Tag Archives: Netwalking Space

Cracked 25k on Netwalking Space…another snippet

I promise, there will be non-Netwalking Space posts soon. Just pounding away trying to hit 50k before September strikes. So here’s a piece from today’s writing…

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“What are you doing?” Melanie asked, slipping in a small compulsion tone as she spoke.

Gupta grimaced in reaction to her tone. “We’re sending a communication probe toward the incoming fleet. Based on observations and trials with the Gizmo, we’ve managed to create a welcoming message.”

“Are you out of your everloving minds?” It was all she could do to keep from screaming at Gupta and the other Exec members. She’d thought Zhao could keep a better rein on their impulses! Maybe we should have risked Mom’s proximity to the gadget and left her here to keep them in line. Sending her out to DIR1 sure didn’t stop bad things from happening!

“What part of an invading force armed with strength we can’t match don’t you understand?” Gupta shot back. “Why alienate them if we can defang potential hostilities?”

<He does have a point. We don’t know whether the gadget is representative of its kind,> Will speeched.

<Not you too!> Melanie snapped. “And how do we know that your probe isn’t being co-opted by the device to provide a booster link to the incoming fleet so that it can get free? Can you guarantee that?”

“No,” Tessa Chandler said. “But we can certainly take precautions. With your help, we hope.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Melanie sighed, sinking back in her chair. “I think this is a supremely stupid move. I can’t talk you out of it?”

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Today’s snippet

Nearly 20,000 words in, and things are getting difficult….

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“Mom, don’t.” Raw fear echoed from Andrew. “Don’t do anything you regret.”

“I’ve done plenty to regret,” Diana retorted. “Now I’m going to make amends for my past choices.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Diana turned coy. “You’ll find out soon enough. I never thought I’d live to see the end of days, but it looks like it may be my privilege to bring it.”

“Mother, please. Don’t do this, whatever it is you’re going to do. You have problems with us. Come deal with us directly. Don’t take it out on the rest of humanity!”

“Humanity has been contaminated by Netwalk,” Diana said, her voice falling into a rote pattern as if she were repeating words she had been coached to say. “Humanity needs to be cleansed and purged.”

“Mother, no.

“Say your prayers, Andrew. Maybe you can be saved. Acknowledge your abomination before God.”

Melanie gulped back a sob of her own. She tapped out a message to Alex, Nik, and Bess as Andrew continued to try to reason with their mother, only the occasional crack in his voice revealing his emotion.

Assume Diana Landreth to be dangerous and hostile. Stop her no matter what it takes.

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Another Netwalking Space snippet

Just wrote this; closing in on maybe hitting 18k words on Netwalking Space today. Just a little bit from Diana’s second person perspective….

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You are cursed, you and your descendants. Abominations. Unnatural. What if your father really wasn’t Dan Andrews? What if, like Peter, you are his daughter?

You can’t trust Sarah, the lying bitch. Which means you can’t trust her current Netwalk host, your granddaughter. And you can’t trust your daughter, who sides with Sarah more often than not. Can you trust your son? You don’t know. Perhaps you can bring him over to the awareness that the whole family is an abomination that should end. If you could rip that Netwalk chip out of your head that Sarah fouled for all those years, you would. Maybe after you do what needs to be done at Stephens Observatory.

Right now, the only thing you can trust is that datathread. The only thing you will trust is that datathread.

You don’t think about Will. The Will you loved died years ago, when Netwalker Sarah killed him. Once he became a Netwalker, he crossed the line into abomination.

Netwalk must end. Netwalk must die. Death needs to mean dead, not just physically but in the digital world.

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A snippet from today’s writing so far

I’m playing around with a second person POV for Diana in Netwalking Space. Enjoy!

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The small chapel on DIR 1 stinks. Sweat, fear, organic smells from the biospheres, and the faint acrid whiff from the chip manufacturing wings all seem to concentrate here. You drop to the prie-dieu’s kneeler in front of the cross, old knees stiff and sore even in the lighter gravity of space. Space. The place your granddaughter loves, almost more than any others.

You dredge your rosary out from the depths of your right pocket and lean on the prie-dieu’s shelf, bowing your head as you sort out the beads. This morning you have felt the growing oppressive rumble of the Gizmo deep inside yourself. It woke you early, before your alarm, and you lay in your bed, listening to the hisses and clanks and pops of a working space station as the rumble rose in your head.

Sarah kept it out. But she kept other things from you, things deep and dark and hidden. No matter what your daughter says about how a Netwalker and host can’t hide things from each other, you know differently. Sarah holds secrets. She always has. Now she’s corrupting your granddaughter.

The Gizmo inside you grumbles even more at the thought of granddaughter. Melanie wasn’t a good daughter in that respect. She resisted the need to expose your granddaughter to the Gizmo, to make certain that Bess never introduced dangerous elements to the virtual world. Bess—and her cousin Chris—are among the Netwalk users the Gizmo doesn’t know. That’s dangerous.

Your head hurts even more and you drop it into your hands. Agony pulses through you in great rumbles. It lasts a few moments, and then you can raise your head, pick up the beads with heavy fingers, and begin the Our Father, proceeding to contemplate the Sorrowful Mysteries.

You have finished your third decade when an alert flashes across your overlays. You blink it away. Your staff will handle it. This is Bess’s station, not yours, and you’re just a figurehead. If they need you, someone will come.

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And it begins…the opening of Netwalking Space

Just started writing on Netwalking Space, the last installment (so far) of the Netwalk Sequence. I’ll be writing more, and this is rough, but…just felt like sharing these opening lines.

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“Where’s the data you used to extrapolate your projected performance from the interface of the Netwalk 5 chip with the Resolve biobot?” Bess Fielding leaned forward in her chair, fingers closing tightly on the squeeze ball she was clenching under the desk out of sight of the other participants in the hologlobe conference between Do It Right principals and researchers and the developers of Resolve. She focused on Remy Alastair, the lead researcher for the European-based company who had developed the Resolve. “Because I’ll tell you right now, those projections do not match any scenario I’ve developed for Netwalk 5. There’s no way in this solar system that Netwalk in any version operates at those speeds, especially in extraterrestrial settings.”

Remy brushed a strand of dark hair out of her face before answering. “We project a boost in Netwalk from Resolve—“

“Now just wait a minute.” Zack Hawkins, one of Bess’s researchers and the host for the Netwalker Will, Bess’s late grandfather, interrupted. “Resolve cannot have those accesses to Netwalk. That would assume a backdoor that does not exist.”

“We would need to create that opening.” Remy scowled. “These are projections based on the existence of such an opening. Which is standard protocol for all virtual access these days.”

<NO. FUCKING. WAY.> Will’s virtual shout made Zack wince and Bess’s lips tighten even further.

<Cool it!> she speeched to her grandfather. <You want Mom getting after you for being rough on your new host? Zack isn’t Julia. Modulate. Or else yell at me.>

<He doesn’t need to be so rough,> Bess’s own Netwalker, her great-grandmother Sarah, chimed in privately to Bess. <And if he shouts like that at you, he and I will have words.>

<I’m not going to stand by and watch those upstarts break my latest upgrades!> Will retorted.

<Grandfather. It hasn’t happened and it isn’t going to happen. Chill.> Bess inserted a nuanced command tone. <I’m the one who makes that call, and I’m not about to break that new security programming!>

“We have a Netwalker objection,” she announced, picking up the non-virtual conversation without a pause. “And it is one I support. We are not going to provide those accesses. Find another way to make Resolve interface with Netwalk.” She took a breath and prepared to say more.

INCOMING. INCOMING. WACKO SYSTEM ALERT. The Do It Right participants startled as bright text flashed across their visual overlays. LARGE GROUPING OF GIZMO-TYPE DEVICES DETECTED OUTSIDE OF PLUTO ORBIT.

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Oooh, this one is gonna be FUN, I tell you. FUN.

 

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