Morning all, another day and yup, more writing. Since I am going for about 1667 words per day to make it to my 50k quote by November 30th, one of the tricks I like to use is to look at my word count when I finish writing for the day. Then I take that number and add 1667 to get the word count I need to shoot for the next day. I generally find this not only keeps me on track, but as I get going I tell myself it is the minimum wordcount I need to reach for the day and then I usually exceed it by a little bit. So just having that number in front of me helps. Perhaps it will help you. And if you have any tips or tricks, feel free to leave them in the comments. Along with the links to your writing if you are joining in and feel like sharing. As for me…
Day 3
Chapter 2
Ames kept thoughts of Bacol and his post class meeting at bay as he lectured. He noticed which students were paying attention, which were looking bored and even noted a few who were clearly doing work for other classes.
He hated the introductory courses.
Students from any department could take them as electives to fill in their course. He was well aware that his classes were considered less boring than most by many of the students, so he always had a swath of those just looking to check off a requirement rather than those actually interested in the subject.
Still, it was a requirement for him to teach these classes. Every professor in the department had to teach one, or find a graduate teaching assistant to pass it off to in the name of preparing them to teach their own classes.
He tried to keep the lectures interesting in the hopes of students paying attention and did his best to ignore those who could clearly care less. As long as they were quiet, he could pretend they weren’t there. Today they were easy to ignore as he had Bacol and the LMC to mull over as he lectured.
There was little information in the phone message to tell him what the site was truly like and he hadn’t had time this morning to listen to the news. If the site was news worthy it would explain Bacol’s interest. Bacol didn’t just want professional advancement. He wanted fame and fortune as well as to be seen as the face of the university, or at least their department.
Bacol, along with the rest of them watched as their former compatriot, Professor Kelson, managed to achieve notoriety, turning some of his dry as dust research papers into action packed fictional adventures that topped the best sellers list. He gave up teaching all together and achieved even more notoriety when he married a famous underwear model.
Ames watched his rise to stardom and was willing to admit a great deal of envy for his career turn, especially when he was stick in departmental meetings that never seemed to end. He knew his own limitations however and doubted he could manage such a feat. He might indulge in a day dream or two, but that was all. At best he might be on a local interest segment of the news when it was a slow day and people became curious about his dig site. At such times his goals were to be informative without embarrassing the university.
Bacol had grander dreams of replicating Kelson. Ames managed to catch a snippet of one of his Early empire sites turned into high romance. A page slipped into one of the reports he was proofreading. He had been momentarily non-plussed when Site KV-2984 suddenly seemed to possess a heaving bosom and a longing for a distant star cruiser commander. Ames read the page unable by the end to determine if the commander of the Star Cruiuser was emotionally distant or simply far away. He decided it was probably both and anile he enjoyed his verbal sparring matches with Bacol, Ames decided the story was a bit too much.
Instead of mentioning it, he waited until Bacol left his office and shoed the notes under the door, hoping the professor thought he dropped them.
‘I’d at least go for horror,’ Ames thought as he wound up his lecture. With the Couran draining the life force from their victims it would make more sense than romance. ‘Not that I am planning it,’ he decided.
He was pleased to see that talk of the Couran at least managed to get the attention from all of the students, even the least interested looking up from whatever else they were doing while he expanded on the subject.
Once class was over, all of them filed out and Ames could let his thoughts and questions swirl, once more focusing on Bacol.
If Bacol wanted the project for himself then it was something he thought would bring him fame, notoriety or political advancement. While Ames was willing to pretend he hadn’t read the snippet of a novel, he wasn’t willing to stand by and let a site go to the man.
His class over, Ames went back to his office. As he promised, he moved the stack of books off his guest chair in anticipation of the LMC’s agent visiting him. He darted a glance to the hall and saw Bacol return, stomping into his office and grumbling as hie fit the key into the lock. When the door closed behind him it was practically a slam.
‘I guess he really wanted to be the investigator of note,’ Ames thought.
He glanced at his watch and realized he had a little bit of time before his appointment. Not wanting to look a though he was waiting, Ames settled himself behind his desk and pulled up the article he was working on.
He as having difficulty completing it. According to the official position of the university, and indeed all accredited Universities on the planet, the Couran were mythical demons who the pre-empire cultures of Scovan believed drained the life energy from their victims. It was accepted belief that these creatures were blamed for anything bad that happened without a visible cause, from the weakening of bodies due to old age and illnesses, especially a type of wasting disease that struck many parts of the planet and its various tribes and villages a century or so before the arrival of the empire’s colonization forces.
While none of those who study ancient diseases ever found the source of the disease, thus being able to name it, the artistic representations, texts from the time and evidence in burials attested to some sort of widespread wasting disease. Many diseases were named as potential culprit, but none was confirmed.
‘Several even believed it was a combination of diseases,’ Ames thought to himself.
In his article he was careful to mention the wasting disease and point out that without the medical knowledge and capabilities they have now, the pre empire societies would not have been able to spot microbes or understand infections. He made certain to mention that so there was no whiff of an idea that he supported the Couran as the culprit. His article dealt with the spread of the disease and the spread of the stories of the Couran.
The Couran were mentioned in nearly every pre-empire culture on the planet. The spelling may alter, but the stories were always the same. Whether they were the Couran to Cotrun or the Calran all the stories were the same. The article Ames was writing linked the stories of the Couran to the spreading of disease, tracing the path of the disease and stories along the trade routes.
In reality the article was mostly dealing with ancient trade routes and the movement of goods in the pre-empire world, but it added some spice with the stories of the Couran and tied in nicely with a recent study done by one of his colleagues in a different department on the spread of diseases. He provided some information for Dr. Moton for his study and he was now using the information from the study, with proper citing, in his article.
‘And both of us get gold stars in our cross departmental synergy checklist,’ Ames thought. It was another University wide initiative and while there were some who complained, Ames found it better to just get the requirement done and checked off so he could move on to other things.
His problem with the article was with how much he left out of it. He knew the Couran were not limited to demonic creatures who drained the life out of people. They were not the scape goats of disease. He was certain that there were probably some instances where the Couran were blamed for the work of disease. However in the stories he learned, the Couran were so much more.
In some they were a priestly class that discovered an unholy rite that enhanced their abilities and made them turn on the others. In some they were infected by an unknown disease and those that survived were different. They were despotic rulers who the gods cursed and law brakers banished from society. There were as many origin stories for the Couran as there were pre-empire cultures on Scovan.
However, the empire, when it arrived, pronounced the Couran suspicious explanations of diseases, faux demons explained away by science. The empire may have abandoned this insignificant outpost before they fell and then in the end fell to someone who pronounced their gods to be merely ancient superstitions, but their position remained the dominant one.
While Ames would never go as far as to say the Couran existed, he was bothered by the fact that each of the cultures mentioned the Couran spoke of a war with the Couran. A time when the Couran were overthrown. Many of the stories often named certain villages and towns that refused to rebel and continued to serve the Couran.
While the bulk of the stories involved how to fight the Couran, they also took pains to talk about those communities and how they became isolated. No one would trade with them, no one would offer them food or shelter should anything go wrong. They were shunned and slowly died off as they were consumed by the Couran.
None of that could be added to this article. He knew that. Ames just wanted to make certain that he was linking the stories and the disease to the trade routes not proposing the Couran existed. ‘And not mentioning other than the sanctioned history.’
As the time drew close for his appointment, Ames managed to finish the draft of the article and save it. He would have to read through it later of course to ensure it was in top form, but he thought he did well in his presentation of the subject matter without stepping over any lines. He also thought he managed to keep the rather dry date interesting and accessible to those who would be reading it.
‘Not a bad thing all together,’ he decided. As he hit save there was a knock on his open door and he saw Dean Harwell and a man he did not recognize standing on his threshold.
