KJToo

It seemed like any other Game Night: Chris was running us through another session of his homebrew campaign (based heavily on the world of Amber, created by Roger Zelazny), we were spending about as much time on conversational tangents as actual roleplaying, and there was cake.

A Tuesday night like many before it, until the deep, concussive sound of an explosion rattled the windows of the International House of Johnson.

“What the—?”

“Holy—!”

“Was that—?”

Dave, Chris and I ran for the front door. Laura turned on the television and tuned to the local news on Channel 5. Rachel sent a message to Twitter from her cell phone; 140 characters announcing to the Internet that something nearby had exploded.

We scanned the treeline and saw it: a large mushroom cloud—too small to be nuclear; besides which we’d already be dead if it was—to the northeast, somewhere near the junction of Route 2 and SOM Center Road. No sooner had we registered the cloud than we heard the screaming. People all through the cul-de-sac had come out of their homes and the sounds of agony surrounded us. We watched in horror as across the street Rick fell to his knees, his face a mass of hideous, black blisters that burst and sprayed a tar-like substance over the pristine concrete pad of his driveway. Something in the house next door exploded, a soft whump followed by the shattering of windows…then flames licking toward the early evening sky from inside.

The idea that I should attempt to extinguish the fire was pushed to the back of my mind by more screaming, this time from right behind me. I turned to find Dave in the grip of some unseen agony. Unseen, that is, until his shirt split at the seams and I caught a glimpse of green scales. I took a step back and nearly tripped over whatever it was that now occupied Chris’ t-shirt and khaki shorts. The thing—gelatinous and translucent, seemed to melt, oozing out of—no…no absorbing—the clothes and coalescing into an amorphous blob that slid down the gentle slope of my lawn toward the street, leaving a wide scar of burned grass in its wake.

Dave was on the ground now, writhing and twisting as his body expanded well beyond the capacity of his clothes. I took another look…and ran. Ran away from the horrors that used to be my friends and back toward the house.

There was no question about what had just happened: somehow, somewhere nearby the wild card virus had been released in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. Rick—and most of my other neighbors, it seemed—had drawn the Black Queen: a mutation that meant death, usually a very, very painful death. The same appeared to be true of Chris, while Dave had probably drawn a Joker as the virus invaded his body. A Joker meant that Dave would live, though whether that made him better off than those who didn’t might be a matter of perspective; the virus didn’t kill him, but it was mutating him into something that probably wouldn’t resemble a human being for much longer.

I dreaded what I would find inside. There was no screaming from, but that could mean that Laura had drawn the Black Queen, too. No, there she was, very much alive and looking very much like Laura. She was  kneeling over a prone figure on the floor.

Rachel, like Dave, had drawn a Joker. A spiral horn had erupted from her forehead, and I couldn’t help but think of unicorns…and faeries—a pair of gossamer wings spread from between her shoulderblades. Her hair was longer, too, at least waist-length and a rich red in hue.

Laura saw me then, and we quickly reassured one another that we were fine, though Laura said she felt “weird”. (I chalked it up to the fact that something had blown up near our neighborhood and our friends were mutating into bizarre conglomerations from J.R.R. Tolkien’s nightmares.)

“We have to get Rachel to a hospital,” Laura said.

My mind raced in a hundred different directions at once, but I couldn’t focus on a clear course of action. I nodded, glad to have the decision made for me. I half-lifted, half-dragged the unconscious Rachel to the front door.

“Where’s Chris?” Laura asked. “His van is blocking the driveway, we’ll have to take it to the hospital.”

“I…I think Chris is dead,” I said. “He…he melted.”

“Take…my…Humvee.”

I whirled toward the source of the pained, gutteral words. Dave was on all fours, doubled over in pain. Scaly protrusions outlined the ridge of his spine and a thick, green tail jutted from just below the small of his back.

Dave’s gas-guzzling, military-inspired monstrosity was parked on the curb. The keys were in the shredded remains of his pants and Laura, when she recovered from seeing the ex-Navy SEAL transformed into a human-lizard hybrid, retrieved them with trembling fingers.

I shouldered Rachel into the back seat, then went back to help Dave. He was impossibly heavy; there was no way I’d be able to even drag him across the lawn, much less lift him into the vehicle. He fought through the pain, staggering to his feet and stumbling toward the Humvee.

“Drive!” he muttered, climbing into the back seat next to Rachel. The Humvee listed as Dave managed to somehow cram himself—tail and all—into the back seat. Laura climbed into the front passenger seat as I pulled the driver’s door closed.

I hadn’t driven a standard transmission in at least ten years, but necessity trumped nerves and seconds later the Humvee was swinging around the cul-de-sac and roaring toward Euclid Avenue.

I uttered a curse—probably several—and slammed on the brakes. Euclid was a snarled mess of cars and trucks, some trying to maneuver toward East 305th Street, others stalled or crashed and now blocking traffic, their drivers either dead at the wheel or having abandoned the vehicle in the street. As bad as it had been in the cul-de-sac, it was a thousand times worse on the most traveled surface street in Lake County. Horns honked, people shouted (or screamed, as the Black Queen took her sweet time finishing a few of the unlucky ones off) and a logjam of steel and fiberglass stretched out in both directions.

It took me a moment to free myself from my usual minivan mindset and realize that I was driving a Humvee. I shifted into four-wheel drive and pushed the big truck into the fray. Metal shrieked, glass broke and rubber stuttered on concrete as I pushed cars out of my way, not caring whether their occupants were alive or not. Ploughing toward the opposite side of Euclid Avenue, I finally encountered an obstacle that the seemingly-irresistable Humvee would not move: a large black SUV.

I uttered another curse and felt the Humvee rock on its suspension as Dave hauled his bulk out of the back door. Slack-jawed, I watched as Dave—at least eight feet tall now—gripped the rear bumper of the Escalade and lifted. The SUV rocked and I recovered my wits enough to let my foot off the Humvee’s brake. With Dave’s help, I pushed the Escalade onto its side and we were able to squeeze past it.

We ploughed along, parallel to Euclid Avenue, cutting through the parking lots of a lawn tractor dealership, a bar and grill, a convenient store. Dave added his power to that of the Humvee when our forward progress was arrested and we rolled through—and in one case, over—the dozens of parked cars between us and East 305th Street.

It took us an hour to reach Route 2, the freeway I hoped would whisk us to downtown Cleveland and The Cleveland Clinic, but the sight we found when we finally crossed the railroad tracks made my heart sink: a virtual lake of vehicles, none of them moving, many of them sporting familiar red-and-blue flashing lights. Route 2, and by extension The Cleveland Clinic, was simply out of reach; we were going nowhere.

---

With apologies to Chris Miller. We didn’t mean to kill you, really.
The Game: Wild Cards, a Mutants & Masterminds sourcebook from Green Ronin Publishing. Written by John Joseph Miller and designed by Steve Kenson.

Wild Cards is based on the series of novels by the same name, edited by George R.R. Martin and featuring stories by Melinda Snodgrass, Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, John Joseph Miller and many more.

On September 15, 1946, the alien xenovirus known as Takis-A was released over an unsuspecting New York City. The virus killed most it infected instantly, while a lucky few were granted superhuman abilities and others were horribly mutated.

On August 26, 2008, a new outbreak of Takis-A occurred in the east suburbs of Cleveland. How the virus was released is not yet known, but northeast Ohio will never be the same…

GM: Gus “I don’t exist in this reality” Gosselin
Players: Dave “Scales” Berg, Kris “I Feel Fine” Johnson, Laura “I Feel Funny” Johnson and Rachel “@TheInternet OMG, Something Just Exploded!” Ross.

Up Next: Aces! (Session 1, Part 2)

Way back in the rough and tumble days of early 2007, I told you about some of the folks who have called my work cell phone looking for someone who is clearly not me. I don’t know what it is, but the phone attracts wrong numbers. Usually I just politely inform the caller that they’ve got the wrong number and carry on with my day.

Usually.

The following is a rough transcript of a call I received yesterday.

Me: Hello.
Caller (female): [something about "retard" and possibly "Bob"]
Me: I’m sorry, you’ve g-
Caller: The child is drinking the liquor you left on the counter, retard!
Me: You’ve got the wrong number.
Caller: Yeah, right. Listen, retard, the child is drinking the liquor you left here!
Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know who you are.
Caller: Yeah you do! The child is drinking the…

This “dialog” continued for a few more seconds, with me insisting that the caller had a wrong number and her calling me a retard and a liar until I just hung up. I expected her to call back right away, but my phone was mercifully silent.

Things are a bit turbulent over at The Secret Lair these days. Chris Miller, my co-overlord, has packed up his belongings and moved to California, where he will take command of The Secret Lair West, our new facility located somewhere near Los Angeles. During one of his pre-move trips to L.A., Chris managed to accidentally shakes things up a bit and our own Secretary of Artistic Propaganda, Natalie Metzger, immortalized the event as an episode of The Secret Lair Webcomic.

Meanwhile, closer to home, I’ve had to deal with not only the ramifications of Chris’ departure, but the day-to-day administrative duties of running an illegal, covert facility near what passes for a major metropolitan area in northeast Ohio.

As a result of the hubbub, we anticipate that our podcast release schedule will be even more sporadic than normal, though we did recently release our final face-to-face episode for the foreseeable future, recorded during Game Night at the International House of Johnson and including a number of very special guests.

Once the dust has settled (and we’ve determined that it’s not radioactive), we’ll fire up Skype and get back to what we do best. And if anyone out there knows exactly what that is, please let us know.

Another podcast novelist makes the leap (over a tall building) to print on Monday, 25 August as Mur Lafferty’s superhero novel, Playing for Keeps, debuts from Swarm Press.

I read Playing for Keeps about a year ago, when a pre-overlord Chris Miller and I were asked to assist with some of the “Stories of the Third Wave” supporting material for the podcast release of the novel. Unfortunately, I had to drop out of the production after only one episode due to some conflicting obligations, but the story of super-powered people whose abilities aren’t quite good enough to make them full-fledged superheroes is right up my alley and I’ve often speculated that my own “Third Wave” power could be anything from killing hard drives to sipping coffee just before it has cooled down to the point where it won’t burn my tongue.

Here’s the official press release from the publisher:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 25 Release Date for Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps

Swarm Press is pleased to announce the upcoming release of breakthrough podcaster and author Mur Lafferty’s newest novel of superheroic action Playing for Keeps. Originally a self-released “podiobook,” this new printed version of Lafferty’s novel is due to hit shelves on August 25, 2008.

Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty.

Welcome to Seventh City, the birthplace of super powers. The First Wave heroes are jerks, but they have the best gifts: flight, super strength, telepathy, genius, fire. The Third Wavers, like bar-owner Keepsie Branson and her friends, are stuck with the leftovers: the ability to instantly make someone sober, the power to smell the past, absolute control… over elevators. They just aren’t powerful enough to make a difference… at least that’s what they’ve always been told. But when the villain Doodad slips Keepsie a mysterious metal sphere, the Third Wavers become caught in the middle of a battle between egotistical heroes and manipulative villains.

“Playing for Keeps grabbed me and kept me reading straight through when I should have been plotting a new fantasy series for Tor Books. Mur, thank you. Tor, however, does not thank you.” – David Drake, author, Hammer’s Slammers.

Mur Lafferty is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a degree in English. Her nonfiction work has appeared at www.SuicideGirls.com, as well as in the magazines Knights of the Dinner Table, PC Gamer, Computer Games, Scrye, and SciFi Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hub, Escape Pod, and Scrybe. She was, until July, 2007, the host and co-editor of Pseudopod, and is currently the host and creator of the podcasts Geek Fu Action Grip and I Should be Writing. Visit Mur online at www.murverse.com

Playing for Keeps is still available as a free audio production at Podiobooks.com.

Despite the fact that I don’t live in or blog about Cleveland, last night I attended the Cleveland Webloggers August meetup organized by George Nemeth. No one seemed to mind that I live in Willoughby, or that my blog doesn’t typically wander into the realms of Cleveland politics,1 society, art or industry.2 And since I wasn’t shunned or ostracized, I thought I’d write a quick blurb about the meetup.

Venue

Americano, a new restaurant at One Bratenahl Place. Fairly simple to find, despite the fact that I saw literally no signage. I believe the lack of signage has more to do with Bratenahl Place than Americano, but I suppose I could be wrong. The restaurant doesn’t currently have a web site, but chef Vytauras “Chef V” Sasnauskas does have a blog on Blogspot.

Attendees

• George Nemeth (Optimistic Rebel, Brewed Fresh Daily)
• Toni Chanakas (Brewed Fresh Daily)
• Jeff Hershberger (My Future Past)
• Jeff Hess (Have Coffee Will Write, The Writing on the Wal)
• Barney Taxel (Taxel Image Group)

Topics of Discussion

After a round of introductions, George suggested that we play “Thinkers and Drinkers”. Everyone wrote a question on a piece of paper and tossed it into a hat. As our hostess came by at various times to check up on us, George asked her to fish a new question out of the hat. I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but these are the questions as I remember them (not necessarily in order of discussion):

• What do you think will change in 2009 (as compared to 2008)?
  The immediate answer was that we in the United States will have a new Commander in Chief. No one at the table seemed especially saddened by this fact. There was some speculation as to whether the national economy will rebound after the election and if, in fact, the economy has yet reached the lowest point of its current slump.3
• Do bloggers have a responsibility to be honest in their blogging and do we need to have a “hard shell”?
  Readers of this blog will know that honesty is something with which I have only a passing acquaintance; if I see honesty walking toward me, I will cross the street or duck into an alley to avoid it. My shell isn’t particularly hard (or my skin especially thick), but it’s something I’m working to improve. When we put our thoughts out there for all the world to see, it’s important to realize that not everyone will agree with or even appreciate those thoughts, and being able to take criticism (or outright attack) is essential to not being labeled an asshat.
  This discussion also led down the road of the consequences of blogging, specifically the potential ramifications to a blogger’s continued employment. I try to keep this blog completely separate from my professional life.4 While it isn’t terribly difficult to determine which company I work for, you’ll never see me discussing that company or the details of my job here, except in abstract. The opinions expressed here are, obviously, my own and not those of my employer. I do not present myself as an authorized representative of said employer.
• If you learned you were going to die in a short time, how would you live your life differently?
  This question arose because we had just received word that Cleveland-born Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones had died of a cerebral aneurysm. Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately, depending on the circumstances) people don’t always get a lot of warning with aneurysm, so I don’t know whether Tubbs-Jones was living her life with the expectation that death could be just around the corner. I cursed George for making me consider my own mortality, but ultimately I think Kyle would get sick of me if I knew I was going to die in a week.
• What is your pet approach to solving the problem of global climate change (née warming)?
  There was a lot of talk about sustainability, eating local foods, cutting back on automobile usage and recycling. One interesting tidbit:5 if we were to eat only foods that had been shipped less than 200 miles to reach us, the main staple of our diet we would have to give up would be bread, as there is no wheat grown in the state of Ohio. We also wandered onto the topic of litter in general, and I expressed a desired to do various unpleasant things to people who flick their cigarette butts out of car windows.6

Food

I saw a very nice-looking steak at the other end of the table, as well as some calamari and a grilled chicken dish of some sort (I should have grabbed a menu). I ordered the Americano burger7 and it was quite tasty. Later, when George, Barney and I adjourned to the bar, I had a bite of the sweet corn ravioli, which was excellent.

Beverages

I started the evening with an Americano. There was orange juice in it. And liquor, but I can’t remember what. It had a nice little kick to it. After that, I switched to lattés and water. The lattés were good, but I managed to burn my tongue on the second one. Given that some of the earlier discussion centered on how litigious our society is, I briefly considered bringing a lawsuit against the bistro for not preventing me from being a dumbass but then I remembered that, while I may be a dumbass, I try not to be an asshat.

Final Impressions

It was an interesting group of people to hang out with for a few hours, and George selected a good venue for the meetup. (I believe Americano will host the group again next month.) The conversation tended toward a little more depth than I’m used to (not one mention of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! or Spider-Man), but it’s good to be pulled out of your comfort zone now and again. I plan to attend the September meetup, provided I don’t have any unexpected scheduling conflicts.

1. Or any politics, for that matter. [back]
2. Let’s be honest here: I rarely even go to Cleveland. Prior to last night’s meetup, the last time I was anywhere near downtown and not just driving through was a Refresh Cleveland meetup back in May, and I was really just tagging along with now-expatriate Chris Miller. It’s not that I don’t like the city, I’m just not close enough to it that I feel compelled to visit on a regular basis. Plus, I used to have some real issues getting out of Cleveland once I got in, (I’m much better now, thank you.) and I suspect I have some emotional scarring as a result. [back]
3. Are we still calling it a “slump” or have we begrudgingly accepted that it’s a recession? [back]
4. I have to stifle a giggle when I use the word “professional” when referring to myself. [back]
5. I heard it from a guy who posts stuff on the Internet, so it must be true. [back]
6. If you’re reading this and are such a person, you suck. There is simply no excuse for your behavior. If you’re reading this and you’re the person who dropped their cigarette butt in my front flower bed, you suck even more; I don’t know who you are, but if you’re ever in my house again, you owe me an apology for being a disrespectful guest and a littering asshat. [back]
7. With fries, naturally. I should have asked if they make their own ketchup, as it seemed a little sweeter than what I’m used to. Not a bad thing, just different. [back]