Stephen Cray

Call me Stephen. I am -- rather, I was -- a grad student working on a doctorate in Planetary Biology and Life Science, before the plague changed all that. I still consider myself Professor Collins' assistant. But the university was hit with the disease while we were away, and no one's opened it back up again. I'm not sure any of the higher learning establishments are back up and running just yet.

Where you there? I was. Nick was at the University of Helios giving a guest lecture. He'd sent me to Denton City to pick up some equipment we'd ordered. It happened pretty fast. I was walking from the hotel to the warehouse and people were standing around, coughing and being ill. One minute they were going to work to start their day, the next minute they're passing out on the sidewalks and streets.

Just dropping there, like they'd been hit.

It was chaotic for a bit. Some fell ill more slowly, others were practically dying on their feet. It was happening all around me, but I was one of the lucky ones.

I was -- am -- immune.

Helios was the fifth planet to get hit by this, so by the time we understood what was happening they quarantined the whole planet. Everyone had to stay where they were, no leaving the cities. It was a death sentence for many, but it saved thousands. The University wasn't hit at all, so Nick was safe there. Those of us who were immune had to help enforce the quarantines.

Some survived. I think about ten percent of those who fell ill lived through it. And if you weren't exposed, within days of the first discovery the threat was over.

Billions died overall, if you combine the planets, but on Helios there were about three million deaths. Denton City was wiped out. When the quarantines were lifted, there were fifty three of us still alive.

I never wanted to come back here again, but we're about to land right now. Nick thought we should help the raiding party, make sure they found the equipment we needed and wanted. This is going to be our only chance to get supplies for the new planet, and if we're going to be stuck there the rest of our lives, we have to make the most of this trip.

I'm not sure how I feel about it, yet. Not the stealing, I don't mind that. There's no one left there to need this stuff. But everything's different now. Everyone's plans got changed. Everyone's lives and ideals altered.

We're all missing who we were, and slowly becoming someone else.

The Tower of Doom

So yeah, got the bedroom painted (again) this past weekend. Did it right this time - proper color, sans clothing.

Friday night I cleared out the contents of the room, stacking dresser drawers on top of each other on this ottoman in the living room, then sliding the dresser out to the dining room. All the other furniture too, everything went.

Got the room primed Friday night, then put my mattress down in the living room so I could sleep there - I knew the cats would sleep with me because anything new is funky, right?

And yeah, as I was stacking these dresser drawers on top of that ottoman, I knew it was a bad idea. The whole stack reached up pretty high, and it wasn't as stable as it could have been - but I figured it was too high for the cats to get on top of, and there were plenty of other fun things in strange places to keep them entertained. Right?

Wrong.

I wake up sometime around 2:00 a.m. to a strange sound, look up (I'm on the living room floor, remember) and I see Secret standing on the top of the stack. Not only is he on the top of what I've termed the Tower of Doom, but he's lookin' to go higher and trying to reach out to the top of the cabinet that hides the TV.

I'm flippin' out, but his brother, Rumor, is holding me down - lying on my legs so I can't get untangled from the blankets and get up. I finally did, and got Secret down, but then Rumor wanted to try it.

Needless to say, I got little sleep. My boys were fascinated with the Tower of Doom all night long, since I had no where else to put these drawers and by now the whole living room is so crowded with stuff, it's all I can do to pull one of them off the Tower while the other climbs up the opposite side.

At least they had a good time.

And now I have a room I no longer call the Bat Cave. My clothes remained clean (since I didn't wear them) and there's no more Tower of Doom for my boys to play on.

Now I suppose I should go write some words, eh?

Conner Bishop

Oh, hey, how ya doin'? Listen, you're not gonna believe what just happened! We just had the Big Meeting -- you know, with the ship captains and everyone in charge of this mass exodus -- and Captain Marcase was there. He even shook my hand! He's not as old as I expected.

Anyway, I had these scans that my father used to carry around with him. See, back in the day, my father wanted to be an explorer, only he never got around to actually doing it. But he found these scans somewhere, I think he bought them off a guy, and all my life I remember him carrying them around. If you gave him half a chance, he'd bend your ear for hours about the unclaimed planets out in the black.

So when I heard we were all getting ready to bug outta here, but no one found a planet yet, I figured what the hell? Dad always swore there were good planets in those scans, and I was pretty sure no one had tried looking in that quadrant.

Professor Collins said I should go ahead and show Captain Marcase the scans, but Stephen didn't think I'd have the nerve. And I almost didn't. People usually think I'm too young to know what I'm talkin' about, and I've been called compulsive and maybe a little hyper by those who know me. But I figured Captain Marcase didn't know that. He only just met me, and seemed like a nice enough guy. And he actually took my scans seriously. Or, dad's scans.

Evan scared the shit outta me, though! I knew he'd be there, but I'd never met one before and man, it took all I had to keep cool about it.

Oh, but anyway, we're leaving, did I tell you? The war started, and they figure it's only a matter of time, probably hours, before Threshold is taken, so we're loading up right now. I'm a little freaked, to be honest. The Professor, Stephen and I are assigned to ride on the Ascalon, which means we have to go with that ship to Helio first to steal supplies.

Me. Planetary Biology student Conner Bishop, stealing.

And I don't mean slipping money out of some old lady's purse. We're taking equipment! Huge, friggin' machines, crates and crates of crop starters, and buildings. Friggin' buildings! I can't even figure out how this is gonna go down, loading buildings onto a ship in orbit.

I dunno if they'll have us help or not. But I guess I'll find out soon enough!

Oops! I did it again.

Well, not yet. Tonight after work I'm running to Lowes to buy paint. Again.

Yeppers - that color I put in my room is just way too dark. And it's not just a matter of getting used to a grown-up look, it's just dark. The color was called Country Path - I figure that's fancy talk for Dirt.

It's the friggin' bat-cave! And what gets me is the fact that I should have known better. I'm drawn to darker things, like dark wood picture frames, dark clay yixing teapots, lovely brown suede curtains and comforters . . . well you can't paint a room dark then accent it with the same dark color palette. And I know that. So what I was thinking when I painted that room is beyond me.

So I have a new color - Desert Sand. Much lighter, still very mature-looking. And yeah, this time I'm gonna have to get the primer tinted, to cover over all that dirt that is Country Path.

Tonight I'll get the paint, some painting supplies, then tomorrow after work I'll clear out the room and hopefully have the stamina to apply the primer. Then Saturday it's painting, followed by returning the room to its full glory.

I look at it this way -- In order to form a proper Theory, you have to be able to first test said theory and examine the results, THEN that test has to be repeatable, with the same results.

Which means I'm painting in the nude again, to see if I can stay clean.

I call Bullshit on that!

I should just chalk this up to hormones. I was checking some agent blogs one morning, and one of them had posted a query that recently landed a new writer a great deal with a major publisher, and you know what?

I thought it was pathetic.

Now that's just my opinion, and it isn't a genre I would read anyway. But what killed me was reading this query and thinking to myself "That's a pretty lame query. It seemed to wander, sounded cliché, and what a silly premise." But the agent fell instantly in love, and kudos for this author.

That's one thing we're taught about queries - make them stand out. Make them grab the agent's attention. They have to hook instantly and never let go. They have to be short, and to the point, while also entertaining and tempting enough to make the agent want to read more right away. You have to condense your entire 100k+ novel into about two paragraphs and show them why this story is both like the other books this agent represents, and vastly different than anything they've read before.

Yeah.

Oh, and the best part is when you read an agent's blog detailing what they look for in a query and what they hate - then they post one that "ignored all the rules about what makes a good query but this one really caught my eye - now they have a 4-book 6-figure deal with Putnam."

Great.

Everyone tells you if you can write a novel, you can write your query. Well I call Bullshit on that. The query is the hardest thing you'll ever write in your entire career. Worse even than that eulogy for Aunt Edna. You've just penned a novel at around 103,000 words, with deep, interesting characters, an amazingly beautiful and twisting plot with lovely and interesting side-plots along the way. A story that leads the reader down a wonderful path of discovery wherein they fall desperately in love with your characters. There's intrigue, deception, revelation, discovery, and lots of little bits along the way.

Now describe that to someone who already doesn't want to bother reading it. And make it clear and concise. Oh, and make sure you mention how different it is than anything else out there. Also include why I should want to read it, what makes YOU special. Mention why you decided to query ME, why I am the perfect agent for your story, and why you were the perfect writer for this tale. Hook me with the first sentence. Oh, and do all of this in just three sentences, including your contact information.

Then give me 9 months or more to get back to you. m'kay?

Professor Nick Collins

Oh, yes, Professor of Life Sciences and Planetary Biology, that's me. Go ahead and call me Nick, you're not one of my students, are you? This is all very new to me, what we're about to do. Seems like just yesterday Stephen and I were cataloguing fossil specimens on Ioni. Now we're meeting in secret on this strange little moon, making plans to evacuate under the nose of President Eljandro and her troops.

Oh, did you hear? She's gone and declared herself "Supreme Ruler", which in turn made Admiral Grant challenge her in public. I don't think the first shot has been fired yet, but everyone's calling it civil war.

It's odd, really. There's never been a war in my lifetime. Not one of this magnitude, anyway. Stephen worries that we're taking the coward's way out by leaving like this, but he does agree with me that -- as scientists -- we're really better off staying out of it. We can't help mankind by picking up weapons and, most likely, being killed. But we can by helping to explore and colonize a new world, far removed from this madness, and make that world available to anyone who desires peace and a return to normal life.

Which is what we're doing, by the way. Stephen, my assistant, and Conner -- he's one of my students, but you'll meet everyone later on. I've only just met Captain Marcase and his people, and I'm not quite sure what to make of them yet. Oh, don't get me wrong, they're a fine group of human beings. I think it's just that, I was expecting something a little different. Maybe someone older, I dunno.

Maybe it's because none of us really knows what to expect. No one's really done this before, not the way we're doing it, anyway. Usually when you colonize a new planet, someone's found it first. Then a group of brave souls volunteers to be first, and slowly, over time, a community is formed.

That's typically when Stephen and I come along. We research and investigate new plant and animal life on worlds that have been lived on for at least a year. But now -- well, right now we don't even have a world to explore, unless Conner's late Father's maps are correct. That'll be up to Captain Marcase to decide, but I'm afraid we don't have all that much time left.

We may just find ourselves living onboard a very crowded ship, sneaking around space looking for a home while trying to avoid this crazy war.

Let's hope for the best, shall we?

Painting Nudes

Or "What I did Labor Day Weekend".

So four years ago, give or take a month or two, I had this attack of whimsy and took it out on my bedroom. My sister and I had saved enough to finally buy new carpet for our bedrooms, and decided if we were going to splurge and do that, we should go ahead and paint before it was installed. That way we could be as messy as we wanna be, since the carpet was being pulled up.

So the aforementioned whimsy attack occurred, and in my defense, my sister was similarly attacked. Which resulted in painting my room a lovely lavender, with darker purple stars stenciled on the ceiling in a random pattern. Oh, sure, some of those stars found their way to the walls, too. My sister, similarly afflicted, painted her room pink, with darker pink hearts.

Yes, I know. What can I say? At the time, it seemed appropriate.

So recently we both came to our senses and realized we weren't 12 years old. The rest of our house is very tastefully painted, with hardwood flooring throughout (except the kitchen). We decided it was time to bring the bedrooms up to speed, since they can be seen from the living room.

Anyhoodle - we painted our rooms this weekend. She went with a soft, grown-up mint green to accent her burgundy carpet, and I went with this soy latte-brown, to make my blue-grey carpet blend in.

And so the painting began. Or rather, the prep work. We couldn't get an early jump on things thanks to a water main break right off our property on Wednesday evening that kinda ruined us for a few days - so Saturday we got started clearing out the rooms. We'd figured we could leave the beds in there, and paint around them - but after applying the primer and having a real hard time doing it, we decided the beds had to go. On Sunday, the beds were disassembled and removed, then plastic replaced on the floors, and painting ensued.

Let me explain, I'm a very messy painter. I'm wearing old jeans, a t-shirt I don't care about, and I already have a ginormous glob of primer on one shoulder (it just missed my face by an inch). While doing the trim work, I realized I was going to run out of paint - even though my room is 100 square feet, and I had a gallon ! I made it through, but took a look at the walls and you could see two colors there - not roller marks, but clearly the primer hadn't covered everything smoothly. We should have tinted the primer, but didn't.

My sister's room turned out great, probably the lighter color she was using, and she had some left over. So another trip to Lowe's nets me a second gallon, then we run to Olive Garden for some quick take-out . . . long story short, we got dinner for free!

I get home, we eat, and I figure I'd best get to painting. By now, I've been wearing these same paint-splattered jeans and t-shirt for two days, and I've discovered my bra has a tear at one seam (I'm pissed about that) so, since it's pretty hot in the house, and the curtains are all pulled closed, I decided to paint in my undies. If I splatter again, it'll just land on me, and if it hits my bra, I'm tossing it soon anyway. The panties - well they can always get tossed, too.

So I put down some plastic, figuring I just have to paint the walls with a roller, basically cover the majority of the area, and I'll be fine. With every expectation of being covered in paint . . . I do the entire room without spilling so much as ONE DROP on me.

Not one drop.

Thus, I've concluded the best way to paint a room and stay neat and clean doing it, is to strip naked and throw caution -- and your boobies -- to the wind.

Now, to be honest, my room color turned out a bit darker than I expected -- I've dubbed my room "The Bat Cave" since painting it, but it's really nice. It's all grown-up looking, and decorated with stuff I had previously, but in a better way now. But this color is much more conducive to displaying my collection of Japanese teapots. It's brown, but with a plum accent to it in the right light. (and there we go talking about plums again).

The only thing is, when I woke up this morning, I thought I was in someone else's room.

Guess I'm not used to this "grown up" stuff yet.