1670 words (not counting the title and chapter breaks), just three words over the minimum goal for the day, and it's 15 minutes until midnight. Talk about cutting it close!
I started the morning at 7:05am, 5 minutes after I hoped to wake up, although I didn't set an alarm, since I went to bed late (near 1:00am) last night. I want to do my writing in the morning, so I get it out of the way and I don't have it looming over me all day, but I also don't want to get into one of my irrationally tired moods where I just write about my writing. That's what the end-of-day blog is for.
So I lay in bed until 7:15, thinking about how I really only had until 9:00am to write this morning, and that's not much time. Debated grabbing coffee and writing at my desk at home, but decided to go into the office and work downstairs, in case I ran over and someone had a question for me.
Got to the office around 7:50, coffee in hand, and didn't even look at email or the web, just jumped right in to reviewing my notes. For this novel, I've written about 1300 words worth of notes, just jotting down little ideas on my Treo when I think of them. Unlike some of my previous unfinished writing projects, where I've managed to spend months and months on research and planning only to figure out that the idea wasn't very good, this one has kept me excited because what I'm writing about always seems a bit out of reach. I figure out one small piece of the story, and then there's another question to be answered.
The nice thing is that even though there is a loosely planned structure for the first 3/4 of the book (so I know where I am going for the first 3 weeks, roughly), I have no idea about the last 1/4 of the book. That's also the scary part, though. A big roadblock for me has always been the fear that I spend all this time writing something and it sucks. Maybe that's why I can crap out games, screenplays, comics, and other things that require only a few weeks of concentration, but the novel always eludes me.
I was ready and raring to go for NaNoWriMo, and didn't feel at all sick this morning, but of course, work slammed me. Sure enough, 9:00am, Chris comes in to my office to discuss the "emergency project" we've got to get out the door by 5:00pm. I have 1100 words at this point, and I'm thinking "OK, I just need to steal a little time this afternoon and I'll be set." On my way to class at 9:50, I even think about what should happen. I manage to slip in about 3 lines of notes at lunchtime, but other than that, and running out to get coffee a couple of times, I don't get a break until my evening class.
When I checked my email, I discovered a nice cheerleader note from my mom telling me to keep my chin up (I'd called to vent to her last night about various things, not least of which was the worry over today looking like such a busy day), and to tell me that she decided to jump on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon, too. Although she's not officially doing it on the web site, she wrote 3100 words, or almost DOUBLE the number of words required to be on track for the first day. Go mom!
I decide I'm going to cut my evening class short, but it's going surprisingly well, so at 6:30 I decide I want to stay and help people on their projects. When I next look up, it's 7:30 and time to go home. We're having a friend over for dinner and LOST, but now Andrew's fighting off being sick, so I get to cook. So that kills sneaking in the last words before LOST.
After LOST, Patrick hangs around for a while and we chat. It's always nice to see him, but I'm thinking about that last 500 words. One thing I'll say for NaNoWriMo: if you're really into it, it gives you a fierce dedication to your routine. More on that tomorrow, maybe.
Oy, the grammar is all over the place in this post. Probably more of that to come, with most of my brain being devoted to getting through each day while crapping out 1700 words...
For now, here is (and remember this is COMPLETELY unedited, so I could get it in before my self-appointed midnight deadline) the first installment of "QWERT".
QWERT
PART 1: Ben Thayer
Welcome to your future. You’re looking down the barrel of a gun, but you hardly know what to make of it. Sure, you’ve seen them in movies, and you’ve heard they still appear on the wrong side of the tracks in Bangalore, but looking down the barrel one is so real, so physical.
Well, sport, welcome to the real world. You’ve been locked up in that ivory tower of yours for 31 years, but now it’s time to throw down. It’s time for you to get an education.
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“We’ve got a twitcher,” Dag says to me. “Channel 17. Think he’s one of yours.”
Oh, shit. It’s Mr. Green again. I know it before I even look. If only his building’s sentry did, too, my life would be slightly less hellish. OK, maybe not hellish, but annoying. I just want to get through a day where there’s not a single redline on my chart. But not today, not unless I can remote into the system before he gets too close.
From the visual, I guess he’s about 25 feet away. I punch up the datastream. Ah, crap. You’d think after 200 years of making cameras they’d have figured out the lens distortion problem, but no. He’s actually more like 10 feet from the door.
Now here’s the judgment call: I could do a manual override, just punch through the system and let him in, and he’ll be none the wiser, but then I have to do a metric assload of paperwork to justify it – not only to prove that I did the right thing, but that I was in my right mind when I did it. There’s no such thing as luck when you’re a qwert, only documentable skills. On the other hand, I could let the system catch him and hope that he doesn’t complain, but he’s Mr. Green. Probably a third of the cred I’ve lost over the last year has been because of him, and he still finds new ways of tripping me up. Forget what I said before: when you’re a qwert, there’s one kind of luck, and it’s bad.
So here’s the thing: Mr. Green has Tourette’s Syndrome. Now, at one point people thought this was a pretty funny condition: you get these smart, rich, handsome guys that just one day start barking, or randomly swearing, or spazzing out like a marionette, and it’s kind of satisfying, like the universe is giving them a little reminder that they don’t have everything. But of course, when you get a condition that seems to afflict smart, rich, handsome guys, things get serious pretty fast.
So there was a big push for a cure — lots of brain research and all-star benefits. And hooray for mankind’s ingenuity, they found one, and somebody made a lot of money out of it no doubt, but by then no one who could afford it, wanted it. When you’re an erg like Mr. Green, you don’t ever admit that your brain is in less than 100% tip-top condition. Otherwise, what’s the point of your existence? As far as society’s concerned, you’re just a couple pounds of gray goo being carted around in a sometimes unreliable pinkish-brown takeout container. Delicious over noodles, or so I hear.
So, since Mr. Green won’t change his mind, I have to change the machines to keep up with him. Every time a new symptom manifests, I have to make sure his BIDET (behavioral identification table) is updated before he hits a wall.
“5 feet.” says Dag. “You on this, Ben?”
Ah crap. What am I doing actively brogging all this right now? Bookmark for later.
The nearest scanner is the retinal above the door. I bounce some light off Mr. Green to give the system every assurance that I know what I’m doing. I pull up my little uber-copy keyscript and copy the offending values from the intruder table to Mr. Green’s record.
The red cells of the intruder table go back to light blue, and the door to Mr. Green’s apartment building slides open just as he reaches it. Another perfect ergonomic experience, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood qwert.
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Dag and I are grabbing some bricks at the local Beerhouse. I’ve got the meatloaf; he’s got the chicken picatta. I ordered the chicken, but Dag grabbed mine by mistake. He figures it out in a single bite, though. “Gah! That’s AWFUL!”
Dag is a supertaster. He should have grown up in 20th century England instead of 21st century Bangalore (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Commonwealth of Massachussetts). Anything stronger than fish and chips makes him gag, and unusual things like capers freak him out like you wouldn’t believe.
“You dick!” he says, wiping his tongue with his hands. I can’t help but crack a smile. It’s kind of mean, and I know he’ll work some kind of payback later, but it’s funny every time. Dag is this big, strong guy. He could almost be a lud, except he’s way too smart for that. Girls love his calm, mysterious, rational demeanor – mostly because they suspect that because of his build, he’s an animal in the sack, just waiting to unleash his raw passions… but no, he’s pretty much always mister calm and rational supervisor, and when his feelings do come out, he’s kind of a priss.
But he could kick my ass, so I hand over his meatloaf without further confirming or denying my amusement. Not that he needs confirmation. In our business, if you can’t read people, you’re out of business – and Dag can read me like yesterday’s news. This etiquette lady from last century, I forget her name, once said that the mark of a true friend isn’t someone who knows you best, but someone who knows you best but never brings that fact directly to your attention.
But, the mixup gets us to thinking about how “the food of the future” looks exactly like something from a dystopian future dreamed up by Huxley or Orwell, but that it’s not nearly so depressing, and that gets us to making a list…
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12 THINGS FROM THE FUTURE THAT THEY DIDN’T SEE COMING
1. Blue jeans are still more fashionable than tinfoil jumpsuits.
2. Cars still don’t fly.
3. Food cubes are tastier than the “real stuff”.
4. People still don’t trust videophones.
5. We still haven’t been back to the moon.
6. Half the world still believes in God.
7. Audiophiles still prefer analog to digital
8. No one is living under the ocean unless they’re doing research.
9. Half the world still has a below-average IQ.
(Dag and I take a break from our listmaking to argue this one. Dag points out that of course half the world has less than an average IQ. I point out that it’s the principle of the thing.)
10. Bibliophiles still prefer paper to onscreen
11. There are still people who aren’t on the Internet.
12. The Beatles are still the most popular rock ‘n’ roll act in history.
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Dag and I are obsessed with late 20th century culture. As far as we can tell, it was some time around then that the world started moving so fast, and stopped at the same time. We think of it like the six-million-dollar man: he moves so fast, he seems to be going slowly to our mere mortal eyes. There still hasn’t been a six-million-dollar man. The 1980s, 1990s and (my favorite) the “naughty aughts” seem to be where all of our hopes and fears were formed, well over half a century before we were even conceived.
We watch the canonical “future dramas” again and again. “The Matrix” is my favorite; Dag loves 1960s “Star Trek” television series. As far as most of our friends are concerned, we might as well be professing our love for the lesser works of Shakespeare or Dickens. It’s so uncool. We love it.
When we get back to our pod, there’s a sticky note on my screen: “See me ASAP. Paula.” I roll my eyes.
Dag gives me his best fake-sympathetic look. “Karma, dude,” he says, affecting his best Bill & Ted accent (I may love the Matrix, but I think Dag has a thing for Keanu). To his credit, he immediately pulls out the screen scraper and the solvent and begins the laborious process of making my monitor functional again.
We have a saying around the pod: you can tell the slipperiness of a manager by the stickiness of her notes. A really good manager sends out emails, maybe instant messages, or, if it’s dire, does a ringthrough, and shows faith in the employee. A mediocre manager relies on things like “paper trails” to prove the employees’ worth, or lack thereof. And then there’s Paula and her kind, using the sort of police-strength sticky-notes that can disable an automobile. At least she’s cheap enough to buy generic, so we can keep the solvent on hand.
Still, the message is clear: I’ve done something for which Paula expects the reparations will keep me away from my station for a while, and she wants to be the one to give me the news, personally. We’ve been through this before, and we’ll go through it again, for as long as I’m dating her daughter, I suspect.
Her pod detects me coming and lets me in. That always makes me cringe a little: here we are, spending our days as glorified doormen for the ergs, and the only doors that open for us lead us deeper into the world of servitude. I cringe a bit more when the door closes behind me: this is not going to be a quick meeting.
“Sit down, Thayer.” I sit. I don’t bother studying Paula’s face. Like all managers, she’s unreadable. It’s the only way to move up in this business, building enough cred through inscrutability. Say the wrong thing, and you’re never going to be more than sport, but there’s a future in saying nothing at all.
