“It doesn’t have to be good.” I tell my wife. It just has to be complete. I need the whole story out on paper.

Somehow it’s just pouring out of me. I’m not even reading what I write so I’m sure it’s mostly garbage. I’ll have a hell of a time trudging through it later and marking down relevant sections–if there are any. I get this bad feeling that it’s all just dreamtext, phrases that sound fantastic when you are sleepwriting but which, upon conscious reading, turn out to be complete drivel. But, again, I am washed with a sense accomplishment. Crap or not, I’m writing a novel.

I don’t want to work anymore. I have two mortgages, a wife and a baby. If I can earn $500K (after taxes), I can pay off both mortgages and we can pay our base bills with the rent from our other house. This will allow me to only have to work for fun and fun money.

And when the economy is good, financing is good. The payout can be great. But there’s risk. There is a hard road to flatten, cobble, pave, paint and then sell to someone who needs a road. That’s the business of a startup. To make something great and see the payoff. Then we get to move on to something else. Hopefully, we don’t move onto something else before the current project comes to full fruition.

Today, I am officially unemployed. The entire company is laid off. With the market hit, some investors have to save themselves before making risky bets.

But all hope is not lost. There are some investors who have been waiting for this moment in the economy so they can get a really good deal on bankrupt and struggling companies. The buying is hot right now. I have done some of this myself. It’s a damn good time to buy up shares of companies you know will turn a profit.

So, I am going to be on hold, trying to see what happens over the next couple of weeks. Maybe I will get hired back, maybe not.

Time to touch up the old resume.

“Ah, good, that part there is a little fast but it’s good that way.”

Many years later, I am an old man. I see the composer in a coffee shop, looking not a day older than when I was a child. It is apparent that he must die. He is the enemy, an agent from another faction. But I am old. What can I do? I befriend him. We discuss the changing scene of classical composition in modern times. He invites me over to his yacht where we drink and laugh about the past.

My family is with me now. We are all old. This is our vacation in some undisclosed European country.

“If he’s here, we need to run.” My wife suggests.

“We could catch a plane tonight. Grab only the items that are already packed.” I tell them. “I am going to see if I can finish this first.”

I head out to the yacht, uncertain of what I will do. Upon arrival, I see a figure leap from the mast and fall into a mesh of chain and rope in the front of the ship. It is the old man. He has hung himself on the bow. My arms fly into the air in a victorious flail of triumph. He is dead and I didn’t even have to kill him!

Interpol comes racing in, surrounding the scene. I scream at them. “He’s dead!” I laugh. “I didn’t do it but he’s dead. He’s finally dead.” I follow them over to the body and one of the agents grabs ahold of the man hanging from the chain.

“He isn’t dead yet. There’s breathing.”

My heart sinks into despair.

Outside, I head to the bookshop, where many people are speaking about historical texts and how they relate to religion in modern times.

There is a boy who is studying Abraxas but he starts to follow a path that is being generated in front of him. A large stepping stone appears inches from his feet and as soon as he steps onto it, another appears in front of that one. He keeps this going until he is almost all the way around the world, traversing oceans and mountains with the steps rising and lowering to fit the terrain. When he is almost around the world the steps begin to go upward at an alarming pace, the boy just barely able to climb up to each next step. Before long, he is walking outside of the atmosphere, no problem breathing, circling the earth.

Narrowly avoiding the boy, a space Winnebago cruses into orbit and slams into the atmosphere, prepared to land in the city where I am watching this. The robot gets out of the machine and now it’s me. I am the robot. I am from space, looking for a new ride. Mine is old and won’t get me back into space.

On the next block, I see a real, honest space missile full of tourists, prepared to take off. It also looks like a Winnebago but when I sneak inside and the thrusters start up, i realize it isn’t as spacious as mine. There is only one seat I can fit into and it’s crammed up against a steering wheel. Nevertheless, I shoot up into space.

The missile doesn’t make it all the way and we land in the ocean near Russia. Swimming through dark waters, we find ourselves near ocean oil storage. There are vast pools of crude oil just floating in the waters, held together only by the chemicals own attraction to itself. When fish swim through it, the disturb it’s purity and get coated in the black sludge. A tanker is on its way to siphon some of the oil. It doesn’t matter how pure it is. It will get whatever it can and sell it at a discount.

We board the barge and when we get to land, everyone is fighting. It’s night and all I can see is fire and red hot pellets whizzing by our heads, shot from the pistols of the enemy. We have archaic weapons but they fire quickly. I’m reaching a tube into my pocket to fill it with tiny pellets, to reload my gun. It fires rapidly, randomly, into the wall of men. Like a fully automatic minuteman, I’m taking them down in seconds. We continue to march, just walking straight into the line of fire, gunning for the front line.

When the smoke clears and the bodies fall, we find ourselves in a theme park. The boy following the trail of stones is here. I tell my group we should go see an attraction that I remembered from a dream I had a few months ago. Behind one of the members of my group, I see floating islands with fortresses on them and a pair of noblemen battling each other on one of the island edges.

“There it is!” I point.

This really bothers me. Obviously, court protection orders aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. If you are threatening murder/suicide, you probably don’t care that some authoritative agency suggests you don’t go near your target. In fact, it will probably just drive the urgency of your desire. Why can’t court protection orders also come with a GPS bracelet, just like those they put on people after they get out of jail so they don’t leave their houses? Only, this version would detect when you come within the limits of your order and notify authorities, who would hopefully come quickly enough. Just goes to show how broken and poisoned our society can be that a guy can go out and buy a gun, get a court order against him and still achieve his dark desires–and that we, as a society, let that happen, made it happen, grew this mindset.

Being a new dad, this stuff worries me.

Melissa was fun and kind. She will be missed by many. I will always think of her when I see LOL cats.
This ones for you, Floxx:

Appended 2008.07.24: Skye asked about the format of my logs so I took a screenshot of the first 30 entries. In later entries I started tracking what movies I watched in the awake time before the nap, whether I worked, played, etc…