Flight Of The Neago
I woke up feeling very hot and stuffy, so I blindly kicked away the blankets.
They burst into flame.
"Simon!" screeched Glory, scrambling backward across her bed and pressing herself into the bulkhead. Her wide eyes were fixed on the circle of bright white light crawling across the cabin, leaving everything in its wake a blackened ruin. As the air filled with smoke it illuminated the shaft of blazing light all the way to its origin at the view-port.
"The shade is fornicated!" Glory contributed astutely.
The door slid open and a medical robot rushed inside.
"I don't feel safe," I shouted to it. "Is this a good time to panic?"
Dear readers,
It's finally happened: the free version of this science-fiction novel has been taken offline in order to make room for the hard-cover printed edition from Ephemera Bound Publishing, on sale in stores and online beginning Valentine's Day, 2008.
I regret any disappointment. I kept the free version available as long as I could. Pleasure be sure to check out the new edition! See Cheeseburger Brown.com for more information and updates.
Love,
Cheeseburger Brown
P.S. You can read more of my free fiction via my weblog or in the complete story achives.
posted by Simon of Space at 22:45
69 Comments:
I love the tranquility of these transitional passages. CBB, once again you've topped yourself. Wonderful story rendered through wonderful prose.
Mastery of your art.
Still don't trust Jeremiah...
"I don't feel safe," I shouted to it. "Is this a good time to panic?"
CBB at his best!
Super storytelling CBB! Great space battle, complete with ruses and asteroid field navigations. Getting naked was a signature touch, and it's nice to see that Ting has dibs on Dr. Pemma.
"Nah," scoffed Captain Ting. "Escepe pods are for losers."
Awesome.
"First bettle for ya, is it? Bloody kids. Mr. Oliver: turn up the music!"
Brilliant!
That was a great space battle! I would love to see a picture of the Neago.
Excellent battle action, very well written. Two thumbs way up!
just a quick spelling correction:
Suddenly the ship bucked violently. Pish fell against the windows with a grunt
You have no fear of dictators cloaking their activities. We have only the public's best interests at heart. Would you like a cannoli?
12th post! Maybe...
Awesome as usual, CBB. :)
I hate spambots, but I love cannoli!
The bridge of the Neago is turning into the Laugh In set!
Yes, indeed! Excellent space battle @ the pace they should happen at; and no l.a.s.e.r's is quite wonderful too. But no matter what I tried to imagine for ting's music, I just kept hearing Flight of the Valkyries. :)
And I'm with "x", what's up with Pish not being so quick to catch on? I guess I expected Exec "offspring" to be a bit quicker.
Oh and I got it half right a few chapters ago about Pish being J's "robot" son -- ok maybe just a 1/4 right... An I still don't trust him either.
A great balance of action, humor, and storytelling. Excellent work, sir!
Can Duncan please unleash the Nightmare Cannoli on these triply-accursed spambots?!?
Thanks!
Ha! Before the exchange between Ting and Pemma this episode I was actually starting to wonder if we were going to be surprised with the revelation that they are a long-time married couple because of they way they bicker.
Recognizing Jeremiah
Jeremiah had a masque that made him look like a robot. When he took it off, Ting knew who he was immediately. I'll have to go back and reread it, but I don't believe I saw any reference to him putting it back on.
-SVM, ERGO MONSTRO
Awesome!! I loved the battle sequence.
One typo:
"Pish fell again the windows with a grunt." again should be against.
Great work as always... though I wonder why Glory is staying behind on the bridge. Hmmmmm
"Captain Ting, you're one dangerous motherfornicator."
Love the sentence.
Where do you come up with these things. :D
"It tasted a bit like corn." haha! creamed corn i betcha!
aweseme! (as the cap'n'd say)
Who you callin' a spambot? I might just be a spam executive, eh?
I am a little confounded. I noticed like SVM that Jeremiah didn't replace his mask, and many people kept referring to him as executive. This should have some kind of effect on Pish. Also Jeremiah's tone completely changed. It might have been easier if Pish was not in the bridge for that scene as it causes some confusion. However, CBB you are a master, and I know you have something brewing that will explain all this.
I agree ... I expected a "Pish, meet the real Jeremiah" scene. We should see some reaction... shock, betrayal, happiness to find out that his robot friend is really "somebody". Either that or he should continue hiding his identity from Pish, which probably isn't viable with the new role he has assumed in the mission.
Other than, great, realistic battle scene! I only fear that when the movie comes out, its producers will veto the silent, invisible space cannons in favor of cooler special visual and audio effects involving whining colored laser beams and its like!
Ahh! I see that word verification for spam prevention is on! Excellent idea!
Actually, there's another again/against typo:
bumped gently again the wall.
Additionally:
He turned around in is chair and
becomes:
He turned around in his chair and
I *love* the space dogfights. What a great thing. I wonder who was firing the heat ray, though.
Thanks,
Seemant
One more quick correction:
"Yes Decta, and this is an emergency," Ting pointed out, wagging her finger in rhythm to the pounding drums.
Her finger?
Does it not occur to anyone that maybe Pish knew Jeremiah was an Executive and he didn't tell anyone?
CNC, that's what I thought too! Although, I'm sure CBB will address this in some fashion. My question is why Simon didn't ask Pish why he didn't react to the change? But there was a space battle going on, so maybe that can slide for a bit....
CNC,
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Pish doesn't know that he himself is also an executive, but he could well know that Jeremiah was in disguise.
Some disguise, though: parading around in armor clearly labeled "Property of Terron Volmash"! Surely with all of Duncan's hacking skills he would have come up with a more suitable disguise!
Well, one should expect a few tiny inconsistencies in a complex story written on the fly like this. I suspect CBB will somehow work in logical explanations even for these tiny details before the end.
Wonderful!
How did Ting know Glory's previous profession?
And the heat ray from Metra- was that standard procedure, or did they know Simon & Co. were coming?
Even in action segments SoS raises questions!
I didn't even catch that,
good eye Kumar and good question.
I think Ting could probably recognize that when he met one... and her garb may have had something to do with it.
Re. the heat ray, I don't think *anyone* was aiming it; Cpt. Ting described it as a booby trap. Remember, the Kamari system is under lockdown for acts of aggression against the rest of the neighborhood...
Besides, if it were manned, wouldn't it have tracked them?
Nice touch, adding the captcha; hopefully that will keep out *most* of the bots... Also, frickin' awesome story as always.
"Mother of love," I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose and feeling suddenly very drained. "What did I do to deserve this?"
Jeremiah did not answer.
Awesome... really awesome.
I find it interesting that our darling Glory has decided she is now a non-profit enterprise.
Heart o' gold, that one has.
P.
So they are quark cannons then?
I think glory's profession is somewhat obvious. It's a small ship, word gets around, if anyone knows, everyone knows. Plus, she underwent a medical exam when she cam on borad. (how tighly is medical information kept private here? and from the captain?)
Plus, who knows what the newsfeeders from maya have foundou t by now?
Failing all that, you might find out her proffesion (and rates) just by pointing a plate at her.
I think the heat ray is always on and always pointed along the trajectory from the gate to the planet. (at least for the beginning of the trajectory)
Since others are pointing out spelling mistakes, I don't feel too pedantic:
"This royal mission supercedes all other "
Should be
"This royal mission supersedes all other"
Supersedes has an 'c' in the middle - it should be an 's'.
Seeing as how they're in Outer Space, I wonder if "Plan 6" is a brief nod to Ed Wood. The 6, inverted, would make it Plan 9 then!
Lovin' every minute of it.
The part of Terron Volmash will be played by Bela Lugosi.
It shouldn't matter that he's dead, right?
Amazing... this needs to be a movie.
Must happen.
I already find myself mumbling some of the lines out loud. Especailly Ting's lines.
Also, I vote AGAINST having stupid colors and "zap!" things if a movie was made... that kind of stuff gets my goat. It's a lot more interesting as CBB has set it up, on top of being more realistic. Although I suppose the two tend to go hand in hand, since reality is genberally far more interesting than msot people's simple imaginations. (this blog not included.)
I'm of the persuasion now that Pish is only partially aware of his actual condition & either new about J's camo or just regards J however he is supposed too.
As far as Ting Grokking Glory's (previous) profession - I would hope that Mon Captain could recognize a working girl on his ship, even without the aide of her frequent vulgarities and being the first to strip when it proved fruitful. :)
I'm still a bit ponderous about the importance of the beginning scene of the last entry (Jeremiah’s Secret): Simon imagines being worked on by the nurse's at the hospital he used to be at (with the Monty Python machines, nice.). Was he remembering when he was there? Or is some "matrix" stuff going on and he is still there some way?
When he come's-to he is back on the Neago and no one (except the Doc) seems to much mention the he just brutally murdered the great leader of the Recovery... as if he was expected to do this. No one even confronts him really, which I though was odd.
I'm still thinking that Simon is Volmash... The "recovery" succeeded (hence Faeda's wish for new horrors) and Simon's current condition is the result of Exec scheming. What better way to raise Exec kids that can resist the horrors of humans than to pair one with a monster of that caliber?
But this monster turned out to have a conscience once his memory was wiped (or was Volmash not as monstrous as the Galaxy thinks in the first place?) and his actions began to aide the exec's varied plans at stabilization, growth, for the galaxy. So the original plan of just extracting information form him has now grown to something larger.
Hmm dunno, just speculations...
So, CBB you haven't said what your word count was up to recently??
Has it pasted the normal "novel" amount??
I would love to get my hands on this if it ever became a book.
sanna
I think the old hospital dream sequence was just that... a dream
I often dream linked to reality when I'm first waking up. It's easy to dream in an alarm clock as something else like a firetruck or something.
.
See what happens when there's not a new chapter... people start thinkin' too hard. sheesh.
Jeff:
Perhaps your right & the scene it's just a cigar.But CBB still put it in there... so I don't think I'm thinking too hard; there is some "Brain Mojo" goin on here somewhere.
I know that *I've* woken up in a hospital after a trauma, though that "reality" was a dream & dream the reality for quite some length of time. The dream was very crisp and very lucid... Then again, I had suffered a seizure, not been stabbed by a beautiful monster. :)
CBB:
The archives are a pain to navigate, and new readers end up seeing the most recent chapter first.
Why not make a blogger entry with links to each chapter? Postdate it to 2006 and it will stay at the top of the front page (or pre-date it and it will be burried, and we can link to it directly.)
So far I've been linking to the first entry, but this is sub-optimal on a lot of levels.
Argan0n,
I'm still not sure Simon is Volmash, but Jeremiah and Olorio both have acted as though they thought he was.
I think his mind wipe was either self-inflicted or done by friendlies in haste to keep someone from learning something. I think this 'something' is the answer to the bird puzzle. Who he's hiding it from, I don't know.
Indrax: I agree about the archives being a pain to navigate. I'm keeping a running .doc in Word for my own reference.
Another irritant is having to scroll down to find the "comment" section, which I usually overshoot. I guess there's nothing that can be done about that, other than maybe only showing one post at a time, which could lead to confusion because you'd never know if you missed a post.
Sanna:
According to my running count in Word, CBB's got over 112000 words(a respectable novel), with around 419 pages depending on typeset choices.
WORD COUNT's:
Heidi 93,600
The Hobbit 97,470
Hunchback of ND 126,000
Harry Potter IV 181,000
Harry Potter V 214,536
:) - quick google search
Line of the year:
"Escape pods are for losers"
Awesome. HA!
Jim:
You can always hit ctrl+f and type in "comments"... That's how I keep from overshooting anyway.
Argan0n humiliates referred to poster, saying:
You can always hit ctrl+f ...
Oh... yeah ...right ... well of course, I thought of THAT! That's obvious! But look at all those keys you have to type! C - O - M - M ...
Why should I have to use STANDARD IE features when Blogger could just develop it's own: "Click here to go to must recent comments" control right there at the top of the page??? Sheesh!
Jim:
It's possible to make blogger have the title to a story be a link the that story's own page, which may then have comments or not.(I'd go with not) So you could just click on the title, and you'd have a page that is just that chapter. Scroll all the way to the bottom of that page, and you'd have a link to the comments. (Actually, you could also put a link to the comments right at the top as well.)
CBB: I'll volunteer if you want any free template modifications. Just say how you want it.
When he come's-to he is back on the Neago and no one (except the Doc) seems to much mention the he just brutally murdered the great leader of the Recovery...
Well, as best anyone can tell, he was in the process of being brutally murdered by the great leader of the Recovery at the time, and he was merely defending himself, so I have no problem with that, personally.
Dear all,
Re: Pish & Jeremiah
I didn't mean to introduce such a quandary. From the point of view of backstory, Pish is already well acquainted with the true nature of Jeremiah. I realize that this not being covered has created an awkward ambiguity in the text. Oops. My bad. I'll see if I can't mop it up or sweep it under the rug in the next episode.
Re: Comment Spam
Thanks to Blogger's new word verification system, we should see less comment spam. (If you haven't seen any don't be confused, I've been deleting it with a savage zeal.) Apologies to any dyslexics out there who may find the new system taxing. I'd also like to take a moment to admire the programmers of today's spambots, because the quality of the comments they leave is sometimes higher than the quality of authentic comments on a lot of blogs (er, I don't mean this one -- you folks are 99% coherency, insight and charm). At any rate, it's just kinda funny when a robot can sometimes drop a better hello than a real idiot.
Re: Blog Navigation
A CSS hacker I am not. My solution was going to be to create my own HTML page with coherent chapter links, and link that from the banner of the front page with some explanatory text. The problems with this solution are obvious: 1) it requires the time to collect the links and titles of all the previous posts, and 2) it has to be updated manually. This is the pitiful extent of my computer magic skills. I specialize in visual magic, not coding magic. I am open to all and any suggestions, especially if they don't involve a lot of time on my part, since time is currently a precious commodity. E-mail me. I'd love it if this mess could be more easily waded through.
Re: The Future
This isn't a promise, but it's a notion. When all this is said and done (and the print version becomes available approx. 2 weeks after the last episode is posted) I don't want to leave you all hanging out to dry with nothing to read while I get to work on my "real" novel (that is, the one I'd like to have published by dead-tree mongers -- something contemporary in which people comes to terms with shit). So, I'm toying with the idea of issuing (in some form) a sequel to SIMON OF SPACE. Or, to be more precise, a prequel.
Re: Sleep Deprivation
Oh mercy, this cycle of feast or famine will be the end of me. I haven't enough room in my schedule to fart.
Love,
CheeseburgerBrown
If you need a petition of names before you will be convinced to write a prequel I offer mine as the first name.
CBB, I'll do chuck one better- If you come up with a way to manage it, I'd be happy to pre-order (and pre-pay-for) dead-tree versions of Simon of Space and its prequel.
Fabulous and fun. As usual.
*wags tail, hoping for another chunk of that tasty ham*
I'm looking forward to CBB tying up that loose end with Pish and Jeremiah. I'm very curious to know how Duncan explained the fact that a superhuman being was hanging out pretending to be their robot. There don't seem to be too many explanations that would sit well with a brain several hundred thousand times more powerful than a normal boy's brain.
Then again, maybe Pish has a program in his brain that makes him not question that odd fact.
CBB:
Pish is already well acquainted with the true nature of Jeremiah.
Cool, thanks for the comment. That's one of the things I'm really enjoying about this endevor of your's CBB... You slinging some of the story threads as you go, and it gives the tale a fresh, uncut feeling that you just don't get with a paperback. Which is a testimate to the writing quality I think.
Thanks for talking the time to share the tale (do relieve yourself though, mustn't keep these thing bottled up).
SoS is described as a tragicomedy on the Darthside. I wonder what's going to be tragic about it since it doesn't seem terribly tragic yet: just dramatic.
"The Speaker of Kamari was Terron Volmash, yes. But we have no idea who is in power now."
Here's a thought: What if Terron Volmash is actually Terron Volmash? (Speaker of Kamari) He could still be in power there.
That would kind of deflate the mystery, wouldn't it?
This is probably wrong: One of Simon's children is a human executive.
I think I've fixed on how Ting's accent sounds in my head: Pippin Took, from The Lord of the Rings (Or was it Merri?)
"It's the lest thing they'll expect."
The accent is just a little stronger here.
YES! A prequel or sequel!!!!
Rest easy CBB.. you have many people hanging on each post!
You magnificent bastard!! Do you know how many hours of work time I've spent catching up on this story... all in the last 3 days? If Harry Potter is literary crack, Simon of Space is pure crystal meth.
So looking forward to the dead tree edition.
I'll go out on a limb and say that Jessem Poll is Terron Volmash.
CBB - this is by far the best fiction I've seen or read in years. This is definitely worth buying and has incredible movie potential. Keep the creative rights, don't let hollywood destroy what you've created!
My guess is that the next Chapter will be called: "Unto The Hegemon".
Don't ask me how I know. I can't tell you. (my nose will bleed... oh the headaches)
:)
Congratulations, Jeff! You guessed exactly the same title as me!
Love the TOC, CBB. Hopefully "Unto..." is already written and you'll publish it today so that Jeff doesn't expire!
Terron Volmash is really Darth Vader.
Actually, I find when you "ctrl f"
very helpful, before this I was scrolling down when ever I was checking for a new comment.
Although, now I keep a new Internet page open just for "Simon Of Space" and just refresh the page for new comments just as effective.
I even just learned how to "alt tab" so that I switch screens with out fumbling with the mouse and getting caught at work
Modern tech. in it's work.
ha ha
sanna
B-E-A-utiful!
On the Prequel Maybe CBB is going to rewrite The whole thing from Terron Volmash's perspective ;-)
Actually, given the age of Jeremiah it could be set at just about any time in this history.
Query: Could Ting have known Captain Gold? Now THAT's a prequel.
I hate to nitpick, but a key part of today's episode was when Simon confronted Jeremiah on having called him "Simon"...but I don't see anywhere in the ep where Jeremiah in fact calls him that.
And crap, somehow my comment went into the wrong entry. Brilliant.
Awesome space battle AND sweaty naked chicks.
They HAVE to make this into a movie.
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