Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMoPreVu 2011 #6: A web of lies

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Here’s my sixth of eight installments in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2011, presented in its raw and unedited format for all to see.

Also, I have decided to raise money this year for NaNoWriMo and the Office of Letters and Light to support their efforts in encouraging writers both young and old. So, I am asking you, my readers, to sponsor my writing effort this year.

If you head over to my fundraising page at StayClassy and help me reach my goal of $250, I will post my NaNoWriMo effort on my website on 1 December 2011. Help me double my goal, and I will post the NaNoWriMo story plus a completed version of the story of which my preview vignettes will become a part on 1 January. If we go beyond even double, I will find something else cool to do for you.

 

NaNoWriMo Preview #6

A web of lies

By Dennis L Hitzeman

 

Lucas Cantril never suspected that his quest to protect his nation’s vital interests would find him in a seedy adult club in Moscow. Frankly, Lucas never believed he would travel all that much when he took his first job with the Network Defense division of the Domestic Intelligence Service, but his latest assignment had kept him moving in ways he never would have expected.

Now, he had everything on the line. It had taken two meetings with superiors and calling in favors to convince them to let him fly to Moscow to begin with. Everything depended on whether Colonel Whiteman was telling even part of the truth and whether his supposed contact actually showed. If neither proved to be true, it would probably cost him his career.

He jumped slightly when a slight woman took the seat next to him, but he tried to cover his nervousness by taking another drink.

“Are federal agents always so jumpy?” the woman said.

Lucus’s heart thundered in his throat. He was supposed to be a business contact looking for hackers.

“Don’t be surprised, Special Agent Cantril,” she said. “Your government has never been particularly good at keeping secrets, especially those of their employees. Nevertheless, we are both here. Perhaps we could find a better place to talk?”

Lucas nodded and allowed himself to be lead out of the night club across the street to a nondescript cafe that served coffee and beer. The woman slipped the hostess a small wad of bills, and she showed them to a secluded booth in the back.

“So, now that we can dispense with the pretenses, what do you want?” she said after the waitress brought them their coffee.
“Miss Karova, someone needs to go down for what happened next week,” Lucas said, “and I have been lead to believe you might be able to help me in that regard.”

“Please, call me Natalia,” she said with the flash of a pretty smile. “Whether I can help you depends a lot on what might be in it for me.”

“Well, why don’t we start with what you might want,” Lucas said, trying to play it cool.”

“I doubt you would be here unless you already knew what I might want,” Natalia said. “I doubt the US government sends its agents out with blank checks too often these days.”

Lucas sighed. She obviously had the upper hand here. “Fair enough. It is my understanding that you want to leave the country without anyone knowing. I believe I can provide that capacity for you, so long as the information you provide leads my government to be able to take someone down.”

“What guarantee do I have that you will follow through, Agent Cantril?” Natalia said.

He reached into his jacked and pulled out a small envelope. “This is the information you need to get to a safe house. They will keep you there until my government has acted. Once the take down is complete, they will provide you with passage to the destination of your choice.”

She touched the envelop tentatively, as if thinking about something, then pulled a small slip of paper from her blouse. “The man you are looking for is called Alexander Varisky. He can be found at the address here.”

Lucas took the paper and she took the envelop, and without another word she departed. Lucas was having a hard time believing it would be that easy.

 

Outside, Natalia Korova, folded herself into the crowd making their way to the nightspots that dominated the street, congratulating herself on another job well done. She wasn’t called the “Black Widow” for nothing, she told herself, and soon her price would go up even more.

She was so lost in her thoughts that the private channel surprised her. It shouldn’t have. Her employers were very particular.

“Zdravstvujtye,” she said.

“Is it done,” her handler said.

“That and more,” she said. “I will be able to make it to the US undetected thanks to your own government.”

“Good,” her handler said. “Contact me at the usual place once you are in the States.”

“I will,” she said.

“Don’t get careless, Natalia. You are not safe yet,” her handler said, then the line went dead.

She was suddenly apprehensive, but chided herself. The rest of these players were children compared to her or her employers. What could go wrong?

 

Alexi almost gagged when she stepped into the dacha. The place reeked of unwashed bodies and stale beer. Vladimir’s crew were strewn about the main room in various states of stupor brought on by too many days without sleep and too much boost. She saw Alexander passed out on a chair, drunk beyond caring.

In one corner, Vladimir sat with a laptop perched on his knees, his eyes fluttering in that strange way they did when hackers were multi-tasking between hard machines an their own connections to the net. He had a five day growth of beard, and she was sure he hadn’t bathed in that long either.

She knew he knew she was there, so she just went straight to the room they shared and waited. If he was going to come, he would come soon enough, and if there was some way to get the information she needed, she would, especially given the state he was in.

It was only moments later when he staggered in reeking and weak from his marathon exertion.

“I thought you had left for good,” he slurred as he collapsed beside her.

She lay back next to him and caressed his cheek. “What are they doing to you, my dear, sweet Vladimir?”

He growled. “Your bastard lover Ryan has poisoned Alexander’s network, Alexi! We risk losing everything if we cannot fix what he has done.”

She slapped him, hard, and rocketed to her feet. “Never say anything like that to me again, you bastard. I have been true to you.”
She turned as if to go, and she heard him sob.

“Alexi, don’t go,” he said. “It will kill me if you go.”

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Why not just walk away?”

“I can’t Alexi,” he said. “You don’t understand…”

“Then tell me,” she put her hand on the doorknob and her heart thundered.

He sat up and buried his head in his hands. “Just don’t go.”

“I want to help you, Vladimir,” she said, “but I can’t if you don’t tell me.”

He looked up at her with blood-shoot, tear-stained eyes. And like an avalanche on one of the snow-covered slopes below them, he told her everything.

 

NaNoWriMoPreVu 2011 #5: Spilling the beans

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Here’s my fifth of eight installments in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2011, presented in its raw and unedited format for all to see.

Also, I have decided to raise money this year for NaNoWriMo and the Office of Letters and Light to support their efforts in encouraging writers both young and old. So, I am asking you, my readers, to sponsor my writing effort this year.

If you head over to my fundraising page at StayClassy and help me reach my goal of $250, I will post my NaNoWriMo effort on my website on 1 December 2011. Help me double my goal, and I will post the NaNoWriMo story plus a completed version of the story of which my preview vignettes will become a part on 1 January. If we go beyond even double, I will find something else cool to do for you.

 

NaNoWriMo 2011 Preview #5

Spilling the beans

By Dennis L Hitzeman

 

“Where the hell did you go, Colonel Whiteman?” Cantril said as he barged into Dean’s library without even the courtesy of a knock.

“Detroit. Why do you ask?” Dean said in his most nonplussed voice. The kid seemed to forget that he was a combat veteran. At the moment, he seemed like he was going to pop.

“After all, I didn’t actually agree to do anything specific for you, did I?” Dean continued. He could tell that Cantril was about to melt down, so he decided to press his attack, “So, you thought you’d just trace me from your command center until I led you to your mark. And then what? You were going to bust a cap in him? Take him in for “questioning?” Disappear us both? Why else would you send an SRT to a nightclub in Saint Louis where you thought I might be.”

Cantril was shaking with rage. Or fear perhaps. “Colonel, that is highly classified information. Perhaps you would like to come in and explain how you came to possess it.”

Dean laughed. He called it his commander’s laugh. “Please… Really? Have you bothered to ask yourself at all through the course of your investigation why any of this is happening? What crime has Ryan Alten committed?”

“Ryan Alten is a clear and present danger to national security, Colonel…”

“Everybody knows Ryan Alten stopped the attack against the Core a week ago, Cantril. Stopping an attack your own people couldn’t hardly constitutes a threat in my book,” Dean said. “So, I’ll ask again. Have you asked yourself what might be going on here?”

Cantril slumped into a chair across from Dean and covered his eyes with one hand. Advantage, Dean.

“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Dean said.

 

Kevin paced the floor of the studio apartment Ten had set him up in, slowly wearing a path in the carpet. It had been three days since he had last heard from Ten and more than a week since the last time he’d been online. In his world, that was like a hundred years.

What was worse is that he was convinced Ten was just storing him. Kevin suspected he’d wake up one day with his network connection restored and no evidence than any of this craziness had ever happened. Maybe that’s what he wished for, because the alternatives were scarier.

He about knocked himself over when someone knocked at the door. Knocked. Didn’t even bother with the comm. Then he noticed the screen was blank and he froze.

“Yeah?” he shouted.

Ten’s voice came from the other side. “Room service.”

Kevin opened the door slowly in case things were not as they seemed, but it was only Ten and two bags that looked like luggage. Ten came inside, pulling the bags behind him.

“Going on a trip?” Kevin said as he closed the door.

“Nope,” Ten said. “You are.”

Kevin eyed the bags. “Where?”

Ten shrugged. “That depends entirely on you.”

“Is everything a game with you?” Kevin said.

“This is hardly a game,” Ten said, “but the circumstances of the situation demand different preparations.”

Ten gestured at the bags, “On my right is your old life, rebooted. It contains a change of clothes and a bus ticket to Spokane. It also contains a voucher for three months rent at a place a lot like the one you recently inhabited, a ten thousand dollar prepaid card, and the contact information for someone who can get you back on the net.”

Kevin’s heart pounded. With that kind of setup, he could get months ahead from where he was before. Ten continued.

“On my left is another kind of life altogether, but I can’t tell you much more than that it involves the things I and some others are engaged in and that it will change you forever. If you take this bag, someone will meet you in the parking lot and the rest will happen from there.”

Kevin’s instinct was to take the right bag and forget it, but he couldn’t force himself to say it. Instead, he said, “Why should I trust you. It just sounds like you’re trying to disappear me one way or another.”

“Do you really think I would go to this extreme to make something like that happen?” Ten said. “I could have just let the federales grab you and saved myself the trouble.”

Ten gestured to the left bag. “Look, Kevin, you’ve got a lot of promise, but let me be frank: you’re young and you’re stupid, and you’re wasting your talents writing identity theft scripts and joining hack for hire teams. If you want to be more than that, here’s your chance. If not, you can have your old life back.”

Kevin looked back and forth between the two bags, and he realized he was rocking back and fourth. Then he realized what he was about to do, and he felt himself panicking.

He reached out and took the left bag and choked. “Do I just go out now?”

Ten nodded. “There’s a white rental car waiting for you in the parking lot. The driver will take you where you need to go.”

Outside, Kevin found the car, driven by an old man with a cast iron hand shake and a military buzz cut. “I’m glad to meet you, Kevin. Ten’s told me a lot about you. My name’s Dean. Settle in, because we’re in for a little bit of a drive.”

 

Vladimir thought he was going to cry. Every time he thought he had the exploit nailed down and fixed, it reappeared somewhere else and kept doing whatever it was doing. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn the thing was alive.

He realized he was shaking as he looked around the room. It might have been two days since he had slept, and even the boost wasn’t really working anymore. The rest of his team looked like the cast of a bad zombie movie. It’d been four days since he’d last seen Alexi, and when he left he wondered if he ever see her again.

But in that time, he had come to realize on thing. Once, years ago, he had taken a wrong turn and it had cost him everyday of his life since then. He hadn’t realize how much the cost had been, but now, he thought, the whole amount was due and he had no capacity to pay.

Alexander came back into the room, haggard and drunk, and Vladimir flinched.

“Have you fixed it, Vlad?” Alexander said.

Vladimir wasn’t sure if he was mumbling. “We need more time. This was an expert hack.”

Alexander raged. “We don’t have more time, Vladimir! Do you have any idea what is going to happen to us if we don’t fix this? Do you have any idea what they can do to us if they do not get what they want.”

“No, Alexander, I do not,” Vladimir said. “Because I do not know who they are or why any of this even matters.”

Alexander’s bloodshot eyes widened, and for a moment, Vladimir thought he was having a seizure. “No I suppose you don’t know anything, do you, my dear Vladimir. Walk with me. I have things to tell you.”

 

Alexi Domanovic had lived for a very long time with the guilt that she was a traitor. Yet, somehow, she had always found a way to explain away the reasons why she had done what she had done all those years ago. That was, she had been able to do so until she watched the man she had betrayed slowly destroying the man she had come to love. It was some sort of grand irony that she was the one who might have the capacity to put the whole thing to a stop.

She’d left the message four days before on a message board she knew he sometimes checked. There used to be other ways to get in touch with him, but those had all vanished as the ante went up over the past week. She was sure she knew why the things were happening the way they were, but she wasn’t sure what he might want. All she knew is that it involved what they had gotten themselves involved in.

She’d waited for a reply by taking a trip to Moscow to visit some old friends she hadn’t seen in a long time. They’d shopped and drank and made a general nuisance of themselves, just like in the old days, and it was almost enough to ease her impatience and fear about his reply.

It came on the third day, terse and to the point. Be at a certain cafe at a certain time. Connect to a certain node by a certain channel. Do not make any attempts to block what might happen next.

Even with that, she wasn’t prepared for the brute force of the hard channel that connected with her that afternoon and ripped her from the net as if she’d never been there at all.

“Alexi, my dear, why does it not surprise me that you are in the thick of this,” Ryan said.

“Don’t be stupid, Ryan,” she said. “You know I have been with Vladimir for a long time.”

“So you have,” Ryan said. “What are you offering?”

“What do you want?”

“Why should I expose myself that way, especially to you?” Ryan said. “You have a habit of using that kind of information to your advantage.”

“Ryan, I can’t do anything about what I did once, but I can do something about now.” Alexi said. “You’re clearly after something, and if you tell me what it is, I will find it out for you.”

“Who is employing Vladimir?” Ryan said.

“A syndicate boss by the name of Alexander Varisky,” she said.

“And who is employing him?”

She paused. No one had ever brought that up. It seemed like such a simple piece of information, yet she had no idea. “I don’t know.”

“Find out, and we’ll talk.”

The connection went dead and she was back in the regular net wondering what they had all gotten themselves into.

 

NaNoWriMo Preview #4: Be careful what you wish for

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Here’s my fourth of eight installments in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2011, presented in its raw and unedited format for all to see.

Also, I have decided to raise money this year for NaNoWriMo and the Office of Letters and Light to support their efforts in encouraging writers both young and old. So, I am asking you, my readers, to sponsor my writing effort this year.

If you head over to my fundraising page at StayClassy and help me reach my goal of $250, I will post my NaNoWriMo effort on my website on 1 December 2011. Help me double my goal, and I will post the NaNoWriMo story plus a completed version of the story of which my preview vignettes will become a part on 1 January. If we go beyond even double, I will find something else cool to do for you.

 

NaNoWriMo Preview #4:

Be careful what you wish for

By Dennis L Hitzeman

Vladimir paced before the huge picture window that looked down on the tree covered expanse of the mountainside below them. He was nervous and he really wished he had a cigarette. Or some vodka.

He had somehow managed to conceal their new mission for the entire move to the dacha. But now, the rest of the crew was getting antsy, Alexi was getting impatient, and Vladimir wondered if this whole gig ended up with him dead in some frozen river.

He turned and looked at them. “Our employers want us to find the one responsible for attacking us.”

The rest of the team gave each other confused glances.

“It wasn’t the Americans?” Anatoly said.

Vladimir shook his head and studiously avoided Alexi’s gaze.

“Will we get paid more?”

Alexi interrupted before he could answer. “If it was not the Americans, then who was it, Vladimir?”

Now everyone was looking at him again.

“You already know?” Anatoly asked.

He turned back to the window. “Yes, yes I do know, and I fear he may be impossible to find.”

 

Ryan was surprised when he felt the tickle of a private channel from outside his enclave. He maintained several relays for a small group of people from the rest of the net who might want to communicate with him from time to time, but this was clearly not one of them.

He was even more surprised when he IDed who it was.

“Vladimir, I told you never to call me at this number,” he said.

“Ryan, you are just as much of an ass now as the last time I spoke with you,” Vladimir said. “And, it seems that you have been a very, very bad boy toward my employers as of late.”

Ryan laughed. “If you only knew, Vladimir, you would probably be a lot more desperate than you already are calling me direct.”

“We can do this easy, or we can do this hard, Ryan,” Vladimir said.

“Really, Vlad. You have no idea what you are in the middle of.” Ryan said.

“We will find you, Ryan. And when we do, my employers will not extend to you the kind offer I am willing to make.”

“I doubt you will find me unless I let you, Vladimir, though I suspect you will find your employers less than understanding about that fact. Do svidaniya and good luck with all that,” Ryan said.

Then, he cut the channels and keyed his self-destruct codes for his outside nodes. And just like that, any trace of Ryan Alten or any of his aliases vanished from the net. Next, he keyed up several bots and coded them to start cleaning any traces Kevin might have left behind. One could never be too safe.

Finally he unleashed a spider to gather whatever information could be found on one Vladimir Pentrenko. He smiled at that last one. Vlad was a worthy adversary, and that made the game far, far more exciting.

 

Vladimir swore and pounded the table while Alexi glowered menacingly. She had not taken the news that Ryan Alten was their quarry well, and that had added to the turmoil the rest of the group felt over their latest assignment.

“He’s gone,” Anatoly said.

“Yes, I know that,” Vladimir said.

“No, Vladimir, he’s gone,” Anatoly repeated. “As in, as far as the net is concerned, neither Ryan Alten nor any of his aliases ever existed.”

Vladimir went back to his feeds. Then he swore again. How had the man managed to do that? Then he realized he felt the same green fire he had heard from Natalia at the club.

“I told you he was the most amazing hacker alive,” Alexi said from her perch in the corner. “We will never catch him in this kind of game because he is the one who invented it.”

Vladimir refused to meet her gaze, mostly because he knew she was right. Then another thought, a horrifying thought, leapt into his head.

“Alexi, this was all a feint,” he said, burying his head in his hands.

She shoot her head. “What?”

“Never mind. I have to talk to Alexander.”

 

Dean and Larry sat at Larry’s kitchen table, the dossiers of the twenty eight engineers and technicians who had defected from Bione some twenty years before spread out before them. Dean had to hand it to Larry, the man hadn’t lost his touch.

At the time the defections had occurred, Bione was one of the biggest defense contractors on the planet, focused mostly on bioengineering and human biotechnological interfaces. They had presented the Department of Defense with one of the most advanced and intriguing methods for enhancing humans that any of them had ever seen, but just as the ink dried on the contract, the entire team responsible for developing the technology walked out.

What followed was a dark time in American defense history. Not only did the team walk, but they dumped the entire contents of their research onto the public net. Overnight, anyone with a few thousand bucks and some patience could gen up an at least primitive version of the technology the DoD had just promised to pay more than a trillion dollars for.

It also meant that, overnight as well, millions of people around the planet could suddenly connect to the net as if it were a part of themselves. Native connection, as it was technically called, meant that people, but most especially hackers, could use the net like they breathed. The resulting chaos was terrifying and ushered the world to the brink of war.

Dean had lead the team tasked with counter attacking the fury unleashed by those defections, and they had succeeded for the most part. They had taken down the people they thought had caused the defection to begin with, defeated the hackers who were suddenly able to run amok on anyone’s system they liked, and established protocols for preventing all but the most sophisticated and sinister attacks from being able to compromise US interests on the net. He thought they had solved the problem twenty two years ago.

Now he looked down at the dossier of Ryan Alten, a junior biohacker on the Bione team at the time, and realized that even he hadn’t known the whole story at the time. He had thought the men responsible for those events dead for two decades, but if Larry was right, they had killed figureheads and the real leader had a legitimate ax to grind.

 

Alexander was not amused, but Vladimir did not expect him to be after the long and delayed train ride from Moscow.

The tea house was a cozy and out of the way affair, and in the depths of winter deserted. Vladimir could not think of a better place to discuss what he needed to say. A quick payoff had sent the waitress and the cook looking for someplace to wait out their meeting. Now he was left with Alexander.

“Well?” Alexander said.

Vladimir steeled himself. “I am afraid your network has been compromised, Alexander.”

Alexander threw his head back and laughed, then grabbed Vladimir by the collar. “You made me spend twelve hours on a stinking supply train to tell me something that cannot be possible? I should kill you now except that Natalia tells me you are still useful to me.”

Vladimir slumped back into his chair as Alexander let go. He might as well get on with it. “Who paid you to attack the Americans, Alexander?”

The man’s glare was an inferno. “You are walking on very, very thin ice, my friend.”

“I know that I am,” Vladimir said, “yet you must ask yourself why a criminal like me would put myself at risk right now with someone as powerful and deadly as you, Alexander.”

Alexander watched him for a long time. When he finally looked away, he said, “There are powerful interests who wish to know what the Americans know about the Bione technology. Our attack was designed to lay malware inside their network to seek that information out.”

“But who were they, Alexander?” Vladimir said. “Do you know who they are?”

Alexander slammed his fist on the table. “Why does that matter, Vladimir? I do not pay you to question my motives.”

“It matters because the one who attacked you is Ryan Alten,” Vladimir said, “and I can assure you that where our attack failed, I am certain his succeeded.”

A stream of curses sputtered from Alexander’s face as his face alternated white and read. Finally, he said, “Are you certain.”

“I would not risk dying by your hand if I was not, Alexander,” Vladimir said.

“Then you are certain our network has been compromised?” Alexander said.

“There can be no other reason he would have attacked you that I can imagine,” Vladimir said, “except to discover who is paying you or where they are or what they plan to do with what they might have learned.”

Alexander gave him a smoldering stare. “Natalia is right, you are still useful to me.”

 

Dean loved Lebanese food, a fact that was apparently common enough knowledge that Ryan agreed to meet him at Al Ameer in Dearborn, Michigan. He was surprised that the man agreed to meet him in person given the likelihood that the government had tracked his every move since his meeting with Cantril, but Ryan had insisted on both the face to face meeting and the place.

Dean was surprised at the man who took his seat in the booth across from him. He looked far younger than Dean expected and yet seemed far more mature than he had come to expect hackers of any sort to be. Ryan also seemed impossibly self-confident, a trait Dean found both repulsing and endearing at the same time.

“I’ll have the shawarma and coffee,” Ryan told the waitress like he ate there everyday, “and please make sure I get the check.”

“Don’t think I’m going to cut you any slack because you bought me dinner,” Dean said. “I’m not a cheap date.”

Ryan shrugged. “You know they brought you in because they thought it would intimidate me, right?”

“It had occurred to me,” Dean said, “but I doubted from the very beginning you were the type to be dissuaded by such things.”

“I suspect that, given what I’ve learned about what you’ve been doing for the past twenty two years, that you and I share a lot more in common than either of us might want to admit,” Ryan said. “We’re just coming at it from different directions.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Dean said. “Please explain.”

“What happened after we walked from Bione left a mark on you. You saw a system corrupted by its dependence on technology everywhere you looked, and you realized unless somebody did something, it was going to eat itself,” Ryan said. “So, you started straight farming because what can be more connected to reality than making sure people can still eat?”

“Fair enough,” Dean said, “but what does that have to do with you and I sharing commonality?”

“I happen to know that the snake is still eating its own tail,” Ryan said. “I walked away. You walked away. But the thing that corrupted the system kept on going. You’re trying to save things by making sure there’s something left after it’s all said and done. I’m trying to make sure there’s anyone left to care.”

“Larry told me what you told him,” Dean said, “but I have two questions: why did you tell him and why should anyone believe you?”

“First, Larry Winters is one of the most gifted archivists the world has ever known. I wanted to make sure that, if anything happens to me before I finish what I am trying to do, someone knew my side of the story. Second, if you really think I’m lying, then why are you here?”

“I could have just lead the government to you, you know,” Dean said, half wondering if that might not be true.”

Ryan laughed. “The government has caught itself in its own trap. The reason they can’t find me, Bione can’t find me, and their backers can’t find me is because they just assume everyone is on the net. They depend on being able to track everyone there, so the number of people who they assign to do actual physical surveillance anymore is almost non-existent.”

“So you’re telling me that there’s no one looking for either of us right now?”

Ryan shook his head. “No, I’m telling you that they were convinced that you drove to Saint Louis this morning and that they have a special response team raiding a night club there as we speak. It will take them days to figure out what happened, and by that time, we will have long concluded our business together.”

Dean looked at Ryan intently. “So let’s say I believe you. What next?”

 

NaNoWriMoPreVu 2011 #3: Racing time

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Here’s my third of eight installments in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2011, presented in its raw and unedited format for all to see.

Also, I have decided to raise money this year for NaNoWriMo and the Office of Letters and Light to support their efforts in encouraging writers both young and old. So, I am asking you, my readers, to sponsor my writing effort this year.

If you head over to my fundraising page at StayClassy and help me reach my goal of $250, I will post my NaNoWriMo effort on my website on 1 December 2011. Help me double my goal, and I will post the NaNoWriMo story plus a completed version of the story of which my preview vignettes will become a part on 1 January. If we go beyond even double, I will find something else cool to do for you.

 

NaNoWriMo Preview #3

Racing time

By Dennis L Hitzeman

 

Kevin sat on a park bench taking quick sips from his can of energy drink without really thinking about what he was doing. The thought that he was sitting on a park bench made him laugh out loud because the last time he had done something like that he’d been about twelve. Then he looked around to see if anyone of the half dozen other people in the park noticed his outburst, and the nervousness and sipping set in again.

Once Ten had locked in his hardened channel, Kevin had kind of freaked out. He found himself locked into some kind of enclave and his whole connection was somehow inside of it. All of his data and feeds was still there, accessible and manipulable, but he knew from a dozen quick checks that he had simply vanished off the net like all the other people in his cell.

He tried for at least an hour to figure a way out of the hard channel, but it might as well of been the ultramax prison they sent all the terrorists to, because there was no way out. So, he did the next thing that came to mind. He disconnected and walked away.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been offline, let alone walked outside. His apartment was hardly in an archology—he couldn’t afford downtown—but it did have an indoor track he could walk if he wanted the rapid serve did just as well as indoor shopping centers.

Of course, he wasn’t really offline either. His wireless connection continued to monitor all his scripts and bots and feeds, though he thought it was strange that his hardened prison still allowed his harvesters to run. Maybe Ten didn’t need another mouth to feed.

Nevertheless, this was the most disconnected he had been… since college at least. In a way, it felt kind of good.

Kevin’s revelry was broken by the tickle of a private channel request. Inside his prison?

“Yes?”

It was Ten. “Where are you? No wait, are you wireless?”

Kevin’s leg started to bounce. “Yeah, why?”

“Shut it off.” Ten said.

“What a second,” Kevin said. “You’ve already got me locked up–”

“Shut it off now!”

Kevin didn’t have time to reply. Instead, his wireless connection fuzzed, jolted, and was gone. He jerked at its sudden absence like someone had just hit him in the head and let out a little yelp.

“What the…” he heard himself saying.

About the same time, a white van skidded to a halt on the street, and several people piled out the back, wearing the tell-tale blue jump suit uniforms of some task force or another. They were joined moments later by two men in suits from a non-descript black sedan. Kevin thought he was going to wet himself.

One of the blue-suiters held something in the air, and Kevin knew it had to be a sniffer. His heart thundered so loud he was surprised they couldn’t hear it.

He squeaked when someone sat down beside him on the bench with a heavy thump. The bum reeked of alcohol and some other smells he couldn’t quite identify.

“Are you high?” the bum asked.

“What?” Kevin said. “No!”

“Then why were you using your wireless just now?”

Kevin about fell over. “Ten?”
The bum laughed. “Hardly.”

“This is just nuts,” Kevin said. “Who are you then?”

“Right now, I’m the man saving your life,” the bum said, handing him a paper wrapped bottle, “before it gets hauled off to some dark corner of the world and rezzed, so maybe you could calm down and act like your drinking from that bottle until our friends over there get bored and go look somewhere else for you.”

Kevin tipped the bottle toward his lips and noticed that the package contained only the top of a bottle. Just inside, there was a flex screen.

Read this very carefully, Kevin. This is not some sort of a game or something. You are the only surviving member of your cell. The rest got popped yesterday. I am not sure how you survived, but that shows some skill, which is why I am going to try to help you. But, you have to do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, or you’re done. Got it?

Kevin didn’t know what else to do but nod.

Ok, good. Your friend is going to leave once the heat gets bored. When all of them are gone, I want you to find a coffin motel and open the bag. There will be more instructions after that.

He felt the bum get up and start to shuffle away and at the same time noticed that the car and the van were headed down the road. He jumped up from the bench and headed toward the nearest bus stop, his heart pounding in his ears and his mind racing to try to figure out what he had gotten himself into.

 

Vladimir opened the door so hard it rebounded off the wall and back into him, which made him that much more angry. When he left the club, he’d been terrified, but the train ride back had tempered his fear and replaced it with a kind of rage he hadn’t felt in a long time.

The rest of his team looked at him with wide eyes and hands poised over their weapons, and Vladimir realized he had also almost gotten himself shot. He wondered if that wouldn’t have been a better outcome at that point.

Alexi peaked her head around the corner from the kitchen. “Vlad, that kind of think is likely to get you killed if you keep it up. I take it the news is not good.”

“We’re not getting paid?” Anatoly said.

Vladimir carefully closed the door. “Yes, we are getting paid. No, the news is not good. But before anything else, we need to pack it up. We’re headed for the dacha.”

The rest of the crew scrambled to start packing up their equipment and gather their belongings. Alexi put her hand on her hip. “Wait! What? Nobody said anything about the dacha. What’s going on?”

Vladimir sighed and leaned against the door. He should have never brought her into this. “We have to at least change location, golubushka, before I can explain any more. We may have to do this again before it’s all done, but I will do my best to explain once we’re on our way.”

Alexi glared at him and threw the towel she had in her other hand toward the counter. He knew how she hated the country, but he had no choice. Maybe he could send her to her mother’s.

“Don’t even think about dumping me on my mother,” she said as she disappeared into their bedroom. “I’m with you on this, even if it means the dacha.”

Then she slammed the door. Someone in the apartment below them bellowed something unintelligible followed by a very intelligible string of curses probably directed at them.

“She’s going to get us killed, Vlad,” Anatoly said.

“That might be better,” Vladimir said.

 

Kevin sat in the booth of the restaurant picking at his food. It had been a tumultuous few days that found him traveling half way across the country by bus to wait for a mysterious contact to meet him at the place he now sat, proudly announcing itself as “Bunny’s Hasty Tasty, a Dayton Institution.”

He tried to avoid eye contact and found himself longing for his connection to the net. It had been four days since he’d last been online, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Somehow Ten, or someone, had managed to erase his security IDs from the net, and unless he was going to brute force his way back on, there wasn’t an access point anywhere that would accept his connection.

Someone slid into the booth across from him, and he was surprised to see what he might have mistaken for a very young man except for the gray in his hair and day old beard. Somehow, he knew he was in the presence of the master.

“Ten, I assume?” Kevin said.

“I’m glad you followed my instructions,” Ten said. “This had the potential to get very ugly for you.”

“Look, what is this all about anyway,” Kevin said, hoping he might finally get some insight into what he had gotten himself into.

Ten shook his head. “Do you really want to know? I mean, really, Kevin. You’re a privateer, right? I’m helping you because you helped me and I know you didn’t sign on for these kinds of consequences. We’re both making the best of a bad situation, but do you really want to know why?”

“Yes, I think I do,” Kevin said. He wasn’t sure why he said it, yet he knew he meant it. He did want to know. He wanted to know about the attack against the Core and about their attack against the Core’s attackers. He wanted to know why it seemed like there were a hundred federal agents looking for him now. He wanted to know who Ten was and what he was up to.

Then he realized that, more than anything else, he wanted to know how to be like Ten, doing something that seemed to matter, instead of harvesting his living off bots committing identity theft.

“Well, I guess I didn’t read you wrong,” Ten said, “but it’s a whole lot more complicated than spilling the beans on everything just yet.”

“I figured,” Kevin said. “What first?”

“First, you finish your lunch and I eat mine, then we get you set up somewhere more comfortable than a coffin motel.”

 

NaNoWriMo preview 2011

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Ok, kids, I have an idea.

Unlike a last year, I am completely unprepared to write for NaNoWriMo this year despite the fact that I have committed to writing this year as well. The fact that I haven’t been writing at anything near that kind of volume since last year compounds the problem.

So, my plan now is to write eight approximately 1667 word sketches over the next eight days (starting tomorrow) in an effort to get my writing gears in motion, and to hold me to this attempt and, perhaps, to inspire others, I will post the results of these sketches UNEDITED on this weblog under the title NaNoWriPreVu 2011 as soon as they are finished every day.

That way, you can read them. Maybe they’ll inspire you. Maybe they’ll annoy you. Maybe they’ll offend you. Maybe you’ll think, “Man, this guy sucks. I could write better stuff than that.”

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll try to prove you can. If you do, in a way, I have succeeded better than if what I wrote got published.

Are you in?

DLH

To NaNoWri or not to NaNoWri…

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After last year’s successful performance during NaNoWriMo, the question before me is whether to try again this year. The biggest problem with doing so is the investment it takes to write 1,667 words on a particular subject when that has not been my habit up until now.

And, that, perhaps, speaks to a bigger problem: people who claim to want to write but who are not writing. Right now, I’m one of them. I can make all the excuses in the world for why that is so, but in the end I’m just another writer who’s not writing.

So, to NaNoWri or not to NaNoWri… I have fourteen days to decide.

DLH

NaNoWriMo Days 10-18: Closing in on home

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Day 18 finds me just short of 2/3rds of the way to my goal with 12 days to go. Of course, a busy schedule and a cold/the flu had to intervene along the way, but this story still has legs, and I think it will reach 50,000 words and beyond.

The other day, another writer noted that middles suck, and I am often inclined to agree. I’m also inclined to believe that it its middles that make a story, even if they’re not as memorable as the beginning or the end. I think middles are the part of the story that make it make sense. If the middle doesn’t hang together, then the beginning and end are like islands in a storm tossed sea, disconnected without anything useful between them.

DLH

NaNoWriMo Day 5: The philosophy of writing

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I have always tried very hard to make sure, as I am writing about writing, to be sure I do not presume or insinuate that everyone else should write like me. What works for me may not work for someone else, but what works for me might inspire someone else.

Today, I found myself being inspired by people who write in ways entirely unlike my own. Yet, in their own exploration of the art and the craft, I found kindred spirits and hope.

I think too many people dismiss writing for a variety of reasons, yet almost all of them spent at least thirteen years or more learning how to do it. Writing is what you make it, and I think the attempt opens pathways in the mind that are worth exploring for anyone.

So, whether you write fifty or five thousand words a day, write them. Mull them over. Savor them. Share them, if you will. Whatever you do with them, the effort will have been worth it.

DLH