Hi Everybody
As I get closer and closer to releasing my Early Adopters Anthology - Early Adopters: Rogue Elements, I had a little fun the other day picking out some mood music. This quickly evolved into a 26 track playlist/potential movie soundtrack! If anyone wants to pick up on the Early Adopters vibe ahead of release, here's the playlist and where it all fits in with the stories - does anyone else do this or just me? Prologue - The Professor's Journal 1) Heroes and Villains (The Beach Boys) Ten Years Later 2) Dog Days are Over (Florence and the Machine) We Are Gargoyle 3) The Pretender (Foo Fighters) 4) It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan) Star Crossed 5) My Mistakes Were Made For You (Last Shadow Puppets) 6) Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holla) - (Marvin Gaye) 7) Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits) 8) Mr Roboto (Styx) The Dancer 9) Suburbia (Pet Shop Boys) 10) Happiness is a Warm Gun (The Beatles) 11) Blood Brothers (Bruce Springsteen) A Little Festive Warmth 12) Mad World (Gary Jules) Putting Words In My Mouth 13) Regina Specktor - Sampson Open Mic Night 14) Sale of the Century (Sleeper) 15) Lucky You (The Lightning Seeds) Luck Is Loaned, Not Owned 16) Cigarettes and Alcohol (Oasis) 17) Cochise (Audioslave) 18) On The Run (Pink Floyd) 19) Achilles Last Stand (Led Zeppelin) Project PowerPack 20) Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy) 21) Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden) Blood On The Carpet 22) Enola Gay (OMD) 23) Lonely Town (Brandon Flowers) 24) Sign O The Times (Prince) 25) Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell (The Flaming Lips) 26) We Didn't Start the Fire (Billy Joel) Is this even a thing for books? Let me know what you all think! If you take a look - happy listening. Until next time - stay safe! D.T.
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Hi All, Following on from my recent updates - here's the third and final part of The Professor's Journal, the prologue to Early Adopters Rogue Elements. Hope you all enjoy! D.T. Entry 13
Status: Full Encryption It has been a few days now since my last entry. We have all been so busy. Bannerman pulled through the first night, then recovered quickly. By morning he had regained consciousness. By lunchtime he was back up and about. He really is a remarkable individual. I could not have hoped for a better first subject and I am just relieved that he managed to pull through. Yesterday, Bannerman confirmed that he was well enough to begin. He consented to our initial tests. Early results were exceedingly positive. Physical attributes have been heightened significantly. We have fallen some significant way short of Lendel’s original work, but everyone seems more than satisfied with the outcome. More and more, it appears that Union Jake was a significant outlier. We will have to see what happens with the rest of this initial cohort before we can conclude this with any more confidence though. We live in hope. Regardless, we must have done something right. The call we received from the CEO serving as confirmation of this. Personally, I can’t help feeling a little pride in this too. Certainly, the information provided to me gave us a head start, but I am led to believe that others have tried to fill in the blanks before and have delivered nothing. I cannot rest just yet though. We have the other subjects to get through the process. Our Sergeant needs his troops. Having seen the ordeal Bannerman has endured, I do worry for the rest. In all honesty, I have welcomed the lull of the last few days. The fact that Bannerman has not sailed through the process by any stretch of the imagination has given all involved a reason to pause and take stock. A window in which to review and reassess. I have made use of this time as best I could, going over the early data, making alterations to the process and the apparatus. We will look further into Bannerman’s fledgling abilities and his bloodwork tomorrow. We will look out for any instabilities. After that, I fear we will then need to press on. MiliTech will demand it. I only hope that I can make it easier on the rest, with what I have learnt. I do not want anyone’s blood on my hands. Then there remains the final question. The one I have not dared broach yet with anyone I fear is able to give me a definitive answer. Once I am done building these demigods, what do MiliTech plan to do with them all? I only hope that this cohort can be put to work doing some good in the world. Lord knows we all need them to. I am far from convinced though. The very idea that after what I’ve put these people through here, they could then be broken and bent into instruments of destruction and death appals me. I don’t quite know how I could live with myself if this goes wrong. It is not my choice however. All I can do is look after the best interests of these Early Adopters while they are my charges and hope they find their own way after that. Hi All, Continuing on from my last update, here's the next entry in The Professor's Journal, which acts as the prologue for Early Adopters - Rogue Elements Hope you enjoy! D.T. Entry 12
Status: Full Encryption As I write, it has just ticked past 03:00AM. I doubt I will get any rest tonight. As expected, it has been an extremely testing day, not least for the subject himself. Bannerman survives, for now. He is resting in the custom-made recovery bay. Early signs seem positive. We began the process at 08:00AM, as planned. The process of editing the subject’s DNA is long and arduous one. Not least for the subject. We begin by extracting sample material and then reintroducing the design alterations back into the subject, where they begin to do their work. Aggressively, almost like a virus, the new blueprint begins to rewrite the larger profile in its own image, cell by cell. A total upgrade. We expected the whole process to take around eight hours. It took twelve. As expected, it proved infinitely painful. If Bannerman does last out the night, I doubt I’ll ever be able to look him in the eye again after what I’ve inflicted on him. I have to keep reminding myself that he volunteered for this. The man must have a will like a rolled steel joist to stand up to the agony and endure. As much as I worry for him, I worry more for those who may follow, individuals who may lack his grit. Hopefully I will be afforded the time to review the data from this initial procedure and refine the process. If MiliTech permit it, hopefully I can make it easier on the rest who follow, though no doubt it will be no cake walk. Technically, Bannerman could have been declared legally dead three times already. Once during the procedure and twice since going into recovery. Thanks to the dark arts bequeathed to me from Lendel’s original work and the other information provided by MiliTech, we managed to drag him back from death. Perhaps that wasn’t fair, but the company wills it anyway. We will see what the rest of the night brings for us all. As promised yesterday on Twitter, here's the first entry from The Professor's Journal - the prologue to Early Adopters - Rogue Elements (or the first draft anyway!). Hope you enjoy! Entry 11
Status: Full Encryption It was raining on the way in this morning. Underground, in this facility, it’s hard to tell if it carried on all day, but the melancholy of it hung to me regardless. We begin with our first procedure tomorrow. It is too soon. Far too soon, not that my new paymasters want to hear that. We press on regardless. We hope for positive results. I don’t want to discover what happens if things go poorly. When I first came here, I was told that we would be studying inter-species viral transmission. That we’d be using gene editing to build up humanity’s resistance to the next global plague, whatever that could be. I am certain that if our experiments are successful, the test subjects would indeed be very hardy. To illness and all manner of other hazards this world could throw at them. I know now though that this was never about virus transmission. The things I’ve seen already during my short tenure here. The uncanny things that I’ve been gifted, unexplained. Keys to knowledge beyond my wildest dreams, but hushed silence in response to questions of its provenance. I should have walked away. Maybe if I were a stronger man, I would have done. The truth is that when I could have done, I was greedy with interest and now that I’ve seen enough, I honestly fear what MiliTech would do to me if I tried to leave. Things had changed quickly once MiliTech took over the operation. Perhaps I am showing my academic naivety. More likely they have always been involved, behind the curtain until I was in too deep to walk away. It seems they wanted me for my involvement in the original project. Found my name in Professor Lendel’s notes. They didn’t want to hear that back then pretty much all I did was make the tea. Thankfully, my skill has developed since then. I pray that it is enough, for all of us. There is no choice for me now though. No choice for all of us involved but to press on and hope for the best. It is too early for human trials. I keep telling them, but no one wants to listen. One thing they do want to communicate however is whose fault it will all be if a sub-optimal outcome is delivered. Tomorrow. We’re not ready, but I have no choice but to proceed. In addition to the enlightening, sometimes terrifying data they are feeding me from god knows where, I also have access to what remains of Lendel’s research from the original Union Jake project. It has helped me to make some of the jumps required. Without Lendel’s notes I wouldn’t even be close. Success tomorrow would be an impossibility, rather than just an unlikely outcome. I wonder sometimes what Lendel would think. Or what Union Jake would make of it all. If only I could speak to Lendel again. If only I had more time. The subject is willing enough. Sgt Connor Bannerman. A very brave young man indeed. A true war hero, if such a thing can be allowed to exist in the cess pit the world has become. He is aware of the dangers and frankly, the agony to come for him and he has not balked at the prospect. He has a grit that I have not come across often in my own vocational circles. If this project is to succeed, if we are successful in lifting him up above his current, already lofty physical station, I can imagine no better man for the job. Hopefully, something like the man going into the process tomorrow ends up coming out the other side. He is, for these purposes at least, the best of us. However, I cannot say the same about the rest of the ragtag bunch MiliTech have provided me with. That is, I suppose, a little unfair. Perhaps I’m spending a little too much time around my paymasters. Beginning to think like them. Maybe I need to remind myself more often that these are human being we are talking about after all. Perhaps in the days to come, I can justify my involvement in all of this by affording them all as much dignity and humanity as my situation allows me to. I have a dreadful suspicion that not all of them are here voluntarily and an even worse sensation that they won’t all last out the process. Hopefully, I can get them all through this, one way or another. Everyone is jittery. Not in a good way. There is no frisson of excitement here, but a deep well of dread, bubbling up. The incident on Level 3 last week has hardly helped the mood. Some professor of machine learning or artificial intelligence down there was working on neural network digitisation. Dr Cline, or something like that. Probably being pushed as hard to deliver as I am being pushed myself. Maybe he had a little more courage. He was conducting the experiments on himself after all. Shifting his consciousness from brain to some specially constructed cloud data cube and back again. Last week though, he didn’t come back. I saw them wheel the body bag out of here. It has plenty of the staff pretty spooked. Especially as some of them are still receiving electronic communications from him. He’s not in a good way, apparently. One can only imagine. Against my better judgement, we go ahead tomorrow morning. God have mercy on us. Hey Everyone, As My Early Adopters Anthology - Early Adopters: Rogue Elements lumbers on, ever closer to publication on Amazon, I'm back again to give you the low down on the cluttered thoughts behind another one of those stories. The second Early Adopters story I wrote was The Dancer. In it, we meet an entirely new member of the Early Adopters crew - Victor Deng, The Dancer. From Vic's involvement in the Early Adopters Project, he acquired super human agility. When the project fell apart, he discovered a love for dancing and is trying to make it big in entertainment, using just enough of his special ability to get noticed, but just not get noticed by the wrong kind of people (MiliTech). It's not a massive spoiler to say things don't go overly well for him in that department - This is Early Adopters after all. I do love Vic as a character though as I'd say he is probably the one character from the crew that has come through the dumpster fire of their collective past (which I might step back in time to write and fill in the blanks one day!) and has remained relatively optimistic. Everyone loves him. The story also acts as a bridge. It's the point at which the crew decide to stop running, hoping the problem will go away and really begin to commit to doing something about MiliTech. Romeo (from Star Crossed) is involved again and I loved writing the first meeting we see between him and Connor. Due to the somewhat muddled order I wrote theses stories in, this was the first time I'd written Conner, but in terms of final story order, he actually appears in the first story, We Are Gargoyle (we'll get on to that in another post). Connor and Romeo have an interesting dynamic which for me cuts to the heart of Early Adopters. Both men have seen too much. They are jaded and tired, but Connor still believes in whatever a 'Hero' is meant to be and wants to try and aspire to that, even if it gets him kicked back on his ass again. Romeo, well he's not so convinced of the merit of it all. He thinks that any attempt to go down that road, to do some good will only put them and everyone else in a worse position in the long run. Their shared history shows that he's probably not wrong, but still, who's side are we on, and can they co-exist? For me, this was the story where this started to be more than just stories happening in the same 'world' - this was where the overarching story arc began to develop and I really decided to push on with this as a full project rather than just a bit of a distraction, so The Dancer is a big step for the characters and for the whole project too. Once it's out there in the world, I hope you guys enjoy it. Just one other really important thing before I go - the project now has a cover! I think it is glorious and I'm forever grateful to the fantastic @EVCComicsBooks for bringing it to life and putting up with all my demands! Maybe sometime soon, as this was my first fully commissioned cover, I might do a blog post on that process. For now here's the cover - hope you all love it as much as I do! Until next time - stay safe everyone!
D.T. |
BlogThis is where I will put semi regular musing about things that interest me. I cannot guarantee they will do the same for you guys Archives
May 2022
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