After the discovery of the frozen ‘dragon’ bodies in the cave in the Alps, Duncan was given the opportunity to see the research first hand. There is where they discovered that the species found was something entirely new, and was nothing at all like the dinosaurs they had got to know so far.
It was discovered that the ‘mother’ dragon had three chambers in her body. There were some traces of methane along a passageway that led to a smaller chamber. On the other hand, another passageway that ran parallel to the methane passageway had oxygen traces. Despite being frozen for over a million years (carbon dating method) the body of the ‘dragon’ was somewhat warm. The research team predicted that the third chamber might have been the place where dragons produced their legendary fire.
When the research papers were revealed to the scientific world, everyone who heard it got into frenzy. It was a revolutionary find. People had accepted it as a myth, and now the evidence was here right in front of their eyes.
The question was… would there be others?
Duncan took it as a personal quest. He was going to be the one who discovers the next body, or fossil, or whatever it may be. He didn’t care at whatever it might have cost him… and monetary cost was the last thing on his mind. His mission took a toll on him. He neglected friends and family. He stayed around the Alps for years hoping to get another body.
Unfortunately, the second dragon body was not around the Alps at all. It was found in a desert in Mongolia. It wasn’t a body, this time, just a full skeleton, and some bits of skin that remained in the harsh, dry desert land. But what almost drove Duncan insane was the person who led the team that found the dragon.
It was Tara.
-----------------****
The idea of changing Duncan’s character into a woman remained just an idea. Besides, there weren’t any characteristics that made Duncan completely necessary to be a guy. At least, not yet. So he figured that if Duncan required a sex change, he would just change the name to something more feminine, and change all the he’s into she’s.
Something else crossed his mind as he typed out the story. He begins to wonder if it was wiser to make the character a first person… instead of a third person narration.
Will it be odd if I described Duncan, when he is actually describing himself?
HE was a mad palaeontologist. Opposed to I am a mad palaeontologist.
Clearly writing had driven Mark close to temporary insanity. He decided to take a walk before continuing his journey into the unknown world of palaeontology and dragons.
Mark often took a walk late at night, past some street side stalls and decided to have some hot Nescafe at one of the stalls that was lined at the side of the street. The delicious aroma of coffee floated through the air, beckoning him to get over there immediately.
He could make a cuppa at the house, but he thought it would be too much of a hassle. The coffee maker was a thing of the past. Besides, they didn’t have any sugar in the house… especially since the ex-housemate left. He even doubted the existence of Nescafe that hadn’t surpassed the expiry date. Grocery shopping was just not his thing.
He met two of the writers from the Peter and Molly series having a late night drink too, and joined them at their corner.
Mark wasn’t in a chatty mood that night, but his two friends were. The word regret swam in front of him several times as he just nodded in approval at their opinions and grunted at intervals to be polite. He wasn’t really paying attention to their chatter. All that was in his mind now is his story. Duncan’s obsession and without any connection whatsoever with whatever he did earlier or is doing at the moment, his mind floated to this role playing game he played some time back. There were dragons there.
Mark recollected how engrossed he was in the game back then. It was a crazy period of sleepless nights and on the nights he managed to finally catch some sleep, queens, vampires and thieves invaded his dreams. His role as a game player required him to rescue a few characters and solve some riddles that sent him back and forth through many places in the game. If he had problems solving a particular puzzle, he’d have a dream that had the solution. It was utter madness. He finished the game in a mere 40 hours. Those were the days…
“Just poke him on the shoulder. His mind has drifted away.”
“You poke him!”
“You’re nearer! Shut up and poke him”
Mark is came out of his reverie in a state of surprise.
“Sorry bout that, wei… you stopped responding. Anyway, we’re leaving. Paid up for your coffee too.” said one of them
“What? You didn’t have to…” Mark interjected.
“It’s paid up for, already. But you could thank us” the other one added
“Oh… thanks. But you really didn’t have to… see the poke on the shoulder works wonders.” Mark added feebly
Both of them laughed and headed off. One of them turned and waved at Mark with a smile.
She has a really nice smile; Mark thought as he waved back at her and felt his face turning red.
----------------------*****
Luke was watching his favourite episode of the Private Crime Investigations from his DVD set, his feet curled up on the chair, and a tennis racquet in his hand when Mark reached their rented house.
“Who do you plan to beat up with that?” Mark asked. Curious.
“This?” Luke asked back swinging the racquet
“Simple… according the show, If I hit you while you were on the floor, it’s supposed to hurt your head quite bad. But if I hit you when you’re standing up, the only thing you’d most probably get is a bump on the head, and a very bad headache.”
“And you have intentions of doing that?” asked Mark again, looking apprehensively at the racquet.
“It’s bloody interesting concept. Don’t worry, I make an honest living by making people believe that I’m someone whom I’m not. I don’t need this.” Luke said, clearly annoyed
“Ok…” Mark said and got up to leave. He was annoyed too, for no apparent reason.
---------------------****
The Mongolian dragon had red skin, based on the bit of skin they discovered near the spiked tail. Despite the fact that most of the muscles had decayed, some parts remained, and the evidence of the three chambers was a good enough proof that it was indeed a dragon.
Duncan hated the fact that it wasn’t him that discovered the Mongolian dragon. Even the Alps dragon was more of a joint discovery. He was only a student back then.
Tara had been one of Duncan’s mountaineering buddies. They had a shared passion for mountains, ancient history, dinosaurs, and the wild outdoors in general. It was during the terrible days on the mountain and the fear that they would never make it down to safety, with the company of two unknown creatures, Tara and Duncan bonded emotionally. The other team member had suffered from a fall, and was in between being conscious and unconscious, and therefore was not fully involved in the daily conversations of fears and hopes.
After the ordeal they had decided to get together as a couple, but the news of the existence of dragons had changed Duncan. He began to see everything as a competition. He needed to verify his position as the top palaeontologist from time to time regardless of the consequences.
It is hard to say that if it was because of their similar vocation or not, but Duncan began to see Tara as a threat. Her less unpredictable behaviour and her non existent temper tantrums earned her several invitations to join respectable expeditions through respected college professors. Whereas, Duncan was left behind for being a completely unpredictable, hot headed, and disgustingly self-centred jerk.
It was sooner rather than later, when Duncan began verbally abusing Tara, accusing that she had used him to get into higher playing fields in palaeontology that she decided to end the relationship. He had established his own research team, because his parents were wealthy enough to help him out, whereas Tara had joined one of the teams that were based in Mongolia.
After the Mongolia findings, Duncan moved even further forward, pushing himself and his team to the limits. There was no news of Tara. There was also no news of new discoveries. That was good enough for Duncan at the moment.
Mark began to enjoy the single dimensioned character of Duncan. Who needed him to be complicated? Good dialogue was not necessary. As long as the obsession is justified, his crimes revealed, the pain that has been caused and the pain received in return has been mentioned, and a suitable retribution has been figured out. The novel should be fine.
Moreover, this was his first attempt at a novel. And he was doing it in a hurry. When you look at 50 days closely, you quite realise that is a tremendously short span of time. No one wins a Pulitzer in such a short time. Ha! Ha! Ha! Pulitzer. Who am I kidding?
---------------****
It has been a week since Mark started on his journey to be a novelist. The word novelist sounds like an awfully serious word for many people. Although his character was much more developed now compared to the earlier days, Mark still didn’t know where the story was headed. You could do a lot with 70,000 words. According to his ancient dictionary which he’s been using for the past 10 years, there are 72,000 words in the language. He wondered how many unique words he uses. He doubted he used that many… maybe there were only about 2000 different types of words scattered throughout his work.
He began to get slightly worried, though. The story might meet a premature ending if he couldn’t expand it to stretch through all those 50 days.
Luke enters the room where Mark was working on his manuscript.
“Your boss just called” Luke said
“What did she want?” Mark asked, wrinkling his forehead.
“It’s a he… err. Ex-boss?”
“Of course… now he calls me. The dingbat!”
“He’s still on the line…”
Mark dashed out the room to the telephone in the next room.
What is he calling for now? Mark thought, slightly annoyed
“Sir?” enquired Mark, keeping his tone polite
“Mark, old boy… How have you been?” said a gruff voice from the other end
“Jobless” Mark said “as if you didn’t already know” he added to himself. “What happened that day? I tried contacting you but…” Mark finished off halfway, not really sure how to say what he thought.
“Yes, that… I figured I owe you an explanation, and your salary. Can we talk somewhere, for coffee? Tea?” the gruff voice continued, slowly.
“Name the place and date, I’ll be there.” Mark said. Involuntarily he shrugged his shoulders.
“4:30 pm at CoffeeTown. You’re okay with tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.”
-------------------------******
Mark had to wait for at least 15 minutes before the ex-boss arrived. He spent the time drafting out the plot for DUNCAN’S STORY - A yet to be named novel. Soon after he had started though, he met a stumbling block in the plot and gave up.
Before the mysterious appearance of the man in a grey suit and the policeman that strange Monday morning, Mark was employed as a new reporter for a little local newspaper. Although the rest of the staff had years of experience in the field and were all involved in some sort of covert satirical writing, they accepted Mark with open arms as they ‘could do with some new blood’.
The newspaper was sort of leftist in nature, as the proprietor (that is the boss) had some issues against the local happenings. He went undercover and resorted to writing scandalous articles similar to those of Junius[1] in the late eighteenth century. Junius carried his secret identity to the grave, but the boss chose to reveal his true self a tad bit too prematurely, besides, it was highly impossible to remain anonymous in this time and age.
The boss managed to recruit a small team of like minded people, mostly former army personnel who felt that their services to the well being of the nation was overlooked and underappreciated and that the certain people needed to be pulled down a notch or two.
Mark was hired based on being at the right place at the right time, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time depending on how you looked at it. He possessed a certain knack in writing satire that was not prevalent among the younger crowd of journalists, and no one suspected that anything was amiss seeing a young person loitering (and snooping) around. He was just most probably wasting his time doing nothing of particular importance like most of the other young people.
“Mark, you’re here already…” said the familiar gruff voice
Mark looked at the person who spoke.
The ex-boss had on a pair of sunglasses. He looked a little thinner and walked with a slight limp. Mark looked at the man’s hands and saw that his knuckles were bruised. When he spoke, he sounded like he was in pain.
“Yeah, I arrived here about 15 minutes ago.” Mark realised with trepidation that he never go to find out the boss’ name. Everyone he knew either called him Boss or Sir. Interesting… Mark thought.
The boss pulled out a chair and seated himself.
“I’ll get to the point…. Those idiots destroyed all our equipment, the computers, printers, stencils, dark room, you name it… There’s not one thing left.” The boss said with certain bitterness to his voice.
“They even beat me up…” he added with a grimace, taking out his sunglasses.
Mark gasped. The boss’ eye had an unmistakable look of having received a rather severe injury.
“I thought you should know, they had me in for 2 weeks. I tell ya, those were the worst days of my life, and I was in the ward for about a week.”
“But these injuries don’t matter so much… it’s just that I lost the one true thing I really cared for…” said the boss “and that’s he newspaper if you didn’t already know” the boss added quickly when he saw the expression on Mark’s face.
“Who did it?” Mark asked slightly hesitant.
“Why, don’t you know?” the boss was clearly surprised.
“No… I have no idea. Who’d do such a thing?”
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. I almost had those suckers nailed down for all those heinous crimes they did while in power.” The boss lowered his voice dramatically.
“Those bastards got wind of the big story I had, and they did this to us. Rifle died in the scuffle. Poor chap couldn’t handle it.” The boss continued.
Rifle was the assistant editor of the paper.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t know.” said Mark sympathetically. ‘Yeah, I didn’t know anything…’ thought Mark to himself.
Mark grew more and more horrified as he realised the truth behind the sudden loss of his first job. Of course it wasn’t the best job in the world, but after the sudden disappearance of the boss and the newspaper, Mark had found it almost impossible to get a new job.
If he stated that he had no previous job before that, the prospective employers passed him off as being inexperienced. On the other hand if he used the name of the paper as a previous job experience, the prospective employer just never bothered calling him back.
In the days that followed, certain opportunities knocked on Mark’s door only to disappear the very next day. It’s either the person who wanted to employ him moved to another country, or he missed the call because his phone was cranky. The last straw was when the person in charge of another paper that dared to employ him died of a heart attack the night before the day Mark was supposed to report for duty.
The whole ridiculousness of the situation made Mark almost believe that he was jinxed.
In the end when the story book offer came by, Mark grabbed the offer without thinking too much. Weighing the pros and cons was out of the question. Here was a job where no one died suddenly in the process. The transition from joblessness to having a part time stint was smooth as far as transitions go. Most of all, he needed the money.
[1] The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries pg 29, Colin Wilson & Damon Wilson, Constable & Robinson Ltd
Monday, November 20, 2006
DAY 5
After the discovery of the frozen ‘dragon’ bodies in the cave in the Alps, Duncan was given the opportunity to see the research first hand. There is where they discovered that the species found was something entirely new, and was nothing at all like the dinosaurs they had got to know so far.
It was discovered that the ‘mother’ dragon had three chambers in her body. There were some traces of methane along a passageway that led to a smaller chamber. On the other hand, another passageway that ran parallel to the methane passageway had oxygen traces. Despite being frozen for over a million years (carbon dating method) the body of the ‘dragon’ was somewhat warm. The research team predicted that the third chamber might have been the place where dragons produced their legendary fire.
When the research papers were revealed to the scientific world, everyone who heard it got into frenzy. It was a revolutionary find. People had accepted it as a myth, and now the evidence was here right in front of their eyes.
The question was… would there be others?
Duncan took it as a personal quest. He was going to be the one who discovers the next body, or fossil, or whatever it may be. He didn’t care at whatever it might have cost him… and monetary cost was the last thing on his mind. His mission took a toll on him. He neglected friends and family. He stayed around the Alps for years hoping to get another body.
Unfortunately, the second dragon body was not around the Alps at all. It was found in a desert in Mongolia. It wasn’t a body, this time, just a full skeleton, and some bits of skin that remained in the harsh, dry desert land. But what almost drove Duncan insane was the person who led the team that found the dragon.
It was Tara.
-----------------****
The idea of changing Duncan’s character into a woman remained just an idea. Besides, there weren’t any characteristics that made Duncan completely necessary to be a guy. At least, not yet. So he figured that if Duncan required a sex change, he would just change the name to something more feminine, and change all the he’s into she’s.
Something else crossed his mind as he typed out the story. He begins to wonder if it was wiser to make the character a first person… instead of a third person narration.
Will it be odd if I described Duncan, when he is actually describing himself?
HE was a mad palaeontologist. Opposed to I am a mad palaeontologist.
Clearly writing had driven Mark close to temporary insanity. He decided to take a walk before continuing his journey into the unknown world of palaeontology and dragons.
Mark often took a walk late at night, past some street side stalls and decided to have some hot Nescafe at one of the stalls that was lined at the side of the street. The delicious aroma of coffee floated through the air, beckoning him to get over there immediately.
He could make a cuppa at the house, but he thought it would be too much of a hassle. The coffee maker was a thing of the past. Besides, they didn’t have any sugar in the house… especially since the ex-housemate left. He even doubted the existence of Nescafe that hadn’t surpassed the expiry date. Grocery shopping was just not his thing.
He met two of the writers from the Peter and Molly series having a late night drink too, and joined them at their corner.
Mark wasn’t in a chatty mood that night, but his two friends were. The word regret swam in front of him several times as he just nodded in approval at their opinions and grunted at intervals to be polite. He wasn’t really paying attention to their chatter. All that was in his mind now is his story. Duncan’s obsession and without any connection whatsoever with whatever he did earlier or is doing at the moment, his mind floated to this role playing game he played some time back. There were dragons there.
Mark recollected how engrossed he was in the game back then. It was a crazy period of sleepless nights and on the nights he managed to finally catch some sleep, queens, vampires and thieves invaded his dreams. His role as a game player required him to rescue a few characters and solve some riddles that sent him back and forth through many places in the game. If he had problems solving a particular puzzle, he’d have a dream that had the solution. It was utter madness. He finished the game in a mere 40 hours. Those were the days…
“Just poke him on the shoulder. His mind has drifted away.”
“You poke him!”
“You’re nearer! Shut up and poke him”
Mark is came out of his reverie in a state of surprise.
“Sorry bout that, wei… you stopped responding. Anyway, we’re leaving. Paid up for your coffee too.” said one of them
“What? You didn’t have to…” Mark interjected.
“It’s paid up for, already. But you could thank us” the other one added
“Oh… thanks. But you really didn’t have to… see the poke on the shoulder works wonders.” Mark added feebly
Both of them laughed and headed off. One of them turned and waved at Mark with a smile.
She has a really nice smile; Mark thought as he waved back at her and felt his face turning red.
----------------------*****
Luke was watching his favourite episode of the Private Crime Investigations from his DVD set, his feet curled up on the chair, and a tennis racquet in his hand when Mark reached their rented house.
“Who do you plan to beat up with that?” Mark asked. Curious.
“This?” Luke asked back swinging the racquet
“Simple… according the show, If I hit you while you were on the floor, it’s supposed to hurt your head quite bad. But if I hit you when you’re standing up, the only thing you’d most probably get is a bump on the head, and a very bad headache.”
“And you have intentions of doing that?” asked Mark again, looking apprehensively at the racquet.
“It’s bloody interesting concept. Don’t worry, I make an honest living by making people believe that I’m someone whom I’m not. I don’t need this.” Luke said, clearly annoyed
“Ok…” Mark said and got up to leave. He was annoyed too, for no apparent reason.
---------------------****
The Mongolian dragon had red skin, based on the bit of skin they discovered near the spiked tail. Despite the fact that most of the muscles had decayed, some parts remained, and the evidence of the three chambers was a good enough proof that it was indeed a dragon.
Duncan hated the fact that it wasn’t him that discovered the Mongolian dragon. Even the Alps dragon was more of a joint discovery. He was only a student back then.
Tara had been one of Duncan’s mountaineering buddies. They had a shared passion for mountains, ancient history, dinosaurs, and the wild outdoors in general. It was during the terrible days on the mountain and the fear that they would never make it down to safety, with the company of two unknown creatures, Tara and Duncan bonded emotionally. The other team member had suffered from a fall, and was in between being conscious and unconscious, and therefore was not fully involved in the daily conversations of fears and hopes.
After the ordeal they had decided to get together as a couple, but the news of the existence of dragons had changed Duncan. He began to see everything as a competition. He needed to verify his position as the top palaeontologist from time to time regardless of the consequences.
It is hard to say that if it was because of their similar vocation or not, but Duncan began to see Tara as a threat. Her less unpredictable behaviour and her non existent temper tantrums earned her several invitations to join respectable expeditions through respected college professors. Whereas, Duncan was left behind for being a completely unpredictable, hot headed, and disgustingly self-centred jerk.
It was sooner rather than later, when Duncan began verbally abusing Tara, accusing that she had used him to get into higher playing fields in palaeontology that she decided to end the relationship. He had established his own research team, because his parents were wealthy enough to help him out, whereas Tara had joined one of the teams that were based in Mongolia.
After the Mongolia findings, Duncan moved even further forward, pushing himself and his team to the limits. There was no news of Tara. There was also no news of new discoveries. That was good enough for Duncan at the moment.
Mark began to enjoy the single dimensioned character of Duncan. Who needed him to be complicated? Good dialogue was not necessary. As long as the obsession is justified, his crimes revealed, the pain that has been caused and the pain received in return has been mentioned, and a suitable retribution has been figured out. The novel should be fine.
Moreover, this was his first attempt at a novel. And he was doing it in a hurry. When you look at 50 days closely, you quite realise that is a tremendously short span of time. No one wins a Pulitzer in such a short time. Ha! Ha! Ha! Pulitzer. Who am I kidding?
---------------****
It has been a week since Mark started on his journey to be a novelist. The word novelist sounds like an awfully serious word for many people. Although his character was much more developed now compared to the earlier days, Mark still didn’t know where the story was headed. You could do a lot with 70,000 words. According to his ancient dictionary which he’s been using for the past 10 years, there are 72,000 words in the language. He wondered how many unique words he uses. He doubted he used that many… maybe there were only about 2000 different types of words scattered throughout his work.
He began to get slightly worried, though. The story might meet a premature ending if he couldn’t expand it to stretch through all those 50 days.
Luke enters the room where Mark was working on his manuscript.
“Your boss just called” Luke said
“What did she want?” Mark asked, wrinkling his forehead.
“It’s a he… err. Ex-boss?”
“Of course… now he calls me. The dingbat!”
“He’s still on the line…”
Mark dashed out the room to the telephone in the next room.
What is he calling for now? Mark thought, slightly annoyed
“Sir?” enquired Mark, keeping his tone polite
“Mark, old boy… How have you been?” said a gruff voice from the other end
“Jobless” Mark said “as if you didn’t already know” he added to himself. “What happened that day? I tried contacting you but…” Mark finished off halfway, not really sure how to say what he thought.
“Yes, that… I figured I owe you an explanation, and your salary. Can we talk somewhere, for coffee? Tea?” the gruff voice continued, slowly.
“Name the place and date, I’ll be there.” Mark said. Involuntarily he shrugged his shoulders.
“4:30 pm at CoffeeTown. You’re okay with tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.”
-------------------------******
Mark had to wait for at least 15 minutes before the ex-boss arrived. He spent the time drafting out the plot for DUNCAN’S STORY - A yet to be named novel. Soon after he had started though, he met a stumbling block in the plot and gave up.
Before the mysterious appearance of the man in a grey suit and the policeman that strange Monday morning, Mark was employed as a new reporter for a little local newspaper. Although the rest of the staff had years of experience in the field and were all involved in some sort of covert satirical writing, they accepted Mark with open arms as they ‘could do with some new blood’.
The newspaper was sort of leftist in nature, as the proprietor (that is the boss) had some issues against the local happenings. He went undercover and resorted to writing scandalous articles similar to those of Junius[1] in the late eighteenth century. Junius carried his secret identity to the grave, but the boss chose to reveal his true self a tad bit too prematurely, besides, it was highly impossible to remain anonymous in this time and age.
The boss managed to recruit a small team of like minded people, mostly former army personnel who felt that their services to the well being of the nation was overlooked and underappreciated and that the certain people needed to be pulled down a notch or two.
Mark was hired based on being at the right place at the right time, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time depending on how you looked at it. He possessed a certain knack in writing satire that was not prevalent among the younger crowd of journalists, and no one suspected that anything was amiss seeing a young person loitering (and snooping) around. He was just most probably wasting his time doing nothing of particular importance like most of the other young people.
“Mark, you’re here already…” said the familiar gruff voice
Mark looked at the person who spoke.
The ex-boss had on a pair of sunglasses. He looked a little thinner and walked with a slight limp. Mark looked at the man’s hands and saw that his knuckles were bruised. When he spoke, he sounded like he was in pain.
“Yeah, I arrived here about 15 minutes ago.” Mark realised with trepidation that he never go to find out the boss’ name. Everyone he knew either called him Boss or Sir. Interesting… Mark thought.
The boss pulled out a chair and seated himself.
“I’ll get to the point…. Those idiots destroyed all our equipment, the computers, printers, stencils, dark room, you name it… There’s not one thing left.” The boss said with certain bitterness to his voice.
“They even beat me up…” he added with a grimace, taking out his sunglasses.
Mark gasped. The boss’ eye had an unmistakable look of having received a rather severe injury.
“I thought you should know, they had me in for 2 weeks. I tell ya, those were the worst days of my life, and I was in the ward for about a week.”
“But these injuries don’t matter so much… it’s just that I lost the one true thing I really cared for…” said the boss “and that’s he newspaper if you didn’t already know” the boss added quickly when he saw the expression on Mark’s face.
“Who did it?” Mark asked slightly hesitant.
“Why, don’t you know?” the boss was clearly surprised.
“No… I have no idea. Who’d do such a thing?”
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. I almost had those suckers nailed down for all those heinous crimes they did while in power.” The boss lowered his voice dramatically.
“Those bastards got wind of the big story I had, and they did this to us. Rifle died in the scuffle. Poor chap couldn’t handle it.” The boss continued.
Rifle was the assistant editor of the paper.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t know.” said Mark sympathetically. ‘Yeah, I didn’t know anything…’ thought Mark to himself.
Mark grew more and more horrified as he realised the truth behind the sudden loss of his first job. Of course it wasn’t the best job in the world, but after the sudden disappearance of the boss and the newspaper, Mark had found it almost impossible to get a new job.
If he stated that he had no previous job before that, the prospective employers passed him off as being inexperienced. On the other hand if he used the name of the paper as a previous job experience, the prospective employer just never bothered calling him back.
In the days that followed, certain opportunities knocked on Mark’s door only to disappear the very next day. It’s either the person who wanted to employ him moved to another country, or he missed the call because his phone was cranky. The last straw was when the person in charge of another paper that dared to employ him died of a heart attack the night before the day Mark was supposed to report for duty.
The whole ridiculousness of the situation made Mark almost believe that he was jinxed.
In the end when the story book offer came by, Mark grabbed the offer without thinking too much. Weighing the pros and cons was out of the question. Here was a job where no one died suddenly in the process. The transition from joblessness to having a part time stint was smooth as far as transitions go. Most of all, he needed the money.
[1] The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries pg 29, Colin Wilson & Damon Wilson, Constable & Robinson Ltd
It was discovered that the ‘mother’ dragon had three chambers in her body. There were some traces of methane along a passageway that led to a smaller chamber. On the other hand, another passageway that ran parallel to the methane passageway had oxygen traces. Despite being frozen for over a million years (carbon dating method) the body of the ‘dragon’ was somewhat warm. The research team predicted that the third chamber might have been the place where dragons produced their legendary fire.
When the research papers were revealed to the scientific world, everyone who heard it got into frenzy. It was a revolutionary find. People had accepted it as a myth, and now the evidence was here right in front of their eyes.
The question was… would there be others?
Duncan took it as a personal quest. He was going to be the one who discovers the next body, or fossil, or whatever it may be. He didn’t care at whatever it might have cost him… and monetary cost was the last thing on his mind. His mission took a toll on him. He neglected friends and family. He stayed around the Alps for years hoping to get another body.
Unfortunately, the second dragon body was not around the Alps at all. It was found in a desert in Mongolia. It wasn’t a body, this time, just a full skeleton, and some bits of skin that remained in the harsh, dry desert land. But what almost drove Duncan insane was the person who led the team that found the dragon.
It was Tara.
-----------------****
The idea of changing Duncan’s character into a woman remained just an idea. Besides, there weren’t any characteristics that made Duncan completely necessary to be a guy. At least, not yet. So he figured that if Duncan required a sex change, he would just change the name to something more feminine, and change all the he’s into she’s.
Something else crossed his mind as he typed out the story. He begins to wonder if it was wiser to make the character a first person… instead of a third person narration.
Will it be odd if I described Duncan, when he is actually describing himself?
HE was a mad palaeontologist. Opposed to I am a mad palaeontologist.
Clearly writing had driven Mark close to temporary insanity. He decided to take a walk before continuing his journey into the unknown world of palaeontology and dragons.
Mark often took a walk late at night, past some street side stalls and decided to have some hot Nescafe at one of the stalls that was lined at the side of the street. The delicious aroma of coffee floated through the air, beckoning him to get over there immediately.
He could make a cuppa at the house, but he thought it would be too much of a hassle. The coffee maker was a thing of the past. Besides, they didn’t have any sugar in the house… especially since the ex-housemate left. He even doubted the existence of Nescafe that hadn’t surpassed the expiry date. Grocery shopping was just not his thing.
He met two of the writers from the Peter and Molly series having a late night drink too, and joined them at their corner.
Mark wasn’t in a chatty mood that night, but his two friends were. The word regret swam in front of him several times as he just nodded in approval at their opinions and grunted at intervals to be polite. He wasn’t really paying attention to their chatter. All that was in his mind now is his story. Duncan’s obsession and without any connection whatsoever with whatever he did earlier or is doing at the moment, his mind floated to this role playing game he played some time back. There were dragons there.
Mark recollected how engrossed he was in the game back then. It was a crazy period of sleepless nights and on the nights he managed to finally catch some sleep, queens, vampires and thieves invaded his dreams. His role as a game player required him to rescue a few characters and solve some riddles that sent him back and forth through many places in the game. If he had problems solving a particular puzzle, he’d have a dream that had the solution. It was utter madness. He finished the game in a mere 40 hours. Those were the days…
“Just poke him on the shoulder. His mind has drifted away.”
“You poke him!”
“You’re nearer! Shut up and poke him”
Mark is came out of his reverie in a state of surprise.
“Sorry bout that, wei… you stopped responding. Anyway, we’re leaving. Paid up for your coffee too.” said one of them
“What? You didn’t have to…” Mark interjected.
“It’s paid up for, already. But you could thank us” the other one added
“Oh… thanks. But you really didn’t have to… see the poke on the shoulder works wonders.” Mark added feebly
Both of them laughed and headed off. One of them turned and waved at Mark with a smile.
She has a really nice smile; Mark thought as he waved back at her and felt his face turning red.
----------------------*****
Luke was watching his favourite episode of the Private Crime Investigations from his DVD set, his feet curled up on the chair, and a tennis racquet in his hand when Mark reached their rented house.
“Who do you plan to beat up with that?” Mark asked. Curious.
“This?” Luke asked back swinging the racquet
“Simple… according the show, If I hit you while you were on the floor, it’s supposed to hurt your head quite bad. But if I hit you when you’re standing up, the only thing you’d most probably get is a bump on the head, and a very bad headache.”
“And you have intentions of doing that?” asked Mark again, looking apprehensively at the racquet.
“It’s bloody interesting concept. Don’t worry, I make an honest living by making people believe that I’m someone whom I’m not. I don’t need this.” Luke said, clearly annoyed
“Ok…” Mark said and got up to leave. He was annoyed too, for no apparent reason.
---------------------****
The Mongolian dragon had red skin, based on the bit of skin they discovered near the spiked tail. Despite the fact that most of the muscles had decayed, some parts remained, and the evidence of the three chambers was a good enough proof that it was indeed a dragon.
Duncan hated the fact that it wasn’t him that discovered the Mongolian dragon. Even the Alps dragon was more of a joint discovery. He was only a student back then.
Tara had been one of Duncan’s mountaineering buddies. They had a shared passion for mountains, ancient history, dinosaurs, and the wild outdoors in general. It was during the terrible days on the mountain and the fear that they would never make it down to safety, with the company of two unknown creatures, Tara and Duncan bonded emotionally. The other team member had suffered from a fall, and was in between being conscious and unconscious, and therefore was not fully involved in the daily conversations of fears and hopes.
After the ordeal they had decided to get together as a couple, but the news of the existence of dragons had changed Duncan. He began to see everything as a competition. He needed to verify his position as the top palaeontologist from time to time regardless of the consequences.
It is hard to say that if it was because of their similar vocation or not, but Duncan began to see Tara as a threat. Her less unpredictable behaviour and her non existent temper tantrums earned her several invitations to join respectable expeditions through respected college professors. Whereas, Duncan was left behind for being a completely unpredictable, hot headed, and disgustingly self-centred jerk.
It was sooner rather than later, when Duncan began verbally abusing Tara, accusing that she had used him to get into higher playing fields in palaeontology that she decided to end the relationship. He had established his own research team, because his parents were wealthy enough to help him out, whereas Tara had joined one of the teams that were based in Mongolia.
After the Mongolia findings, Duncan moved even further forward, pushing himself and his team to the limits. There was no news of Tara. There was also no news of new discoveries. That was good enough for Duncan at the moment.
Mark began to enjoy the single dimensioned character of Duncan. Who needed him to be complicated? Good dialogue was not necessary. As long as the obsession is justified, his crimes revealed, the pain that has been caused and the pain received in return has been mentioned, and a suitable retribution has been figured out. The novel should be fine.
Moreover, this was his first attempt at a novel. And he was doing it in a hurry. When you look at 50 days closely, you quite realise that is a tremendously short span of time. No one wins a Pulitzer in such a short time. Ha! Ha! Ha! Pulitzer. Who am I kidding?
---------------****
It has been a week since Mark started on his journey to be a novelist. The word novelist sounds like an awfully serious word for many people. Although his character was much more developed now compared to the earlier days, Mark still didn’t know where the story was headed. You could do a lot with 70,000 words. According to his ancient dictionary which he’s been using for the past 10 years, there are 72,000 words in the language. He wondered how many unique words he uses. He doubted he used that many… maybe there were only about 2000 different types of words scattered throughout his work.
He began to get slightly worried, though. The story might meet a premature ending if he couldn’t expand it to stretch through all those 50 days.
Luke enters the room where Mark was working on his manuscript.
“Your boss just called” Luke said
“What did she want?” Mark asked, wrinkling his forehead.
“It’s a he… err. Ex-boss?”
“Of course… now he calls me. The dingbat!”
“He’s still on the line…”
Mark dashed out the room to the telephone in the next room.
What is he calling for now? Mark thought, slightly annoyed
“Sir?” enquired Mark, keeping his tone polite
“Mark, old boy… How have you been?” said a gruff voice from the other end
“Jobless” Mark said “as if you didn’t already know” he added to himself. “What happened that day? I tried contacting you but…” Mark finished off halfway, not really sure how to say what he thought.
“Yes, that… I figured I owe you an explanation, and your salary. Can we talk somewhere, for coffee? Tea?” the gruff voice continued, slowly.
“Name the place and date, I’ll be there.” Mark said. Involuntarily he shrugged his shoulders.
“4:30 pm at CoffeeTown. You’re okay with tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there.”
-------------------------******
Mark had to wait for at least 15 minutes before the ex-boss arrived. He spent the time drafting out the plot for DUNCAN’S STORY - A yet to be named novel. Soon after he had started though, he met a stumbling block in the plot and gave up.
Before the mysterious appearance of the man in a grey suit and the policeman that strange Monday morning, Mark was employed as a new reporter for a little local newspaper. Although the rest of the staff had years of experience in the field and were all involved in some sort of covert satirical writing, they accepted Mark with open arms as they ‘could do with some new blood’.
The newspaper was sort of leftist in nature, as the proprietor (that is the boss) had some issues against the local happenings. He went undercover and resorted to writing scandalous articles similar to those of Junius[1] in the late eighteenth century. Junius carried his secret identity to the grave, but the boss chose to reveal his true self a tad bit too prematurely, besides, it was highly impossible to remain anonymous in this time and age.
The boss managed to recruit a small team of like minded people, mostly former army personnel who felt that their services to the well being of the nation was overlooked and underappreciated and that the certain people needed to be pulled down a notch or two.
Mark was hired based on being at the right place at the right time, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time depending on how you looked at it. He possessed a certain knack in writing satire that was not prevalent among the younger crowd of journalists, and no one suspected that anything was amiss seeing a young person loitering (and snooping) around. He was just most probably wasting his time doing nothing of particular importance like most of the other young people.
“Mark, you’re here already…” said the familiar gruff voice
Mark looked at the person who spoke.
The ex-boss had on a pair of sunglasses. He looked a little thinner and walked with a slight limp. Mark looked at the man’s hands and saw that his knuckles were bruised. When he spoke, he sounded like he was in pain.
“Yeah, I arrived here about 15 minutes ago.” Mark realised with trepidation that he never go to find out the boss’ name. Everyone he knew either called him Boss or Sir. Interesting… Mark thought.
The boss pulled out a chair and seated himself.
“I’ll get to the point…. Those idiots destroyed all our equipment, the computers, printers, stencils, dark room, you name it… There’s not one thing left.” The boss said with certain bitterness to his voice.
“They even beat me up…” he added with a grimace, taking out his sunglasses.
Mark gasped. The boss’ eye had an unmistakable look of having received a rather severe injury.
“I thought you should know, they had me in for 2 weeks. I tell ya, those were the worst days of my life, and I was in the ward for about a week.”
“But these injuries don’t matter so much… it’s just that I lost the one true thing I really cared for…” said the boss “and that’s he newspaper if you didn’t already know” the boss added quickly when he saw the expression on Mark’s face.
“Who did it?” Mark asked slightly hesitant.
“Why, don’t you know?” the boss was clearly surprised.
“No… I have no idea. Who’d do such a thing?”
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. I almost had those suckers nailed down for all those heinous crimes they did while in power.” The boss lowered his voice dramatically.
“Those bastards got wind of the big story I had, and they did this to us. Rifle died in the scuffle. Poor chap couldn’t handle it.” The boss continued.
Rifle was the assistant editor of the paper.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t know.” said Mark sympathetically. ‘Yeah, I didn’t know anything…’ thought Mark to himself.
Mark grew more and more horrified as he realised the truth behind the sudden loss of his first job. Of course it wasn’t the best job in the world, but after the sudden disappearance of the boss and the newspaper, Mark had found it almost impossible to get a new job.
If he stated that he had no previous job before that, the prospective employers passed him off as being inexperienced. On the other hand if he used the name of the paper as a previous job experience, the prospective employer just never bothered calling him back.
In the days that followed, certain opportunities knocked on Mark’s door only to disappear the very next day. It’s either the person who wanted to employ him moved to another country, or he missed the call because his phone was cranky. The last straw was when the person in charge of another paper that dared to employ him died of a heart attack the night before the day Mark was supposed to report for duty.
The whole ridiculousness of the situation made Mark almost believe that he was jinxed.
In the end when the story book offer came by, Mark grabbed the offer without thinking too much. Weighing the pros and cons was out of the question. Here was a job where no one died suddenly in the process. The transition from joblessness to having a part time stint was smooth as far as transitions go. Most of all, he needed the money.
[1] The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries pg 29, Colin Wilson & Damon Wilson, Constable & Robinson Ltd
2 comments:
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Cyberfish said...
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Nice prose. Aspiring professional writer or just a hobby? The story definitely has its hooks. Can't wait to read more.
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November 9, 2007 at 8:56 AM
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Cyberfish said...
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One more thing, most content on the internet is considered default creative common attribution. You may want to stick a disclaimer in their or a copyright notice.
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November 9, 2007 at 8:57 AM
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2 comments:
Nice prose. Aspiring professional writer or just a hobby? The story definitely has its hooks. Can't wait to read more.
One more thing, most content on the internet is considered default creative common attribution. You may want to stick a disclaimer in their or a copyright notice.
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