Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

:: Goes to check closet ::

FUCK!!! He's gone again... :(

You'll have to track him down tri. Payment on delivery... or ditching as the case may be...

I of course will need some proof.

At 10/25/05 12:42 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: You'll have to track him down tri. Payment on delivery... or ditching as the case may be...

It'll be my pleasure!

I of course will need some proof.

I'll bring you a lock of his hair.

At 10/25/05 12:42 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: FUCK!!! He's gone again... :(

All these attempts to track down gum's Alt has caused us to pass the 4,000 posts mark for the thread. Congrats all

At 10/25/05 10:19 AM, gumOnShoe wrote:

I'm going to lock the door this time. If you come out I'm going to shoot you...

That sounds like something Spade would say.
</steil>

At 10/25/05 12:56 PM, Coop83 wrote: All these attempts to track down gum's Alt has caused us to pass the 4,000 posts mark for the thread. Congrats all

I do believe you are correct. Congratulations to all!

At 10/25/05 01:13 PM, Pinkasaurus wrote: I dont currently do a lot of writing, but I really really want to start. The only problem is that I really need some tips on writing, and a lot of encorougment. I was hoping that the Writer's Guild could help me out?

We are always willing to help those who ask :-)

In other words, can I join? I am pretty bad at writing right now, and I wanted to see how the experts do it to get a feel of what I need to do to make my stuff better. =)

Youa re msot welcome to join and we shall do all we can to help you improve :-) If you have some exampels of your work handy it ight be an idea to pso tit so we can see what stage your at. That way we know exactly what you ened to focus on.

Well, I sat down this evening and churned out the last three pages of this section.
UNTITLED SCI-FI CRIME THRILLER has now officially begun, all that stuff before was just prologue - this is the meat of it, and if I get around to fitting in half the plot I have planned it'll take months to finish.

P.S - I'll be away from thursday until sunday morning, so depending on when GumOnShoe finishes his section of the collab It might take me a while to get mine up.

And without further ado:

Chapter I

Sanction Hotel Basement – The Outskirts
Time since Reformation: 3 Days 2 Hours

Eddie waits, his back pressed to the humming generator. The two cops had double crossed him. They had been stupid, or perhaps incredibly manipulative. If they planned this all along Eddie doesn’t even know why they would have played the game for as long as they already had. Well, they would pay for their mistake this time.
His blood runs sluggishly down the steel grid covering the machine behind him. It drips from the vents of his dented sidearm, bubbling as it comes into contact with areas of the still-cooling metal. They are in the basement. One is just meters away, the other somewhere behind the stack of crates in front of him. The generator control panel it situated just below Eddie’s left hand. He eases up the safety lock and slides the output lever to it’s limit. Seconds later the machinery whines and gives out a chattering sound. The one nearby turns suddenly, he can’t hear the other one over the noise anymore. Maybe that was a bad move.
Eddie lets the generator run for around thirty seconds, long enough for the cop to start moving again, slowly, away from his hiding place. Perfect. He pulls himself around and into a crouching position, red droplets clinging to the sleeve of his jacket are shaken loose by the movement creating an arc of crimson splotches across the concrete floor. He strains to hear his second adversary one last time, but no such luck. This is it then. Eddie yanks the lever back to zero and clamps the safety back down over it. The chattering abruptly stops in concordance with the sound of metal snapping, the gangster dives around the corner, pulls the trigger, a spear of light is projected toward Stanley Hunter.

Tube Arrivals Station – The Outskirts
Time to Reformation: 2 Months 6 Days

The skies were blue over First City. A rarity though this was, it struck Stan as odd that so many people were outside, lounging on scraps of corrugated metal, their guttering drum-fires forgotten. That was a clue now wasn’t it? Event, memory trace, aaaand… result! Of course they were outside, a sizeable contingent of bums (or “dwellers”) always seemed to congeal around the tube station, usually trying to pawn off something they had scavenged from Mid-City to the wealthy class of folk as they departed the carriage.
Stan squinted his eyes as a fleeting square of sunlight slid through the window. His memory was pretty much back up to scratch now. Only problem was he usually needed to see things to remember them fully, like all the information was just ticking over, waiting to be accessed and re-integrated into his brain again.
Better take a walk before I do anything else He thought to himself as the tube slowed to that gentle rocking that preceded arrival at a station. It was true, there were a lot of things that just needed jogging back into place in his mind, a walk might well help. Not to mention a few beers. The carriage shuddered violently for a moment, then clunked smoothly down as it stopped parallel to the station.
Almost immediately a series of unwashed faces pressed themselves against the windows. A couple of the passengers in Stan’s section seemed a little taken aback, but these guys were nothing to worry about. At least the homeless here were only trying to sell you stuff, that was the difference between them and the really bad guys. Bums were out of luck for one of two reasons: either they couldn’t cut it as criminals, or they just had a plain old dislike for violence. Either way they weren’t much harm to anyone. Stan, as a matter of fact, felt something like a deep-down respect for these guys. It wasn’t easy living on the central side of the outskirts like they did, especially when you could be getting all the cash, drugs, and hookers you wanted just by shacking up with one of the gangs on the outer arc. No, you needed guts to be a loser, that was for sure.
Stan picked up his bag and filed towards the exit with the other business-types. He didn’t feel comfortable in this setting at all. Before he had left the Temporary Residences building that morning a suit had been laid out for him, albeit not an extraordinary one, but there was enough natural fabric there to set him back a few months on his salary. It transpired that The Building wanted a little chit-chat with him before he returned home – which could mean anything from a smile and a handshake to a bullet in the head.

The Building had always been there in First City, records didn’t date exactly when it had sprung up, but none of the history books seemed to be without a reference to it somewhere. It was like a hub of the intellectual elite, a kind of unofficial government. Although the public services were by no means directly affiliated with The Building, if the men in black snapped their fingers, it was assured that someone would take their requests to heart. Needless to say – you did not fuck with The Building.
The deal seemed to be a case of them running society as long as society let them run it. If one fell apart, the other would probably go down with it.
So, it was safe to say Stan had felt himself a little nervous while approaching the monolithic black structure that lent its name to the organisation. He had seen pictures of course, but this was the real deal. It wasn’t the height or the breadth – those were impressive, but no more so than a few of the other skyscrapers – but rather the architecture of The Building. It was black, a soft black. Not pitch, not grey. Approximately a dozen bands of a slightly lighter material (whether this thing was made of metal, stone, or even plastic was beyond Stan) stretched around the four walls at grouped intervals. The windows (as Stan would later find them out to be) appeared only to be shallow rectangular depressions on the upper levels of The Building, almost indistinguishable at this distance.
There were lower levels as well, Stan discovered, as he peered over the bridge leading to the main (and only) doors. The Building continued down for another couple of hundred meters, then ended in a foundation block of some light-coloured stone, around which the cool green liquid of the Inner City waterways splashed contentedly, pumped up from deep in the Earth, cleansed for the viewing pleasure of Inner City, then pumped off under Mid-City and most likely into the sewers of the Outskirts.
The image of a fairy tale castle sprang into Stan’s mind, a magical structure in an otherwise simple and mundane land. Shit, it even had the moat.

The lobby was likewise as simultaneously basic and intriguing as The Building’s exterior, the main difference being that they had gone for more of a grey/brown motif. That was nice of them. There was one desk, a polished wooden reception job, funnily enough it reminded Stan more of a bar than anything else. He approached the one woman sitting behind this construction and coughed deliberately. She glanced up from her work terminal and swivelled around in her chair to face him.
“May I help you sir?”
“Uh, yes I’m… my name’s Stanley Hunter.”
“Ah yes, Luke is expecting you. I’ll call someone to take you up.” The receptionist stood and turned to pick up a headset from the panel behind her. Stan took the opportunity to admire her well-crafted figure and was struck by a sudden thought – he must not have had sex in months. It was so inappropriate it would have been funny in any other situation. Such thoughts however made Stan a little nervous – it was a ridiculous assumption, but he had heard that The Building could probe your mind to find out almost anything they wanted, and, while there probably weren’t any brain-scanning thingamajigs located in the lobby, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that these guys knew a little too much about a guy than he was comfortable with. Fantasizing about the receptionist could wait for the moment.
He busied himself studying the lobby while the receptionist muttered into her headset. The room was fairly large, no great surprise there, polished wood-effect chairs lined the walls, with an elegant fountain as the centrepiece (what was it with Inner City and water features?). The walls extended up entirely too far than was practical, the shaded lamps too high up to offer any real illumination greater than a dim orange glow. It was an elegant reception area.
“Mr Hunter?”
Stan dropped his gaze back to the desk lady.
“Hmm? Sorry, I was miles away.”
She smiled and pointed over his shoulder.
“Stairwell three. You’ll be taken up.”
“Thanks.”
It struck Stan as odd that they used stairs in a place like this. He had always pictured The Building as having a network of elevators connecting how ever many hundred floors existed in here.
Here we go. He thought, as an MIB descended the stairs and motioned him over. Stan was surprised not to have seen more of these guys around, he had started to feel a little out of place in his formal attire. The suit turned and headed immediately back the way he came, Stan had little choice but to follow.

Luke twirled a pen about his fingers as he waited for this next appointment to arrive. His office had been busy these last few days, the Hunter case, it seemed, was attracting a lot of attention. Hell, if he could crack it there might even be a seat waiting for him up on the top floor. He grinned and stretched. Life in The Building sure beat the shit out of anything else he had tried his hand at.
As Luke basked in that moment of self-adoration his desk monitor chimed. That would be the famous Mr. Hunter now. The doors in the foyer outside his office slid open, and sure enough, Stan entered accompanied by another employee.
Luke depressed a handle in the side of his desk, and the one-way panel of glass that functioned as his office door clicked open.
“Please Mr. Hunter, come on in,” he stood and motioned the officer over. “Take a seat, we have important business.”
Stan stepped through warily, casting his eye over the room’s interior before sliding into the guest seat. The employee closed the door behind him and took a chair himself out in the foyer.
“So,” Stan began. “What business is this?”
Luke drew up his chair and crossed his hands on the desk.
“An ongoing investigation of ours. I though it best to tackle the matter head on, once you were fully recovered of course.”
“It’s about my surgery isn’t it? Are you going to tell me what exactly I did to deserve that kind of attention?”
“Close, but no cigar. Yes, it is about your medical bills, but no, we aren’t going to tell you why.”
Stan glared across the desk. Luke awaited his response, but received none.
“Mr. Hunter… I can already anticipate your response, but do you have any idea who could have come up with this money?”
“Take three guesses.”
“I thought as much. But let me tell you now, this is a serious matter. For an individual such as yourself, any… shall we say, downpayments of this magnitude would require a pretty big service on your part.”
“Look, I already told you,” Stan said. “I’m as lost as you are. For the moment I’m just glad someone did cough up the cash, why they did it seems kind of secondary from my point of view.”
Luke reclined his chair back and resumed the twirling of his pen.
“Oh but it isn’t. Millions of credits is a big favour, you should be hoping to god no one decides to cash in on that. You see, it’s our business to know what goes on in First City twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And if you know something you aren’t telling us, we will find out, and believe me when I say the consequences will be dire.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Stan muttered. “But like I said, your guess is as good as mine.”
Luke paused for a moment, pen mid-twirl.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I believe that’s true. Well, just bear all this in mind once you get back to work. If anything, and I mean anything crops up that can shed some light on the subject, then get in contact with us.”
Stan nodded and made to rise.
“One more thing…” Luke shifted uncomfortably.
“You’ll have a partner when you return to work, the police department is starting up the old system again just to make people think they’re still doing their job.”
“So?”
“Well, you’ll be working with Lynda Rivera, the medic who brought you in, she transferred to the job recently. The thing is, she’s an old… and old friend. Just keep an eye out for her ok?”
Stan grinned.
“So, you guys are only human after all eh? Don’t worry about it, I’ll keep her out of trouble if needs be.”
Luke nodded and gestured towards the door. Stan turned, and exited the office.

So, here he was. Back on the ol’ Outskirts. Someone tugged at his suit and proceeded to shove a pack of stimulants in his face.
“You in’trest in these suh? Top qualiteh’ I buys em mehshelf suh!”
The bum waved his merchandise even more vigorously, a hopeful grin plastered over that battered face of his. Stan took a moment to examine the stims, they looked alright, almost certainly fell off the back of a truck, but no problems there.
“These commercial?” he asked.
“Yessuh, all’s good here.”
Stan took the pack and gave it one final inspection.
“Alright,” he said. “I don’t have any cash, want to trade?”
The seller looked baffled, clearly no one from Inner City had been without credits before, let alone had known about trading.
“Uh, ye-yessuh, what cho’ got?”
Stan pulled off his suit jacket and held it out to the bum.
“Will this do? I won’t be using it anytime soon, that’s for sure.”
Yet again that expression of dumbfound bemusement crossed his face.
“Is this…” his voice was low, almost a whisper. “Natural clothes?”
“You betcha. Go on, take it, I told you I don’t want it.”
The bum clutched the fabric and backed away into the rapidly disbanding crowd.
“Thanks yuh, oh thanks yuh true suh!”
Stan waved and headed for the road at the edge of the platform, ignoring the other vendors that hailed him. There were a few cabs waiting at the curb, beyond them a crumbling street, the buildings lining it were weathered with age, among the oldest in this part of the city. Rusted hulks of old automobiles stood out amongst the tangle of broken parts and trash that littered the street. Some of the buildings here rose almost as high as those in Inner City, only these didn’t end in smoothed domes or spires. Here were jagged edges of walls, some blackened and burnt out, concrete drooped sadly from others, as if it had been looking forward to demolition years ago.
The sun was setting in the distance. The Outskirts stretched out in front of Stan, sloping down to ground level over the miles they covered. And beyond them, the desert wastes, and whatever horrors dwelt there. In hell.
A light breeze stirred his hair. Stan surveyed the apocalyptic view.
“Home sweet home.”

At 10/25/05 01:24 PM, Pinkasaurus wrote: Almost all of my work is hand written, I like writing by hand a lot more then on the computer. Il make sure to write my next story on my computer so I can post it here =)

Thats how I do most of my work as well. I revise and such on a hand written sheet of paper and then when I go through the process of typing it up I am able to analyze it to see how I want it a second time and I notice things I may have missed before. Then I print out a hard copy and go through the whole process and read it out loud checking for errors and bouncing it off a few other people. So its not like you have to write the thing on the computer and in fact I find it difficult to just type out whatever it is strait onto the computer because, while you have a lot flexibility with deleting things you don't have a visual representation of where you've been in the past...

But thats just my stand point.

I hate to do this but we have a slight problem... and I'm not sure what to do about it...

Coop83 must have misted TNT's post because he jumps off of Myst and well... Try's small plot twist is completly ignored and the story doesn't make sense if I put it in chronological order in that thread...

What should I do.... ??

:o

You can see what I mean by scrolling down to the ned of this page...

Attention all writers guild members:

Im accepting user contributions for my website.. Its all non-profit and for the sake of expression, if yall want some webspace to post your material, feel free to e-mail me @ admin@compyooter.com for more info. Thanks.

At 10/25/05 11:27 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: I hate to do this but we have a slight problem... and I'm not sure what to do about it...

Coop83 must have misted TNT's post because he jumps off of Myst and well... :

o

WTF? I thought they were all in the file I got sent by Myst. I counted and they were all there after my last post. Must be the caffiene.

You can see what I mean by scrolling down to the ned of this page...

*nuts wall* I'm very sorry peoples. I'll take mine and rework it. DO NOT POST ANY MORE YET.

At 10/26/05 04:08 AM, Coop83 wrote: WTF? I thought they were all in the file I got sent by Myst. I counted and they were all there after my last post. Must be the caffiene.

I sent you a file? hmm... I must be f'd on caffiene as well, because I don't remember. lol.

*nuts wall* I'm very sorry peoples. I'll take mine and rework it. DO NOT POST ANY MORE YET.

Okie-doke. I am sure it can be edited a little to work with the previous part.

At 10/26/05 07:55 AM, Myst_Williams wrote: I sent you a file? hmm... I must be f'd on caffiene as well, because I don't remember. lol.

Yeah you sent me a file. I read to the end of it and I don't think there was a part from TNT on it. At least, not the part which was the last post on the thread they started.

Okie-doke. I am sure it can be edited a little to work with the previous part.

I'll look at it in about 5 hours time

This is going to be one of those days....

Sorry to do this to you coop...

At 10/26/05 08:54 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: This is going to be one of those days....

Sorry to do this to you coop...

I'd rather you pulled it on me now, so I can rectify it now.

At 10/26/05 08:54 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: This is going to be one of those days....

Haha, its been one of those weeks.

Bah...

Too much stuff going on at once, for once Myst isnt multi-tasking very well.

I'll try again, shall I? This one continues on from TNT's last submission.

I continued to rummage through the junk on this workstation in the hope I could find something to help the pain in my leg. I must have accidentally touched a button, because the screens suddenly came to life.

I don't know why, but I turned around and looked at the back of the door. There was a jacket hanging up there. I walked over and had a quick look through the pockets. This produced a data-card and a small, sleek hand gun. Standard issue for these parts, I guess. I stuck the gun in my pocket and found a drive to insert the data-card.

<Access Granted> The computer chimed at me.

While this had let me gain access to the sewer systems, my attention was drawn to a flashing icon in the bottom right, indicating new messages. I touched the icon and up popped a message.

"Roberto,

I am sorry for the deceit, the lies and the treachery. They have all been nessesary evils. You are in a bad state and need fixing up. The attached file is a map. Follow the bluebird and you will find all you need to get working again.

You will find me eventually, I promise you.

E."

A map flashed up on the screen, indicating where I should go along the corridors of the sewer system with a blue line. I really had no choice but to go there. If I didn't, I'd die for sure.

Square I couldn't help but think of the word which had triggered my brain. May be I'd find Elijah (or one of his cyborg friends) at the town square

I left the room, passing the guy I'd killed. I felt sorry for his death, but not guilty. I made my way through the sewers almost to the end of the road, when I noticed this junction had a large inlet pipe, pouring gallons of water in every second. The pool below looked deep and I needed to head straight across the crossroads. There was no ladder down, so my only option was to jump.

I did not jump, so much as topple into the deep, fetid pool. Using my good leg and both of my arms, I managed to half-wade, half-swim across to the other side. The pain was excruciating, but I made it. I staggered down the last few yards of corridor and opened a service hatch into a room, where three people stood. That was the last thing I saw, as I passed out.

'Uh... What happened? Where am I?'

'Why don't you rest a while, you are still drowsy from the drugs.' There was a dim light in the room from over in the corner, where someone was working at a bench.

'Drugs?'

'We needed to keep you in a coma for several days, to prevent you dying, Roberto.'

'What did you do to me?'

'I saved your life. I fixed you.' A spry little man with a white goatee and a receeding hairline peered over me, grinning.

'Is there any chance you could do something about my leg? It's killing me!'

'What, that's hurting? We may need to take it off as well then.'

'AS WELL?! What the hell else did you cut off?!' My eyes widened and I nearly fell off the bed.

'Well, you lost a lot of blood from the rip in your thigh. It wasn't healing, so we had to... replace it.' I glanced down the bed at the blanket covering me. I twitched the blanket to one side and there I was, one leg of flesh and bone, the other mechanical from mid-thigh down to the floor. The toes wiggled and I was dumbfounded. I could control this leg, as if it were my own...

******************************

There. I have now satisfied the criteria of saving face and encorporating TNT's part into it. Is everyone satisfied? Can we now move on?

Hey all,

I did my English exam today. 4 2 page + essays in 3 hours. Tiring, but not too bad.

Anyway, anyone care to tell me their English Exam stories? I also had a nightmare the night before that I didn't understand the question. So much for confidence.

english experiences...

well I've yet to have an actual test final, but for my last essay I should have been failing but instead I got an A- on an ABCDF grade scale... kinda sad.

Click a sig for a link to my new "project" (anything you click will take you there)

... also I am working our thing... trying to work some old stuff in and resolve some things, I don't want to bring to much new stuff in unless its an explination. Plot is one thing... but just moving forward is starting to get confusing...

Sup guild, my names Rollie, and I want to start a portfolio up, I need a writer, someone who has a good sense of humour and a nice plot. I don't want a series with just a limited genre of gags, I mean random shit, a completely immersed world of slapstick and black humour.

Anyone interested?

It was the best of times it was the worst of times blah blah blah

Hey everyone how's it going? Wie gehts?

Been slow around here I see.

At 10/28/05 07:20 AM, Alkador wrote:

Anyway, anyone care to tell me their English Exam stories?

Hmm, most of mine have been fairly routine. I only really remember my GCSE one, prior to that particular course I always did really well in English, but for the duration of the three years preceeding the exam my teacher always gave me really poor predicted grades based on my classwork. As a result I was convinced I would get a rubbish final mark, as you can imagine I shit my pants when I opened the results envelope to find an A* grade in the subject.
Yeah, that teacher got TOLD.

I finished my computer program... so that means I just have to do a bit of reading and studying tommorow... I should be able to start writing... sorry for the bit of a delay... but college is college.

If I don't have something in soon I guess I will get passed.

At 10/30/05 11:59 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: I finished my computer program... so that means I just have to do a bit of reading and studying tommorow... I should be able to start writing... sorry for the bit of a delay... but college is college.

Hey, I don't suppose you'll take as long as I did to finally write my part. Don't sweat it.

Hey, I'm quite bored and thought of something yesterday, do you think this could become something good or not?

-----------

Corrupted by anger and hatred
He loves each time he gets a chance
Without being safe or good at anything
Or any fellow men to trust
Fighting to live this world, this man must:

Never love anything more than his enemies
Never expect time to move on

Nor expect the laws of fysics to work for him
Or anything else for that matter

Or as his destiny is sown
Forever live alone

-----------

Something like that (I wrote that in two minutes so I would just like to know if the idea could be developed to something).

-=Queue to Perfection=-

The rippling of feelings surge around you
Numbed by your beauty, men stand in queue

Each word you breath strucks like a bolt of thunder
Takes their breath for your next, a plunder

Filth to be cleaned by your charm
Hearts grow for you to their harm

I see no end of this lonely path
My heart is broken and you're my patch...

At 10/31/05 11:28 AM, Andersson wrote: -=Queue to Perfection=-

I quite like this one actually. I can't really go into much depth as I aint much a poet myself but I enjoyed it :-)