Month: December 2017

No, really, it was just the other night.

I was fishing, down to the lake. You got to fish at night if you’re using quarter stick dynamites. It’s not like forty some, whatever years ago when I was a boy. Now a days they start talking about reckless endangerment or claiming you sunk their boat. But that guy was at least as drunk as I was and probably more.

So it was just me and my boat in one of the channels leading into the lake. I was close to the cypress trees, but not too close. You don’t want to accidentally blow up one of them and have it fall on your boat. Of course I had a cooler full of beer because I was fishing; that goes without saying.

It was a quiet, cool night with the stars out. Taking it easy, with my feet propped up, it was just me, my coveralls, a can of beer, and a pocket full of quarter stick dynamites. As long as no game wardens came along, it would’ve been a perfect night.

I almost fell asleep, but then I saw the light. It was in the sky, but kind of low. Game warden helicopter; had to be.

I hadn’t caught no fish yet, so he probably wouldn’t bother me. The ones in the helicopters is looking for serious offenders. They won’t bother you unless you make them notice you, but they may call in somebody else if you put on a show.

The light kept getting closer, but I couldn’t hear nothing. A chopper usually makes a big woop-woop noise out on the lake, but this one didn’t even make a whisper. I thought maybe it was a military helicopter, one of those stealth ones you hear about.

Sure enough, it came right over me as quiet as a drunk wants to be when he sneaks home to a sleeping wife. That light shone down and I couldn’t see anything. I almost dropped my beer, but instinct kept it in my hand.

Next thing I know, I woke up on a table. I figured I was in the hospital again, but things didn’t seem right. Instead of clean, white walls, it was all shiny metal. There were gizmos and gadgets all around. A lot of them had flashing lights and little screens. Some them looked a little, well, invasive. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

A bunch of these gray skinned dudes stood around the table. They was like you see in the movies, with big, black eyes and big heads all stuck on the top of a stick-thin body. Their tiny little mouths made high-pitched gibbering sounds.

I tried to get my fat backside out of there, because that seemed like the best possible idea. Something held me down. I couldn’t feel what it was, but I could not move nothing but my eyes. I could look around easy enough, but nothing else worked.

One of the little alien boys poked me in the forehead with a screwdriver-looking thing, then gibbered to his buddies. The others gibbered back.

It turns out I could still sweat. It ran down my face. That’s when I noticed the rest of me was sweating up a storm too. Man, them little aliens had me scared. I thought back to all the stories I ever heard about folks getting abducted by flying saucers. Parts of me clinched up real tight, if you know what I mean. My heart beat like an outboard motor on full throttle.

They were still gibbering when they walked away. I heard a shushing sound, like in the sci-fi movies when doors open and close. The gibbering went away. They left me alone.

The table still held me down, but figured I better try to figure out more about where I was. The table seemed to be metal or plastic; it was hard. There was something in my hand.

It was metal too.

It was cold.

It was my beer.

Them little critters left me my beer. That filled me up with something, and suddenly I didn’t want nothing more than to get me a sip of that beer.

Lifting my head didn’t work, but I’ve been raising a beer to by mouth since I was twelve years old. There was nothing going to keep me from my beer.

All my strength, all my brains, it all went straight to my beer hand. The muscles strained. I squeezed my eyes shut and got all tense as I forced the can to bring me my alcohol.

My hand shook a little.

That was it. I may not be able to move much at all, but it looked like I was going to eventually beat the table. As long as those kidnapping aliens didn’t come back, I would work until I drank my beer or until the table killed me.

I thought back to helping my pa working on the truck when it fell off the jack. We had to pry it up get it high enough to put something else under it. He told me, “Billy, boy, just take a deep breath, think about what you’re doing, and just do it.” That’s what I was going to do.

I took a deep breath and relaxed myself a bit. That was good, but I wanted another one. This time, I filled my lungs and held it while I thought good and hard about my beer hand. With everything thing I had, I tried to lift that beer.

My armed lifted slightly, shaking the whole time.

Then it slammed back down, losing its hold on the beer.

The metal of the can clanked against something as it fell. Then it made the gurgling noise beer makes when it’s running out of a can.

It don’t shame me to tell you I cried. Tears ran out of me as fast as that beer ran out of the can. It’s a bad enough thing to know space men are going to do unnatural things to you, but to spill your beer on top of that; it was just too much.

I put my hands to my face and I cried. That’s when I realized I could move my hands. I did a quick check and all of me could move. The spilled beer must have shorted something out. Beer was my savior after all.

Jumping up, I grabbed the beer can and found a little left. I slammed that down, letting it run down my throat and fill me with its goodness. I might get out unprobed.

It looked like there was a door where I heard the shushing sound before. I didn’t dare use any of the tools they had hanging there. I didn’t know how to use any of them and would probably just end up killing myself. Besides, you don’t know where something like that has been.

I put my hands in my pockets and found a happy surprise. Them little buggers left me with my quarter stick dynamites and my cigarette lighter. I might not know how to work their fancy gadgets, but I know how to go fishing.

The door opened up when I walked up to it. I looked through. There was a hallway made of the same shiny metal as the room. There weren’t no signs of anybody. I didn’t know where to go, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to the table. I lit one of the dynamites, tossed it in the room, and then ran like crazy down that hallway.

I didn’t get very far when another door opened. One of the aliens stopped in his tracks in the doorway. I don’t think he expected to see me. He really didn’t expect the loud bang that happened a second later.

The whole space ship rocked a bit. I fell against the wall next to the open door. The alien dude fell back into the room.

The room had a bunch of screens and lights, and, more importantly, a bunch of the aliens all falling over.

I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I lit another dynamite and threw it in. I ran again and heard the door shush behind me.

The hallway was just smooth metal, and seemed to be going around in a circle. A couple of smaller hallways joined it here and there. I didn’t have any idea where to go. I figured the ship was a saucer, so I took one of the side hallways leading away from the middle.

The aliens must have figured out what was going on. A pack of them showed up, running down the hall, each one had something in his hand, probably some kind of ray gun.

I turned at the first corner I could find and threw another dynamite back at the aliens. That was either a very good thing or a very bad thing.

The floor tilted up and I slid down the hall. I hit the new floor that used to be a wall. It hurt a little, but the spirit of the whitetail deer was in me and it meant to run as far away as it could.

Another explosion rocked the saucer, and that was no quarter stick. The wall in front of me broke open and I could see the night sky. I hoped it was the night sky, realizing we could be up in space. All the movies say opening up a spaceship in space is a bad thing. I got this picture in my head of my eyes swelling up and popping just before the rest of my body did the same thing.

The ship lurched again and slid me backward. I hit something and it knocked me plumb out.

I woke up on the bank of the lake with the sun just coming up. Chunks of twisted up metal stuck up out of the ground everywhere. Little fires burned here and there.

You know that cold, stiff, pain you get from sleeping on the ground when the ground leeches all the warm out of you? Well, I had that. I dragged myself over to the nearest fire. It looked safe enough, so I got warm.

My poor old boat was nowhere to be seen. I used up all my dynamites. My belly griped about being empty. There was a dead alien hanging off a fallen log.

A little while later, some government men showed up and explained to me about swamp gas and weather balloons. They thanked me for my cooperation while they cleaned up the wreckage. I didn’t mention breakfast to them, figuring I’d be safer if they didn’t know.

Anyway, that’s my story. Every word of it is true, just like it happened.

One of the questions from J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings is: how did the bad guys build an army of orcs? Each of his primary bad guys, first Morgoth and then Sauron, built up an army, but then those armies diminished as soon as the bad guy was gone. I’ve got a theory, and it doesn’t even require dark magics. You could even do this at home, if you are an evil overlord. Here’s how.

Physical and Mental Characteristics

The story goes that orcs, as a species, started out as predominantly elves, with some later experiments with humans, who were corrupted by the bad guys. The orcs were humanoid and generally filled with hate for the other humanoids and anything not corrupted. They also were not prone to building things of their own, but had to steal from other cultures or be forced to build things by their masters. They hated their masters as well.

If you look at the orcs as a people with a select group of characteristics, it becomes obvious that a sufficiently powerful leader could create such a group today using real humans. The physical differences between the orcs and everyone else are just enough to make it easy to see who is who. The mental limitations are just enough to keep them from turning on their masters, but not enough to keep them from fighting or from being sneaky when needed. The anger issues seem inborn, as though they are predisposed to a lack of impulse control. You may have heard of specific humans in our world who have one or more of these characteristics.

I’ve met many people in my life, so I have an assortment from which to pick in this example. I’m picking neo-Nazis because many readers would have an idea who they are, though there are others I could use for this example. Whoever I pick, someone will be upset, so too bad.

Most of the neo-Nazis that I’ve encountered are not mentally complex. Human mental complexity spans quite a range, and these people have tended to be below average. Most of them are still functional and generally capable of holding a job or managing speech. Most of them will not be doing calculus. This is how they get snared into the Nazi rhetoric. They don’t have the intelligence to understand why they aren’t rich, famous, or powerful, but someone came along and said it’s because of some outside group such as the Jews or black people.

In news coverage of some recent white supremacist rallies, you can see the faces of those involved. In some instances, you can see the sign of conditions such as fetal alcohol syndrome or other mild developmental disabilities. One must assume that some of those individuals do not understand their condition or how it affects what they can do in life. However, the leaders can quickly prey on that lack of understanding to fill their numbers. They fill the followers with nonsense about superiority that can easily be overcome by “inferior” peoples.

How to Use This

Imagine that you have decided that you are going to be a Dark Lord and you have the financial means to engage in that activity. You have a kingdom of your own where you can do what you like. You’ve decided to build an army that will be a threat to others but are not clever enough to be a threat to you. After all, you know that you are the smartest and all-around best entity that ever existed and should be worshiped by everyone else.

You start by separating out the ones who are likely to follow you and you get them angry by telling them that the rest of the world is keeping them down. You, of course, are their only friend and, if they stick with you, they will eventually rise up to be in charge of all those inferior people who are oppressing them. Anyone who doesn’t go along with what you say is obviously collaborating with the inferior people and must be ended.

Selective Breeding

If you have enough time, you can start selective breeding. You encourage anger and mild stupidity. You want followers who will be brave in their group, but need the group, otherwise you risk an uprising. You don’t want any individualists.

You can also encourage distinct physical traits so you can easily tell who is a member of your army and who comes from elsewhere. This is an important thing in groups such as the white supremacists because a simple, visual cue about who is a “good guy” and who is a “bad guy” is a must. It’s like an easy way to tell who is on each team. Since your army will be made of simple minded creatures, anything more complex will be confusing. The appearance is also a quality that makes your people “superior”. Anyone without the correct physical characteristics would be culled.

A side effect of this selective breeding is that two characteristics would develop naturally. Most of the genetic material would come from the physically strong, aggressive members. These individuals would have the strength to breed whenever they wanted, and would produce most of the offspring. A second, smaller group of breeders would be made up of those who are sneaky. They would use stealth and cunning to breed without conflict with the strong ones. This would give your army two types of viciousness in a good proportion, preferably about 80/20 or 90/10.

Going to War

Once your army had sufficient size and the right characteristics, you could unleash it on your neighbors. This could gain you more ground, at least at first. Any damage caused to your soldiers was just more evidence of the other people keeping them down. With an aggressive breeding program and a general disregard for the safety of your army, you could stay at war for quite a while.

In Tolkien’s works, the orc armies were only strong when being guided. Whenever the most recent dark lord was deposed, the size of the armies diminished. Small pockets of orcs withdrew to isolated areas where they rarely encountered other people. This makes sense for a species that was bred to be less capable of doing anything but fight. They simply cannot take care of themselves, so it takes an external leader to organize them and keep them healthy long enough to grow.

This means that you must make sure that you are around to keep motivating them. If you are dead or otherwise not viable, you army will fall. Small pockets of them will survive, but it will probably not be the strongest of them unless a smarter one appears to lead. It’s also possible that the skeeky ones will last longer just because they know how to avoid danger.

If there is a chance that you will not survive, make sure that there is at least one person that you would choose as a successor. That person must understand how to manage your army of monsters and your overall goals. However, you must take steps to make sure this person is not a threat to you.

You must also make it understood to your army that if you are gone it is because you had to return to your heavenly plane to fight enemies there. That means the army should be worshipping you. If things go poorly for them it is because they are not doing enough to defeat their earthly foes. They should try harder to get back into your good graces.

The Threat from the Enemy

Your enemy will be made up of individuals who are healthier and smarter than your individuals. The enemy will have a big weakness: they don’t want to go to war. That gives you a big advantage and the enemy scrambles to change from their peacetime lifestyle.

The specific threat posed by your enemy is that they will kill large quantities of your soldiers. The enemy will also attempt to invade your lands and kill you too. In today’s world, that means a drone strike on your headquarters. You may want to dig deep.

The longer term threat comes in the form do-gooders among the enemy. They will want to capture and rehabilitate your forces. With good healthcare and nutrition, proper education, and breeding taking place in a violence-resistant environment, your hard work will be wiped out in a few generations. That’s all it takes to turn your army of freaks into a slave class living peacefully among your enemies.

The best bet is to try to shorten the time to maturity for your monsters and make sure they are breeding like rabbits. You want them to consider the enemy to be a food source. Understanding that there will be a high mortality rate, send out as many of these things as you can as fast as possible.

Conclusion

This all seems highly unlikely to happen. There aren’t really any tyrants with the money and land to do this, we keep telling ourselves. The main issues are that those same tyrants don’t understand how this would work nor do they have the patience. Note that the conversion from humans to fiends takes generations, and no single tyrant has time for that. This is something that would have to be worked on by a dynasty, or at least a secret government research branch. Can you really imagine a government doing something like that?

The Fall semester has finally ended. Maybe now I can get back to some writing… maybe. Already, my mind has been a blur of things to write. It’s almost overwhelming, but some of it has already squeaked out.

I’ve had a few short poems show up. They have been the silly, dark poems that my mind tends to favor. One of them has already made it to this site (read it here). These kinds of things often show up in my head, but I rarely have time to write them down during class, so they drift away into the universe, like so much dandelion fluff.

With the end of the semester, I’ve already had one instance where an idea woke me and demanded to be written. It was just the general idea, so it has a way to go before completion. The idea was for a better follow up to the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies, this one involving the great grandson of Fraser’s character. I should look a little bit into writing for movies; I’ve got a partially written follow up to Hogan’s Heroes just sitting in my pile of things to write.

I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my novel. I’m not sure what genre it really fits, and that has hampered my attempts to find an agent. I’ve gotten really positive feedback from the agents who’ve seen it, but it wasn’t what they were looking for. One possibility would be to serialize the novel on this site just to try to get publicity. The goal of doing that would be to get enough attention that I could sell my other novels. It’s an idea.

Another thing I would like to do is to finish illustrating a couple of my poems. There are some that just need illustrations to finish them off. If I do that, I may put “dramatic readings” of them on YouTube or something similar. Again, this would to help generate name recognition and overall exposure for the writing.

Naturally, I won’t accomplish all everything in the break between semesters. At least the Spring semester schedule is a more normal schedule with only one night class. My energy levels should be better and I should be able to accomplish more outside of work. That’s the goal anyway.

Mary had a little stalker
Who couldn’t understand, “No”
And everywhere that Mary went
The Stalker would surely go
The cops said that their hands were tied
So Mary bought a gun
And when the stalker went too far
His stalking days were done.

I looked at my last posting to see that it was in September 2017. Today is the third of December, and almost the end of that. That tells me only one thing: it has been a really long and busy semester.

This particular semester has been busier than the previous ones. The schedule has been a mix of long days, irregular hours, and far too much to do. Just a week before classes started, the office cancelled one of my classes due to low enrollment. They replaced it with another class, one I had never taught before. New book in hand, I dug into the material so I could serve my students well. Fortunately, I had used the material in “real” work before, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch, but it still took a lot of time.

Then there were my doctors. I have three primary medical people: the internist, the diabetes specialist, and the cardiologist. Two of them have lectured me about not keeping to a proper schedule for diet, exercise, taking my pills, etc. The cardiologist would probably join in, but I only get a checkup there once a year and won’t see them till spring. The disruption to the pills, eating, and so forth probably contribute to my exhaustion. I’ll have to look into it.

I have written a couple of things, though. It’s mostly just notes for other pieces. For example, I figured out how to create an army of horrible fiends such as the Orcs of Tolkien’s stories. No, it doesn’t involve overworking some cranky, old teacher; that’s how you get supervillains who create armies of horrible fiends. I hope to have that little essay written and posted before too long.

My classes for this semester end this week, followed by a week of final exams. Once that is done, I have a few contracted work days for wrapping up this term and preparing for the next. This means that grading drops off appreciably, so I have more free time. Since my school is actually closed from Christmas to New Year (no one allowed for liability reasons), I should have a bit of time to do even more writing. I’m looking forward to it.

With all that free time, who knows how much I can post. I might even get enough to keep me over until May when my next break comes at the end of spring classes.