… Or Aren’t We All Just Talking to Ourselves?
A quote comes back to me from some point in time, past or future. ‘I am what I think I am.’ What am I? I’m a voice and thought. No that’s wrong. I’m a human being. I know I am, therefore, that’s what I must think I am. So how come I am currently a voice and thought? Because I had taken my body for granted.
Welcome back to the Daniel’s Nemesis Podcast, reading Chapter 11 - Ginger Realises that He Is Talking to Himself.
Well, the title of this chapter is apt for this podcast. I mean it’s what I do as I’m lacking listeners. Go do what the other podcasters tell you to do. Shoo, do it now! Then come back and listen.
XBook. I was in my early twenties. I wanted to be a writer. I could use up to two index fingers to type. I wrote this novel. Ginger, self-proclaimed hero of the First World War, fighter pilot, and mind heavily damaged through the traumas. Can’t tell his arse from a Tuesday. William, leader of a race of aliens that has taken 850 years to travel from their dying planet to Earth has to work out how to integrate his race onto Earth. Attack seems the only option.
Sounds good so far? Shame that I mired this actually decent sounding premise in heavy exposition and oodles of surrealism that I then try to unpack after reading the chapter.
My friends, this is my podcast. Hosted by me, and well, me. The old neurons that wrote this book, that I thought were long buried under a decade and a half of turning my back on this book have fired back up. Yes, you’ve heard it over previous episodes, but I guess my old neurons are now a co-host.
It’s a mind-fuck of a novel. Now it’s a mind-fuck of a podcast. There’s also some mild swearing. Don’t let the kiddies hear.
So, where are we up to?
William has given Earth 24 hours notice of an attack. He then went to sleep.
Ginger has been called off his leave, leaving his girlfriend Dee at their holiday cottage as he returns to base.
Please remember:
This is Fiction,
always fiction.
Logic is as logic does.
Chapter 11 - Ginger realises that he is talking to Himself
I arrive back at the base later this day. I go straight to the Flight Lieutenant’s office. I open the door without knocking first. As I enter, the Flight Lieutenant looks up from the paperwork that he is doing. He does not seem too surprised by this intrusion.
“Ah, Jeeves, There you are. Might as well give you your mission briefing now,” says El Flighty.
I look around for some pen and paper. No, I can’t see any, I’ll just have to commit it to memory, hopefully to be remembered at a later time. “Ready and waiting for your orders, Sir.”
Flight Lieutenant Johnson shuffles around in his chair, decides on leaning forward across the desk. “Good, good. I want you to kick some Martian butt.” He leans back in his chair and smiles.
I wait for him to carry on. “Is that it? Can you elaborate on that perhaps?”
He picks up a pen and starts tapping it on his knuckles.
“Is there anything else, Sir. Or is that it?” I have to ask this as I need to get out now. The desk is transforming into a giant… unrecognisable… shape that’s just throbbing and pulsing and retching. But I need not fear as after two seconds it mutates back into what I recognise as a desk. It looks smugly at me, knowing my fear. I daren’t take my eyes off it.
“There is a little bit more. I want you to have your squadron ready for 0-600 hours. This should allow ample time to get to London. Then, the second you see one of those alien craft, I want you to attack.”
“Attack. But how do you know they won’t just surrender straight away?”
The desk is beginning to pulse again. My heart starts beating faster in anticipation of the worst. The desk knows this and starts its pulsing to match the rhythm of my heart.
“My orders from the P.M. are to attack, and that is what I’m telling you to do.”
“But how will we know when they arrive? What do they look like? Have you got any photographs of these… aliens?”
The Flight Lieutenant goes through some of the papers on his desk, which remains still and in its original form, until he finds what he is looking for. He passes some of the photographs to myself, and I take them cautiously. My eyes are kept firmly on the desk.
“Yes, here we are. Sorry that they are blurred. They were moving too fast for our cameras to pick up most of the time. But here’s one where they were still.”
I’m not looking at the photographs but am already beginning to get a bit worried. “Fast as in faster than our aircraft?”
“Oh, much faster, I’m afraid.”
“Darn!” I wait until I feel that the desk will pose no more threat to me or even the Flight Lieutenant. I stand there looking at it for 65,748 seconds, and eventually I deem it safe. I look at the photographs. They are really unclear. I can make out black streaks. These, compared to the black streaks at the bottom of each picture, which I guess are buildings, don’t look too large, maybe the size of a bus, but certainly larger than our craft. There is one that is motionless, and contrasted to an image of Buckingham Palace, which is currently moving all round the picture, I believe my estimations to be accurate.
Something grabs my eye. “Jeepers Creepers! Look at the guns on that one! I must protest. We’re going to get plastered!” I place the photos on the desk, which, although I can see it, fails to be there. My hand and the photos just go through. So I end up putting them on the floor, before quickly snapping my hand back through the table, just in case it wants to trap my hand, or something.
“Yes. Well, no need to worry. Every active squadron within a reasonable distance of London is to accompany you to your...” The Flight Lieutenant pauses, whilst trying to find a suitable word. Somehow, ‘slaughter’ and ‘regurgitation’ keep coming to my mind, “... your Confrontation. We will also be sending along ground troops, you know, soldiers and all that, as a last hope. But they are only to be used once the last pilot has been shot down. We don’t want to go around shooting our own troops, now, do we?” The Flight Lieutenant smiles. The table smiles.
“Yikes!”
“Don’t worry, lad. It won’t be as bad as all that. Besides, I believe that you’ll find that the phrase is ‘flattened’, not ‘plastered’.”
“What do you bally well mean, Sir?” I am visibly shaking by now. But that’s only partly fear for the coming mission, for what is currently happening to me right now is that the desk has grown arms, embraced me, and is shaking me all over the place. My head bumps on the ceiling, then the door, then a chair, which just laughs at me, and… stuff.
“Well, if you fall from that height, you’re bound to end up flattened when you hit the floor. Especially if your plane lands on you. Splattered, if you like, which is almost an anagram of plastered, but with an extra ‘t’, I think.” He stops to think. “Yes.”
“Gee, Sir. You really know how to make a chap feel confident, don’t you!”
“Cheer up, old bean. It won’t be as bad as all that, you know. I remember when we used to do this kind of thing.” Johnson gives another encouraging smile, which consists of just showing a lot of teeth.
“Hah!”
He moves forward in his seat again. A more serious look on his face has appeared.
“I’m sure you’ll come through. Besides, you’ve got to do this. It’s for your country, and your world.”
“Yes, but will I come through alive, is what I want to know. And will there be anyone left alive to thank me.” I know that desk won’t thank me.
“I know what’ll cheer you up. A good joke. What’s the difference between an alien and a Boche?”
“There isn’t one. They are both ugly bastards.”
“Oh, you’ve heard it before, then. Never mind,” says Johnson, obviously disappointed.
“No, Sir. I just seem to have an uncanny knack for knowing the punch lines to pathetic jokes,” I say rather nastily. My wit is drying out a bit, but the sarcasm is lost on El Flighty, anyway. I take a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down a bit. “I wish it was the Germans we were fighting. At least then we might possibly be able to stay alive for longer than two minutes. I mean, these aliens have travelled half-way across the universe. We can’t even get into space. That at least suggests some sort of superiority. Plus, they’ve got big guns. Really big guns.”
By this time, the Flight Lieutenant is staring vacantly out the window, thinking about whatever the Flight Lieutenant thinks about. The desk has left the room to go to the toilet, or something. But I see something, some red sauce. I pick it up, pull up my sleeve to expose my bicep and pour it on to the arm. It acts like blood, running down my arm, forming rivers, droplets picking up more momentum when they join together. But as soon as a river is there, it will stay, drying and crusting, but it hasn’t got to that point yet.
Before the Flight Lieutenant turns around, I pull on my best jacket, which, unfortunately, happens to be a pale cream colour and not very thick. Where it touches the skin and red sauce, it absorbs through so that a red stain is clearly visible on the outside of the jacket. Shit. I don’t want anyone to see it or know about it.
The Flight Lieutenant has turned to face me and we’re talking again, but I have to have my arm turned away from him at all times. It feels like it’s stopped now, so at least there won’t be any drops falling on the floor, now that it’s drying up. I try to look as casual as possible, which is hard when you’re talking to someone sideways. The desk makes a comeback, giving me an excuse to leave. I get out of the room without him seeing the stain. Yet I have been told to report to one of the briefing rooms, where some of my men are waiting for me.
I enter into the briefing room. There are a small number of men sitting around, having a smoke and a chat. They get up and go to their seats as they see me enter.
I decide to get right down to the plan, as opposed to putting them off by telling them exactly who, or what we are to be fighting.
“Righty ho, then chaps. Here’s the plan. We take off tomorrow at 0-600 hours...”
One of the pilots stands up to protest. He disappears right in front of my eyes.
“But Sir, it’s Christmas day, tomorrow. I’ve arranged to spend the day with my family. I’m already having to put off plans I had made for tonight. I don’t want any practice flight. Not tomorrow.”
There is a small murmur of agreement from the rest of the pilots, who keep individually fading into my view, before disappearing again. I recognise the first pilot purely by voice, as he has a distinct nasal tonation.
“This ain’t no bally practice run, I’m afraid, Connor,” I say.
I look to the rest of the room. They’ve gone. They’ve all gone. I peer under desks, under chairs, but there is no-one to be seen. I trip over someone’s foot, but he’s run off before I even get the chance to see who it was. But if people still seem to be around, I’ll carry on.
“You all know that London was under attack this morning, don’t you?”
There is laughter, but it sounds distant, distorted. It sounds like it’s from another room, somewhere at the opposite end of the building.
“What, by these alien chaps?” This voice appears behind me, I spin rapidly around. No-one there. Just a chalkboard. I spin around again. I see Connor. His voice must have echoed off the wall behind me. Why didn’t I hear it coming? Shit! Is he the only other person in existence?
“Yes, that’s right,” says I, though I don’t know where I’m saying it to, so I aim my voice up at the ceiling, so it should bounce back down and cover most of the room.
A second voice, Phillips, I think, comes from the floor. Whoever, it sounds more serious this time. “But I thought that was a joke.” Urgent. A need to believe.
I get onto the floor. I wipe away some of the dust. I scream as loud as I can through to the floor below, “I can bally tell you now, having been called from my leave, seeing orders from the Prime Minister, this certainly is darn well not a joke!”
The voice comes back. I can just about hear it. I think he might not be on the floor underneath, but the floor underneath that. The building becomes a thousand storey building. With me on top, and him at the bottom. But quietly, faintly, I can hear his voice, just a gasp.
The voice from the back of the wall, hits me again. “You mean there really are aliens? Wow!” says Connor. He isn’t excited, but shocked.
This time however, I’m beginning to be able to work out his position, from the way that the reverberations come off the wall. Judging that it’s towards one of the corners, I position myself at the opposite corner. I cup my hands to my mouth, judge the angle to bounce my voice off the ceiling, and I say, “I’m afraid so, and it’s up to us to stop them,” my voice acting like a snooker ball. I don’t know if it went into the right pocket, but somebody heard it as Phillips’ voice comes back through the floor. “But why do we have to leave at six a.m. tomorrow?”
“To get to London by the 06:30 deadline that we’ve been given.”
What am I doing? I feel a fool. I pick myself up off the floor, and dust myself off. I stand there. Unable to know what to do. What am I doing? I’m standing here, talking to, as far as I’m aware, a small group of men. But I can’t see them, only hear them, and when I do hear them, they appear not to be in the room, or maybe a different part of it, perhaps hiding. But I’m looking a fool ‘cos I’m responding to where I think they are. And I think they are in this room, otherwise the voices I’ve heard would have to be weird coincidences.
I feel the room fall back down to its proper place on the third floor. My ears pop. I can hear a bit more clearly now. In fact, the next voice I hear, Philips again, seems to come from the chair he was sitting in before he disappeared. And he says, “Deadline for what, exactly?”
“Either we surrender to the aliens, or we fight them,” I say this calmly, reassuringly, to reassure him. But it doesn’t seem to work. My voice just spirals out in front of me, zooming away, hitting each wall, hitting the opposite wall, bouncing backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards. My voice lost in the echoes the multiples have produced. I can’t even hear me clearly, and I know what I said.
“And we’re fighting them?” Phillips is starting to get worried by now. I am too, but I’m not sure if we worry for the same reasons. I think he’s worried by what’s going to happen. I’m worried by what is happening.
“That’s correct.” Only this time, I don’t put the force into it that I did last time. My voice echoes out, but I feel small, worthless, and so does my voice, it spreads out, but weakens by every millimetre, rapidly declining, becoming nothing.
A third pilot speaks, breaking the silence, he doesn’t speak much. But it comes as such a great feeling. I feel heard. He says: “What would happen if we were to surrender?”
“Most probably that they would start killing people ruthlessly, and then take over rule of each country on Earth.”
I’m beginning to feel crowded now. I’m still searching for those faces, the ones that I can’t see, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve disappeared anymore. I feel I can be more relaxed now, knowing that they are in the room, they are talking to me, but I still question why I can’t see them.
“And if we fight and lose?” asks Connor.
“Most probably do exactly the same thing.”
There is a pause. It’s not a long pause, but it is certainly a big pause. There are only four other men in this room, but it feels like the pause of a hundred, if not a thousand people, rather than just a handful of people taking in what was said.
It feels to me like the reason I can’t see these four men is that they have been crowded out by a hundred different other invisible faces. Ghosts, or souls, reincarnations of people, without bodies, visions, both mine and theirs. There are too many people in this room, I know that now, but I can’t get an accurate idea of how many without first being able to see them
“Might as well go down fighting, then. After all, what have got to lose?” says Phillips.
Bradfield, a fourth pilot, who is very pessimistic decides he has something to contribute. “We could lose our lives, maybe?”
At least, I think it’s Bradfield, it could be any one of these unseen people.
“Aye, might as well give it a shot,” says Connor.
If I can’t see any of my men, can they see me?
“Or get shot!”
I look down at my body, but all I see is floor. Holy Moly! I’ve not been aware of my body, just my voice and my thoughts. That’s all I’ve been since I’ve been in here. A voice and mind. That’s what I am. A VOICE AND THOUGHT. I need to continue before I disappear completely. SAY SOMETHING!
“Might just as well... yes. Show them that we are not totally weak.’
A quote comes back to me from some point in time, past or future. ‘I am what I think I am.’ What am I? I’m a voice and thought. No that’s wrong. I’m a human being. I know I am, therefore, that’s what I must think I am. So how come I am currently a voice and thought? Because I had taken my body for granted. I was not currently as aware of it as I was when I was hungry last, or hurt, when my body is sending messages to my brain, when there is something wrong. I am a human being.
To make sure of that, I’ll hurt a part of my body, which has just drifted back into a focus, though not a very good focus now that I think I have a body. I smash my arm against the wall. As the shot of pain runs up my nerves, my arm reappears with it. A success. I think I have a body, therefore I have a body. I continue the process on each of my limbs to ensure success, and lo and behold, I am!!
“Have we got any chance at all of beating them?” asks Bradfield.
I take a deep breath. I don’t know what to say. I need to make them think they are what they think they are, therefore they can be, because right now, they are not. But, as I think about the size of the guns and the amount of destruction that they could do, that we do not have a chance, I can see that they too are thinking along similar lines. They are thinking about their bodies. Success! I can see each of them fading slowly into view, as they remember their limbs whilst imagining them being blown off. But, I don’t want to scare them off completely.
“Yes. Yes, we have got a chance. And I promise that we’ll all be back in time to open our presents and have dinner with the rest of our families.”
Strike! As they think about food, they start getting hungry, and they are what they think they are, humans, and therefore they can be! Humans! With bodies!
“I take it, it won’t just be us?” says Phillips.
“No. There’ll be plenty of others out there with us.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a relief,” he sighs.
And I agree with him, as I can now fully see the people that were once not there at all.
“Although I’m sure that we won’t be needing so many people out there. I’m sure that we’ll have gotten to them before too long.’
I keep feeling that I have to be very careful from now on. If I forget for a second my body, I could disappear forever. It’s a scary thought, but, for now I use the others as a gauge. When they disappear, I’ll know that I too could be on the way out. Yet I still have to be careful. I could be thinking too much about the others, and not myself and, again, disappear.
“How will we recognise them?” asked Connor.
I think about the photographs that I’ve seen in my hand. Right now, it’s important to think about my hand. I don’t want that to go. The alien craft are certainly very obvious. They appear to have no wings, for a start.
“You will recognise them. Trust me. They’re aliens. They’ll be ugly buggers. Probably have about twenty arms, or something weird,” I laugh. But it makes me think. If I think I can be, if I think I can disappear and not be, would it be at all possible to think that I can have twenty arms and be with twenty arms? I won’t do it now, I don’t want to scare anyone, least of all myself, but it’s a question I can take away with me.
Bradfield feels he has a more important question. “How are we going to fight them?”
“Hopefully not man to ...” I pause, trying to think of what they could be called, “...whatever. No, usual tactics. Just get in there and fight. Well, I think that’s all for now. Meet you back here for 0-500 hours tomorrow. We’ll be fine.”
They all get up and leave, leaving me behind.
I THINK I have twenty arms, therefore I have twenty arms.
General Notes
It’s interesting, isn’t it? How when the characters have something to talk about, not only is the dialogue more dynamic, but we get to learn more about them.
This is obviously why it’s important to always have something for your characters to do.
OG DANIEL’S NEMESIS:
But Ginger gives himself conflict.
He’s active in his mind, if not his body.
HOST:
Flight Lieutenant Johnson hasn’t changed in character - he’s stubbornly the same, but his digressions, his short attention span works better when Ginger has to get real information from him. Annoying, yes, but Flight Lieutenant Johnson was always supposed to be annoying. A man-child in contrast to Dee’s … poor development? In contrast as he is Ginger’s superior.
But as we begin moving into the story, as the chain of events begin to take effect, and we start pulling ourselves out of the first act, where are we in the story?
What we have here is Blake Snyder’s debate section. Sorry that I keep talking about him, but if there is any analyst of story structure who’s made things approachable and accessible, it really is him. I have a lot of respect for Linda Aronson, but she delves into much more complicated narrative structures - flashback structures. I’m a bit more linear, Blake Snyder would never approve of my script, but I do kind of follow his pattern.
OG DN:
Go fuck Robert McKee then.
HOST:
Look, I’ll talk about other analysts when we really start getting into the book. I don’t want to be giving too much away, so I’m sticking with basic structure rules - something I think most are familiar with. I want to go into all the details that are being set up in these early chapters, but I can’t as that might give away core details later on.
My theme is the Trascons arriving on Earth at a time when the humans are not very advanced militarily but have started down that road to the military that we recognise today. This is the message that I want to deliver by the end of the story. In other words: This is what the story is about. Here, Ginger is finally questioning whether he is able to embark on this mission. He is not the only one. Doubt and disbelief are scattered about. However, whereas he casts away Dee’s doubt in the previous chapter with the goal of doing his duty, here he is confronted by the pictures (the photographs). And he does focus on the size of the guns. Unlike with Dee who is expected to go along with Ginger’s goal, he has to convince the disbelievers of the truth, and also instil on them the confidence that he is lacking himself.
Perhaps it is Flight Lieutenant Johnson's blitheness that spurs Ginger on. As man-child as he is, having a character that perhaps does not get the gravitas of the situation, and is merely passing on orders as there is no apparent consequence to himself, this allows Ginger to be able to digest the facts for himself. In fact, there are many instances where Flight Lieutenant Johnson does not challenge Ginger’s comments, nor try to get Ginger to override them, but merely reflects what Ginger is saying, upping the stakes and therefore we can be confident that Ginger’s views are his own.
OG DN:
But it’s like in Terry Pratchett books where the characters argue, but it’s funny. Yes, he’s annoying, but that’s where the humour is - a character who is in charge but doesn’t know what’s going on.
HOST:
Flight Lieutenant Johnson relays the information, lacking the empathy to see Ginger’s state, and essentially suggesting that Ginger is doomed to failure. Does Flight Lieutenant Johnson just see Ginger as a disposable cog? Perhaps, therefore it is now down to Ginger to survive as he is not getting any help on that front from any of his superiors.
OG DN:
You are really overthinking a silly character.
HOST:
Look, you want this podcast to be about you? Fine, let’s make it about you. Pitch your book. You think it’s so great, pitch it to me.
The Pitch Meeting
HOST:
So, hello, mister Nemesis is it?
OG DN:
Actually, it’s Master Nemesis, if you’re giving me a title.
HOST:
Well, I have the Master’s Degree, you don’t, so let’s just see about that. So, you want to sell me a book idea? Tell me about it. What’s the logline? The pitch paragraph?
OG DN:
(BREATHING IN)
It’s 1918, and the First World War has just ended. Humanity is recovering from having entered into the modern world in a very bloody way. Ginger Jeeves, fighter pilot, hero, having survived the whole war needs time to recover from all the damage he has seen.
Abandoning their planet due to a dying star, it has taken the Trascons, an alien race, 850 years to travel through space. Their new home: Earth. At the head of this race is Skaj Frite, taking on the human name William. It is his goal to get the Trascons onto Earth. His question? How? The Trascons are divided in their ideas of how to do this, with many believing that attack and invasion are the best way.
Ginger is called upon to fight the Trascons. But his world is not of others. His mind creates a new world that he has to traverse through, new obstacles to fight against before he is even able to confront that which is happening in the real world.
A human that is psychologically damaged, and an alien that is doing the best for his race no matter the means. This is a book in which the two confront each other to take us, the reader on a journey through surrealism, conflict, and thought-provoking questions. Tying the two together is Holly, but what is Holly?
HOST:
Fine, fine. That’s neither a logline nor a pitch paragraph. Are you selling me the idea, or just reading the novel?
Ok, look. Ginger(?), I believe is the main character(?). What is it about Ginger that I’m supposed to like, to identify with?
OG DN:
He, well, umm, he’s … (SIGHS)
Is it important that you identify with him? Can anyone identify with him? We go into his head, yes, to understand him more. Describing his actions from a third person would be one obstacle too far. We can’t identify with him, but we can at least know what’s going on. Isn’t it more interesting to see, to become a character that is unknowable?
HOST:
So, you have this character… Holly? Who is she?
OG DN:
Let’s skip that question.
HOST:
The science fiction books that tend to sell these days are grounded in reality. In a contemporary world. How does your book fit into that?
OG DN:
Today we have nuclear weapons. I could have fabricated laser shields or whatever, but what makes that interesting? Conflict, right? Stakes? Isn’t that drama?
Rather than a McGuffin that needs to be found or destroyed, why not make it real? Imagine aliens attacking at a time when our weapons are more simple.
That’s stakes. It’s not set today, because we are too advanced. Not to fly far into space, but we have simple ships. The aliens are more alien if Ginger is not able to understand the technology. They are more threatening if you go head to head with them in a plane made out of wood. The reality is the reality of not being equipped to deal with a more advanced race.
1918 is the right time. It would be silly if they were all knights of the round table in big suits of armour. Or riding around on horses with muskets that take five hours to reload.
HOST:
And grounded in reality?
OG DN:
Well, that’s William, isn’t it? Yes, he’s alien, not human, so it’s not a human reality. But that’s where we see politics at play, people working towards their own goals, not that of a unified common goal. The interactions that cause us to question, wonder who a person actually is. No, there’s no Joe Bloggs, but it’s all representative, isn’t it?
HOST:
And who is the audience for this book?
OG DN:
(FLUSTERED)
It’s for people who love books. There doesn’t have to be an age range, or a target, or anything like that.
HOST:
Well, that’s a bit vague. People who buy books tend to prefer certain genres of fiction. Just describe to me the reader. Who is the person that you picture reading this book? Tell me about that one person you see.
OG DN:
(STILL FLUSTERED)
Well, no one.
Myself, I guess.
I don’t know.
Why does someone read Terry Pratchett, then go to JK Rowling, then a bit of Dostoevsky?
HOST:
And have you read Dostoevsky?
OG DN:
That’s not the point! People do.
HOST:
And how similar is your book to Harry Potter, seeing as you used that as a reference?
OG DN:
Well, it isn’t! I was referring to how people want variety.
HOST:
And many don’t. We’d like more certainty. Marketing costs money. Where do we market? What section of a store do we put this novel in? We’d just like to know from you, that’s all.
OG DN:
It’s a good book. It will get good reviews. People will find out about it. I mean, don’t people talk about things on the Internet these days?
HOST:
That’s not quite how it works. Tell me, are you the right person to write this story?
OG DN:
I’m the one who wrote it! It’s from my head! William and Ginger are both aspects of me, played out in very different ways. Who else could write this book?
HOST:
I’m sure that we could find someone. If the idea is marketable.
And, is there a sequel? We like series these days. Stand-alone books... Well, we want to see a vision, a plan. How do you imagine these characters in later books?
OG DN:
Are you trying to fuck your own podcast? We don’t do spoilers.
Look, I’m the author. I need to work on my spelling, maybe my grammar. That’s all you need to tell me. Otherwise, I think we need to end this here.
HOST:
As he disappears to sulk, I shall get into the -
The Psychologist’s Chair
There’s a lot of ways the scene in the briefing room could be interpreted. One way is how we talk to people in a public forum. I’ve been on stage many times and had been at the time of writing this. For me, at least, there is an element of tuning out the rest of the world to perform better and sink myself into that performance. As a teacher, my current day job, there is a different aspect at play, as I still need to be looking at people to see if they are understanding or following as I speak. But even then, I find myself very easily going into that zone. Even stopping to repeat myself or ask questions to my students doesn’t take me out of that zone.
But there is also another element of accepting a new truth in this chapter. Ginger, still coming to terms with, though clearly in acceptance of, the new facts, has to convey this to his team. Each is at a different level of their own acceptance or scepticism, and so are distanced from Ginger in relation to his knowledge of the truth.
This chapter is an example of how the drama from a typical narrative structure setup and the drama from a surreal inner monologue can tie up and work together.
Whilst Ginger may not be thinking critically about what is happening, his goals internally and externally amount to the same thing: to get the others to the place where he is. The surrealism of the situation nicely balances with the reality of the situation to make a scene that is both interesting and cohesive.
I’ve also talked before about being socially awkward. And I’m often that guy in the corner of a party. We can see elements of that going on here. As Ginger observes, the others who are lost in the fun of the party are not so aware of all that is going on around them. But Ginger isn’t just the guy in the corner, he’s also the centre of attention in the party.
(GHOSTLY SOUND BEGINS)
I don’t know, there’s a lot to interpret in this chapter. I like it.
The power of thinking is brought up with the whole Descartes quote: “I think therefore I am”.
GINGER:
(AT THE SAME TIME)
I think I’m in the future, so I’m in the future.
What happened to my twenty arms?
OG DN:
Hey, that guy sounds an awful lot like me.
HOST:
Ginger? Oh no. Please, no.
This is getting out of hand!
I think we need to finish here as we are just-
GINGER:
A room. Blue walls but one is green. There are some metal tripods scattered around. I’m surrounded by people who look like me, talk like me. As I lean down to taste the ground to check if it’s real, one of my doppelgangers, the older one, leans into a pole to talk to it.
HOST:
(RUSHED)
Next time, er… William changes the er… channel on the TV. Ginger has a party in a double-chapter episode again.
Fuck it, I may do three chapters if it helps get me through this book quicker.
Until next time, TTFN!
(MUSIC STOPS, AWAY FROM MIC)
What the fuck is all this? I just wanted to revisit an old book, I don’t need the past haunting me. I don’t have enough vocal patches. How many ways can I alter my voice for characters that are essentially me?
And just in case you were wondering, all text was written by me, Daniel’s Nemesis, and XBook is purely a work of fiction and is not meant to be based on anyone or any events at all.
The music was also by me, Daniel’s Nemesis, as was the image that accompanies this podcast.
It sucks, doesn’t it?
But there we go.