Waterbug: Moving Forward

So, having almost ground to a halt less than 6,000 words into NaNoWriMo, and with only a week left to write the remaining 44,000 words. While my NaNo stats are telling me it'll take 6,300 words per day to finish on time, I don't think saying this won't get done falls under the purview of my usual pessimism. I'm pretty sure it's abso-frakking-lutely guaran-frakking-teed.

However, the sticking point is that I'm definitely still into these characters. As little ahead as I've actually begun to figure out, I like where it's going. I've introduced and started to formulate even more characters who're fun to write. I'm just sorta losing it in a couple areas:

1. Plot's never been my strong suit. Worlds and people in them? Fuggeddaboutit, but as soon as they need something to do to keep an audience entertained for a long time, then we're in trouble. I don't know what the solution is to this other than to keep throwing stuff at the wall until a plot comes together out of the mess.

2. The format. I definitely had a lot more fun writing the script versions of Waterbug than any of my prose attempts. I like letting these characters talk, often to each other. I like interspersing their conversations with action. Where I run into trouble, in prose, is figuring out how to work descriptions of stuff into the mixture. It may not be sexy and glamorous, but I think it'd get me from point A to point B a lot quicker if I could just set the scene in one block of text before two or more characters start talking to each other.

So, I think, since I'm somewhere in the middle of what would be the "pilot" of Waterbug, I'm going to, over the next couple months (3D has been woefully neglected while I've been busy not-writing for NaNoWriMo, so I need to strike up a better balance) work on turning the new content back into script versions to follow a revised version of the scene that I scripted way back in the summer. I've got ideas for other chunks of Earth's outer colonies that I want to explore, people, places, things etc. I've got history. I've got the starts of a handful of distinct colonial cultures. We'll see what happens...

Waterbug: NaNoWriMo Version

I've finished re-writing the first 'chapter' in Waterbug for National Novel Writing Month. After this point, I'm flying the Cargo-Hauler Waterbug into uncharted space, done boldly going where I've gone a half-dozen times before. What's next, you may ask? I don't know. I've got rough ideas. I need to explore what happens when Robins gets to Ganymede, and I'm going to introduce more than one character who can both walk in environments with gravity and speak English. Plus, the more terrified I've made Erika of returning to Titan City and her parents, I feel like a confrontation with whatever it is about that colony that truly frightens her is in order. 22 days and 47,764 words to go. Stay tuned!
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The ship shuddered, more violently than usual, violently enough to dislodge John Robins from sleep. He loosened the belt that kept him from drifting out of his bunk and turned to try and sleep on his side. The only light visible in this part of Waterbug came from the stars outside Robins' tiny window.

Then the alarm began blaring, and the captain's voice crackled over the intercom. "Back to sleep, Aspiring-Titan-City-Councilman Robins," the young girl ordered, slightly panicked. "Sitch is normal." Something clattered loudly on her end. "Under control. Definitely not doomed."

He undid the belt and launched himself towards the wall with the intercom. "Not doomed, you say?" he asked the intercom.

"Not a chance. Well, a chance. Big chance. Actually... you can breathe CO2, right?"

Months on the campaign trail had left the crass former lawyer with a dangerously overtaxed verbal filter, which he allowed to explode in the privacy of his quarters. As he dressed in the dark, a series of half-sentences spewed from his mouth, covering a range of topics from 'That little...' to 'If I get my hands on her...' Once dressed in the loose, warm jumpsuit that served as the zero-gravity equivalent of a bathrobe, he went back to the intercom. “No, as a matter of fact, I can't.” He chuckled nervously. “My body has this weird tendency to expel carbon-dioxide. I've been meaning to see a doctor, but, you know how it goes. What can I do to help?”

“You can... go back to bed. Relax. If you wake up tomorrow, everything will be fine.”

“If? I'm on my way! Engine room?” Without waiting for a response, he quickly pushed his weightless body out the door, propelling himself via a series of ladder rungs along the wall.

Outside the guest cabin, some of the warning lights actually worked.. Robins pulled himself aft, guided by those flashing red lights that were not burned out, shattered, or missing. In the semi-darkness, he could make out the large, transparent, water-filled pipes that. At the end of the hallway, he passed through an airlock. Normally, it separated the rotating living areas with gravity from the stationary parts without; the hold, engine room, and cockpit. It was superfluous on Waterbug.

At the far aft end of the ship, a sloppily hand-painted sign indicated the entrance to the “Captain's Playroom” and warned that any damage could “Kill Us All” and that “Horseplay should be undertaken only by trained professionals.” Under the paint, the raised lettering of “Engine Room” was still visible.

The engine room was a mess of parts, floating in the microgravity. Robins was careful to breathe through his nose to avoid inhaling any floating bolts, and that immediately alerted him to the rotten seafood scent of Waterbug's Europan co-pilot, Crabby.

The creature hung near his waterlock, four hind legs easily finding purchase among the pipes and machinery on the wall. A gigantic claw, the central of three forelimbs held a tool box, while a pair of smaller, dextrous arms twiddled nervously, ready to dig through the box as needed.
From under the chitinous shell, a pair of stalks tipped with beady 'eyes' turned to 'look' at Robins as he entered. Technically, they were sophisticated heat-sensing organs; heat was far more useful to detect than light underneath Europa's ice-encrusted oceans. His seven dangling mouthparts twitched fiercely as he hissed a brief, agitated question at Robins.

Robins wiped the alien's spittle from his face before retorting, “You know I can't speak your gibberish. Where the Hell is the captain?” He thought for a moment, then added, “Point; don't say.”

Crabby glared at Robins for a moment, gurgled a something that sounded dismissive, and pointed one of his smaller forelimbs into the gloom. In the dark, Robins could barely see a pair of bar feet dangling out of a large machine. They disappeared, and a moment later, a blinding white light replaced them. If he squinted, Robins could almost make out the torso of a lanky thirteen-year-old girl, Erika Stellane.

Captain Stellane exhaled a few hot breaths onto her hands to help them stand out to Crabby's infrared sensory organs. She dangled seven fingers below her chin in imitation of his mouthparts and hissed to get his attention. She flashed a series of quick gestures to the arthropod. Once Crabby was rifling through the toolbox, she seemed to notice Robins for the first time and flipped a switch on her headlight. The beam disappeared, replaced by a soft glow.

The tween could hardly be called cute; going through puberty in microgravity ensured that. Her limbs were way too long, the muscles beneath them too small. It was tough to tell, between splotches of cheap dye and a variety of grease and chemical stains, but she had red hair tied in an sloppy bun. She wore a greasy jumpsuit, sleeves rolled up to hide how little of her arms they covered.

Robins pushed off the door behind him and began floating towards the girl. “Aspiring-Titan-City-Councilman Robins,” she called, “Didn't I tell you to go back to sleep?” She reached up and caught a tool that Crabby hurled her way, then ducked back into the machine.

“I've never been able to sleep with flashing lights and sirens everywhere.”

From her crawlspace, Erika muttered, “Amazing you get any sleep in Titan City then...”

“What?”

“Nothing!” she called.

“Look,” Robins caught himself on a nearby machine to keep from floating past her. “This ship's clearly falling apart. There's got to be something I can do to ensure I don't need to take an escape pod the rest of the way to Ganymede.”

“First we'd need escape pods...”
“What?”

Erika puled herself back out. “I said, 'first we'd need escape pods.' We pawned 'em for parts a few months back.” She grinned. Given that confession, it was unsurprising that she was in dire need of about a month in a dentist's chair. “Also, everything you're hearing is normal.”

“This is normal?” Robins asked, one hand gesturing at everything, the other holding him in place.

“Yeah... 'cept the alarms... and the warning lights, but those are only for this faulty CO2 scrubber.” She smacked it with her wrench for emphasis. “And before you ask, this crawlspace is tight enough with just me; Crabby's got the tools, and I don't need anyone 'holding the light for me'.” She pointed to her headlight. “So, you can't help, and you may as well go back to your bunk so you can suffocate in comfort.” She ducked back in and began working again.

“What do you mean 'you can suffocate'? You don't, just me?”

“No, I meant 'we'.” She popped back out and signed something to Crabby. Both laughed; it must have been a joke, probably at Robins' expense. “'Sides, aren't you some big-shot politician, now?” She pointed her wrench accusingly and waited for an answer.

“Running,” he responded weakly, not liking where this was going.

“So, you could've flown in style, couldn't you've? Which, she added without letting him respond. There were actually good odds he could not. Even as big as Titan City was, the Outer Colonies Group' remoteness tended to keep their politics rather spartan, compared to the circuses that happened during election season on Earth, Luna, Mars, and a few of the larger asteroids. “Makes it miiiiighty suspicious that you would charter an old Scarab that —and lets not mince words, here; let's really make our leftover O2 count!— is worthless scrap even by Scarab standards.”

“Circumstantial,” there was a mantra in Titan's law schools: 'deny until you can't.' Robins wanted her to get it over with so he could react. It was the theatricality that aggravated him. He was cornered; they were alon so who was the big show for?

“Therefore, I can only surmise that you, Aspiring-Titan-City-Councilman Robins, chartered Waterbug because,” she paused to heighten the drama of her reveal, “You missed me!”

“Missed you? Why would I ever want to see you again? Losing your trumped-up emancipation trial cost me everything! All my credibility as a lawyer, right out the airlock because some sympathetic tweenie jury believed a nine-year-old girl belonged out on the streets! You're only flying around the O.C.G. in this pile of scrap metal you call a ship because of a freak loophole in Titanic Law, which, by the way, will be closed as soon as I'm elected. Then every delinquent like you in Titan City will be tightly leashed to her parents until age 18 when you can be reasonably stuck in a padded cell!”

“Aha! Nailed it! A confession, straight from your own mouth,” Erika noted Robins' perplexed expression and explained, “You chartered Waterbug for your big secret trip to Ganymede so you could keep an eye on me and, once we're back on Titan, drag me kicking and screaming back to my parents.

“You think I don't see it? That would be killer for your campaign! Call in all the top journalists in the Jovian Newsweb for the big photo-op, 'Parents Reunited With Estranged Daughter After Four Years of Titanic Double-You-Tee-Eff Thanks to Candidate Robins!' '”This is just the start,” Aspiring-Titan-City-Councilman Robins added. “Robins 2268!”' Don't worry, if anyone can force me to smile while I'm being crushed under point-oh-two-five gee's, it'll be my parents, so I won't ruin that for you.” She went back into the crawlspace and closed the hatch to seal herself in. She did not continue her repairs.

“Of course, it's all moot,” she announced, somewhat muffled by the hatch, “I won't let you. Crabby won't let you. And it's extra-moot because we're all going to suffocate before we even reach Ganymede.”

Robins stifled a laugh. He almost felt bad for her, but he had learned four years ago that she was a manipulative brat, a brat whose ship was going to get him killed. Given the circumstances, he felt no compulsion to pull his punches. “That's your theory? That I put my life and career on the line —the second career I'd be wasting by getting tangled up in your life, I might add— in your flying deathtrap to bring you home to your parents? You think I've got some file on my desktop with an elaborate flowchart of how I can reunite the Stellane family just to ensure your perfect misery? Well, I've got news for you. This may be something you're psychologically incapable of comprehending at your age, but you're not the center of the universe. I picked your rust-bucket over everything else in that junkyard they call a spaceport because I saw a Europan and thought, 'Hey, a pilot who can't speak any human languages, I bet he won't ask me any uncomfortable questions!'— an impression about which I learned I was sadly mistaken once I saw you here!”

“Yeah, I'm sure questions won't be an issue,” Erika called. The sound of metal scraping on metal suggested she was jury-rigging a lock. “When our corpses drift into Ganymede orbit in a few days. Politician in his pajamas, cash-strapped teenage girl hiding in the crawlspace, ship registered to a Europan, the newspost writes itself.
“Then again, the vultures'll probably ask anyway, won't they? Whaddaya think Missus Robins will say when they ask her about it? Is she gonna be all weepy to see your political career floating belly-up in the J.M.C.? Or will it be more like 'Frankly, I'm surprised it took him this long to get himself killed trying to do something deviant in zero-gee with a desperate, way-underage hooker.' Is there even a Missus Robins?”

“Leave her out of this, you deluded brat!” Robins launched himself at the CO2 scrubber and began frantically pounding on the hatch and trying to pry it open with his bare hands. After a few moments he gave up. “Fine, stay in there. You've gotta have E.V.A. gear somewhere. Once we get to Ganymede, it'll be a bargain to add you and the crab to the hit. A hundred-thousand for Councilwoman Griffins, and a pack of gum to make sure the annoying little girl suffocated like she said—“

The hatch flew open, smacking into Robins' chin. The smack sent him tumbling starboard. Erika emerged holding a small audio-recorder. “You win,” she called to Crabby, “My breakfast rations are yours.”

She turned to Robins' drifting form and waited for him to collide painfully with the wall. Then she spoke “As for you, Crabby's always happy to ensure that asphyxiation remains an option for you if you ever threaten me on my ship again. If it's any consolation, all the cash you're going to pay me to keep this out of the hands of the Titan Election Committee and out of the mailbox of every reporter in the whole of the J.M.C. Will ensure that your next flight on Waterbug will have all the comforts of home: Gravity, food that was vacuum-packed this century, lights, and of course,” she ducked back into the machine one more time, and the alarms and warning lights stopped, “Working Life support. Please enjoy the rest of your round trip, Aspiring-Titan-City-Councilman Robins!”

National Novel Writing Month

After several years of thinking, "This is a great idea, I should sign up," and then not doing so, I decided to take a stab at National Novel Writing Month:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/unitedshoes37/novels/waterbug-292447

The plan is to use the Waterbug script as a jumping-off point, rewrite it as prose, and then tell a handful of other stories within that universe, giving a bit more exploration to the characters and the setting.