Meet Deacon Carver

Deacon Carver is a villain to some, just another an immoral criminal to others.



Deacon never had any parental figures and so lacked guidance. In competitive sports, where he played ‘for keeps,’ he couldn’t understand why his successes weren’t as celebrated as his competitors’.



His only real friend has been Char Osbaldistan, a woman a few years his senior. She is both his role model and his mentor. She helped him become a smuggler, like herself.



He craves acceptance, but defines that as wealth, stature, and reputation, not friendship, respect, or a lasting relationship. He is very transactional in his dealing with others. He is emotionally immature.



When he does acquire money, he’s not wise with it. He has gained some stature in his cover-life as a solar-sail racer, but he is perpetually broke.

His reputation as a smuggler is one of competence, brutality and self-preservation. He’s great to hire for a tricky job, as long as things go well. Should the job go wrong (they rarely do with him), he’ll save his ass, not yours.



He does have a moral code – he won’t traffic humans, he won’t kill. He’s not a thief, if he can help it. But he’s greedy, he’s spiteful, and while he may not kill, he’s not against putting others in the way of fatal danger and leaving them to rescue themselves. In his mind, their deaths aren’t his fault.

Even the woman he desires accuses him of moral corruption. She uses his transgressions against others as reasons to keep him at arm’s length. This frustrates him, leading him to bouts of malice directed at whoever is nearby (but never at her).

Three-Act Outline

Act 1


Beth Lavenza is a noted nanotechnologist. Her experiments are on the verge of giving humans immortality through an ever-renewed physical body. There are many who object to her work, including fanatics who attack her while she is walking her dog, Bear. Beth survives, but Bear is near death. A heartbroken Beth injects her experimental nanobots into Bear in an attempt to save him.

Act 2


Bear recovers. Beth garners press attention for how she saved Bear, and takes Bear onto a talk show hosted by the very cute and single Victor von Stein. Beth and Victor start dating. Bear starts exhibiting some creepy, stalkerish behaviour towards Beth. Victor suggest she night need to get rid of Bear. One night, Beth wakes to voices in her bedroom. She fears that the fanatics have come back to try to kill her again. Instead, she finds Victor and Bear in an argument. Yes, Bear can speak: The nanobots were geared towards replicating human DNA and Bear is evolving. 

Act 3


Bear wants Beth for his own, so he kills Victor. Bear then bites Beth, saying, “You’ll understand. It won’t take long.” Beth falls ill with a high fever and sleeps for days. When she wakes up, she realizes that she now has the nanobots in her, along with some of Bear’s DNA. They are now psychically linked – not just Beth and Bear, but all the nanobots too. The nanobots are going to remake Beth into a mate for Bear, so that the nanobots can propagate further, eventually replacing humanity. Bear and Beth will be the new Adam and Eve.

Act 2 Turning Point

In every way, Victor’s place was better: The view was better, the restaurants were better, there was more than one room… But of course Bear wasn’t welcome. Once had been enough. Beth had offered to pay for the damage, but if she could afford to replace his wardrobe, she could afford better than the lower-end IKEA furniture that populated her studio.

Still, he was coming to stay in her cramped studio instead. Victor never complained about her place, the creaky pipes, the lack of air conditioning, which was sweet of him, but also annoying. She felt judgemental on his behalf, coming to dislike her cosy little hidey-hole. It got damp with two people, and had developed a slightly mouldy stench, a dog-ish odour she hadn’t previously noticed.

She smiled at Bear, rubbed his head as she grabbed a stack of journals off the bed, set them beside the kitchen sink, stored her laptop in the cutlery drawer. 

Bear was always a problem they pushed to another day. But as their relationship deepened, Bear’s fate permeated her sleep. In her dreams, Bear could talk. He always said, ‘I love you.’ And he often told her about a future of just the two of them, no Victor. After these dreams, she’d invariably find Bear curled against her, snoring.

When Victor arrived, he leaned in to kiss Beth, but she grabbed a damp towel and scrubbed her lips first. “Bear was licking me.”

“On your mouth? Eww, I have to kiss that mouth.”

“You don’t have to…” But he did.

That night, Beth locked Bear into the bathroom for some uninterrupted couple time with Victor. When she let him out, Bear hopped onto the bed, curled up on Victor’s side, giving a soft growl.

“He doesn’t sleep with you, does he?” Victor watched Bear’s eyes. He’d noticed that Bear seemed much more attentive to their conversations lately.

“Jealous much?”

“Quarantine protocols?” Victor asked. “He has your nanobots in his blood.”

“Yeah,” Beth waved off any concern. “He’s safe.”

Later, Beth’s sleep was interrupted by dreams of Bear talking to her. But this time there was more than one voice. As she neared wakefulness, she felt a memory, three blurry strangers grabbing her, pulling her, taking control. 

“No!” She sat bolt upright, shook off the cobwebs, and found both Bear and Victor watching her, an interrupted tension obvious between them.

“What’s going on?”

“He talks. Your damn dog talks!”

“No he doesn’t. He doesn’t have the right vocal cords.” Beth stopped as Bear made a noise. “What did he just say?”

“I heard ‘ruv ru.”

“I very clearly heard ‘I love you.’” Beth touched her ear. “I don’t think I heard it, so much as understood?”

“The nanobots. You’ve got his nanobots in you. Now you’re linked somehow.” Victor looked around widely. Could he get to the frying pan hanging on the wall by the kitchenette? Could he possibly swing it hard enough to kill Bear? “And he’s learning to talk.”

Victor took a step towards the kitchenette. Bear growled long and low. 

“He says, ‘Don’t move.’”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Everyone who tried to visit the lakeside town of Midland had to pass over the troll bridge. Everyone knew the troll didn’t like people entering Midland. No one understood why.

The studious troll was pretty close to finishing his Ph.D. dissertation on the pending ecological collapse of his lake. Not being allowed to own property in Midland  – thanks to a speciesist town council – forced him to live outdoors. 

He’d discovered that the curve of the stone bridge best amplified the free wifi from the local pub. So there he lived, trying to protect his research from further contamination, from the annual influx of drunk tourists. 

First he’d tried stopping traffic and handing out pamphlets at the bridge, but the illiterate tourists just crumpled them and chucked them all along the shoreline.

Then he’d tried iconographic ‘no fishing’ signs at all the popular fishing holes. They’d been vandalized.

So, now he played to the stereotypes. Hey, if they’re gonna label you an angry troll anyway, why not be one?

“Hey, Doc, how’s Holden doing this week?” D.B. always asked the same question, even knowing that the answer would never be ‘he’s gotten better’ as they went through the usual weekend check-out procedure.

The best D.B. could hope for was that tired old pun, ‘He’s Holden his own.’

D.B. found it odd that Holden wasn’t ready for him like every other Friday evening. D.B. hadn’t missed a weekend, ever. The doctor guided D.B. into his office while they waited for Holden to arrive. The door closed gently behind D.B.

“Maybe, he’s taken a turn for the worse.” The doc didn’t want to meet D.B.’s eyes. “We tried that experimental treatment, the one you signed off on, electrode-shock therapy. It was not successful, if anything, it made him angrier.”

‘Angrier’ caught D.B.’s attention.

Holden was always at odds with his life. Even here, he complained the place was ramshackle. But it was costing D.B. a pretty penny, and other than some dust from the Santa Anna winds drifting across the orchards, the place was spotless. 

Holden had been a little too privileged in his upbringing for D.B.’s liking. Maybe if he’d had to serve in the war, if he’d known what menace really was, he’d’ve appreciated what his parents had done for him, what D.B. had stepped up to do for him, once they gave up.

“We have to file a report with the Department of Corrections next week.” The doctor spoke furtively, eyes on the closed door. “This might be your last time with him. I can’t recommend him being allowed weekend releases anymore. You’ll need to be more careful with him this weekend. Especially around women. He tried to strangle one of the nurses, again.”

The door opened and Holden walked in, less steadily than the last time D.B. had seen him, more reminiscent of how he’d looked when he first arrived, drugged, on edge. D.B. became aware of the two rather muscular medical assistants standing just behind Holden.

The doctor’s tone changed to an obviously false joviality. “What do you have planned for the weekend?”

“I thought I’d take him to the pier in Santa Monica,” D.B. nodded out the window to his pride and joy, a sporty Jaguar convertible. “All this time in the foothills, I thought the sea air might be good for his spirit.”

Without ever breaking his smile, the doctor started flipping through a directory, mumbling, ‘Santa Monica…Santa Monica…Ah, here.” He grabbed a pencil, scribbled a number on a slip of paper and handed it to D.B. It was a phone number. “Just in case you need help.” They both stood up. “Quickly.”

“Have a good weekend, now,” The doctor allowed the assistants to manhandle Holden through the lobby and out the large wood and glass front doors. D.B. barely caught up as Holden reached for the driver’s door of the Jag.

“I drive this weekend, buddy” D.B. teased. “Maybe next weekend you can.”

Humanity discovers a work-around for faster-than-light travel, and goes out to discover that the galaxy is crowded with a multitude of aliens, none of whom use this technology because it causes reverberations that are fatal to some species. A confrontation between a human crew of explores and a couple of elder species ensues around a nearby star, Proxima.

Also, the aliens don’t believe we discovered it, they believe that a particularly aggressive species seeded the technology to us so they can harvest it and use it for galactic conquest.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, we’re following a high ranking assistant, who is aware that some of these accusations may be true. She’s helping the world council prepare to betray the aggressive species, and for humanity to make the conquest ourselves.

Our ship’s crew escapes back to Earth. The assistant warns them of both military and political danger. They flee back to Proxima, chased by a military force, and a final showdown occurs with four factions, two alien and two human.

Shakespeare’s Last Stand

The legendary Shakespearean actor awoke to, “Assume crash positions!”

Glancing around as panicked faces craned to peer out the windows, abject fear at the angle of their descent ghosting their visages.

What do they know of fear? Peons!

Fear the indignities of ageing. Fear indifference and degradation! Flying to an audition? Audacity! Sitting in Economy, among the Greek chorus? Not even a window seat? Humiliation!

If they must die, let them die enlightened. One final stage then and not a critic to besmirch the memory, he thought as he arose, clearing his throat for their attention.

“To be, or”

Not.

My First Cosplay

This should be a great night!

Human Cosplay is new to my species. Dressing up in another being’s guise is incredibly empowering. It’s almost as much fun as making the costume.

Entering the bar, everyone notices my impressive appearance. I must have done well to draw such immediate attention.

There are my co-workers, at the back: the cool crowd, finally accepting me.

“Dreegli, what have you done?” Cute little Shrel asks, exasperated, eyes wildly tracing the blood dripping down my sides.

“I … came as a Human?”

“You’re supposed to emulate them, not kill them and wear the carcass.”

“Oh…”