My head cleared this morning. It wasn’t a PH day, but I was happy to awaken with my head relatively calm. I’ve been busy at work all day looking forward to my “free time” to sit down and write. My forced writing lately has been more a result of my tiredness and headaches than deficient desire. The tall mocha IV drip has started and I’m hoping it takes me somewhere interesting.

I finished writing for the day (the results come after this editorial comment). I once again failed to write any real part of the story. It’s becoming clearer, I think, which should be a good thing. I wish I knew whether any of this clarity will result in a real story. The following is a mishmash of notes for the story(ies).

Before I get started:

Things to Buy: On PRI, I heard that J.M. Coetze (a South African author and Nobel-prize winner I respect) learned to write novels by reading the notes of Samuel Becket.

Story Idea: (Not being able to make up story ideas; now they come too fast for me to write them all.) For immortality pill: what happens when the pill arrives, but it keeps people at their current age, i.e., old people stay old forever; another aspect to explore. What happens to the old people?

Random Notes on The PSS Lucille: (I really need a better title.)

The first story: Jake is a junior officer on a naval patrol vessel when it comes across a Generations Vessel, which has been traveling for thousands of years to reach this solar system. When it left, a treaty was reached between the then System Government to absorb the population in exchange for a quantity of metals that the Generations Vessel would transport. During those thousands of years, the System (perhaps corporations) found the metals and mined them from undiscovered (when the agreement was made) asteroids. There is now no need of the metals that the Generations Vessel carries.

A person’s life lasts hundreds of years (but they’re not immortal—that’s a different story). This is early in Jake’s career. How is the government at this time?

What is the response? Does the government order the navy to turn away the GV? This should be the start of the downward spiral of the System Government (and the society). They would have been falling earlier, but this is the first obvious symptom. (There probably should have been many governments, some System Governments, some individual planet or continent governments, during the solar system’s history. Many civilizations—but with new communication and library technologies, each new “society” builds on the old ones, so while there is a new government or society, it’s based strongly on the old one.) The SG refuses to…before I go there, why is the SG negotiating? I would rather get away form the idea of an Empire-style navy, and move more to a corporate navy. The libertarians dream: all industries, including military, have been privatized. The SG lays down the law, but the private military enforces the law.

Why have a central government at all? Free market—doesn’t work. The government has powers in the form of money. It taxes the people. How can they enforce the taxation? Through the private military. There is not one military, but many small ones. This allows the government to control all of them but having the threat of one against the other. Very complicated and risky. The militaries are based on geography—the ground forces are regional; the navy is quadrant based. This has evolved over many centuries.

Interesting corporate-based solar system. Yup. What about ethnicities? They still exist, but it’s less separate. Race is mostly outdated because of interbreeding. The only remnant is religions, which are making a comeback in this age. Why? The threats of terrorism—but that comes later, after the incident with the GV. The GV is what begins the terrorism. And eventually where Jake must make his choice (very vague).

I need to introduce a simple concept along with Jake during this first story. Main concepts: Planetships; Solar System governments (with no guidance from outside the system b/c of SOL issues); incoming Generations (containing people looking for a better life on a different planet or asteroid).

The Generations cause the problems. You have a balanced system with mature governments and populations, when a Generations arrives from another solar system. It might have traveled for hundreds or thousands of years to arrive. It has a huge population (hundreds of thousands to millions), and wants to share in the resources of the solar system.

***

(Jake wouldn’t be nervous—or would he? No. It’s you who would be nervous.)

Jake stood before the door leading to the bridge. He yanked on his white duty shirt to straighten it for the umpteenth time since dressing. This was his first day of duty on the PSS Lucille, his first assignment after graduating from flight school. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Lieutenant Jake *** reporting for duty, Captain.”

“You’re a few hours early, Lieutenant. The shift change isn’t until twenty-hundred hours.”

Jake glanced at his watch nervously.

***

Purpose of this story: introduce Jake. He needs to be outrageous. He’s the Captain Kirk of the story, but we’re catching him early in his career for the dying navy, which is part of the dying Empire. What is pulling the Empire apart?

I still don’t feel ready to start these stories. I don’t know what I’m waiting for…perhaps I need a better understanding of the world I’m creating. I also need to understand Jake. What makes him special? I have Jake. And I have the conflict. I also have his growth, or failure to be more specific (damn, this theme seems to follow through all my stories). He’s an intelligent risk taker. A trained foot soldier, who returns to the military to fly Planetships after fighting in ground wars for the Empire. (I need a better name than Empire.) He’s brilliant and lives his life according to principles. He thinks deeply and has “more original ideas than he knows what to do with.” His political sense is weak, but his strong ability to push his ideas, and the thoughtfulness of his ideas help him succeed.

He’s not overly eager; he thinks he knows what’s best for the navy and the Empire. He plays a political gambit late in his career in an attempt to save the Empire, but he loses. He might run for political office, or try to get the top naval job; that’s his downfall, and the story with Cini begins a few years after that, when he’s settled in as a Captain of the Planetship, broken. It’s Cini that pulls him out of his failure and he convinces him to act once more.

When talking to Jake, it was difficult to look into his eyes. The darted in all directions, never settled. Once his thought was finalized, his eyes would bore into you, imploring you to understand what he was saying. Few people did. His mind worked fast, and he lost confidence in people quickly when they fell behind. He would explain his thoughts when needed, but it became more of a lesson than an exchange.

He’s smart, why are people going to like him? People like clever but not intelligent. People will like him because he provides solutions. People like solutions. He doesn’t just say no.

Jake sleeps a few hours a night, forcing himself awake. He never talks about his time in the ground forces. He was there and he did things. He killed people and let forces in battle as a noncommissioned officer. He did what he thought best for his forces. Jake exercises every evening. He pushes himself because that’s what he’s always done.

What about his weaknesses?

Jake is impatient with people. He does not judge quickly, but when he comes to a conclusion, which is always well-thought out, he’s stubborn about it.

Flashback for Jake; time of war; Jake is commanding a warship; the peace movement of the gov’t decides to give in (appease) the threats, and demands he stand down, which puts his other naval ships at risk. The enemy (who is the enemy?) destroys the naval ships, which haunts Jake. He believes had he gone against his orders, he might have saved the ships. He starts as a man of peace who has complete faith in his gov’t and its pacifistic bent; and ends as a disheartened man, who realizes the decadence (and decline) of his gov’t. Did the appeasement bring about peace? Yes. In this case it did. Appeasement worked—why is he angry about it? He saved the lives of millions. Appeasement wasn’t necessary—the threat wasn’t grave. It was like Hitler during before WWII. Had the allies acted early enough, there would have been no war. At the time, had Jake continued forward, he could have turned the battle and perhaps won the war.

I’m starting to worry about the length of this story, and the amount I need to disclose. I need to get over this and start writing, thinking along the lines of short stories that begin to develop the world, ala Asimov’s early series. He wrote short stories that when combined formed a mostly coherent book. I’ll let the world develop in that way, returning to it to fill in details of Jake’s (I need a better last name than Mahahana or whatever I chose) life. The theme: depressing, life sucks and get used to it because you can’t change anything. Sound familiar with some of my other works?

First story with Jake…something simple that will introduce him. He’s a Planetship captain (or pilot). He’s somebody with an exciting life in a declining civilization. I want to introduce all of this. (If this is a longer set of stories, Jake will have to choose to do something amazing to save the society—otherwise there will be no pay out.)