WIP Intro: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
Genre: Contemporary Sci-Fi (tags: Superhero, Zombie Apocalypse, Time Travel, Mystery)
Age Range: New Adult
POV: First Person, single POV, past-tense
"Last chance to see; come the end of this month, this entire island is either going to be ash, glass, or biomass."
Synopsis:
Columba’s problems started when they somehow got caught in a time loop. No, really, they have no idea how it happened. A car crash might have been involved. Maybe. It was either that or the apocalyptic wave of death that caused the car crash in the first place. One of those two.
A few decades, a dozen loops, and countless failed plans later, they find themself desperate for any sort of help they can get in solving their plight. Enter: Riley Tanner, investigative journalist in training. Perfect. Even better, she’s the sort of person who’s right up Columba’s alley when it comes to relationships. Truly, a match made in heaven.
And then it turns out that she’s fated to die when a deadly bioweapon gets released in her hometown of NYC. And that said bioweapon is actually a zombie virus. And that she’s the sister of the guy who released the bioweapon in the first place. Except, wait, no, the guy might have been framed, because this all started when she was helping him investigate this genetics research lab, and then this secret government hit squad showed up, and, really, it’s all just a mess.
Their mission? Save their girlfriend from certain doom, crack open the conspiracy they somehow stumbled into, and find a way to escape from their temporal purgatory. Oh, yeah, and save New York City from a zombie plague. You know, on the side.
(In order to make this interesting, I’m only going to be pulling from thing I either haven’t posted yet, or things that I know I won’t be posting)
Laugh:
I stopped dead in my tracks, and my thoughts did likewise. What the hell had that been? Whipping my head around, I searched for the owner of this weird-ass leather jacket. I’m not entirely sure what I expected to find, though; I didn’t even know what color I was looking for. Brown? Black? Orange? (You laugh, but I honest-to-god saw a gal in a bright orange leather jacket in that crowd.) About the only way I could narrow it down was to turn around and look back the way I came.
(I am having a character-design crisis that may see this entire plot point cut, but we’ll see. Also, important note, as I just found out: you can’t spell “slaughter” without “laugh.”)
Pages:
“I figured.” Then, with a sly smile, she added, “You know, they actually look kind of good on you.”
Okay, forget what I had said about boring celebrity gossip, I wanted nothing more than to bury my face in one of those magazines right about now. Oh, fuck me, why did I have to be so unbelievably abysmal at reading these situations? Was she flirting with me? Was this good-natured ribbing? Was this just normal friend talk? I didn’t know. All I knew was that my face was about as flushed as it could get, and she’d given a little laugh at my reaction. What did that mean? Whatever. Face. Magazine. Couch. Go.
She smirked as I practically threw myself at the couch, hands shaking as I fumbled to pick up a magazine. “Just a compliment, Col.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah,” I replied from between the pages of last month’s Vanity Fair.
(Another scene that may end up being cut. You also can’t spell “rampages” without “pages”)
Adult:
Ah, this called for celebration, folks! And here I was, a spirited young adult with the whole of New York City spread out before them, ripe and ready to savor. Money was no object; I had a thousand dollar credit limit and no intention of living long enough to see the bill come in. The only thing that was off the table was alcohol, which was no great loss, in my opinion. Yes, it was time for me to have a much-needed vacation. Look out, Manhattan, here comes Columba!
…
I spent most of the day up to my elbows in bullrushes, looking for that damn hudsonian godwit, and you will be pleased to know that I did, indeed, find it. In addition, I also spotted a glaucous gull, a small flock of bobolinks, and an osprey.
The last one’s nothing new or unusual, by the way. Those things live literally worldwide. I just really like ospreys.
(This entire chapter no longer exists. However, this particular bit may find itself transplanted elsewhere.)
Drop:
Just, like, there’s some sacrilege incoming, is what I’m saying. Hopefully, I can walk you through how I ended up there, mentally and physically, but if all this starts sounding like some insidious propaganda to you (or you decide you just fucking hate me,) you have my permission to drop this thing like an incandescent potato.
…
Not literally, though. You’re reading this on some species of electronic device. Don’t hurt your baby like that. Maybe burn it onto a CD and drop that?
Tagging: @sunlight-and-starskies, @cookiecuttercritter, @donovyn--nox, @casperalixander, @abalonetea, @yikeskimi, @ownworldresident, and anyone else who wants to join in.
Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
In Which Columba Reaches the End of the World, and Thus Begins Their Journey
[[INDEX || NEXT]]
[ 1 / 33 ]
[cw: car crash]
So.
It’s three in the morning. I’m still awake, as usual. And I’ve been told that I should write a book about the insane clusterfuck that is my life. I’m not going to be falling asleep any time soon, and I’m bored out of my mind, so I guess now’s as good a time as any to follow through on that advice.
First thing’s first: my name’s Columba. I’m a time traveler. Specifically, I’m stuck in a time loop. Yes, that’s right, an honest-to-god, Groundhog Day style time loop (it lasts a lot longer than a single day, but that’s beside the point.) How? Don’t know. Why? Likewise, don’t know. All I do know is the rules by which it operates, and that was all through trial and error.
For instance, the first rule is that something terrible happens on July 17th, 2012, at 3:32 PM, Pacific Standard Time. Like, really terrible. Apocalyptically terrible, even.
It’s a beautiful day, now that the morning clouds have burned off. “June gloom” we call it around here; overcast and chilly in the early morning as the marine air flows inland overnight, before the sun comes in and bathes us in that classic Southern California sunlight.
We’re coming down the 5 after having spent a long weekend up in Mammoth. Aug, my best friend, hailed from a snooty upper-middle-class family and had an aunt who owned property up there (a little cluster of timeshare vacation homes, in fact.) She’d been more than happy to let us hang around during the off season… as long as we promised to keep the place in good shape and not bother whatever actual guests she had at the time, of course. As if she’d needed to ask; I tended to keep to myself, and Aug was one of those folks who’d go to clean up his own mess and find, an hour later, that he’d cleaned the whole damn room. Blessing and a curse, honestly, thinking in straight lines like that. He can power through grading a thousand essays, but heaven help him if there’s anything else he needs to do.
The windows are down, and the cool mountain air rushes in. His hair’s a disaster, my hair’s a disaster, but it sure as hell beats wasting fuel running the air conditioner. It seems more real, too. Without that glass between me and the outside world, I can feel the empty distance stretching out all the way down to Pyramid Lake, nestled in the valley this highway skirted. Watching all those little boats and jetskis glide around the surface of the lake makes me thankful that I’m riding shotgun. How could I be expected to keep my eyes on the road when I had this sitting right next to me?
The two of us are getting antsy from driving for so long. It’s been over three hours since we finally managed to pack everything back into this little sedan of his, and we’re desperately in need of a stretch break. Next rest stop’s maybe fifteen miles ahead, going by the last sign we saw. We start debating whether we want to stop for an actual lunch or just grab some gas-station snacks and keep rolling. His vote is for the former, he says. In mock indignation, he explains that if he so much as sees another pack of corn-nuts again, he’ll drop me on the side of the road and let me find my own ride home.
I relent, emphasizing how burdensome his demands are, but, since we’re friends, I’ll shoulder them out of the kindness of my heart.
Our stern looks melt away as we break into a giggling fit. I comment on how neither of us can ever keep a straight face. He quips that it’s because neither of us are straight, period, and I just start laughing so hard, my sides begin to hurt. Was it that funny of a joke? Yeah, kinda. But, see, Aug has this laugh that is incredibly fucking infectious, so once he joined in, I was as good as doomed.
Perhaps knowing that I wasn’t going to stop until he did, he turns on the radio to distract us. It’s a hell and a half getting a signal up here, between the mountains and the trees, but, finally, one station comes through strong.
I… honestly don’t remember what the song was. I can guess, sure; "Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club fucks me up for no good reason, so I’m putting my money on that being what was playing when…
Aug’s voice cuts off midway through one of the lines of the chorus. Sudden. Unnatural. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him go rigid for a split second, before slumping forward over the steering wheel. He’s not breathing.
I scream his name (I tried to shake him awake, too, I think.) He doesn’t move. Or, rather, he does move; he begins to fall towards me, dragging the steering wheel with him.
Turning right.
Sharply.
Towards the lake.
Off the road.
Over the edge of the road. And down the side of…
…
You know, I don’t even remember the impact. The impact with the ground, I mean. We hit the guardrail full-force, the airbags exploded, and gravity picked a new and exciting direction to start pulling me in, but… yeah, no, I don’t actually remember us hitting the ground. Doesn’t really matter, in the end. Or at all, honestly.
Because, see, the second rule is…
Three dozen heads instantly turn towards me, aka, the weird kid who’d just screamed. Loudly. In a calculus class. During the final. For no goddamn reason.
It’s August 8th, 2008, 9:28 AM, Pacific Standard Time, and I’m sitting in the back of Room 404 at the local community college.
As soon as the world around me finally registers, my hands fly up to cover my mouth (and also to help hide the fact that I’m blushing bright red from shame.) In the process, I drop my calculator onto the floor, just adding to the noise. Great.
And then the people around me register. A few scattered individuals are still looking around wildly, presumably to find whatever bug must have startled me (this particular building has a reputation for being a roach magnet.) The rest, though…
Oh. I know those looks. Mentally, I sigh. Damn it. Well, with any luck, I’ll never see any of these assholes again after today. And if this kicks up my reputation again? Fuck it, I’m going to be waving goodbye to this place by the end of next… year?
Wait. No, that’s not right. I’ve graduated. I know I have. I remember, because that weekend, Aug and I celebrated by…
Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
In Which Columba Reminisces About Bad Decisions
[[PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT]]
[ 6 / 33 ]
Things got… kinda rough, after that.
Really rough.
As in, “I don’t even remember Loop 12, and I’m pretty sure there’s one or more bad lifestyle choices behind that” rough. I’d be all parent-ly and tell you kids not to do it… if only I could remember what “it” was.
Eesh.
Okay, okay, clearly, the story I’m in isn’t an adventure or a mystery or whatever. It’s some sort of angst-fest, some dark and depressing bullshit. Has to be. So, it’s got to end in some kind of tragedy, right? I’ve got to make a sacrifice, some real emotional wallop that’ll end this all off on a bittersweet note. Like, “I’m free, but at what cost?” The leading theme I’ve had through all of this has been futility, trying and failing. So… what if I failed on purpose? What if I deliberately fucked things up beyond all repair?
And then, on the heels of that, came the worst idea I’ve ever had (which, as you’ll come to see, is saying something.)
What if I killed Aug?
…
As you people can probably guess, that abso-fucking-lutely was not it. I’m not even going to give you any elaboration on that. Just use your imagination on this one; whatever you come up with, it’s probably equally awful to what actually happened.
Manually reset that loop not ten minutes after the fact. God, I still have nightmares.
Loop 14 was spent in penance. Nobody questioned me. Tried religion. Watched as the congregation changed around me in the wake of Manhattan. Some left; some joined; some held on, white-knuckle, as if it was all they had left. Sometimes it was. Didn’t work out for me, in the end. Probably for the better; my pastor would have had an aneurysm if he found out about half of the shit I was going to get into.
As for God Himself? I’m hopeful. Sort of. Again, morally-questionable, aneurysm-inducing shenanigans were not only in my past but in my future. Hell, in my future, as in, present-day, actually-writing-this-me. Even now, there is so much bullshit on my horizon. Murder is, once again, on the table. (And maybe also possibly kinda-sorta cannibalism. Maybe. I need to see how things pan out.)
(You know, as an aside, I am just now realizing, in the present, as I write this, that I’ve never actually tried killing the person I was currently anchored to. I’ve certainly gotten the poor bastard killed, but never by my own two hands, never intentionally. Kinda counterproductive, am I right? But, would that do anything? I mean, it’s pretty much a moot point these days, seeing as I have no way of carrying it out, but… wait… hmm…
Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
In Which Columba Finds a New Target
[[PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT]]
[ 4 / 33 ]
Turns out, one random-ass college student having memories of the future isn’t exactly this huge, timeline-altering force… especially when they’re more concerned with their day-to-day life than going out and doing something crazy. My exploits barely affected anyone outside of my friends and family, much less the global stage… er, except for that one time I somehow managed to flip the 2008 presidential election. Hey, don’t look at me, I don’t even know how I did that. I sure as fuck wasn’t trying to, I can tell you that much. And, honestly, it still didn’t really affect international politics. Doesn’t matter if your name is Barack Obama or John McCain, there’s really only so much you can do when New York’s been nuked out from under you, even if you do play all your cards straight.
…
Alright, alright, I can already hear your questions. No, I was not personally responsible for stopping that, but I did have a major hand in it. I’ll get to it.
Here I am, a spirited (kind of) and attractive (kind of) twenty-something (prime protagonist material, if I do say so myself,) who has found themself trapped in a time loop with no obvious exit. It’s a curse, but also a blessing; I have the power to change the fate of the world, so, clearly, by the rules of fiction, I’m meant to use it. And when I finally finagle things around to whatever state it’s “supposed” to be in, reality repays the favor and lets me literally get on with my life. (That, or I have some big, life-changing revelation; or learn some lesson; or some other feel-good spiritualist hippie bullshit. I’m hoping for the former; it’ll be less work.)
So, since this is obviously a work of fiction, there’s got to be one specific thing I’m meant to change. Typically, this role is filled by a big disaster of some sort. The Titanic. World War II. JFK’s assassination. That sort of shit. I was a few decades too late to tackle any of those, but I did have two very big targets in my sights.
One, the obvious, is The Event. As I’d come to find out over the loops, it kills way more people than just Aug, and it’s what got me stuck in this mess in the first place. That was what I was currently focusing on, but it was just so… big. And nebulous. And enigmatic. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what it was, much less how to prevent it. I’d been mashing my face against it since day one and had made roughly zero progress.
But… there is a second option. The other tragedy that takes place in this little four-year chunk, the one you’re probably all too familiar with. That’s right; The Manhattan Outbreak! That whole godforsaken tragedy, those two weeks of utter hell, up to and including New York City getting nuked. (Told you I’d get to it.)
Now that seemed like a proper goal to tackle. A manageable one, even, if you believed hard enough. It wasn’t some unstoppable force of nature, it was relatively localized, and, best of all, it wasn’t in any way a mystery. The chain of events leading up to it had been poked and prodded and picked over in the three years that followed, so it wasn’t like I was going in blind. Far from it; in fact, I already had a target, one so obvious he might as well have had a giant neon arrow pointing right at him.
Yeah, you heard me; I was going to tango with none other than Dr. Morgan Lucius Tanner, otherwise known as the world’s deadliest terrorist. Hey, go big or go home, am I right? I wasn’t in a position to assassinate Hitler, so I was just going to have to settle for the next best thing.
Even better, this was a simple fix. Baby’s first timeline alteration, if you will. All I needed to do was prevent a single, well-defined event from happening: Dr. Tanner releasing that damn bioweapon of his into a crowded train station. And that? Walk in the freaking park compared to everything else I’d been dealing with. Literally the only thing in this clusterfuck we didn’t know with absolute certainty was the guy’s motives… but who the fuck cares why he did it when you weren’t planning on reasoning with him? There is no argument more persuasive than preemptively booting someone’s ass through the gates of Hell.
…
Of course, actually assassinating a person is something easier said than done. Especially when you’re a twenty-something college student. And I’m not just talking about the logistics. I, like the majority of humanity (and unlike a certain loathsome bastard,) have these little things called “moral qualms” about out and out killing someone.
I mean, on the one hand, if you’re going to murder exactly one guy in your life, someone who will be responsible for over fifteen million deaths and the complete and utter annihilation of New York is a pretty solid fucking choice. On the other… still murdering someone. Worse, you’re murdering someone who hasn’t actually done anything yet. That’s kinda fucked up. And, moral ambiguity aside, the law doesn’t exactly have clauses for “don’t worry, guys, I’m a time traveler; he was absolutely going to kill a fuckload of people, trust me!” I’m not quite ready to make that sort of sacrifice, especially if this does break me out of the loop, and that life sentence becomes an actual life sentence.
So, against my urges to righteously and aggressively strangle the son of a bitch with my own two goddamn hands, I aimed a little lower (on the violence scale, anyway… though I wouldn’t have said no to stabbing him in the heart, given the opportunity.)
Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
In Which Columba Gets a Taste of the Apocalypse
[[PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT]]
[ 5 / 33 ]
[cw: gore]
I can’t remember exactly what I tried, Loop 8, other than it was something utterly inane (like sending Dr. Tanner a string of emails both proving that I was a time traveler and telling him not to do it.) Fuck, I think that’s what I actually did. It’s hard to recall, because, well… a lot of other stuff happened in that loop that drowned it out. Doesn’t matter, in the end. The only thing that does matter is that it worked as well as you’d expect.
Actually, no, it worked way less than you’d expect. In fact, it actively made things worse.
A lot worse.
Funny story, see, ah, that bioweapon he released? Not a modified strain of influenza, despite what the official story is. Not anthrax, either. Or tularemia (though at least that one’s a good guess, all things considered.) It is also not some sort of rabies offshoot, driving people mad and causing them to riot (though, again, good guess.)
Yeah, I’m going there.
The conspiracy nuts are right; the Manhattan Plague is, indeed, an honest-to-god fucking zombie virus.
Now, Col, I hear you saying, you can’t be serious. Zombies? That sort of shit only happens in fiction! Yeah, well, that’s what I thought, too, right up until I was being gnawed on like a goddamn cow in a goddamn river full of goddamn piranhas!
Fuck Loop 8, fuck Loop 8, fuck Loop 8…
The feel of warm asphalt on my face still sends me into fits, sometimes.
However, despite the jagged grooves it cut into my mind, it nonetheless gave me two very important pieces of information. The first was that a major US city getting glassed wasn’t a failure state. It was a draw.
The second was that it wasn’t just my death that could end a loop.
I really, really fucking wish I hadn’t seen Aug get ripped apart by an unholy, malformed thing the size of a car, but I did see (and hear, and smell) him get ripped apart by an unholy, malformed thing the size of a car. Mercifully, though, it was the very last thing I saw before I got sent back to that calculus class.
(Didn’t scream that time, surprisingly enough. I simply set down my pencil, grabbed my calculator and backpack, and walked out of the classroom without a single word. And kept walking. Got on a train. Went downtown. Spent a day at the Natural History Museum. Looked at stuffed birds. Cried my eyes out in a bathroom stall.)
But the point of the matter is that I didn’t actually die; I was still alive and kicking and screaming at the moment Aug’s head got split like a melon between a monster’s jaws.
The sixth rule is that it’s not actually The Event that restarts my loop. Or, rather, it is, but not for the reasons I was thinking. It’s Aug dying in The Event that triggers the reset. Somehow, we were linked in some intangible way, our fates welded together. Would have been downright romantic if it didn’t cause me so much grief.
My guess as to why? About the only theory I have is that it’s because the two of us died in close proximity to each other, physically and temporally, in the aftermath of The Event. Beyond that, I have no idea. Hell, I actually have less of an idea these days than I did back then.
Granted, this didn’t really help me at the time; if I didn’t know what The Event was, I sure as hell didn’t know how to make someone survive it. It’s only when it’s paired with the final two rules that it becomes something useful.
The seventh rule is that that bond can be transferred. And the eighth, alongside it, is that doing so has… other consequences.
Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon
In Which Columba Sees the Future
[[PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT]]
[ 10 / 33 ]
But life continued on.
Living in a world where The Outbreak had never happened was… weird. Hundreds of events that I had taken for granted just didn’t happen, or didn’t happen the same way. The immediate aftermath (or, rather, non-aftermath) was, obviously, completely changed. The difference between “business as usual” and “the economic and diplomatic hub of the world got glassed” was, needless to say, fucking huge.
Different presidential candidates, different policies, different attitudes. More moderate for the most part… except 2016. 2016 was when everyone went off the rails. Security was shockingly lax this time around. Fewer armed guards, no dedicated biohazard crews. Sniffers? Straight up never invented. Lots of other stuff took its place. Computing skyrocketed, the internet exploded, a vast network unfolding at exponential speeds. The economy, while not great, was in far better shape.
Took me busting my ass for it, but I finally got that scholarship I’d first tried for all those lifetimes ago. It would mean moving up to San Francisco, but, damn it, I finally had a future. The dreams I’d left behind on that fateful July 17th were now suddenly back on the table, and after all the shit I’d been through, I owed it to myself to at least try to see them through. Oh, yes, I was going to get that Masters in Museum Studies, get a job back home at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and spend the rest of my days surrounded by cabinets of stuffed birds. Hell, maybe they’d even tap me to re-design their current exhibits. I mean, they were fine, for the most part, but they could have used a little updating to make them not look like they were from the 80’s. Because they were from the 80’s. And it showed.
Aug, meanwhile, managed to finish the bulk of his schooling, passed his exams, and began his internship as a Teacher’s Assistant at the local high school. As I’d long suspected, he took to it like a fish to water. Finally untangled himself from the last of the poison and shame he’d grown up with and began to live as himself, the Aug I saw.
Watching my life get back on track had been great, but seeing his? What it looked like when he hadn’t been culled by some unfathomable disaster? I was proud of him, just so fucking proud.
We were going to be okay. We were all going to be okay.
…
You see that little scroll bar on the right? I want you to take a good, long look at where the cursor is.
Yeah.
The world ends on March 21st, 2017, at 8:04 AM, Pacific Standard Time.
TFW you realize that setting your story in 2009 can actually serve the plot, instead of just being a random-ish year you picked because of a stupid numerical running gag and so that you didn’t have to deal with coming up with future history. (I SUCK at writing near-future stuff)
