This is the page that I hope will become a collectively written novel featuring my friend Bill Mansker as the hero. Bill was rescued from five months of being homeless after he left a psychiatric treatment center in Colton, California. Lots of Bill's friends displayed tremendous concern about Bill, so his being found (living among a homeless group only a mile or so from the hospital) is significant.
Bill, like me, has long been a science fiction fan, and I thought after his ordeal he needed to have a story about him, which includes bits of his real life, to show him just how much his friends worried about him.
This is meant to be that novel. People may add to the story using the comment section and as it grows, I post the entirety of the novel as part of the main part of my blog. There do, however , have to be some ground rules so we're all operating in roughly the same universe, and here they are:
Notes for Bill’s story.
1. The tower is based on one recently patented by Thoth Industries in Canada. It is twenty kilometers high with a land structure at the top of the tower. From the top shuttles can fly in the upper atmosphere and reach low earth orbit.
2. Bill’s home planet is called Silluria. It’s an Earth-like planet in the midst of a terrible ice age. It orbits a star about 15 light years away.
3. Siluria’s enemies are called the Suvique, and their leader is referred to as the Bey.
4. The weapons the Sillurians and the Suvique both use are personal railguns that fire semi-molten projectiles. Their ships have larger versions of these weapons, in addition to laser and alpha beam weapons.
5. At the moment, the Sillurian forces are roughly organized like the Byzantine Empire, so the ranks (like Strategos) should reflect this. If you don’t know these terms, you should check this website: <http://strolen.com/viewing/Byzantine_Military_Ranks>
6. On Silluria, Bill is addressed as Nelglib Rexnam, his given name.
7. His Sillurian wife is a Dejah Thoris-type, but he constantly thinks about Patty. (As you might expect, he decides at the end to return to Patty on Earth. Earth is, after all, paradise in the galaxy.)
8. Everything else is fair game: space opera, sword and laser, etc. You may create any aliens you want. You may name a character after yourself, but try to restrict yourself to a last name.
So, to get everyone started, here's the first chapter, written by yours truly. Copyright will remain with each writer, but I hope to perhaps put this up on Kindle and direct the royalties to a charity that helps the homeless in California.
Chapter One
As the sun rose each morning, its rays struck the towering structure of the space elevator. The elevator’s immense, long shadow fell across the length of the space center’s campus. Part of the shadow fell across a small copse of pine trees on the south side of the complex. The copse of trees itself filled a corner of the grounds of a regional hospital compound. A colony of transients, mostly alcoholics, drug addicts, and psychiatric patients lived there. The psychiatric patients, most of whom were also alcoholics or substance abusers, had either walked away from the hospital or had been released too early or by mistake. With nowhere else to go or because relatives did not know they were missing, the homeless stayed close to the hospital. There, social workers gave them foiled wrapped sandwiches and packets of fruit or candy. The transients traded the packets among themselves for cigarettes and booze, which some of the younger homeless people had either shoplifted or had other folks buy for them. Others were know to hang around taverns and clubs and pour the tail-end drops of booze from discarded bottles until they could fill another bottle or two full. The result usually didn’t taste that good, but it was alcohol, and their bodies demanded it.
Sometimes the homeless would stand outside the fences and stare up at the elevator tower, which extended straight up twenty kilometers into the sky. Many of them homeless had once worked at that complex, riding the elevators into the heavens and then down again. Those who had worked at the very top of the structure, braving the winds and thin air to refuel and repair the shuttles that carried passengers are cargo into orbit, they were often the ones who had been confined to the psychiatric ward of the hospital, broken by the extreme conditions and the vertigo inducing heights, by the horrifying thought of plunging, screaming, earthward from twenty kilometers to be smashed to bloody pieces of meat and bone on the unforgiving surface.
Most knew that the old tale, that you would be dead before you made impact, was simply a bald-face lie to sooth children and the stupidly ignorant. They also were aware that no one, to their knowledge, had actually been blow off the tower. It hardly mattered, however, because their own imaginations and fears and irrational phobias had worn down their sanity to a tissue thin membrane that could longer hold their minds together.
Yet even after all that, after their institutionalization and their treatment with psychotropic drugs and even surgeries, they hung onto both their fears and to the lofty structure that scraped the heavens and wrecked their minds.
That was true, however, for all but one man. His name was William Glenn, although most people who knew him called him “Bill.” This man, who looked as emaciated as a concentration camp survivor, had barely turned sixty (although, in truth, for his kind, sixty was still comparatively young) He still possessed almost all the hair on his head, which was now grey and tied up in a ponytail. He had never in his life been in a building higher than twenty stories, let alone a tower twenty kilometers into the heavens. His friends thought he was quiet and a dreamer, with his dreams always up in the air, or even well off into space. He was bright and intelligent, but those who knew him were often surprised at his naiveté and his odd lack of knowledge of even the simplest things. He was also, however, a compassionate and caring friend, who had always been there when someone needed help. Often, he had shared his last bite of food, his last cigarette, his last swig of booze with someone he thought was more desperately in need of it. He had driven friends to the doctor when they were too ill to move, and had accompanied a friend when she had an abortion. He had listened as friends opened their souls to him and told him the tales of their abusive lovers and mentors.
He would stand at the fence and stare up at the space elevator. There was a wistful, longing expression on his face. To others, as they watched him, his eyes were sad and lonely, his mouth open in a sorrowful way. He was wanting something, or perhaps even remembering something he had lost and feared he could never regain.
“What do see when you look at the tower?” the other transients asked. “What does it mean to you?”
“It is a way for me to go home,”
“Your home is not earth?” some asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Is your home in the sky? In heaven?” others asked.
“No, it is not in the sky,” he’d say. “But the sky will help get me there.”
“Is it on another planet?” some wag would always inquire.
“Yes,” he would answer. “But it is not one you would know. And while you can see its star, you do not know its real name either.”
While a few individuals might laugh and dismiss his story, others asked him, “Why are you here? Do you plan to invade us?”
“No,” he would say softly. “I am here to recover, to recuperate, to have my sanity restored. Yours is the sanctuary world. Countless races envy you. Yours is the safe place in a hostile universe. It is the utopia we all desire. Even your pain and agony and the cruelties you endure is so much less than any place in the cosmos. On some worlds, those who are religious believe that if you are pious and worthy, when you die you are reborn on Earth, where your soul is cleansed and healed.”
Then he would break down in tears, and the other homeless comforted him, an act of compassion virtually unheard of on any other world.
“Yours is a sacred place,” he’d sob. “All other races have agreed to leave you alone, to only come here when someone must be treated in order to be cured and restored. All races speak your name with awe and respect. And, dare I say, with love.”
“Poor man. Sad, crazy fellow,” the others would say. “Such a fragile soul. I hope someone can help him.”
They would caress his shoulders and hold his hands. Some would say, “Bless you.” Others asked, “How can I help?”
“Thank you,” he said through his tears. “But others need you more than I do. Take care of them when they appear among you, as you have done for me.”
Then the others would give him some food and something to drink and offer him a place to sleep in their camp, in their flimsy, but welcoming shelters.
“Glenn? Is there a William Glenn here?” he heard someone say one morning in autumn when the homeless came up to the hospital to seek food.
For a moment he hesitated to speak and identify himself. Who wanted to know?
“William Glenn, your wife wants you to call her!”
He had a wife? Yes, he remembered he did have a wife, and that she loved him very much. But how could she be on Earth? Surely she was back on their home world.
“I’m William Glenn,” he said, stepping forward. He could see two California state troopers standing beside a hospital physician.
The doctor, whom William recognized as Dr.Redick, smiled. Dr. Redick was a female physician whom most of the other inmates found was a caring, compassionate person. She had a warm smile, emphasized by her beautiful lips. Her eyes positively danced in accompaniment. Some of the other patients, both male and female, had told him they found her husky, smoky voice sexy and alluring. He couldn’t tell, although he thought it was friendly and considerate.
She handed William a cell phone.
He raised it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.
“Bill? Is it really you?” a voice said.
“I suppose it is me. I don’t know if I am anyone else,” he replied. “And who are you? I thought my wife was dead.”
“Bill, it’s Patty,” the voice said. “Everyone who knows you thought it was you who was dead.”
The world seemed to have pulled out from under him. He didn’t recall fainting, if he had fainted, but now he was staring into a clear, blue California sky. He blinked, once, twice.
He could see massive arms and huge hands reaching down, grabbing his own arms and supporting his shoulders. The two state troopers helped Bill to his feet.
“Are you okay?” one trooper asked.
Bill didn’t know what to say. He had vague memories of encounters with cops, but they had not been pleasant.
“We’ll take you home,” the other trooper said.
Bill wanted to say “Thank you,” but his tongue seem paralyzed. He mumbled consent. The troopers led him to a patrol car and helped him inside.
The other homeless folks gathered around the car. But they did nothing. In fact, they seemed glad Bill had been found.
“Glad you’re going home,” one man said.
“Hope your home planet is okay and is as nice as Earth,” a woman said.
He shook his head. “Nothing is as lovely as Earth. You need to appreciate it and people more.”
The crowd of transients seemed to nod as one. “We will, sir,” someone said. “We will.”
He smiled, but inside he felt very sad.
Bill didn’t remember to drive to Patty’s house in Barstow. All he knew was that he was in Colton one minute and in Barstow the next. The troopers helped him from the car and led him to the door of a mobile home. They knocked on the door.
A woman opened it. Her face seemed tired and worried, riven with care and sadness. When her eyes saw Bill, however, her eyes glistened and a smile broke out across her face. She stepped forward and embraced him. She began sobbing with joy.
Bill didn’t know how to respond. His arms felt like lead and hung limply at his side. He managed to get his right arm around her and tried to hug her. Her sobs confused him. What I am supposed to do, he asked himself, I’m supposed to kiss her head, aren’t I”
He puckered his lips and clumsily kissed her forehead. His mouth was dry and there was a metallic taste on his tongue, but he could sense and even taste the joy and love being generated by her body. He didn’t know what to do.
Patty released her hug and looked up at his face.
The smile on her face and the tears from her eyes moved him.
“I love you,” she said. “I don’t ever want to lose you again.”
“I…love…you, too,” he said, finding the words somehow strange, somehow odd to be coming from his mouth.
“Ma’am,” said one of the troopers. “You need to sign some forms, for out records.” The officer held out a metal clip board.
Patty released her grasp on Bill , took the clipboard from the trooper, and sign the papers. “There. I hope that’s all you need,” she said, thrusting the clipboard back at the officer.
The officer took back the clipboard. He paused for a moment, as if thinking what to see. ‘Thank you,” he said. ‘I guess.”
As they stepped into Patty’s double-wide, Bill could see strange shapes sitting in two chairs by her dinner table. The two figures seemed like dark specters to Bill.
One of the figures stood up, came around the table and stood in the light of the living room.
Bill gasped, sucking him breath. The figure stood nearly two meters tall.
The figure wore a black leather duster, leather gloves, and what appeared to be riding boots with silvery laces. The figure also wore a dark grey fedora with a navy blue band around the crown. The hat kept the figure's face hidden in dark shadows. The figure's eyes were hidden behind glistening, silvery mirrorshades. The lower part of the figure’s face seem oddly blue-white, which contrasted with almost pale maroon-colored lips.
Bill felt his heart racing. He seemed to remember someone like this, but couldn’t remember when he had met this person before. Just who was this person?
"Mrs Glenn," a deep, weirdly resonant voice said.
Bill recognized that voice, a voice from the deepest depths of his memory
"It is time for us to go, Strategos Rexnam,” the figure added. “Your people need you. It is a matter of life and death.”
A bone-chilling shiver ran down Bill’s spine. He knew this was not good news.
Not good news at all.
