I just can't stay away till next Autumn-- think I'm gonna have to post a story bi-weekly. Sometimes, they will be edits of Oktober's efforts, as promised. As always, be it cutthroat or kind, your critique on these first drafts (and subsequent drafts) is more than welcome-- it is craved!
Peace, Mari
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Putting the Sky Back
Galen isn't the kind you'd expect to bomb a cathedral. He's neatly dressed, for his age; no baggy pants drooping off his backside, and his shirt is ironed, and tucked into the waistband of his jeans. His smile, when you draw it out of him, is real, honest, not a smirk. He doesn't pretend to the apathy, the cool of non-caring, that most teenagers effect nowadays.
And he's not racist; this is born out by the colorful ring of friends he keeps around him. That's a key detail in the case. The media is calling this a hate crime, racially motivated, just as we'd expect from previous notes.
He's a good boy. He donates hours weekly to the local food bank, sorting and hauling and running errands for them on his own fuel. He takes his grandmother to church when she's up to it, mows the lawn in summer and shovels all winter. The boy has never been in trouble of any sort, and does well in school-- he's slated to receive several scholarships when he enters college next Fall.
So: Why was he running down the empty street, minutes before St. Celia's blew up, grinning? Did he suspect that the worshippers inside were a control group? Why did streetcam footage show him climbing up the pole seconds afterwards, just before the same cam was disabled? And how did he know how it was there?
That's the real question, gentlemen: is one of the subjects aware of the experiment after all this time? If so, we have a problem. We're very near the end, here, and we can't afford to have our results skewed by a random factor. If it is random, and not the beginning of something larger. Yes, Harves?
I agree, it could be. Galen is intelligent, resourceful, he could have discovered a link to us on his own, although he couldn't have an accurate picture of the breadth of our connections, just a mild inkling at best. It's happened once or twice. But he could be part of an organization-- a grassroots rebellion against the project. There's been no sign till now that the subjects have any communal awareness of their situation, outside of a few small groups known within their society to be lunatics. Galen may be the sign, and we can't afford to ignore it.
I'm taking recommendations on this, of course, but my inclination is to clamp down, hard. To remove the smaller spyware and put back the atmospheric info net instead. Yes, we did remove it for a reason, Harves-- and the subjects registered it as a natural occurrence. They even took the blame for it's disappearance!
I believe they created strictures designed to prevent further problems with the 'ozone.' They may believe that they've succeeded in repairing it, or that it rebuilt itself, or that their scientific data was wrong to begin with, but that's immaterial. By the time they can confirm otheriwse, we'll be finished here. We're in the last stages-- precisely why we need to avoid any further upset. This has been a long haul, and I'm not prepared to write it off as a ruined effort. It's containable if we act quickly.
That's it. Any contrary suggestions? Good. Let's put the sky, back, then, gentlemen. Thank you for your time.
