Sajani Tails

Hi. This is what was submitted to Rossi Publishing Games as a writing sample when I applied to write the Sajani Tails books for them. I never finished the story, so if you're going to be disturbed by that, I suggest you don't read any further. Other than that, enjoy. This is technically a rough draft. I was told to send what I had and was so excited I didn't bother changing much. I don't suggest doing, even if you're applying at the same publisher. I hope you do enjoy what's here and maybe even learn a little bit from it. The Prologue is WAY too long, but parts of it were designed to be given at the beginnings of the chapters, so it's longer here than it would be if the book were completed.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado (NORAD) 12:14 PM MST 0 A.C. (After Change)

      General Wilson had been at his job for almost 30 years in one form or another. He’d been too young to understand what was happening when the Soviet threat fractured into many smaller threats and gradually rebuilt. He’d been a Lieutenant Colonel when factions of the European Union had looked like they were poised for war and he had watched that threat dissolve in a similar way to the Soviet threat. NORAD was the end of his career. His last stop in service rendered—as the base chaplain would say—Pro Deo et Patria—for God and Country.

      He sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair. Two days until retirement. His successor was already on the ground and seemed to have a good grasp of the ropes. His wife had been a big part of the planning for the retirement party and Colonel Faine, his aide, had the change of command all ready to roll. Thirty years of service. Five seconds of rest couldn’t hurt.

Colonel Faine’s voice shook him only a second later. “Sir, urgent intel patched through just now.”

      The general leaned briefly over his monitor. He didn’t have to look long. “Faine,” he bellowed, not bothering with the intercom. “Set DEFCON Five. Threatcon to Delta. All staff to monitoring station three in five minutes.” The sirens signaling his orders blared almost immediately. “God help us.” He added under his breath.

US ICBM Missile Silo, Somewhere in the Central United States 1:18 PM CST 0 A.C.

      Lieutenant Zacks had never expected such an order to come through on his shift. Things had been quiet for long before his time. He’d been just about to call in Captain Manson to look at the odd heat readings coming from the silo when the call came. It’d come on the line straight from NORAD. He carefully checked the authorization as he received it “…seven niner six fife charlie hotel x-ray mike romeo. Do you copy?” That was the correct authorization. “Yes, sergeant major, I copy. Relaying authorization to the Duty Officer.” A few key-strokes and the alert was passed directly to the captain’s desk. He joined the call.

      “Captain Manson.”

      “Captain Manson, this is Sergeant Major Polsky from NORAD fire control. Lieutenant Zacks has just received stage one authorization to activate. Sending stage two. Prepare to copy.”

      Everything was flying by so quickly. Launching was supposed to be quick, as long as all the procedures were followed. Zacks terminal confirmed the first code and opened the key box near his desk. While still holding the phone to his ear, he had just removed the key when the lieutenant finished receiving his authorization.

      “… niner tree eight fife. Do you copy?”

      “I copy. Ready to launch on your order.”

      “Prepare to copy destination over-ride.”

      Over-ride? That would send the missile somewhere else. Zachs knew this was all wrong. There should be no reason to…

      “Station two ready to copy.” Captain Manson said. There was a pause.

      A red light started flashing on the lieutenant’s desk. He checked the alert on his terminal. Heat was building quickly in the silo.

      “Station one do you copy… Station one…” The sergeant major’s call brought him back. Finish the current mission. One mission at a time.

      “Station one ready to copy.”

      “As you were. Fire. Fire Fire.”

      “Say again NORAD?” Zacks had no idea why he said that. He knew what the order was.

      “Fire. Fire. Fire.” The sergeant major’s voice was raised to almost a panic. The display showed that Captain Manson had already turned his key. Lieutenant Zacks didn’t hesitate a second time. But the chaos wasn’t over yet. “Silo seven fife zero. This is NORAD. Prepare to copy in-flight over-ride.”

Reactor Technology Complex, Idaho National Laboratory 12:20 PM MST 0 A.C

      Dr. Edison was rethinking the lecture he’d given just two days ago at the University of Idaho regarding the safety of nuclear power. The reaction was totally out of control. They’d attempted to stop it. That had failed. Emergency coolant pumping through the grid as fast as possible slowed things but wasn’t stopping it. The detector near him read 1000 when he turned to a nearby worker. “Keep only those necessary for containment. Continue evacuation.” His last thought as he was leaving the mostly contained reactor was that it was a good thing this hadn’t happened on some of the older European and Russian reactors. He also wondered how he’d had the energy to get through it all.

White House, Washington D.C. 12:00 AM EST 0 A.C.

      Nuclear proliferation had not been part of his platform, the newly elected president thought as he entered the meeting room. It wasn’t a problem either candidate discussed. He’d hardly heard it discussed in his lifetime. His mentor in the Senate, George Farmworthy, once called it political suicide. “No one wants to be reminded about that anymore. It’s a real threat, but people are tired of voting out of fear.” And now it was a subject without a vote.

      “Mr. President,” the secretary of Homeland Security motioned to a woman next to him. “Dr. Grace Melleth, of Harvard University…” the introductions began. He wanted more international scientists, but they were busy on their own home turf. He had the 25 leading physicists from the United States, he’d been reassured. There wasn’t time right now to care what their names were.

      “Ok.” He said quickly once the introductions were done. “What the hell happened earlier today?” He thought there would be many responses to that, that the whole room would erupt in explanations, but it was silent.

      The physicist from Harvard cleared her throat. “Mr. President. We’d all like to answer that. It’s our job to answer that.” More silence.

      “We’ve just been forced to launch our entire nuclear arsenal as fast as possible off the planet because they were about to self-detonate. All nuclear reactors in the world have melted down. Thank heaven ours seem to have had adequate containment procedures.” the President said slowly. “I did ok in college physics. I think I even got a ‘B’” there was a little forced laughter for his joke. “Critical mass changed?”

      “Mr. President,” one bearded scientist was saying as he carefully moved past a man in a wheelchair. “it’s unlikely that it changed. There could have been some atmospheric or terrestrial occurrence…”

      The President watched the man in the wheelchair slowly shake his head. He was younger than most. “Something that has Europe and the former Soviet Republic slightly irradiated, huge parts of Asia without power and has caused the destruction of some middle eastern countries that have been denying the existence of a nuclear program for decades, was just a tremor or change in wind direction?”

      The man did look slightly stumped. “Physics does not change.” He asserted. Silence answered again.

      A woman spoke next, he thought she was introduced as being from Stanford. “I think what Dr. Baxtor is saying is that the laws of physics can’t change…”

      “They just occasionally roll dice?” The President quipped. No one laughed.

      “Our theories on how things are must have been wrong in some way. It seems to be a slight change in the effects of gravity dramatically affected some things.”

      “Gravity changed?”

      “I wouldn’t say it changed exactly.” She said. “It’s possible that we failed to account for some effect of time, space, or even additional dimensions.”

      Part of the president wanted to laugh. Could these people even form the words, “I don’t know?”

      “I don’t know.” Came the echo to his thoughts. It was the physicist in the wheelchair—a Dr. Krossfield from the University of Utah. “It’s possible that such a thing has happened before in the universe, but we lacked the instruments and technology to notice it. It could explain many parts of myth and history that we can’t seem to explain now or shrug off as nothing more than legend.”

      “Dr. Krossfield and his magical world of God to explain everything.” One scientist joked. The group laughed. Apparently the others knew something about the disabled physicist that he didn’t.

      “Doctor, surely you don’t expect us to believe that it happened by magic or that God changed His mind? Science can’t work on such an assumption.”

      More laughter came from Dr. Krossfield’s response. “Sometimes,” he said, “science cannot work without such an assumption. At least until we find the truth. We’re lucky the nature of DNA didn’t change and wipe us out. We don’t even know yet what all has changed. It will be decades before we know for sure.” Despite the laughter, the President felt that he might be looking at the only sane person in the room.

University of Utah 2:20 PM 3 A.C.

      Dr. Krossfield wanted to pace in front of the class that was about to start. Before the car accident, that would have been what he’d done. But the accident left him with only moderate use of his legs. Standing for short periods of time with support was possible but pacing… never again. It was odd that the accident that made such a huge change to his life happened only months before the huge changes to the entire world. Huge changes? More like “The Change.” That’s what it was called now, showing science’s usual lack of creativity. In some of his papers and to his students, he called it the Universal Hiccough or even Ted if he wanted to make it sound more personable. The rest of the world called it the change and now used it as a measurement of time. Science had been waiting to use some other measurement than the Birth of Christ. They’d kept the B.C. and A.D. dates up until the change. It would have been too hard to re-write everything. The bell sounded. The students quieted. Dr. Krossfield picked up his digital pen and set it to blue. He wrote on the pad on the front of his wheelchair the words,

      The Change

      Aka

      The Universal Hiccough

      Aka

      Ted

      The words appeared instantly on the screen behind him. He waited a moment and then tapped the opposite side of the pen (the erasure he still thought of it as) to the pad and the words disappeared. He then wrote in red letters, “Unit 12. Assigned Reading: Handout. Questions 1-10. No Textbook Assignment.” As the students scribbled down what he’d written he added, “If you’re just copying what I write out of habit, save the universe a little entropy and yourself some energy. As always, these notes will be posted to the web.”

      “In a completely unreadable format.” A student near the front added. The class laughed.

      The teacher shrugged it off and continued, writing notes for the students as he went. “There are two major areas of change that have been noticed. There might be more. Biologists got more out of Ted than physicists as many of you already know. While we’ve seen changes in gravitational fields that have caused changes in radioactive decay, they’ve seen the exciting results of what is known now as gene transmutation. So while we get to disprove continuously by observation such things as the one theory proposing that we’d passed by where another ancient universe had started and became subject to its laws, Biologists get to prove theories about the nature of life and gene-transmutation.

      “That area isn’t part of what we study as physicists, except as it pertains to particle physics, so if you want to know more, you’ll have to talk to Dr. Philips. If you are totally confused about what I’m talking about this early in the semester, I suggest the Liberal Arts Department across campus.” A few were shocked, but most students just chuckled. “I’ll discuss the changes in gravitational force that caused some quantum mechanics to spit up some quarks in a moment, but it’s important for you to understand the drama Ted caused. With a reduction in gravitational force, radio-active material decays faster. Mr. Leathermon, before you sign off for you nap, can you please tell us what is meant by critical mass?”

      The student jumped slightly at the mention of his name but seemed mostly ready for it. “It’s the smallest amount of something, needed to maintain a chain reaction.”

      “Very good. Don’t take it personally, now you’re awake. That was almost textbook perfect, but Mr. Leathermon forgot to mention that you need something radio-active to maintain that nuclear chain reaction. Yes. This, as the more studious of you now know, caused the world-wide panic. The United States was able to launch all their nuclear missiles in time and had sufficient containment on its few nuclear power plants. This was because there was an approximately 20-minute delay across the world. We had the most warning.

      “The changes that we are most certain of have to do directly with gravitational forces. While our quantum forces seem to have stayed consistent, our views of gravity have changed slightly. By the old theories, a reduction in the earth’s gravity by 8.7 percent would re-arrange our orbit around the sun significantly. This is not the case, however. The orbit has stayed consistent over the last three years. “As you know from doing the required reading for this session, the earth’s orbit around the sun is constant in all four dimensions. What we see as an elliptical orbit in our limited three dimensions is in fact a straight line through time. What we have perceived so far is that those bodies with a high enough mass to significantly affect space-time have not changed how they are affected by gravity. Those that are below that mass, now known as Melleth’s Mass after the physicist at Harvard that first documented it, are affected. This mass is calculated…”

University of Utah 2:10 PM 3 A.C.

      Some days, Dr. Philips liked his job better than others. Fortunately, there weren’t any days when he just didn’t like it. A bounce in the step, a little enthusiasm, and a healthy dose of humor could get even the hardest concepts into student’s heads better than days of lecture. The class mostly quieted itself at the bell. He didn’t wait for everyone to settle, he just plowed right in and let the rush of new information force them into a calm. “As you can see from the overhead, today is section 8 of Chapter One. Homework is problems 14-25. Vocab test this Thursday. Any questions from last class’s assignment?”

      Silence, he suspected, was more from the student’s wanting to hear what he had to say today, than from a lack of questions.

      “Those that are up on the reading, know that today we discuss the changes that we’ve seen in human genetics since the Change, aka Ted. There are a lot of misconceptions about this, so expect the test to cover this pretty heavily. The questions will be fairly simple if you’ve read the assignment, but I want to make sure that there’s no wrong ideas stuck in your heads.”

      The students as one seemed to lean a little closer to their notes. There was no need, however, most already knew what he was saying. It was a little like teaching sex education on the college level, you just needed to make sure that no one was subject to the myths still prevalent in society: a condom doesn’t always stop AIDS and werewolves don’t have to change at the full moon.

      “Occurring in about one out of every 1,000,000 people, for a rough number of 6,500 world-wide, or 450 or so in the United States, we’ve noticed recently a few humans able to change into another animal form. This animal form varies from individual to individual case, but the most common seem to be wolf (about 75%) and cat forms (about 20%). “The ability to change is based on a set of introns. For those that somehow missed my basic biology course and still managed to get into this class, introns are part of the DNA that have no start codon or ‘signal’ if you will and so produce no proteins. It seems, however, that the intron does supply some information that is used as part of the development process. People with the correct introns, but past the adolescent stage of development, are not able to change.” He smiled slightly and added, “So despite your reputation for an avaricious appetite, Mr. Littleton, there is no danger of you turning directly into a pig.”

      A slightly heavyset student in the back dramatically wiped his brow and the class laughed.

      “It’s estimated that we will see an increase of about five to ten times the current occurrence in the population as new children capable of changing are born.” He glanced over the notes of a student on the front row and added. “That’s B-O-R-N, Mr. Brown. No need to add an E-D.”

      The student looked puzzled briefly but didn’t need to erase anything.

      “The change is governed in part by the cerebellum and brain stem, sometimes referred to as the lower, or reptile, brain. That’s the same area that deals with such mundane and unimportant things as breathing, swallowing, and making sure your heart beats.” Like much of his humor the last was wasted on his class. “There’s nothing to suggest the change is governed by the moon, the stars, or as was once proposed, the height of woman’s skirts on Wall Street.” He could barely believe he saw students writing that last part down.

      “The mass of the changeling or lycanthrope, if you prefer, stays constant, although the volume reduces significantly. The muscle mass condenses and that accounts for part of the drop in volume, but we’re still trying to figure out how a 100 pound human becomes a 100 pound wolf that’s still the size of a normal wolf. “Of course this assumes a full change. As many of you already know, there is a partial, or what you might think of as a hybrid change stage. This more closely resembles your typical Hollywood version of werewolves in the case of lupine changelings. In this hybrid stage, mass and volume are consistent with the mass and volume of human form. “Any questions so far?”

      One student asked, “Is there anything to support that the change is governed by anger?”

      “Worried about a little road rage?” some of the class matched his smile. “Not really, Mr. Fog. While some might change out of anger, it does seem to be a controlled choice. The comic book makers can keep their trademark on such things. Ms. Fenther?”

      “How does the change actually take place?”

      “We’re trying to find out the specifics, but we’re only two years into even knowing this really happens. Again you should know from your previous class about the ATP cycle, the lowest level chemical reaction the body uses to produce energy. That cycle is exothermic—produces heat. Ted’s postulate calculates that a body cannot produce enough energy to fuel the change without also producing unsafe amounts of heat.”

      “Isn’t that Philips’s postulate?” One student near the front asked.

      “Ted’s Postulate.” Dr. Philips corrected.

      “So if they don’t get the energy the normal way, how do they change?”

      “Say it with me class,” he said raising his arms like he was about to direct an orchestra. “It’s hard for science to say it alone since Ted.” He dropped his arms to signal them to start and all said in unison, “I don’t know.”

Continue reading Chapter 1: http://sajanitails.com/index.php?/archives/3-Cici-and-Number-Nine-Chapter-1.html