The Kitty Wittgenstein Blog

YouTube Can Be Fun... Monty Python v Star Wars

2009-07-04T17:18:00.002+10:00

All right, rumours are afoot that a new tale (Kitty Wittgenstein and the Irredeemable Heroine Addicts) is imminent. But, considering the source, one shouldn't hold one's breath.

During the meanwhile, here's Monty Python v Star Wars. Enjoy.

A Crack Commando Unit

2009-06-15T10:01:00.004+10:00

More A Team movie news updates. We all know why the original attempts to make this movie were scuttled (oh, lycanthropy, have you ever scuttled a more promising movie project?)

But the latest news on the A Team movie is that Liam Neeson is in line to play the George Peppard role.

"Master Hannibal. What are midichlorians?"

If Only I'd Been Written By... Douglas Hofstadter

2009-06-13T14:21:00.002+10:00

Another look at how my life would be different if only I'd had a different author. This time around, Mr Douglas Hofstadter.

According to Wikipedia,

Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, thinking and creativity. He is best known for Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, first published in 1979, for which he was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.

Of course, this kind of counterfactual translation from one author to another would be perfectly up Mr Hofstadter's literary alley, as even the most casual reader of his works would have noticed.

Hofstadter also invented Hofstadter's Law, which states:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Liebke should probably take Hofstadter's Law into account when he writes my novels.

Of course, if I'd been written by Douglas Hofstadter, here's what would happen:

I'd be non-fictional. Or, at the very worst, a fictional character in a non-fictional book. So that's a step up.
I'd be involved in actual matters philosophical. Y'know, as opposed to bizarre adventures about werewolves invading the Oscars or conspiracies of lefthanders or whatnot. People would probably be far less likely to try to kill me if Hofstadter wrote me.
The puns would be a lot better.

YouTube Can Be Fun... Bonnie Tyler Interpreted Literally

2009-06-05T09:40:00.002+10:00

Liebke once claimed (presumably in jest, although with him one can never be sure) in a 'review' of Tal Bachman's She's So High that he hoped to one day

"... see the scourge of metaphor completely removed from all art."

Here's a glimpse into such a world - the literal version of Bonnie Tyler's music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart:

Funnier than I'd have thought. Maybe Liebke's onto something, as unlikely as that might seem

Nine Hundred And Ninety-Six Short

2009-05-30T12:12:00.005+10:00

Y'know, it is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This cliche once inspired the following observation from Liebke in a novel that (shamefully) failed to feature me:

"By my reckoning, if a picture paints a thousand words, then we could probably replace most art galleries with a very small set of books in the corner. Which would free up a lot of space that I could rent out at inflated prices. You know, due to their proximity to great works of art."

All somewhat droll and amusing, I suppose, if you like that kind of thing.

But here's a picture that, rather than a thousand words, warrants only four (two of which are hyphenated): "Pillow-fighting, bikini-wearing Princess Leias"

(image from Eloketh's flickr page, click image for full size)

I, for one, am sufficiently dumbstruck by the image that the remaining 996 words totally elude me. Feel free to help me out.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed... Time Travel via Electronic Literature

2009-05-18T11:20:00.003+10:00

Okay. If you've been paying any kind of attention to this site over the past year or so, you know I've just had a time-travel based kind of adventure. Not that I actually travelled through time (apart from the tedious 1 hr/hr standard forward rate), but there was certainly enough time stream manipulation and reality modification to qualify.

If, for some reason, you're looking to have a similar kind of adventure, then I heartily recommend this 2007 post on Writer Response Theory as a starting point. The post discusses Time Travel via Electronic Literature and links through to a number of time travel literary hypertexts and interactive fiction. Go visit. Have your own adventure. I'll be here when you get back. We'll bond.

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Twelve

2009-05-09T12:15:00.002+10:00

Chapter Twelve - the final chapter - was written in a mad frenzy during the last week of December, 2008. I just scraped it in, penning the final section on the afternoon of New Year's Eve. Luckily, by this stage, it was just a matter of working through the checklist of answers until we got to the end. The only real problem was solving everything in the space remaining. Despite a wordier-than-I'd-like final bit, I just about managed it.

The only new thing I came up with as I wrote this chapter was the idea that The Man In The Hat could be a mutated Platypus Man. Which would explain why KW didn't recognise him until after their little chronodip.

And, this quote:

“I think you’ll find that, even if things are confusing, happening as they did over varying timelines with varying histories and various states of handedness, it all makes sense if you think about it hard enough.”

was pretty much my way of saying, I don't have time or the exposition-inclination to spell out every little step over multiple different timelines, but, heck, if it doesn't quite all add up, it's gone awfully close, hasn't it?

Of course, there were other ramifications of KW's little dip in the chronopool. I'll get to them in future stories.

All in all, I was reasonably happy with the way the sequel turned out. In true sequel fashion, I'm not sure it quite matched the first story. It was certainly more sci-fi heavy, which is perhaps not to the taste of some of the reader who enjoyed the simpler adventure of the first story. But there were lots of good ideas in there (and maybe a few that didn't quite work). If nothing else, writing the sequel taught me something about, well, how hard it is to write decent sequels.

Probably not going to stop me from going for a trilogy, however.

REWRITE NOTES

Are you mad, it's over! No more rewrites. It is what it is.

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Eleven

2009-05-07T13:48:00.002+10:00

Chapter Eleven was written during the first three weeks of December 2008, as I scrambled to get the story done by my self-imposed end of 2008 deadline. The writing had grown easier by this point. Most of the mysteries now had solutions and most of the plot ideas were now converging. It was just a matter of making sure everything was explained before the end of the book.

The major ideas introduced in this penultimate chapter were the idea of Jason Bateman being the latest Sinister One and that this role tended to fluctuate as KW messed with the timelines. I also introduced the Morpheous Protocol as their way of getting around KW's interference (although, of course, the introduction of the sleeping left-handed people-computer turned out to be KW's way of ultimately defeating them - oh, irony, what a pestilent bedfellow you can be) and, in the final paragraph of the chapter, set up KW as the new Sinister Two.

Of course, the only way that I could justify KW being able to stop an omniscient foe was for her to be an exception to the omniscience - their blind spot. Fortunately, that had been explained many times throughout the plot already.

Which left me the final chapter to explain why she was a blind spot.

REWRITE NOTES

No major rewrites - just the usual tidying and speeding

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Ten

2009-05-04T09:14:00.003+10:00

Chapter Ten was written during November, 2008 as I upped the pace to try and get the whole thing done before the end of the year.

At this stage, the path to the finish was becoming clearer. I still had a handful of outstanding questions (as the following notes from the time indicate), but pretty much everything was coming together.

Outstanding Questions
Why is Kitty immune to the virus? Because she went into the time pool with Derek and they shared the right-hand left-hand
Why is Kitty a time anomaly?
Why is Derek leader of the Dexters? Derek goes into the time-pool with her?!
The man in the hat?
Why did Sinister Two want to kill her?

Around about this stage, I'd become concerned about my 'polar bears are left-handed' cure to the virus. It was sort of a solution, but I wasn't sure if it was the most logical one. And then, one afternoon while puzzling over this, it occurred to me that a far neater solution was to turn everybody into left-handers. It eliminated the lycanthropy thing from play. And, logically, if everybody was left-handed, the whole basis for the Southpaw Society was eliminated. It seemed neat enough to work.

REWRITE NOTES

Basic tweaks and typo-correction. Also eliminated excess words as usual
No other major plot changes were necessary. By this point, as the conclusion loomed large, I pretty much knew where I was going and how to get the plot there. So I got it more or less right the first time

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Nine

2009-04-30T11:04:00.002+10:00

Chapter Nine was written during October, 2008. There's nothing particularly new and/or exciting and/or innovative about this chapter. It's all pretty simple, really. KW goes into the Zambezi river and heads over the Victoria Falls. Having seen the Victoria Falls twice in person myself, this was always going to be a scene in the book.

Just to make things a little more challenging, I gave her Alf and Beryl to rescue (Alf and Beryl are named after my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle).

And that's pretty much it. The only other note for the chapter is that Alf and Beryl had to ultimately escape and disappear. Otherwise, the Dexters would interrogate them for SSS info. And I really needed KW to stay the centre of attention on that front. Because this was where I was going to unveil my Jon Stewart/Jerry Seinfeld fake-out.

I toyed with the idea of having a longer delay between sending the Dexters after Jon Stewart and revealing KW was after Jerry Seinfeld. But, ultimately, I went with the version here.

Oh, and I love that Bruce is just lying about the awesome kick-ass uber-chip in his head.

My notes for the final three chapters:

10. Let’s get him! They head off. KW and Bruce deviate. KW questions Bruce. Has he revealed the cure? No. He doesn’t like the SSS but he doesn’t want all lefties to die. Because while everybody’s after JS, she has other plans. She contacts Stiller to tell him where to go to protect Jon Stewart.

11. We’re going to find Seinfeld (she knows that the real S2 can’t be captured – because he would have sent a message back in time. Etc.) They have to keep it secret.

12. Final fight. Virus cure. Everything else.

Gotta love that Chapter Twelve detail.

REWRITE NOTES

The usual typo-check and speed-up of the pace
On the rewrite I again considered hiding the Seinfeld revelation until later and, again, concluded that it might be a fake-out too far

YouTube Can Be Fun... Bohemian Rhapsody Performed By Computers

2009-04-27T09:57:00.002+10:00

Can a robot Freddie Mercury be far away? (Cripes. Shouldn't have said that - you just know that Liebke's going to send me into battle with robot versions of dead rock gods next.)

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Eight

2009-04-19T14:38:00.003+10:00

Chapter Eight was written mostly during September and early October, 2008 in a bold attempt to get two chapters ahead of what was being published at the site. This didn't work as well as I'd hoped, given my renowned slackitude.

The major note from Chapter Eight was that I'd suddenly woke the middle of one night and realised that, despite all previous claims to the contrary, KW wasn't the only left-handed person to have successfully transformed into an animal in the previous story. I'd gone through most of the 'Academy Award-Winning Werewolves' suspects that had transformed and confirmed that they were right-handed (thanks Google) and, in this story, I'd made a big deal about Bruce being left-handed and, hence, possibly more closely aligned to the Sinister Society than KW herself. And yet, I'd completely forgotten that in the back half of the previous story, Bruce had transformed into a rhino and back.

D'oh!

The only possible way out of this, given that I'd made a big deal about KW being the only leftie to have transformed successfully, was to insist Bruce wasn't left-handed at all. Which naturally led to him being a spy in the Sinister Society and so on and so forth.

Chapter Eight also allowed me to pay off the 'Tune Me Another One' clue, which was nice. I also tied it, kinda, into the Livingstone Statue, which was also nice.

We also introduced Sinister Two. I'd always intended Sinister Two to be Jon Stewart and was prepared with 'JS' initials and left-handed second-in-command (the misleading Stephen Colbert). Around about this point, it occurred to me that JS could also be Jerry Seinfeld, with left-handed sidekick Jason Alexander. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this ambiguity, as my notes at this point indicate:

Current Position:
Dexters – with S2’s help set up the virus, want to clone KW, refine the virus, ensure there’s no cure. They don’t want to kill her
SSS – trying to find a path that doesn’t lead to genocide. They believe KW is the key. They’re been watching and waiting for her for centuries.
S2 – believes the deification of KW is a mistake. They’ve tried every possible future with her – maybe the should try one without. He’s set Derek up as the leader, hoping he has a similar DNA pattern

Bruce infiltrated the SSS because he believes they’re dangerous. Why? Because he was told as a child he’d be able to save the world, but only if he was left-handed. Who told him? He doesn’t remember/know. A young kid. Jewish. He remembers (under hypnosis) his school bag: JS.

REWRITE NOTES

Sped it up. Obviously. Got rid of superfluous ideas
Toyed with changing the Zimbabwean police officer's names, but ultimately kept them
Added some clues to Sinister Two's identity

YouTube Can Be Fun... Star Wars Cantina Theme on a Harp

2009-03-24T11:06:00.003+11:00

Liebke's still trying to get his nonsense together, so, during the meanwhile, in the much-beloved vein of Star Wars on Banjo and Star Wars on Bagpipes, here's the Star Wars cantina music on harp. Enjoy!

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Seven

2009-03-07T12:38:00.002+11:00

Chapter Seven was written from late July to late August.

This chapter contains a few of my very favourite ideas:

The alternative solution to Newton's equations that let people fall to Earth without parachutes. I love the idea that a future mathematician might come up with a completely new solution to the fundamental equations of gravity and that this solution would have real physical effects
McDonald's Farm. The Extra-Invisible, Extra-Inaudible, Orbiting Hangar. E-I E-I O-H.
And, of course, Kitty sending secret messages to Orlando via Morse code television conversations, where monosyllabic words are 'dots' and polysyllabic ones are 'dashes'

Also, the chirality of the sub-atomic particles of the universe being left-handed seemed an appropriate and cool thing to add in at this point.

Derek the brother was also an addition I liked. I didn't really know why he was the leader of the Dexters at this point, but it certainly added a personal element to the crisis. All in all, this was probably my favourite chapter.

REWRITE NOTES

Slowed everything down. Added extra words. Inserted typos.
No, the opposite of the above
No significant changes to the storyline in the second draft. Good chapter

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Six

2009-03-03T14:10:00.003+11:00

Chapter Six was written between mid-June and mid-July 2008. According to standard plotting theory, I was due for another twist in the storyline. I'd already had the big 'KW blows up' kicker at the end of Chapter Three. The end of Chapter Six called for something similarly impressive.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much up my sleeve. The best I could muster at this point was KW switching sides to join the right-handers. Which is okay, but not great. Still, I did have her revelation that she'd worked out how to nullify the virus to help things along (as I wrote the final bit of this chapter, the fact (?) that all polar bears are left-handed popped into my head. I mistakenly misremembered it as all platypuses being left-handed, but a quick Google search rectified that misapprehension. I then had to go back and remove polar bears from the list of bears attacking her.) It's an okay kind of story midpoint revelation, I suppose.

I wasn't completely sure how the polar bear left-handedness was going to tie in. But it was going to be the key to something. I think at this stage, I (like KW) assumed it would function as some kind of cure. As I thought it through more, I didn't see how that would be logical. And, heck, when it comes to transmutating viruses that are lethal to left-handed people, I'm a veritable stickler for logic.

REWRITE NOTES

Tidy, tidy, tidy. Speed up, speed up, speed up. Also double-checked that no polar bears were attacking her.
I'd always planned for KW to put on a battle suit at some point in the story and be fascinated by the data and power it gave her. Maybe get her into a fight she might, like, win. Alas, I couldn't work out how she'd have the time to get a full battle suit on. So, the helmet remained as close as she got.
I have no idea why I decided a non-deaf Marlee Matlin was a good idea. Or whether it meant anything. In the end, I decided it did no harm, so the non-deaf Marlee stayed. Is the idea that she's been faking her deafness all this time offensive and/or politically incorrect? Very possibly, yes.
The River and The Stones analogy was the best I could come up with for explaining how the whole adjusting the time stream worked. It's probably okay, but the back of my mind keeps nagging that there might be something better. Until the back of my mind gives ideas to the front of my mind, however, the River and the Stones analogy stays. I also like that it later ties into the Zambezi river in which KW almost drowns. Rivers pushing people ever-forward to their demise only for them to be rescued at the very last moment? Kind of neat that the analogy works on both the literal and 'river of time' level. I guess.

KW 2 Commentary - Chapter Five

2009-02-28T12:06:00.005+11:00

Chapter Five was written mostly in May 2008. It was mostly just an action sequence as KW did her best impression of Zoe Bell in Death Proof, scrambling around on the top of an out-of-control car.

By this stage, I'd started to get my ideas of the next set of the story under control. I knew the Dexters and the Southpaw Society would be fighting to get KW to join their respective sides. I still wasn't 100% sure why, but I knew it had something to do with the battling timelines. Some notes I made around this time:

The SSS use their memory transfer technology to test out future strategies. They have a pair of users strapped in around the clock, getting memories of the future. They take it in turns to relay what they see. These memories are then passed back in time still further and so forth. As the SSS change their plans, they get feedback on what that does to the future.

JS explains that the machine was used on KW. They led her into a trap and blew her up. Just before she died, they strapped the machine onto her and sent the memories back. They'd planned zillions of schemes to get her on board to help stop the Dexters from killing them all. Every other scheme failed. This was the one that worked. “Will you join us?” asks JS. “Of course,” says KW. What choice does she have? This scheme works.

But, of course, KW doesn't approve of the SSS. An insane elite running the world for their own benefit? It's crazy. However, realises that the only way to stop the SSS, given their ability to see (in some sense) the future is to destroy their future-seeing machine. She begins tracking it down. She finds it in South Africa (?). When she tracks it down, however, she discovers that it is used by a specially trained pair of users, overseen by Stephen Colbert. He explains that those without training tend to go mad, eg Jack the Ripper and the only real way to stop the machine is to kill the pair of users.

Clearly, at this stage, I'd decided that Sinister One was Jon Stewart - it made sense, he's left-handed, smart and politically savvy. He could easily be running the world from behind the scenes. Also, at this stage, I was convinced that Stephen Colbert was left-handed... mostly because I'd seen the sneaky bastard sign off at the end of his show with his left hand. They seemed a perfect pairing of lefties.

Of course, later I was to discover Colbert was right-handed.

But from the notes above, I'd obviously got most of the big picture behind the scenes mechanics sorted out. There were a few minor changes (alas, Jack The Ripper disappeared from the plot), but those notes form the essential gist.

A couple of other notes suggested I still didn't know much more than that.

The SSS know the virus future is coming. They tried asking KW for help. She knocked them back (why??) They tried kidnapping her and isolating the immunity, That didn’t work either. Even with a lifetime of research they couldn’t find a cure. So they’ve been watching, waiting, planning since she was born.

The virus has come from nowhere. It’s a huge surprise. To change the future they need to work out what stones to drop. If the path to the virus is hidden, they can’t stop it.

Who is the man in the hat?

What, exactly, do they want KW to do?

So a few large-ish questions (ie, why is our lead character part of the plot?). Still, I now had a path to follow...

REWRITE NOTES

The usual tweaks, typo-correction and tightening
In the original version, I had Akira tell KW that Bonnie had been murdered. Later on, I wanted to retract that. If the Southpaw Society had killed Bonnie (who was an innocent) then would KW want to work for them? I basically made this point later in the first draft and had Ben Stiller announce she wasn't dead at all, planning to undo the 'death' completely in the second draft. Of course, I'd forgotten I'd given KW a line of reasoning built on the foundations of her death. So, in the second draft, the death stayed. Instead, I just made it very hazy as to who is to blame for her death, with both the SSS and the Dexters accusing one another
Also, KW worked out Sinister One's identity with just a quick search on her iPhone, while sitting in the park. I always imagined she'd done a search for 'Tune me another one' and found the earliest possible record of this phrase and then did some further googling to trace it back to Jon Stewart. But who knows, maybe she did something even cleverer.

A Timely Plug

2009-02-24T10:27:00.002+11:00

While we continue to wait for Liebke to get off his butt and continue documenting the, ahem, 'creative' process behind the second of my novels, Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws, I thought I'd just remind those of you that have been caught up with Oscar fever, that the first of my novels, the very timely Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves, can be downloaded free just to the right there or (even more conveniently) here: link to PDF download (585K).

That's all. Speak soon.

KW2 Commentary - Chapter Four

2009-02-16T09:29:00.003+11:00

Chapter Four, written mostly in April 2008, was probably where I was most in 'making it up as you go along' mode. Up until now, I'd been heading towards a goal - the exploding KW. Now? I had only the vaguest idea where I was heading.

I had the rodeo idea in mind - purely from a puntastic perspective. And managed to get the 'Rodeo Ga Ga' and 'Video Killed The Rodeo Star' titles out of my system. But apart from that, I had nothing. So it seemed a good chapter in which to slow down, consolidate and recap what was known. Of course, one can't slow down too much in a KW story, so I sent a fresh batch of battlesuited people to try and get her. But, because these were earlier prototypes of the suits, I knew they weren't going to work as well. So that gave our heroine a chance for a small breather.

Not much more to add on this chapter. Over the next couple of chapters, I start to get fresh ideas of where the plot was heading, but I'll get to them next time.

REWRITE NOTES

Trim, trim, trim. Excess words gone. Typos corrected. The usual stuff.
With just about every celebrity in this story, there was a search for whether or not they were left-handed. Just to be sure (this would later prove problematic for Stephen Colbert). Generally speaking, it was easier to confirm left-handedness than to deny it. A search for 'left handed ' would usually do the job if they were, indeed, a southpaw. A search for 'right handed ' was far less likely to bear fruit. Which was fine - right-handed until proven otherwise became my philosophy. But I spent longer than usual trying to find out if Aaron Spelling was, perchance, a leftie. Just because it would have given KW something extra to ponder after Luke Perry's addled comments about him being 'the sinister one'. Alas, I could find no evidence of Mr Spelling's handedness, so I let it go.

KW2 Commentary - Chapter Three

2009-02-10T13:24:00.003+11:00

Aha! Chapter Three, written between mid-February and mid-March 2008. This was where I got the chance to pull out my first big shock - the death of Kitty Wittgenstein. I'd held that idea up my sleeve since the earliest ideas for the story and it was cool to now have a chance to actually put it into play.

Before we got to that, we had to get our heroine into a position where she did, in fact, blow up. I also liked the idea of Bruce leading her into the trap - would help foster a sense of paranoia for the rest of the story.

So I then had to work out how to actually get her in there. I puzzled on that for a loooong time. Breaking into heavily guarded research facilities is tricky. Then it occurred to me that breaking out of heavily guarded places was even trickier and that this was the key to getting KW in there. Just add clones (not completely crazy, given the first story), a feigned escape attempt and voila! Problem solved.

Also, the one advantage of starting in the future and ending with KW's death was that I actually could leave a few loose ends lying about, knowing that if she fixed up the past they'd all go away of their own accord. This meant I didn't have to examine the KW clones in great detail. Nor explain where Orlando or Akira had been taken.

Before I realised this, however, I was frantically trying to work out why on Earth the Southpaw Society would have kidnapped Akira. My notes from that time period suggested I was thinking:

Akira was going to unleash the virus via aromatherapy. KW was frozen to prevent it taking hold of her.

Which might have worked. I know it had also crossed my mind that KW's immunity to the virus was due to some interaction with some special massage oils. Obviously, once I realised Akira's story was going to fade away with the rest of the future, I abandoned that whole line of thought.

Some other observations from the chapter:

Boy, those lycanthropy virus researchers sure like picking on the homeless, don't they? That's two stories in a row where they've experimented on them
Having Sinister One lead KW to the research facility made sense at this stage. It made a little less sense when I later revealed that, to avoid detection, all the Dexter research was taking place in a fragmented way that could not be traced. I can only assume that this was just one of many research facilities. And, presumably, one of the very few the Southpaw Society knew about. They must have decided it was wiser to use the facility to show KW what was going on, as opposed to storming it and shutting it down, only to have others spring up elsewhere... that's what I'm going with, anyway
The bomb not counting down to zero? Long-standing dream of mine
'Pistachio' is a funny word

REWRITE NOTES

Once again, tidied up typos. Cut and trimmed for speed. Wasn't quite as critical for this chapter because the first draft had eleven bits crammed into the usual ten, due to, uh, me not being able to count. So it was already moving faster than most. But, hey, could always speed it up further
At the time of writing this chapter, the name 'Good Stuff' was the best I could come up with for the researchers. Incredibly unimaginative, but I didn't seem able to come up with anything better. Later, I came up with 'Right Stuff', which, as Wainwright says, makes a lot more sense. I explained the name difference away as just weird timeline shifting stuff. So, in the rewrite, decided to keep the original lame 'Good Stuff' name for this part of the story. It serves a kind of a purpose in indicating that there are minor differences in the timelines.

KW2 Commentary - Chapter Two

2009-02-07T14:53:00.003+11:00

Okay. The first draft of Chapter Two was mostly written in January 2008. As I mentioned last time, the original idea was to have her blow up at the end of this chapter. For some reason, I decided to push that back to the end of Chapter Three. I think I just did it to give me some more time to establish the mysteries of the future world.

A note from December, 2006 reminded me that:

A rodeo is a great environment for a KW chapter - Rodeo Ga Ga, Rodeo Killed The Video Star, etc.

Obviously, good scenes are mostly dependent upon the bad puns I can use as titles. But, once I rediscovered this note, I decided that, after she exploded, KW would return in a rodeo. Given that, I threw in the visions of people being hog-tied and rodeo clown make-up. Foreshadowing! Awesome. And inexplicable and baffling foreshadowing at that. Even more awesome.

Writing this chapter was also where I started working out (at least vaguely) what the left-handers were, actually, y'know, trying to do. I moved away from the idea that they were trying to conquer the Earth, or had already conquered it or were setting up a space war or whatever the hell I first thought, to the idea that they were fighting for their very survival.

And tying it into the virus of the first story seemed a nice touch. Made this story a little less standalone than I might have liked. But what the hell. Still, more on that element in the Chapter Three commentary.

I didn't know who Sinister One was at this point. Or exactly how his plan worked. So his email conversation with KW is a little short on details. But that's okay. I figured that was just how S1 worked.

Anyway, once I decided that the virus was the way I was going to go, the attack by a Kate Beckinsale vampire made perfect sense. It mirrored Musky's attack at the end of the first chapter, showing that despite their different technical expertises these two organisations were going to interact with our heroine in pretty much the same way.

Also, it wasn't until halfway through writing the attack scene that I realised that Kate would be attacking her in this vampiric way to get adrenaline-fuelled blood from her. So I went back and made her more insistent on wanting to suck KW's blood.

REWRITE NOTES

Again, fixed typos. Sped the story up. Removed extraneous nonsense
Corrected the quote that Kate Beckinsale had only been in one Underworld movie. Kinda ruined the 'Looked like somebody had made one too many Underworld movies. Of course she'd only made the one, but my point still stood' joke. But accuracy above all things!

Crimes They Did Not Commit

2009-01-30T15:49:00.004+11:00

I hereby interrupt Liebke's stilted attempts at commentary on the Sinister Southpaw story to provide further news of... the A Team movie:

According to this report, directors and producers are coming together and there are also rumours my good friend Bruce Willis is considering the role of Hannibal.

I dunno... Don't want to disparage Bruce, but I still kinda wish they'd persevered with the earlier version, actually. (Download and read Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves for more information on the Clooney-Silverstone-Savage-Reeves version.)

KW2 Commentary - Chapter One

2009-01-20T16:15:00.003+11:00

All right. So, Chapter One. As I mentioned earlier, I wrote the first four bits of it as kind of an initial attack on a KW sequel.

The massage attack idea was the first bit that came to me. As I was having a massage, obviously. Head poked through the little hole, it occurred to me that, if attackers showed up, all you'd be able to see were their feet. From that point on, any time I had a massage, I started going over the first scene of the story in my head. Eventually I wrote it down so I could get back to relaxing on the massage table.

The idea to make the attackers invisible and armed with assorted hi-tech weaponry stemmed from a similarly disturbed part of my brain that tries to work out how one could achieve superhero-like powers while sticking to the laws of Physics. And, seeing as how the Kittyverse is slightly ahead of us technologically (all those useful celebrity researchers I guess), that was a perfect place to place those ideas. I was particularly fond of the mute button - read the lips, estimate the sound waves, throw the opposite sound wave at it to cancel the sound out. Neat.

So, the first four bits (up to the disappearance of the invisible man in the hat) were written back in... 2006? A long time ago. When I resumed at the beginning of 2008, my plan for the rest of the first chapter was pretty simple. Get KW to discover the existence of the society (another one of my favourite scenes - basic probability theory leading to the inescapable conclusion of a Society of Southpaws) and start throwing in some mysteries to solve.

At this stage, I'd planned for her to blow up at the end of the second chapter, so thought I'd just give her a car chase to wrap up the first one. After all, a car chase was one of the few traditional action elements missing from the first story. It deserved a shot in the second book.

And the death of Musky? I wasn't sure why they killed him, but I figured I'd figure it out. The dying words 'No. It’s not too linear. There's a wider pa-' seemed vague enough to let me do pretty much anything once I worked it out.

REWRITE NOTES

Sped things up a bit - killed some extraneous words and sentences
Bonnie perhaps shouldn't have been quite so surprised when she walked in on the aftermath of Akira's kidnapping, given that she notified Sinister One about the appointment. On the other hand, presumably S1 didn't give her feedback that the attack was going to take place that day. So it's probably okay. Maybe that's why she was tidying up, as part of an attempt to hinder the police investigation
Initially, Detectives Richter and Weldon were going to know something more about the Sinister Society. Then they dropped out of the story. So their reaction to the revelations that everybody was left-handed is now perhaps more boredom with KW's self-absorption than recognition of a darker force at work
'Trenchcoat Man' is now 'The Man In The Hat', for consistency's sake.
Oh, and given he's eventually revealed to be not left-handed, we have to assume he doffed his hat with his left hand in this chapter solely to help KW to deduce the society's existence.

KW2 Commentary - First Thoughts

2009-01-16T12:44:00.003+11:00

Okay. After a suitable period of not thinking about it, I've now reread the entire story from go to whoa. And my first thoughts are... it's not too bad. There are a few things that need sorting out, but, overall it's something upon which I can build.

STRENGTHS

It moves along at a rapid clip. This was one of my main goals when writing both books. If things move fast enough, it gives you the chance to maybe fudge, just a little, on some of the story logic
KW herself is in pretty good form. Nicely self-deprecating and self-aware. One of the issues with writing 'the smartest person in the world' is making sure they do as few stupid things as possible, but don't come across as an all-knowing prat. I think I managed that again. A fast-moving story helps here as she can show intelligence by solving problems, only to have fresh new problems thrust at her before she can recover her equilibrium
Quite a few neat sequences - the waterfall problems, being trapped in the back seat of a car, breaking into a heavily guarded research facility, etc. A lot of them worked well. And I was very happy with the first three chapters set in the future.
Nice continuity with the first story and the virus. I didn't actually plan that to begin with, but when I spotted the connection, I was very happy. I think it ties together well.

WEAKNESSES

Exposition-heavy in the later chapters. Sure, one has to make sure that people know what's going on, that everything made sense, but I could have paced that out a little better. This is a side-effect of me only working out how it all tied together while writing the final chapter
'Everything made sense'? Well, not quite. I kind of fudged it a bit by suggesting there were loads and loads of different timelines and if cause and effect seemed muddled, that was just because KW remembered all the different timelines that had existed
Dangling plot threads. I'm pretty sure I picked up the major ones. But there were a few minor ones I just left dangling - eg, why was Bonnie killed? Or not? Or whatever happened to her? What, exactly, was everybody doing in the future? And why? How, exactly, was the release of the left-hander killing virus going to work? I sort of covered some of these off, but not really. I'll check with my official readers whether there was anything dangling that they really felt should have been resolved and sort it out.
Inconsistencies. Not too many of these, but a few - the man in the hat was known as Mr Trenchcoat for a while. The battle suits were also known as battle armour. Good stuff. Right stuff. Nothing too major.

So, a few things to fix in the second draft. Let's get into it.

KW2 Commentary - Overview and Introduction

2009-01-08T15:32:00.006+11:00

Okay. I'm going to take over KW's blog for a bit and talk a little about the process of writing 'Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws'. I figure some people may find it interesting and, if nothing else, my thoughts and notes on the creative process will serve as a good companion to the first draft of the novel.

So, the obvious first question was why a sequel? And my equally obvious answer was 'why not?'. I always envisioned KW as the kind of character ripe to be the centrepiece of a wide variety of stories. I'd given the first story ('Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves') a nice open ending, allowing me to write another one, should the urge take me. And, heck, at some point, the urge did take me.

In fact, the opening four 'bits' (I use the highly technical term of 'bit' to describe one-tenth of a chapter) were written within a month after I finished writing the first one. At that point, I knew very little about the plot. I had a title and an opening scene. I churned those first couple of thousand words and moved on to other projects.

When I returned to work on KW2 (the inevitable abbreviation), I had to face the question of how, exactly, was I going to do a sequel?

It's a trickier question than I first thought. As I said, I'd thought of KW being the centrepiece of an ongoing series of stories a la James Bond or Indiana Jones. Take supermodel philosopher character, add slightly insane scenario to her life and write from there.

But here was the thing. I didn't want to just rehash the first story. I didn't want to set up a template from which all future KW stories would unfold (even though that would make things a lot easier).

On the other hand, I wanted to maintain a similar feel to the first. It had been well received in its little circle of readers and I wanted to give those same readers a similar (but different) experience the second time around.

So... issues. What elements of KW1 were going to be the core of KW stories? What were going to be confined to that first adventure?

I liked KW's strange universe where celebrities justified their fame by performing remarkable feats of research and by leading powerful political organisations. I liked most of the supporting cast in the first one, but didn't want to use them all second time around. Orlando, the butler, could stay. Bruce, the scientist, could stay. Baz, Mother and President Ford could all take a breather. Some of them will probably be back third time around.

(As it turned out, other characters (and ideas) from KW1 ended up in KW2 as well. But that kind of just happened, as opposed to being a deliberate choice at the time.)

I also liked the style of the first one which, rightly or wrongly, I attributed to the serialised nature in which I wrote it. I quite enjoyed the process of painting KW into various tight spots and then trying to work out a way to get her out of it.

So, for better or worse, I decided to do the serialised storytelling again. And KW's blog seemed the best place to do it.

I'm not completely crazy, however. I got myself a chapter ahead of what I was posting and pretty much stayed there from then on. If I truly bollocksed things up, I had a chapter's leeway to get myself out of it. If the bollocksing took place prior to that, I'd just have to write myself out of it. Either way, I was going to enjoy myself.

I'll go through each chapter in detail as I rewrite it. For now, here are the notes I had prior to starting (these are from way back in December, 2006):

Sinister Society of Southpaws
Suppose KW discovers a conspiracy of lefthanders that want to embroil fie world in war. She decides she must somehow foil their plans.

Opening Scene

KW is attacked while having a massage. The attackers are more interested in her masseur than her.

She fights back using towels and oils and so forth.

Big Surprise 1

There is a conspiracy of lefthanders

Big Surprise 2

The lefthanders don't want to conquer the world. They're already in charge. The best slaves are the ones who don't know they're slaves. Right handers are referred to as dexters. Instead the lefties just want to leave Earth (?)

Big Surprise 3

The lefties have received a message from the future (?) They are setting up a future space war ?

The other big twist is that Bruce is left-handed and willing to side with the southpaws. This may even work as Big Surprise 2.

Obviously, I didn't go with all those ideas. In fact, I barely went anywhere with them. But I did like the idea of messages from the future and had fleshed that out further in my mind before I started writing. I always knew Chapter Three would end with KW dying. And the revelation that the first quarter of the book had taken place in the future.

Apart from that, I had little to no idea where I was going. As I shall demonstrate when I rehash Chapter One.

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws - Chapter Twelve

2009-01-01T09:11:00.003+11:00

Happy New Year!

CHAPTER TWELVE

In which explanations are (eventually) received, an unusual cavalry makes a timely appearance and Kitty grows closer to her brother

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)

12.1 Becoming Sinister Two

“Stop her!” shouted Jason.

But it was too late. That was the thing with sending things back in time. Once you got the opportunity, you only needed an instant. And they’d given me the instant I needed.

I could only assume it was because I was this infamous time anomaly that I was capable of surprising them like this. Anybody else’s actions would have been foreseen and manipulated out of existence. With me, they needed to actually plan for unknowns.

And since they weren’t used to unknowns, they didn’t seem to be very good at allowing for them.

Here’s what I figured. The helmets worked best upon death, sending the full memories back. But I knew they worked even without that, just more sporadically.

Still, I was an intelligent person two or three years ago. If even a smattering of the current situation made it back. I’d investigate.

And, if I had any sense, and was able to unravel anything, I would do what Bruce had suggested earlier.

I would become Sinister Two. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The only timeline I’d seen that kept the southpaws in check was the one where somebody else usurped their technology and helped found an opposing force. It wasn’t an ideal solution, having these two secret hidden armies running around trying to eliminate one another. But it was better than this current timeline where the southpaws ruled everything.

Now I just had to hope my younger self got it.

A soldier collided into me. Thudding me against the wall. He knocked the helmet off.

“Destroy the helmet!” ordered Jason.

“But that’s—“ protested Ben, still on the ground, clutching his testicles.

“Destroy it!” interrupted Jason. More forceful now.

The soldier blasted it. The helmet exploded.

Jason looked around warily. As if searching for evidence of an altered timeline. Not that he’d know it if he saw it. When the timelines changed, people’s memories and viewpoints changed to match it.

Except for mine, apparently. Again, chalk that up to the mysterious time anomaly thing, I suppose.

Marlee signed at him.

“Yeah,” said Jason. “I think we’re okay.” He turned to me. “I don’t know what you thought you were trying to do, Kitty. But you’re not going to get a chance to do it again.” He pointed to the soldier. “Paralyse her.”

Oh no. I wasn’t going through that again. Or, technically, for the first time. Bloody time paradoxes.

I dove under the table as the soldier shot at me.

I didn’t like the way this was heading. My younger self must not have been able to interpret the memories. Maybe she’d thought they were a dream. Or a hallucination.

Oh, wait. That wasn’t when I’d been trying to operate on two hours sleep, was it? If I’d received the memories then, I would have written them off as just part of the ongoing hallucinations I’d had at the time.

The table above me shattered into many pieces.

“Careful!” said Ben. Which would have been sweet if he’d been concerned about me. Far more likely he was worried about the equipment, though. Fair enough, I suppose, given the damage I’d already done to it.

The soldier looked down at me.

And at that point, the cavalry arrived.

12.2 The Cavalry

The first I knew of the cavalry was when half a dozen man-bats flew into my line of vision. They knocked over the soldier and flew on.

It was a flying cavalry. But a flying cavalry was better than no cavalry at all.

Way better.

I got to my feet.

Panic was everywhere. Jason was ordering soldiers to attack. I wasn’t sure whom. I’m not sure they knew either. But there were plenty of targets.

The Dexters were here. And they’d brought with them an army of man-animal hybrids.

Across the room a pride of lion-men were pounding on some soldiers that had been isolated from the main group.

I saw Jason pull Marlee Matlin to her feet. Ben had also clambered to his. Behind them a half man-half rhino tackled three soldiers into what appeared to be a rather delicate set of experimental apparatus.

Sirens started to wail. The same voice that had been alerting me throughout McDonald’s Farm came forth with fresh news that we were ‘under attack’.

A small group of soldiers had positioned themselves near the door by which Jason had exited. I could almost see them gathering their thoughts. Using those incredible helmets to work out a strategy to defeat the menagerie – man-agerie? – currently laying waste to them.

Closer to me was Bruce. He’d been released from the grip of the soldiers holding him. By one of the more traditional werewolves. Good to see the classics still in vogue.

He stumbled towards me. I ran towards him. Helped him towards what seemed to be a Dexter-safe zone.

Which was the clearest proof that my younger self had, indeed, managed to unravel my scattered future memories and bring about the timeline for which I’d hoped. The Dexters were here to rescue us. They weren’t trying to kill us, kidnap us or otherwise maltreat us.

They were on our side.

About time somebody was.

“Look out,” came a voice behind me. I turned in time to see a platypus-man fry the circuitry of another soldier’s armour. Without the assistance of the suit, the soldier was no match for the baseball bat that slammed into the side of his head. He slumped to the ground.

The person on the other end of the bat did surprise me.

“Derek?” I said.

“Hey sis,” he said. “We made it.”

“You cut it fine,” said Bruce.

“Some transportation problems,” said Derek. He grinned.

“Have you got it?” said Bruce.

Derek pulled a box out of his pocket and opened it.

“Is that what I think it is?” I said, when I saw what was inside.

Bruce nodded. “Airborne strain of the polar bear virus,” he said. “Finally finished it.”

“You asked Derek to bring that along?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “Can’t turn the world left-handed without it.”

I broke into a wide smile. My younger self had been way ahead of me. She was a much better Sinister Two than the rest of them. This new timeline had all kinds of things going for it.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go do it.”

We turned to leave. And there, standing astride a large number of unconscious were-tigers were yet more battle suited soldiers.

Fantastic.

12.3 The Sulking Of Derek Wittgenstein

Platypus Man pushed himself between us and the soldiers.

“Leave this to me,” he said.

“Really?” I said. There were, what, eight of them? And one of him. Sure, his little platypus electric shock thing was cool and all. But I didn’t really think it could take down all of them.

He nodded.

And then I saw it. Behind the soldiers, lizard-men emerged. Chameleon-men, to be precise, as they simply shimmered into existence from their standing position against the wall.

While the soldiers were focused on Platypus Man, the chameleons pounced. It was a slaughter.

“Come on,” said Platypus Man. “Let’s go.”

I followed him through the door. “This way,” I said.

“Where are we going?” asked Derek.

I frowned at him, not breaking my stride. “What are you doing here, D?” I said.

“I’m here to help, sis,” he said.

I continued to frown.

“Hey, you hired me,” he said.

Well, that had not been my finest move. Bad enough that Seinfeld had got Derek muddled up in the Dexters thing during his reign as Sinister Two. Now, I’d kept him in there? What was I thinking?

“Just stay low,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Fine,” said Derek sulkily.

I ignored him. Sulky was better than dead.

More were-creatures passed us on the corridor, heading towards the battle.

We let them go. We had to head back to the pool of… what had Jason called them? Morphoids? We had to head back there. I had a plan.

I filled the others in.

“If we can just make it to the pool of Morphoids, we can use the airborne polar bear virus to turn everybody into left-handers.”

“Wait a second,” said Derek. He stopped running. “You’re on the southpaws’ side now?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” I said. I dragged him back into motion. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

He sighed. But started running again. “Right,” he mumbled. “Don’t tell Derek what’s going on. He’s too dumb to understand the intricacies of Kitty’s oh-so-brilliant scheme.”

Okay. That was it. “Oh, for the love of—“ I began.

Bruce interrupted me. “Sshh,” he said. He pointed to the entrance.

There was another set of battle-suited soldiers there. A much larger group. Guarding the pool.
I turned to Platypus Man.

“You got any chameleon-men in that room?” I said.

“No.”

“And I don’t suppose your electroshock thing can take out all of them.”

He snorted. “Uh, no.”

“How are we going to get past them?” said Bruce.

“Maybe I could be a decoy,” said Derek.

I just gave him a glare. “Nobody’s going to be a decoy,” I said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

12.4 The Final Plan

Above the pool of Morphoids was an observation deck. If we could get to the observation deck, I could still set off the virus from up there.

As we backed up and headed out for the observation deck, I explained my idea to the others.

“Originally we’d planned to just release the airborne strain of the virus as soon as Bruce had developed it. Turn everybody into left-handers. Be done with this whole stupid war.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Derek. “If you turn everybody into left-handers doesn’t the southpaw society win?”

“Not much point in waging war if everybody’s on the same side,” I said.

“But everybody’s going to be left-handed!” said Derek. “The left-handers win.”

“Nobody wins, Derek. I can’t think of many less significant distinctions than handedness. If we’re all left-handed, all right-handed, what does it matter? It just so happens that the left-handed virus was the one we developed. The point is that there will be no more wars over handedness, because there’ll be no difference.”

Derek grunted. “I guess,” he said.

“So why aren’t we releasing this?” said Bruce, holding up the virus. “This thing is seriously contagious. Unchecked, it could lefty up the world in a matter of days.”

“For one thing,” I said. “If we released it now, all our animal army would suddenly become left-handed and then suffer maltransformations. Rendering them useless in battle. We could cure them, but not in time to help us defeat the society’s army of soldiers.”

“Excellent point,” said Bruce.

“And for another,” I continued. “Because the spread of the virus may not be unchecked. We have the society on the back foot at the moment, but they’ll regroup. And they’ll regroup strongly.

They’re hampered in what they can do to me because of this ‘time anomaly’ thing I’ve got going. But I wouldn’t put it beyond them to somehow counter your virus before it completed the job.”

“So what are you suggesting?” said Bruce.

“We learned last time that the virus works on a number of levels. It first transforms the physical side of the recipient. And then, a little more slowly, it starts work on their brain, slowly transforming their mind into that of the animal.”

“We’ve advanced the technology somewhat from there,” said Bruce. “After all, this doesn’t turn them into a polar bear. This just isolates the left-handedness of polar bears and transforms them into that.”

“Right,” I said. “But it still works at a brain level, too, right? The minds of the recipients will actually, in some sense, become left-handed.”

“Oh sure,” said Bruce. “And probably quicker than you’d think, given that the purpose of the virus is so focused.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“I still don’t get it,” said Derek. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to drop the virus into the pool of Morphoids.”

12.5 In An Emergency, Do Not Use The Elevators

Platypus Man smiled at me. He got the plan straight away.

“Nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He explained it to the others. Gave me a breather on the exposition.

“You see,” he said. “The Morphoid’s minds are always travelling back in time. So, if they’re infected by the virus and the virus latches onto their brains…”

“Then the virus will go back in time,” said Derek, excitedly.

“Exactly,” I said. “The virus will go back with them and spread in the past. The world will be left-handed before the society knows what has hit them.” I smiled, pleased just a little bit with the cleverness of the plan.

Bruce had an objection. “But the Morpheus Protocol’s a relatively recent development. It requires computer technology. What about before then?”

“It doesn’t matter, Bruce. Once the virus has taken hold, they can’t get rid of it. They can discard the pool of Morphoids. They can send messages back in time the way they did before then, advising their earlier counterparts to prepare for the virus. But, once they’re infected, every message they send back takes the virus with it.”

“They can’t warn themselves without infecting themselves,” said Platypus Man.

“Exactly,” I said. “This fixes everything. There is no cure for this. We just have to get the virus into the pool and, boom, no more society.”

Everybody slowly nodded. They got it.

We’d made our way to a lift. Before I could press the button, the door dinged.

It opened and an orang-utan-man emerged, wrestling with nobody. Or, far more likely, an invisible soldier.

We got out of their road. The orang-utan-man seemed to be getting the job done.

Another elevator door dinged. This time, three half men-half weasels emerged, doing their best to defeat a very visible, very angry looking soldier.

He zapped one with some kind of laser. The were-weasel flew into the wall, hitting the up button with his head.

Another ding of the elevator and the door opened. The serendipity was hard to ignore. I went to step in.

An enormous crash on the roof had me stepping out just as quickly.

Possibly even a little more quickly.

Another were-weasel flew past me into the back of the elevator.

Then the roof collapsed. Two soldiers fell to the ground. They were immediately set upon by some more man-bats.

I took another few steps backward. Only just avoiding the orang-utan-man who continued to grapple with his invisible enemy. They pounded into the elevator, colliding with a soldier and a man-bat.

The other soldier and man-bat emerged from the elevator, fighting furiously.

The third were-weasel joined the fray.

Which surely meant his soldier was now free of attackers. I whirled my head around to see what was going on.

Nothing. He’d turned invisible. This was no good. I was more than happy to leave the ridiculous fighting to the animal-man hybrids and the battle-suited soldiers. I had absolutely no desire to get mixed up in any of that.

Particularly not against an invisible foe. I’d learned already how unsatisfying such a fight could be.

Oh. Wait.

He wasn’t invisible at all. He was collapsed on the ground. The Platypus Man stood over him, hand crackling with electricity.

“I think we should take the stairs,” he said.

I agreed.

12.6 The Return Of Hugh?

Before we could get to the door, the second elevator dinged again. Two soldiers emerged, doing their best to fend off a rampaging were-wolverine.

“Hugh?” I said.

He ignored me. Probably for the best. He had other things on his mind. The three of them battled their way in front of us.

One of the soldiers seemed to notice us. Well, they probably all noticed us. What with their fancy-schmancy helmets updating them on their complete environments at all times.

But this one noticed enough to turn his head. Raise one of the weapons on his arm at us.

He didn’t get much further. Taking his eyes off Hugh proved to be rather a large mistake. (Once again, I was going to assume the were-wolverine was Hugh Jackman until somebody proved otherwise. Until you get evidence to the contrary, always believe what makes you happiest. One of my simpler philosophies, but one that helps keep a sunny outlook on life.)

Before his arm had raised more than a few degrees, Hugh had lunged at it. I heard the snap of something that should certainly not be snapping.

Meanwhile one of the were-bats joined in, attacking Hugh’s second soldier.

This was a silly place to be. Far too dangerous.

Fortunately, a gap had opened up. A gap leading to the staircase.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The others didn’t need to be told twice. We all ran for the door. Clambered through, then closed it and the mad battle behind us.

We started making our way up the stairs.

Derek was the first one to recover his equilibrium.

“Okay,” he said. “I understand why turning everybody left-handed prevents any need for wars based on handedness. But there’s one thing I still don’t get.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Just because everybody else is left-handed, that won’t prevent the society from using their future-vision technology from taking control of the timeline, will it?”

“No,” I said. “It won’t.”

“So are we really fixing anything?” he said. “Or are we just giving a new elite, based on something other than handedness, an opportunity to wield the same power the southpaw society wielded?”

“No,” I said. “That’s not going to happen. Because we’re going to spread the details of the mind-transfer technology far and wide over the internet.”

“But then everybody could see the future!”

“Right,” I said. “But if everybody can see the future, then everybody can try and manipulate it. Move it into their own preferred direction. But once you’ve got enough people doing that, the future becomes unpredictable again. You’ve seen how much trouble we’ve been able to cause the southpaws just by being one other group with the mind transfer technology.”

“So if everybody has it…” said Derek.

“It becomes completely useless. It just becomes a device that shows a future that almost certainly won’t come into existence. You might as well be daydreaming with a silly helmet on.”

12.7 Marlee Matlin, Karate Expert

The Platypus Man raised his finger to his lips in the universal shushing gesture.

“We’re here,” he whispered.

He slowly inched the door open. We peered in.

Virtually empty. Just Ben and Marlee, working away at a control panel of some kind. Their backs were turned to us.

“Take down Ben first,” I whispered to the Platypus Man. Not nice to exploit Marlee’s deafness and take her by surprise. But, on the other hand, I still remembered a timeline where she exploited her own fake deafness.

Mine was the lesser crime.

Platypus Man skulked over to Ben.

Marlee sensed him approaching. Heard him? I wouldn’t put it past her to be cheating on the deafness thing again.

It didn’t matter. She was now the one with the element of surprise. She whirled a kick into the side of the Platypus Man’s head. He stumbled over to the far wall.

Ben was at the control switch. He started to speak into a microphone.

“They’re here,” he said. “They’ve reached the observation—“

He was interrupted by a Bruce tackle. The two of them scuffled on the ground.

That left Marlee to face Derek and me. The odds, for once, were good for us.

One bewildering series of karate kicks and punches later and the odds had changed drastically.

Derek was down on the ground and I was left facing Marlee Matlin.

Who was now apparently a martial arts expert.

Where did these people find the time? I like to think I have good time management skills. I also sleep only four hours a night. But I have nowhere near enough time to develop life-threatening prowess in any of the martial arts.

I suppose it’s a matter of priorities.

As Marlee closed in on me, I was beginning to wish I’d upped the priority level of self defence training several thousand notches.

She swung a kick at me. My sense of self-preservation helped me weave away from it. Not much time to spare, though, as I felt her heel flick the end of my hair.

Before she could unveil her next move, she was tackled from behind by Bruce.

I looked over to Ben. He was unconscious in the corner. Bit of a bloody mess, really. Bruce was an intelligent, sensitive man.

But he was a brutal man also.

Marlee’s focus had been on me, so he’d managed to take her by surprise this time. Maybe she was deaf. Maybe she wasn’t. At this point, I didn’t care.

Bruce knocked her out with an elbow to the temple.

I helped him to his feet. The two of us went to check on Derek and The Platypus Man.

They were fine. Stunned. Bruised. Sore. But fine in the more holistic sense.

“We don’t have much time,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Ben alerted them we were here.”

Derek walked over and locked the door. “I don’t know how long that will hold them,” he said. “But it’s a start.”

I wandered over to the observation deck. Hard glass separated me from the pool below. I headed back to the control panel where Bruce had already positioned himself.

“Let’s see if we can get that window open,” he said.

12.8 The Morpheus Protocol (Specs)

I started looking over the control panel. Most of it was pretty much expected. There was a large section labelled ‘Chronopool’. This clearly covered the Morphoids.

There was a gauge measuring the level of the ‘liquid tachyons’ in which the Morphoids were immersed.

“Liquid tachyons?” said Bruce.

“Looks like they’ve got rid of the helmets totally for this lot,” I said. Tachyons are particles that travel back in time. Being immersed in them no doubt had rather a lot to do with the continuous time-travel mind-transfers.

Speaking of which, there was another section on the console displaying, on a rapidly scrolling screen, the individual mumblings of each Morphoid. Beside the digitised waveform of each utterance was a translation of it and a timestamp measuring from when the utterance came.

Most of them were two to three years in the future. The occasional four year old utterance scrolled by.

“They’re mumbling into tiny speakers,” said Bruce. “Whatever their minds have sent back from the future, they’re repeating here.”

I continued to scan the console.

I found the next readout. This one showed a distribution plot of the various utterances. Grouped together by theme. The frequency of each theme was shown, then matched to a separate list of possible futures.

The list of possible futures was continuously updating with the input data of the utterance summary. The probability of each future taking place was displayed in large green numbers beside each one.

They were all coded, so no real clue as to what any of the futures might be. But I did know that Future DK212 was leading the charts with a solid 11% probability score.

More scanning.

There was a large screen labelled ‘Media Multiple Input’. Beneath it were streams of all the major radio and television stations from around the world. And a large number of minor ones too.

As with the mumble output, this enormous funnel of information was automatically summarised and grouped by theme and importance.

Then, finally, the media funnel and the future mumblings funnel were merged into one data stream. And it was sent straight back into the earpieces of each Morphoid, to be transmitted back in time and cycled through the same process in the past.

“This is just a large-scale version of what they’ve been doing for centuries,” said Bruce. “Just fully automated.”

“Zeus bless the computer age, huh?” I said. “Any sign of a control that opens that window?”

“I can’t see one,” he said. “Fortunately, there are other options.”

He went over and picked up the still-unconscious Ben Stiller.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“Just a trick I picked up from the original Die Hard.”

“You’re going to throw him through the window?” I said.

He shrugged. “You want the window open?” he said.

A bullet hit him in the throat.

“No,” said Jason, standing at the door, wielding a very large gun. Two soldiers stood beside him. “I have had enough of this. Time anomaly or not, this ends now.”

12.9 Everybody, Into The Pool

Things happened rapidly from that point. And seemingly all in the same split-second.

I turned and ran. For the chronopool.

Bruce, with his dying breath, hurled Ben into the window.

Jason pulled the trigger.

Ben bounced back. He’d cracked, but not broken the window.

The Platypus Man leapt out from nowhere and fried the first soldier guarding Jason.

The bullet hit my shoulder.

Derek started running towards me.

The other soldier turned to the Platypus Man.

Jason reloaded his gun.

I started to fall backwards with the impact of the bullet.

The second soldier hit the Platypus Man with some kind of sonic blast.

Jason aimed at me again. Pulled the trigger.

Derek tackled me out of the line of fire. Took the second bullet in his leg.

The Platypus Man, out of control, careered into both of us.

All three of us plummeted into the window.

This time it did smash. The three of us fell through.

And landed in the chronopool.

Now, obviously all that took place in more than a split-second. But it sure as heck seemed simultaneous to me. Which was odd because usually in life-threatening situations one’s perception of time slows.

But not this time. This time it sped things up to simultaneity.

In fact, as the three of us splashed around in the liquid tachyons, I noticed that everything was becoming simultaneous.

Not just the last few seconds of my life. But the last hours. No, wait. The last day. Last week. Last… year?

And as I headed for the surface, I noted that it was, in fact, my entire life being mooshed together.

And not just the past either. I was experiencing the future too.

All at once.

A fan of Alan Moore’s Watchmen might call it my Dr Manhattan moment.

And in my experience of all time as one, I suddenly understood what was happening. My plan was being put into action. And it had worked more effectively than I’d ever hoped.

Firstly, the polar bear virus immersed in the chronopool had worked as hoped. It had infected the brains of the Morphoids. This didn’t affect them, since they were already left-handed. But the mind-transfer properties of the pool meant that the virus was transmitted back to the past.

From there, Morpheus Protocol supervisors caught the virus. Again, no impact on them because they were left-handed. But once they re-entered society and started interacting with right-handers, the virus had spread.

And before anybody could stop it, right-handedness was no more.

And with no more right-handedness, there was nobody for the left-handers to lord over. No need for a sinister society of southpaws.

And, as a bonus, with no more right-handers, the lycanthropy virus was no longer effective. No more left-handed genocide virus. No more humans turning into animals.

Which explained why the platypus man who had surfaced beside me no longer resembled a platypus.

He resembled somebody I’d seen before.

He was the one who’d saved me from the paralysis right back at the beginning of this little adventure, in a future that no longer existed.

He was The Man In The Hat.

12.10 Final Explanations

We fished ourselves out of the chronopool. Apart from the three of us, it was now empty.

Further evidence that the southpaws had finally been defeated. No more Morpheus Protocol. No more Morphoids. Nobody else in the sub-Niagara Falls base at all. No Jason Bateman. No Marlee. No Bruce. No ridiculous number of super-soldiers. It was a mystery why the chronopool remained, but not a mystery worth thinking about just now.

The Man In The Hat had explanations for all kinds of things. He handed us a towel and offered us a hot chocolate.

“Bruce?” I said.

“Is fine,” said The Man In The Hat. “The timeline has changed. He wasn’t here. Jason Bateman wasn’t here. He was never shot.”

That was a relief. But I had other questions and explanations I needed clarified. “This little dip is why I’m a time anomaly?” I said to him.

“Yes,” he said. “We all are. The combination of my platypus electricity, the liquid tachyons and the polar bear virus had a unique effect on us all. As you no doubt experienced, it compressed all our timelines. In a very real sense we experienced our entire life at one instant, collapsing the dimension of time into a single point.”

“I’m sure Kitty understands all that,” said Derek. “But I sure as heck don’t.”

“Don’t worry, D,” I said. “This kind of stuff gives me a headache too.”

The Man In The Hat smiled. “And while all three of us were time anomalies, Kitty was the only left-handed one and, therefore the only one that could destroy the southpaw society—“

“Wait,” said Derek. “Aren’t we all left-handed now?”

“True,” said The Man In The Hat. “We are. But it wasn’t always so. Even if in this timeline, it, uh, was always so.”

“Oh man,” said Derek. I knew what he meant.

“Timelines have changed,” said The Man In The Hat. “And we’re the only ones that are capable of remembering the timelines that existed previously. In a very real sense, this entire adventure never happened.”

“But in another sense it did,” I said. I was remembering some more of the compressed timeline I’d seen in the chronopool. This timeline turf war had been waged many, many times. In some of those timelines, I’d been Sinister Two, helping the Dexters, doing my best to counter the society and bring about this victory. In others, Seinfeld had taken over. Or Gabe Kaplan. Or all the others. Some of the timelines had hampered the southpaws. Others had barely slowed them down.

But in all of them, there had been Derek. My little brother. Entrenched in the Dexters. Using his status as a time anomaly to help me. I had a new-found respect for him.

“Thank you for all your help, Derek,” I said. “I love you.”

He frowned at me, then smiled. “Love you too, sis.” We hugged.

“One more question,” I said to The Man In The Hat. “Why was I the only lefthander immune to the lycanthropy virus?”

“It’s a long and complicated explanation,” he said. “It’s all to do with the three of us crashing into the pool at the same time, all bleeding. I had the platypus virus. You had the polar bear virus. You and your brother share half the same DNA. And time compressed our entire lives into one. It’s a long, detailed chain of events stretching back to the fact you share the same womb. In a very real sense, you were always immune to the virus, from the day you were born.”

I sighed. I knew my mother would find a way to sneak herself into this adventure. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“I’m happy to show you the details,” he said. “I think you’ll find that, even if things are confusing, happening as they did over varying timelines with varying histories and various states of handedness, it all makes sense if you think about it hard enough.”

“I don’t think I want to,” said Derek.

“Me neither,” I said. “We may just take a raincheck on that…” I paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.”

“The Man In The Hat will suffice for now.”

“You’ll fill us in on mind-bending time paradoxes, but you won’t share your name?” I said.

“Maybe next time,” he said. “You will be seeing me again, Kitty.”

“When?” I said.

“The future,” he said. Clearly going for a mysterious air.

I couldn’t be bothered with it. “Can’t wait,” I said. “Come on, Derek. Let’s go check out this brave new timeline. Let’s see what new meaningless differences people have managed to wage war over this time around.”

“I’m betting it’s… religion,” he said.

“I’ll go with race.”

Turned out we were both right.

THE END

The Kitty Wittgenstein Blog

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