Post by werewolf on Mar 3, 2013 10:19:30 GMT -5
Although l'm still plugging away at the revision of my gothic novel , the first one l wrote l have never been able to find a suitable title for the second novel l did though it is completed in a rough draft. My working title is Sleeper but l've never been happy with it.
The story is a rarity for me. Most of my art and writing has been in heroic fantasy or horror.This one is mild scifi and action oriented set uncommonly for me in the present day [almost; sept.2012].lt combines alot of conspiracy theory stuff with the superhero genre though no costumes are involved.lt's got aspects of Marvels Wolverine and Capt. America l suppose.
The hero is Benjamin Cord, lieutenant in the army during the 70's. Born of a military family he enters the army shortly after Vietnam. But he had a secret, a genetic anomaly he inherited that gave hm greater resistance to disease than normal as well as faster healing and great though not superhuman strength. Eventually, this could not be hidden and he came to the attention of a shadowy project called PRPHET which sought to enhance the strength and mental abilities of it's test subjects at a hidden base beneath he Cascades in Washington state.
Taken into the project forcibly in 1979 the experiment succeeds in further boosting his strength though not in reproducing his healing and disease resistance in others. Without that other potential super soldiers or agents could not be created. The problem occurred when the experiment turned to mind control as his handlers desired complete obedience without question. As a test of that he was to kill a Friend who was also taken for the program. Cord refused, rebelled and tried to escape. He was recaptured and told his Friend had been terminated due to his intransigence.
Meanwhile, the program was winding down due to budget cut and a lack of successes. The underground base was being closed and a new less expensive facility opened in California. A few of the test subjects were being moved there but those deemed failures were being terminated so that the public never knew about them.Cord was to be one of these.
But the head of the scientists who had worked on Cord felt guilty for having chosen him as well as reluctant for his masterwork to be so casually destroyed. So, he faked Cord's death with a drug and later hid him in a stasis pod the project had developed for a moribund space expedition [possibly using reverse engineered alien tech.] To power the pod the scientist rigged a feedback loop funneling the bases residual power into the pod [including soe from solar panels]
This cost the scientist his own life as he was trapped in the base when it went into automatic lock down at the time of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 which greatly hastened the abandonment of the base. But his assistant escaped with some of his notes. injured escaping the eruption the assistant settled in the small town of Emerson about 40 miles from the base. Changing his name he married there and became the town doctor in time putting his past behind him or so he thought.
The overall head scientist, Walter Ratlinger, was involved in cloning experiments. But his military superiors were unwilling to wait years for his test specimens to mature.[they would've matured at a normal rate not the usual hyperaccelarated rate of most comics and much scifi.]Ratlinger was convinced that the problem with Cord was his 'outmoded ethics and morality'. He believed that with 'proper' training that could be overcome. So he secretly took cell samples from Cord and used a female assistant at the California facility to carry the clone to term.The 'mother' died in childbirth but Ratlinger adopted the child [the clone of Cord] and raised him to view ethics and morality as weaknesses to be exploited. By the present day the clone named James, was an operative for the CIA in it's more shadowy dealings [read illegal].Ratlinger had become a professor emeritus at Georgetown University few knowing of his past. James himself did not know he was a clone. The discovery unhinged him. The idea of being a copy of someone else was intolerable to him.ln a fit of rage he murders his foster father but pretends it was an accident then he heads to Washington state to destroy Cord so he would again be unique.
For the base was rediscovered by accident by hikers from nearby Emerson who unwittingly awaken Ben and one of the other experiments that was rather less human.One of the hikers, a young female doctor gets trapped when the base goes into lock down mode again. Ben rescues her from the mutated 'specimen' and uses his strength to help them escape where she would not have been able to alone. Unfortunately, Cord's memory is blocked and he does not even recall his own name.The doctor , Kristina Morgan owes to help him as much as she can. [later she uses hypnotism to reveal much of Ben's past prior to 1979 but is unable to break through the blocks on his memories of what was done to him at the base. Once they learn his name, however, they discover that his death was faked in 1980 in a supposed helicopter crash during a training exorcise in the mountains. The other reputed victims were other failed experimental test subjects.
Ben found out that his grandfather with whom he'd lived after his father's death in Vietnam in 1968 had died shortly after his faked death.He could find no trace or where his other had moved.His uncle, outcast by his grandfather for not going into the military was a reporter.who became obsessed with the idea that Ben's death was not an accident. He published a book on conspiracy theories but died soon after in a suspicious car crash. So, aside from Kristina and her family Ben finds himself alone in 2012 with an incomplete memory. no money or identity as well as being an anachronism in the present.What seemed mere hours to him was 32 years.
Meanwhile, another scientist at the California base had worked with the one who enhanced Ben. When that man and his assistant disappeared their colleague was harassed by his superiors who believed he knew where they were and why. lt shattered the scientist's career and marriage and ultimately his heath. He passed his prejudices and hatred of the government on to his son,Gerard Dirkfeld. Gerard learned of the existence of the hidden base and rumors of what i contained but not it's exact location.He begins to work for a mysterious cabal whom he believes to have alien tech if not to be themselves extraterrestrial or extrademensional. As an adult he becomes a media pundit who falls from grace for his racist and anti-government views [Sort of Glen Beck on steroids] He continues to write books. articles , give speeches and has a website. He gathers a following of skin head types to do his bidding at a compound hat was once a farm near Emerson.Secretly he sends them out into the mountains in search of the base where they capture one of the hikers that stumbled upon it.When he fails to be able to relocate it Dirkfeld has the young man killed in an apparent drug overdose.
But Gerard now knows about Kristina and her brother Kevin who were the other hikers and sets about to kidnap them in order to force them to lead him to the base.Ben of course gets rather substantially in Dirkfeld's way though initially unaware of who and what Cord is.The scene shifts to Seattle where Kevin and the boy Dirkfeld had killed attended college.lt was in rescuing Kristina from Dirkfeld's hirelings that Ben came to the notice of the media and unwittingly alerting his clone where he was.That results in a chaotic three way romp through Seattle.The FBI is drawn in by the mystery Ben represents and the murder of one of their agents by the clone at Seattle's airport.[the clone steals the agent's identity briefly.]Eventually, after Ben's final battle with his clone and Dirkfeld's apprehension Cord is coerced to work for the government in exchange for a new identity and in order to help Kristina who was shot be Dirkfeld's men aiming for Cord.
Dirkfeld is shattered to discover his superiors were not only inhuman shape shifters but the enemy of the forces he'd thought he was serving.[Those enemies of the shape shifters might be responsible for the genetic anomaly in Ben's line somewhere in the dim past.]The clone thought to be dead was taken by the shape shifters to become their new weapon once healed.lt could easily lead into sequels though l have yet to write any.
The story is a rarity for me. Most of my art and writing has been in heroic fantasy or horror.This one is mild scifi and action oriented set uncommonly for me in the present day [almost; sept.2012].lt combines alot of conspiracy theory stuff with the superhero genre though no costumes are involved.lt's got aspects of Marvels Wolverine and Capt. America l suppose.
The hero is Benjamin Cord, lieutenant in the army during the 70's. Born of a military family he enters the army shortly after Vietnam. But he had a secret, a genetic anomaly he inherited that gave hm greater resistance to disease than normal as well as faster healing and great though not superhuman strength. Eventually, this could not be hidden and he came to the attention of a shadowy project called PRPHET which sought to enhance the strength and mental abilities of it's test subjects at a hidden base beneath he Cascades in Washington state.
Taken into the project forcibly in 1979 the experiment succeeds in further boosting his strength though not in reproducing his healing and disease resistance in others. Without that other potential super soldiers or agents could not be created. The problem occurred when the experiment turned to mind control as his handlers desired complete obedience without question. As a test of that he was to kill a Friend who was also taken for the program. Cord refused, rebelled and tried to escape. He was recaptured and told his Friend had been terminated due to his intransigence.
Meanwhile, the program was winding down due to budget cut and a lack of successes. The underground base was being closed and a new less expensive facility opened in California. A few of the test subjects were being moved there but those deemed failures were being terminated so that the public never knew about them.Cord was to be one of these.
But the head of the scientists who had worked on Cord felt guilty for having chosen him as well as reluctant for his masterwork to be so casually destroyed. So, he faked Cord's death with a drug and later hid him in a stasis pod the project had developed for a moribund space expedition [possibly using reverse engineered alien tech.] To power the pod the scientist rigged a feedback loop funneling the bases residual power into the pod [including soe from solar panels]
This cost the scientist his own life as he was trapped in the base when it went into automatic lock down at the time of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 which greatly hastened the abandonment of the base. But his assistant escaped with some of his notes. injured escaping the eruption the assistant settled in the small town of Emerson about 40 miles from the base. Changing his name he married there and became the town doctor in time putting his past behind him or so he thought.
The overall head scientist, Walter Ratlinger, was involved in cloning experiments. But his military superiors were unwilling to wait years for his test specimens to mature.[they would've matured at a normal rate not the usual hyperaccelarated rate of most comics and much scifi.]Ratlinger was convinced that the problem with Cord was his 'outmoded ethics and morality'. He believed that with 'proper' training that could be overcome. So he secretly took cell samples from Cord and used a female assistant at the California facility to carry the clone to term.The 'mother' died in childbirth but Ratlinger adopted the child [the clone of Cord] and raised him to view ethics and morality as weaknesses to be exploited. By the present day the clone named James, was an operative for the CIA in it's more shadowy dealings [read illegal].Ratlinger had become a professor emeritus at Georgetown University few knowing of his past. James himself did not know he was a clone. The discovery unhinged him. The idea of being a copy of someone else was intolerable to him.ln a fit of rage he murders his foster father but pretends it was an accident then he heads to Washington state to destroy Cord so he would again be unique.
For the base was rediscovered by accident by hikers from nearby Emerson who unwittingly awaken Ben and one of the other experiments that was rather less human.One of the hikers, a young female doctor gets trapped when the base goes into lock down mode again. Ben rescues her from the mutated 'specimen' and uses his strength to help them escape where she would not have been able to alone. Unfortunately, Cord's memory is blocked and he does not even recall his own name.The doctor , Kristina Morgan owes to help him as much as she can. [later she uses hypnotism to reveal much of Ben's past prior to 1979 but is unable to break through the blocks on his memories of what was done to him at the base. Once they learn his name, however, they discover that his death was faked in 1980 in a supposed helicopter crash during a training exorcise in the mountains. The other reputed victims were other failed experimental test subjects.
Ben found out that his grandfather with whom he'd lived after his father's death in Vietnam in 1968 had died shortly after his faked death.He could find no trace or where his other had moved.His uncle, outcast by his grandfather for not going into the military was a reporter.who became obsessed with the idea that Ben's death was not an accident. He published a book on conspiracy theories but died soon after in a suspicious car crash. So, aside from Kristina and her family Ben finds himself alone in 2012 with an incomplete memory. no money or identity as well as being an anachronism in the present.What seemed mere hours to him was 32 years.
Meanwhile, another scientist at the California base had worked with the one who enhanced Ben. When that man and his assistant disappeared their colleague was harassed by his superiors who believed he knew where they were and why. lt shattered the scientist's career and marriage and ultimately his heath. He passed his prejudices and hatred of the government on to his son,Gerard Dirkfeld. Gerard learned of the existence of the hidden base and rumors of what i contained but not it's exact location.He begins to work for a mysterious cabal whom he believes to have alien tech if not to be themselves extraterrestrial or extrademensional. As an adult he becomes a media pundit who falls from grace for his racist and anti-government views [Sort of Glen Beck on steroids] He continues to write books. articles , give speeches and has a website. He gathers a following of skin head types to do his bidding at a compound hat was once a farm near Emerson.Secretly he sends them out into the mountains in search of the base where they capture one of the hikers that stumbled upon it.When he fails to be able to relocate it Dirkfeld has the young man killed in an apparent drug overdose.
But Gerard now knows about Kristina and her brother Kevin who were the other hikers and sets about to kidnap them in order to force them to lead him to the base.Ben of course gets rather substantially in Dirkfeld's way though initially unaware of who and what Cord is.The scene shifts to Seattle where Kevin and the boy Dirkfeld had killed attended college.lt was in rescuing Kristina from Dirkfeld's hirelings that Ben came to the notice of the media and unwittingly alerting his clone where he was.That results in a chaotic three way romp through Seattle.The FBI is drawn in by the mystery Ben represents and the murder of one of their agents by the clone at Seattle's airport.[the clone steals the agent's identity briefly.]Eventually, after Ben's final battle with his clone and Dirkfeld's apprehension Cord is coerced to work for the government in exchange for a new identity and in order to help Kristina who was shot be Dirkfeld's men aiming for Cord.
Dirkfeld is shattered to discover his superiors were not only inhuman shape shifters but the enemy of the forces he'd thought he was serving.[Those enemies of the shape shifters might be responsible for the genetic anomaly in Ben's line somewhere in the dim past.]The clone thought to be dead was taken by the shape shifters to become their new weapon once healed.lt could easily lead into sequels though l have yet to write any.
