The Luddite Conspiracy Ch. 04

The man glanced over Cecile's shoulder at a corner booth and waved. Cecile turned around and looked. Amazingly, two beautiful women were waving back at him. "Why don't we go sit with my friends," the man suggested, grabbing his drink and beckoning Cecile along. "We'll have a little talk, tell a few stories. I promise that you won't regret it. You see, I just happen to be someone who has an awful lot of just about everything, and I aim to share it."

Cecile glanced at the stranger, hesitating just long enough to study his twisting armband tattoo. Something about it struck him as odd. A lilting feminine hello sailed over to him from the other booth, and he went back to staring at the women. "What luck," he mumbled, and stood up. "My name's Cecile."

"Marius," the man responded. "Marius Jones."

-=-=-

ACT FIVE: IN WHICH I REVEAL MYSELF

This is not part of the story, so feel free to not read it. It's just me trying, in my long-winded way, to explain why this work ended the way it did....and hopefully explain a bit about Mad Dog and Hallelujah at the same time.

I have been careful to avoid saying this directly up until now, but with the way I am concluding this submission I feel compelled to acknowledge the truth. Here goes:

When I first stumbled on this site, more than a year and a half ago, I started writing a story.

It's nice to finally have that off my chest.

As it happened, I'd grown weary of one hobby and was looking for something new. And for whatever reason, the notion of amateur storytelling felt absolutely euphoric. Exciting, like springtime. Like a new puppy.

Of course, being human, I fucked it up. See, I started my story in the middle, and eventually I hit the point where I had to address that. Back up, take a deep breath, and map everything out.

So I did. And everything got a lot clearer. To the point that I ultimately started over from scratch.

There were some things that I knew I wanted to try to have in my story. Characters that had history, imperfections, and experiences that affected who they were as people. A backdrop that felt, to the degree that I could manage, like a real and functioning world. Just enough moral ambiguity to be kind of upsetting.

And there were other things that I knew I didn't want. Mostly, they were the same things that I find boring as a reader: clear-eyed champions, endings with a sense of permanence, and characters that don't grow or change.

I also wanted some degree of immediate gratification. I figured, okay, I'm writing for apornsite. Not the ideal setting for attempting the "great American novel," and I'm not really the author for that kind of thing anyway. I figured that, if I were to slap some ninety chapter beast up here, then it would probably be shit. And I would have to live with the fact that chapter 34 was really only valuable to people who'd read chapters 1-33 and enjoyed them. Limiting.

So I decided to put it together as a series of short stories, each one meant to stand on its own. And that's what I've been up to.

You can probably see it in each of the stories I've posted so far. They do have conflict. They have an arc, and a conclusion with resolution. The conspiracy surrounding the Technica is exposed, for example, and Neil and Gina are prepared to face (if not necessarily survive) their marital issues. Jacob Currie wrestles with and ultimately reaches some understanding about what he wants in his life. And Ron and Andro...well.

But if it also feels like something is supposed to come after, that's because something issupposed to come after. Nobody's story is really over. Jacob, matured slightly by his experiences in Hallelujah, will show up in It Always Ends. A Place Made of Sun will pick up with Neil and Gina six months after the events that played out in The Luddite Conspiracy. Ron and Andro will have a backdrop part in a story called Chicago Nights. And Cecile is going to reappear sooner than any of them, along with Moira Adams, in The Lunatic. Each of those stories will be their own thing, and yet if I do it right they should feel like a continuation to those people who happened to have read the first batch. It's not a unique approach. I realize that. But I didn't want someone to finish this tale and be pissed off because they think I just abandoned the story before it was over.

Again, I'd like to think that each of the stories I've submitted so far feature genuine endings. God willing, that should be true for everything that comes after as well. I want them to be valuable as stories, not only as part of a larger puzzle. Besides, that way if life prevents me from painting the big picture (or if I get bored and move on) then anybody following it won't be left feeling like they've gotten robbed.

As of right now, I've got one more story that will strictly be devoted to introducing characters, and then the continuations will begin. It just takes a while because I'm working so hard to make sure that every storyreads as a story.

And, of course, if nobody cares enough to read them all then that won't bother me either. Because, for right now, I'm having a lot of fun.