoever on a space station. The corridors connecting the bays were lined with hand rails which could be used to pull yourself along. In short, everything was designed with zero-G maneuvering in mind. We, on the other hand, had magnetized shoes, which allowed us to actually walk. Agents Spence and Lemark took us through a corridor to the next docking bay, where we were given to understand Dr. Burton’s space ship was already docked. This bay was identical to the one we had just come from except that the carpeting was green instead of yellow. Robert and Theo stood in the middle of the room. Riki and I stood off to one side near a wall. The two Secret Service men placed themselves on either side of us where they could watch all three entrances. “So,” I said to Riki, hoping absurdly that something would spark between us. “Now we get to meet the mysterious Holly Burton.” “Indeed,” she said dryly without looking at me. She appeared to be watching agent Lemark with great interest. I was suddenly very much aware that she was way out of my league and that I certainly couldn’t compete with a Secret Service agent. The airlock hatch opened and a woman with shoulder-length auburn hair floated out into the room. She was wearing blue jeans, a red-and-green checkered shirt, and a bright yellow scarf around her neck. She could have just come from a square dance. Surprisingly, the look worked for her. In fact, she was quite striking. Even attractive. Not that she could even begin to compare with Riki Lindstrom in that department. But I knew she had to be in her mid fifties and yet she looked twenty years younger. “Holly!” Robert started toward her but lost his footing and ended up floating into her with his arms flailing. She deftly caught him and used the railing along the wall for leverage to bring him back down to the floor so his boots could take hold again. We all laughed.

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) It was at this point that the trouble I mentioned earlier started. Three men entered the docking bay from the corridor we had just come down. They had guns. Two of them were black Africans. The third was Southeast Asian. Agent Spence immediately went for his gun but was stopped by Lemark, who had jammed a gun into his back. “Don’t!” he barked. Spence froze. Lemark reached around and pulled the gun from Spence’s holster. He wrapped one arm around the pole they were standing next to and slugged Spence hard in the back of the head with his own gun, which sent his limp body sailing down the corridor. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” said Lemark. “But there has been a change of plans. Don’t do anything stupid and everybody gets to live.” One of the Africans attached a small device to the door to the corridor that led to the next docking bay. It emitted a shower of sparks as he stepped away. He did the same to the door to the corridor leading to the station hub. “Locks are fried,” he said to Lemark. “We already took care of the other bay.” “How long does that give us?” asked Lemark. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.” Lemark turned to Holly Burton and said, “Dr. Burton, I need to take a look inside that ship of yours.” She looked startled for a moment, then laughed and quietly said something back to him. All I caught was, “Be careful what you wish for.” They both disappeared into the airlock. A few minutes later they returned. Lemark looked angry. “Bitch won’t open the damn airlock.” He walked over to Robert and pointed his gun at the middle of his chest. Without looking away from Robert he said, “Dr. Burton, I really am in a bit of a hurry.” “Violence won’t be necessary, Mr. Lemark” she said in a resigned voice. “I’ll open the hatch for you.”