Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Welcome To Glowing Island

I've been tinkering with the concept of bioluminescence recently. More specifically, I've been tinkering with the chemistry of bioluminescence. Because, you see, the proper insertion of a few select genes can save you thousands of dollars in electricity that you would otherwise have spent on lighting.

With that in mind, let me welcome you all to my vision of the future: Glowing Island. Behold: a world without darkness. The grass glows. The trees glow.

If you'll look to your left, you'll observe the glowing carp, making their way along the stream. Ah, and there's a turtle that somehow made its way onto this island... but notice how the glowing lichens have colonized the outside of his shell. He won't need to be modified. Now, follow me and we'll continue on to...

...Bright Village. The grasses are more carefully trimmed, here, but as you see they still provide an ample amount of light - especially with the addition of the hedges and - no, don't touch that, child! The glowing berries are pretty, but they're sometimes explosive as well. Yes, yes - we're still ironing out a few bugs here and there. Ah, here comes Jonas! He's part of the first generation of luminous people. How are you doing, Jonas?

Make it stop? But Jonas, your glowing skin is the very thing that these people have come to... Can't sleep? Have you considered wearing a sleep mask?

No, I suppose that wouldn't help with the glow from your eyelids. Still, it can't be all bad: you're one of the first and finest examples of my new, improved humanity. Ahem. My apologies, ladies and gentlemen. Some of our volunteers take longer than other to adjust to their new gifts. But as you can see, everyone here in Bright Village glows, with no need for electricity at all. Even the babies!

So there's really no cause for concern. Jonas will adapt, and his children will grow up thinking of these scientific miracles as perfectly normal. They can live their lives and conduct their business at any hour of the day or night, secure in... Jonas? What are you doing, my friend? Put the gun down, Jonas... Jonas, try to stay calm. If it means that much to you, I'll be happy to reverse the process... Yes, now - or just as soon as the tour is over, anyway. Go report to the lab, and have them issue you a sedative. No, no, there's no cause for alarm, ladies and gentlemen. Please, let's continue on, and I'll see to it that Jonas receives the help he clearly needs...

Ominous Omens and Portentous Portents...

Something has happened at work.

That's... basically all I know about it. Something has happened. I don't know what, or to whom, or who all might have been - or become - involved. I can't even say with any certainty just how serious the event itself actually was. Serious enough, I presume, but in the absence of information it's more than a little hard to say.

Whatever it was, it has thrown us into a tizzy of tightening security, upholding propriety, and generally making sure that only what is Right and Decent prevails. Our computers are now set, by policy, to throw up a screensaver after ten minutes of inactivity... and then require a password to reactivate. (Some of us - ahem - were already set that way, thank-you-very-much.) As IT folks, we've been told to lock our computers Any Time we move away from them, even if we're only moving to chat with someone in the doorway of our own office. We've been told that People Will Be Checking On This. We've been instructed to keep various cabinets (the one with installation discs and various hardware) firmly, and perpetually, locked. We've been told not to let anyone else use our computers, ever, no matter how dire the circumstances.

We have, as a matter of policy (and there are slightly complicated but very solid reasons behind it) never monitored people's Internet browsing activity. Apparently, as of this morning, we've started. I find this intriguingly suggestive, but there's always the possibility that this is some sort of bizarrely overblown "Edward Snowden Therefore We Must Be Seen To Be Doing Something" sort of thing. I have no way to be sure - at least, no way that wouldn't, in itself, be a distinctly career-limiting move.

Now, I'm not opposed to tightening our security. Stopping to review both official policies and actual day-to-day practice is a good thing. I mention all this because it means, among other things, that I will not be able to throw things up here on the Blog o' Doom between projects at work - or in the half an hour or so between the time when I arrive at work, and the time when the work day officially starts, for that matter. If we're going to be monitoring as closely and as thoroughly as I've been led to believe, then even that would be noticed... and possibly seen to reflect badly on the department, or maybe just on me. In any case, it's a risk I don't care to take.

That means that my time for throwing together amusing little tidbits to toss out on Ye Olde Blogge has now been confined to my evenings. That is also the sole and solitary time that I have for my other writing projects. And since I am currently knee-deep in such a project, that means that the time I have available to compose things for the blog is effectively, well, unavailable.

I will not be closing the blog. I may not even shift to a lighter posting schedule. However, it's extremely likely that you'll be seeing more filler here - things that I found humorous or entertaining, but that don't require much time or attention to compose and post.

Remember, folks: if you trust your co-workers, the terrorists win. Or something like that.

Darkward Progress

I'm making progress on my current short-story project. It's not as much, or as fast, as I'd like - but it's progress. Characters introduced, conflict set up, atmosphere suitably dark and wild. Onward!

Monstrous Free Association

Graveyard, darkness, moonlight. Scales, fur, claws. Contact. Fear/fascination. Books, dreams, nightmares. Forest. Wilderness. Crypts and caves. Flesh and bone, blood and breath. Hungers. Eyes... connection, conversion. Transformation. Vulnerability and power.

"Power makes monsters of us all." -The Gospel of St. John the Blasphemer

Freedom and desire. Breaking free of chains, taking off masks. The dark heart of the self. Shadows. Storms. Transcendence; transfiguration. Secrets, histories, and secret histories. Books.

Forsooth, the Force will be with you

Star Wars, if it had been written by Shakespeare:

In the gathering darkness

Music, because monsters.

The Tribes of the Moon embrace you...

Monsters.

I've always been fascinated by monsters. Some of it, I think, is the idea of being powerful; monsters are, in many ways, the dark reflections of heroes and superheroes. But there's also an element of... estrangement, I guess. So many of the really interesting monsters are just trying to make their way in a world that has no place for them. Some, like Frankenstein's creation, may be tragic figures: misunderstood, abandoned, neglected, rejected, or intruded upon. For others, the demands of their nature, often some sort of hunger, make it impossible (or nearly impossible) for them to live with the people around them.

I was a weird kid. I sympathized with that. And I sympathized with it even more when I went off to college. For... various reasons, I went early - so I was younger than everyone else. And I was, um, "poorly socialized". This, in a place where the student body ranged from upper-middle class into layers of upper class; where traditions, formal and informal, were highly valued; where appearances were not considered superficial, but instead were very important. It was a setting where, without exaggeration, I was a fucking alien. A monster.

It was right at the tail end of my time there that I stumbled onto the Nightbreed. I found it, perhaps oddly, through the comic books, but they took me to both the book and the movie. The Nightbreed, the Tribes of the Moon, fascinated me: this was one of the very few worlds I'd encountered where the monsters were both the heroes of the story... and still monstrous.

Right about that time, I had an epiphany: I didn't have to stay where I was. I could move to another university. And not only that, but universities weren't all alike, and things could actually be different there! Dizzy with revelation, I transferred.

I was still out of place. I was now in a Christian university (though a very liberal sort of Christianity), I still had no interest in joining a fraternity or sorority, and once again many of the other students came from more... monied... backgrounds than myself. And yet, my experience was completely different. There were people here who were just as weird as I was, and in a lot of the same ways. It wasn't just me. At least one of them had also discovered Nightbreed, and fallen in love with it just as I had. So I mentioned, just mentioned, that it might be fun to run a roleplaying game picking up where the book and the movie left off.

I had two people bring me character sketches the next morning. They were... fascinating. And the would-be players were enthusiastic. Which meant, I decided, that I'd better figure out a game system to use, and start fleshing out some storylines.

The whole thing came together much faster and much better than it had any right to. The monsters fled the ruins of Midian, heading down into the United States in a stolen truck, and immediately got into trouble. And then into more trouble. There was running. There was hiding. There was fighting. There were narrow escapes and ancient secrets; there were rivalries and romances and tragedies within the group.

We played for over a year. We had spectators at the games. The stories, that milieu, gave us a way to look at ourselves - helped cement that vital awareness that it wasn't just me and you aren't alone. It was, in many ways, as close to having a religion as I've ever come.

So you can, I hope, imagine my reaction to learning that someone had found the original footage from the filming of Nightbreed, and was putting together a new version of the film that was more in line with original concept. Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut is important to me in way I find difficult to describe.

Then, on Friday, I learned that they're accepting submissions for Midian Unmade, a collection of short stories set after the destruction of Midian. I managed to finish work and drive home, and even get the kids to bed... but I'm not sure I said more than three words in the process, and I may have walked into a wall or two. My head's off in the dark, picking out the trail by moonlight and scent, racing to reach the not-quite-deserted graveyard and the city of monsters hidden underneath.

I'm putting together a story for this. Any writing time I have is going there. It's going to be quiet around here until I get back.