🌖SomeTHING Is Watching

Once more into The Cryptic

What’s the Storymaze? Here you’ll find weekly writing ideas or new writing; a creative something that caught my mind; a look back at my comic book history; and a quote to stir a thought.

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Photo by Stephan H. on Unsplash

In an earlier Storymaze, I shared “The Cryptic”: a fictional take on a kind of “In Search Of…” program. It’s “mission” was to find a place for the weird and disturbing in our too over-documented world. I’ve been working (too) long on another chapter, which I’ll be serializing here over the next few episodes.

INVESTIGATOR/HOST — A Leonard Nimoy like guide into the unknown
KARL — An investigative researcher 
ANDREA - Leader of the Skyfire Project
COLONEL - A liaison for Space Force
WV GRANT - A preacher with a foreboding sense of doom

SFX: Rising rhythm of off-kilter, eerie technology sounds.

INVESTIGATOR/HOST: We only fool ourselves by pretending to be certain of the world. Or what's just beyond. "Mystery creates wonder," said Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. "And wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand." What's really waiting for us up there?

SFX: Audio stinger.

INVESTIGATOR/HOST: This is The Cryptic, Episode 11 — Something To Watch Over Us.

SFX: Music “theme” for The Cryptic. Brief, eerie, techno, disturbing.

INT. THAILAND CYBERCAFE – DAY

INTRO ANDREA FOSTER, lively and articulate in her earnest passion for space, science — but with the undercurrent of a "true believer", a zealot in her cause.

SFX: Low level Thai voices; clattering of diner dishes; video game sounds.

ANDREA: It was a high school science project. Amazing! A couple of kids captured these images. They went up 18 miles, just for the thrill of it. Eyes wide open. But they didn't know what they were seeing.

INVESTIGATOR/HOST: We travel to the Xenith Cybercafe in the Mueang Chiang Mai District of Thailand to meet with Andrea Foster. She holds degrees from MIT, engineered at NASA, advised at SpaceX and consulted for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin aerospace company.

Andrea no longer walks these corridors of power, and instead now leads a public advocacy group called The Skyfire Project.

ANDREA: They saw the curvature of the earth.

And that very, very black sky curling around, closing in our blue planet.

INT. CRYPTIC INVESTIGATIVE OFFICES - DAY

INTRO KARL CUNNINGHAM, CRYPTIC REGIONAL INVESTIGATOR, a bit of a curmudgeon, but warms up to share his practical knowledge of the esoteric.

SFX: Click-clack of a keyboard, efficient. Indistinct police scanner chatter, monitoring the world. The occasional crackle of a Jacob's Ladder. The intermittent whirr of a 3D printer running.

KARL: Inexpensive near space photography is possible by combining several off the shelf components. A cell phone inside an insulating styrofoam cooler, instant hand warmers from REI to keep the batteries warm. Lifted 5 meters a second by a high-altitude weather balloon, all strapped together by a good roll of duct tape.

INVESTIGATOR/HOST: Karl Cunningham knows what he's talking about. As one of the Cryptic's Regional Investigators, he's 3D printed divining rods and piloted custom-built drones over Ocala National Forest to track Sasquatch.

KARL: In this case, the balloon was filled with 80 cubic feet of helium from Benny's Ho Ho Clown Emporium in Falls Village, Connecticut. As the atmosphere thinned at 93,000 feet, the gas expanded and burst the balloon.

That deployed the parachute and began the 40 minute descent, which was tracked with the phone's GPS.

INT. SPACE FORCE HANGER – DAY

INTRO LT. COLONEL MEREDITH TRENT, polished, courteous, intense and "on mission" in her delivery.

SFX: Indeterminate air traffic control chatter and high-speed whooshing aircraft.

COLONEL: We are familiar with these "poor man's satellites."

INVESTIGATOR/HOST: Combat veteran Lt. Colonel Meredith Trent is the public affair liaison for the newly formed Space Force. She has arranged clearance for us to meet with her at the 50th Space Wing, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado.

COLONEL: So long as individuals maintain 30 miles from a commercial airport, call the Prescott automated flight service and register an ascent notice, we have no official dispute with these activities.

INT. THAILAND CYBERCAFE - DAY

SFX: Low level Thai voices; clattering of diner dishes; video game sounds.

ANDREA: What these 17 year old geniuses hadn't accounted for was the sudden angular momentum when that balloon went boom. That spin reoriented their camera to capture some very unexpected images of the moon. Showing something that hadn't been seen before.

More next episode!

Return with us once more to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the MacMall catalog promised overnight Syquest drives and modems buzzed and hissed…

Not surprisingly, Incredible Doom Pt. 2 picks up where Incredible Doom Pt. 1 left off: following the adventures of early nineties teens, nerds and outcasts in Ohio as they navigate young romance and abusive parents, somewhere between running away and running toward. Their experiences are up against the backdrop of Evol House: a run down group home that is fueled by equal parts chaos and connection, stitched together by some early cyber nods to video games and BBS message boards.

Pt. 1 was an earlier Storymaze treasure, and so much of that for me was how effortlessly it communicated so many of those early days of online, touch points that resonated with my own discovery of the interwebs and digital technology. I expected the same for Pt. 2, and was initially put off when it didn't deliver on that. 

Instead the story chooses to spend its  time with the push and pull of runaway Allison and her paramour Samir, bouncing between supporting each other to struggling for control; or the sexual & identity struggle of rebel Tina, forced to confront a sense of rising apathy against a chance at romance far away vs. a chance to make an impact close to home. 

How dare the story go its own way! Well, once I got over *myself* I recognized that this was the logical extension of Pt. 1 — and that its spare art and realistic dialogue continued to deliver. It definitely requires Pt. 1 to get the full effect — but taken together you'll find an intriguing, immersive and emotional world that I was glad to revisit and discover more of. (Yes, even more intriguing and immersive than another mention of a Zip drive or AOL CD-ROM would be.) Now the wait for Pt. 3!

A couple of episodes back I spent time in a sort of tribute to the late Kevin O’Neill, a fabulous artist I was lucky enough to work with during my time as an editor at Epic/Marvel Comics. When I chose to leave that staff gig, Kev gifted me this amazing “Go get ‘em!” farewell. It’s a kick into gear and call to action I was happy to rediscover. Hope you get a kick out of it, too.

Let’s hear what you’re thinking about this episode — or anything!

“One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now.” — Paulo Coelho

Amazing Times

I’m D.G. Chichester. If that looks pretentious, feel free to just call me “Dan.”

I earned my storytelling cred writing comic book titles like Daredevil, Terror Inc., Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, along with digital widgets in the world wide web of advertising. I like weird tales, so if things here bend that way — now you know why!

Folks seem to like the comic book adventures I’ve written, so if you haven’t checked one out — please do. Many are now available in fab collected editions.

For the eager moments between newsletters…

@dgchichester — 280 characters from the Twitterverse

@dgchichester — images via Instagramland