Ah, it’s good to be back in the novelling season. I’m heading for 100,000 words this year once again, but I have a feeling my novel idea could span 150,000. Does that mean I won’t finish in November? Heck no! I plan to finish – I always finish in November, and the day I don’t I’ll be damned to Hell. With that happy thought in mind, and with fingers moving swiftly through hopefully semi-elegant prose, I present the very first entry in my fourth novel, The Typist.

Word Count: 3661

It was a bright, beautiful day, with a wispy autumn breeze that gently rocked the flowers in James Graham’s lawn. Graham sat inside his comfortable home, surrounded by friendly furniture – his only current comfort – wrapped in dream on his recliner, surmising that he should continue his work, inside, on such a beautiful autumn day. In this post-mortal state, he dreamt that he was together, with his family, who he had left so many years ago to make ends meet on his own.

The wind rustled leaves on a large maple outside. A branch fell and hit the window, which woke Graham up. Startled, he let the reclining chair fall, and lifted himself off, shuffling towards the desk on the other side of the room. On the way, he shut half the window, which was letting in a cold draft. Across the street, and through misty eyes, he saw a child playing in a pile of leaves.

“It’s fall again,” he said, looking away from the child. “And I’ve got to get to work.” He sat down at the desk and pulled out a crumpled, but incredibly large, sheet of drafting vellum. But as his pencil hit the page, something interrupted him – the doorbell rang. Sighing, he lifted himself. Someone’s trying to get me to go outside, he thought. About time.

Graham opened the door to find a man in his late forties staring back at him, bags in his eyes. It was Graham’s neighbor, Adam Curie, and it was Curie’s child playing in the leaves across the street. Curie looked incredibly disoriented, and Graham wasn’t sure what in the world he could want. Happily married for several years to the beautiful Vanessa Curie, he lived in a lavish three-story home with enough beds and baths to run a small hotel. The two men had initially, on occasion, conversed over trivial topics when both were out on their lawns running errands and chores, and eventually grew into good friends. Still, it didn’t surprise Graham to see the fellow at the door, especially in such a tired state of mind. Curie was a struggling author constantly missing deadlines – how he maintained his job was beyond Graham, who had never missed a deadline in his life.

“Adam? Well, hello there. What brings you?”

“I need a favor,” he said quickly. “I see you’re already hard at work at something, but I’m wondering if I can pursued you to stop what you’re doing and focus on something new.” His arms flailed as he spoke, and his words had a stark sense of urgency.

“What? Slow down. Here, come inside and have a seat.” Curie forced his way past Graham, and fell down onto a couch. “The kid’s got you working overtime, doesn’t he? Why isn’t Vanessa helping out?”

“She’s been sick. But that’s not why I’m here.” Graham sat down as Curie spoke. “I’m wondering if you could design something for me. I could have asked someone else but, well, you’re the best drafter around here that I know, and I need something built quick. I’m wondering if you could put that brain of yours to work and crank out a little shed in my backyard; nothing big, just a small, external room. I’m wondering if you can do it and get it built in less than a month.” Curie bit his lip.

“I’m an engineer, not an architect. Why is this so important?”

“I’m on contract to write two more novels by the middle of next year, and I can’t concentrate. I need solitary confinement. Just a small room with a desk is all I want, a desk and a lamp.”

“Well, you’re better off just going to prison if you want an empty room,” Graham said with a smile.

“Funny, but I think it will really increase my productivity.”

“Money can’t solve writers’ block, Adam. Honestly, I don’t even know where you get the money anymore. Could you really pay me for this? Let’s say, just for this moment, that I was an architect and could effectively design you this room. What would it do for you that you couldn’t do for yourself by going to the library and tapping away on your laptop?  Honestly, I think you’re a great friend, but you need to get your priorities in order.”

Curie slumped down into the recliner. “No,” he whispered. Graham, luckily, didn’t hear. Speaking louder, Curie said, “I understand your concern for me, but really, don’t worry about my priorities.”

“If I didn’t have to worry about people’s priorities, I’d be a rich and busy man right now. I’ve got three other projects I’m working on for three different clients who know where they’re going.” Graham stood up. “And you want a friendly favor?”

“Yes.” Curie began fidgeting, which Graham instinctively noticed. Curie knew Graham would, because the man had always had an incredible sense of detail, but couldn’t stop his mind from forcing his fingers to fiddle around and move in between one another.

Graham smiled again – Curie wasn’t telling him something. He always fidgeted when he was lying. “Alright,” he said, “out with it. What do you really want me to design?”

“A room!” Curie pleaded. Seeing Graham’s solid stance, he gave in. “A room,” he began, “with an underground bunker. There are some things I’d like to store there. But I need you to engineer a special lock that I can put on the door to the bunker that will keep it secure. I’m sorry – I can’t tell you what will go there, but I’m hoping you don’t need to know anything more.”

“You know, I would have found that out anyway if I’d accepted your proposition.”

“I know. But if you weren’t okay with building just the room, why would you be okay with making the bunker?”

“The room isn’t important, is it? The lock is what’s important. And that’s much more interesting. Listen, I know a guy who can design the bunker and shed for you. Knowing you, you’ve got Vanessa’s consent to build at least the room, so if you pay me one-third of the price up-front, I’ll get to work on the lock and door. How’s that sound?”

“Good to me. Listen, don’t tell Vanessa about the bunker, okay?”

“Of course. Customer confidentiality. You act like I’ve never worked on a secret project before! Not that you’d know,” he chuckled. “You should get back to her. If she’s sick, you shouldn’t leave her alone.”

“I’m more worried about my son – I don’t want him getting bitten up in those leaves!” Curie picked himself up off the chair and went over to shake Graham’s hand. “Well, thank you. I’ll be back tonight with a check, you can count on that.”

“Bring a piece of your current novel, too; you’ve got me interested in what you’re cooking up.”

“Sure,” Curie said, smiling, letting go of Graham’s hand and stepping near the door. The two men said goodbye, and Graham watched Curie walk back across the street to greet his son playing in the leaves. Curie hoisted the young boy into the air and swung him around in circles. Graham, trying not to look at this picture with envy, slowly shut the door and let the outside world disappear. Turning around, he noticed that Curie had left mud tracks on his carpet, leading up to his desk.

The desk was covered with drafting vellum and pencils. Graham was one of the few men he knew that did all of his drafting by hand, though he was slowly migrating to the computer. It wasn’t that he was old – not by far; he was quite young at thirty-two – but rather that he had a certain appreciation for traditional methods of engineering. He spread the papers across the desk, looking at prototype car designs for Toyota, toy designs, and now a blank sheet of paper that would soon be riddled with lock design sketches. His other clients had been very straightforward about what they wanted, and this enabled him to avoid most computer work, even on the car design. He could visualize it all in his head, and represent it on paper with stunning beauty; often he wondered if he should have become an artist rather than an engineer.

Mulling over the lock issue, he knew that someone like Curie, an author, wouldn’t want any normal tumbler lock, and knew that the lock would have to built-in to the door. Curie’s lock would have to be combination-based, but it would also have to be incredibly elaborate. More over, Graham wanted to design something that would inspire Curie’s novels, not just another lock. There was no doubt that Curie wanted the bunker not only to store his things, but also as a muse, as a mysterious pathway into his subconscious where he would find inspiration for his future and current stories. It was imperative that the lock on the door reflected this.

Graham ignored the thoughts; I can’t start working on it until I get paid, he told himself. Flickering lights interrupted his thoughts – the flicker lasted only just a moment, long enough to make his eyes blink. Losing his train of thought, he looked at the mud tracks across the white carpet floor, and cursed Curie. Then he sat down, and waited for night to fall – waited for the bright, beautiful day to wash away and leave a bleak, dark sky. It was these skies that he enjoyed most of all; the skies where he could see the stars. Often he would trace the stars and form his own constellations when he wasn’t busy working – or when he was putting off work. The stars, like particles in the sky, always reminded him that his engineering efforts would pay off one day – that, one day, he would be able to leave this place and work at CERN amongst the most brilliant minds in the world.

Slowly, night came upon the neighborhood. Lights went out, and the doorbell rang. As expected, Adam Curie was standing at the door, awkward as ever – though the bags under his eyes had disappeared. Graham pondered this change, which was odd considering that it was well into the night, and with his wife sick Curie would have had to tend to his screaming son until he keeled over from exhaustion. Why, then, was he looking so sprightly?

“Here’s your check,” he said, handing the slip of paper to Graham. “Thought of anything good? Ah, why bother asking – of course you have.”

“I’ve thought of a few things, but my mind’s been wandering. You’re looking good tonight; you must’ve gotten some sleep. Good for you.”

“Yeah. The kid’s off to sleep already, and so is Vanessa, so I’ve been relaxing and typing a bit. I took your advice and went to the library. You were right; I don’t know why I always thought libraries were loud. With some headphones, it’s quiet as hell, so I owe you an apology for being argumentative about it earlier.” He moved from side to side, as though he were nervous. “Anyways, you can get started now, right? I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait,” Graham said, running back to his desk and grabbing a business card. “This is the man you should contact about making the shed and bunker. Tell him I sent you, and you’ll probably get some sort of special treatment. And for something this simple, you can probably get him to skip the planning and go straight to the building.”

“Good, that gets rid of a big headache. I’m not very much concerned with the design; I know the size and everything, so I suppose I should be good to go as long as I can fit a desk in there.” Curie noticed the scattered papers across Graham’s desk. “Ah, you look busy. I shouldn’t have bothered you so late. I’ll go now.”

“Alright, but I wasn’t busy,” Graham said, nodding to Curie as a signal that it was alright for him to get going. The door shut soon after; Graham was, once again, alone. Alone to contemplate the lock, with pay. He sighed and sat down to a blank sheet of vellum and began to draw sketches of an elaborate color-combination lock. He’d taken a nap earlier and discovered it in a dream – often times he would work from his dreams; they provided guidance and inspiration. If Adam Curie’s own dreams couldn’t provide him inspiration, Graham thought that perhaps his could.

He stayed up late that night working on different designs, shifting between projects as he attempted not to procrastinate too much. Only once did he get up for a midnight sandwich, then sat back down to draft again. His first ideas had evolved; initially, the mechanism was a disc with nine slots, each corresponding to a different color of the rainbow and two for black and white. But eventually he realized that it wasn’t a very secure design – with enough attempts, anyone could crack the color code. So he developed more elaborate designs with ten, twenty, and thirty colors. An algorithm that started with six base colors determined the combination, and more colors were placed around those six base colors in a specific pattern that was easy to remember – if you knew it. Theoretically, one would only have to know the initial six colors and the pattern of color repetitions that surrounded those six colors to unlock the door.

He figured that someone like Curie would easily remember it with practice, and intended to show his designs to Curie the next morning. But when he rang the doorbell, only Vanessa Curie answered the door, looking sprightly – not sick at all. Ignoring this, Graham asked for Adam. Vanessa said she hadn’t seen him since last night, and that he had gone to pick her up some medicine but hadn’t come back.

Where had he gone?

“Thank you anyway, Vanessa. I’ll call him up and see if I can find out where he is.” Graham paced through their front walkway and flipped open his cell phone, selecting “Adam Curie” from his contact list and pressing call. Ever the alert one, Adam Curie immediately picked up his phone.

“What do you want, James?” he said. His voice was tense and frustrated. Clearly this was not the time for a phone call.

“Calm down – it’s nothing serious–”

“Well, I’m in the middle of something serious right now. Make it quick.”

“I’ve got some designs I want to show you. Will you be around later?”

“Yeah. Call me up; I’m in the middle of a meeting with my publisher right now, though, so not too soon. They’re… not happy with me. But I ordered the room and they’re digging already for the bunker. Miraculously, they said they could have everything firmly grounded and usable in two weeks. Ah, he’s motioning for me to get off the phone. Get out of here, James!” He chuckled nervously, and hung up the phone. On the other end of the line, James Graham was indelibly worried.

Across the street, he now saw not one, but two actions taking place: workers blew fallen leaves off of the Curies’ lawn, and more workers moved in and out from behind the house. He wondered if Vanessa was even aware that her husband had ordered a shed in their backyard – he thought, for a moment, that Adam was brewing a sinister plot in which he convinced his wife that she was sick so she would stay in bed while he hired lawn workers to cover up the shed’s construction. Vanessa had looked completely healthy. Then again, Graham remembered, so had his sister.

He shifted his thoughts away from that topic. As he did so, the lights flickered, and went out. He heard thunder outside; it was a blackout. He lifted the blinds on his windows and let the sunshine in – it’d been a while since he’d done that. The light transformed the little oblong room that contained his desk, his couch, his reclining chair, and his front door. How had he come to live such a well-to-do life in suburbia?

He worked on several projects per week, and not always were they in his home, at his desk. Often would he be called to the assembly line – once he created an assembly line, which was since redesigned by another engineer like himself – to look at the prototype models and analyze their structure. More often than not he’d find a fatal structural flaw and spend another week revising it, but he had always surmised that what had made him so successful was his ability to work quickly. People wanted a man who was fast, effective, and efficient – and they were willing to pay top-dollar for it.

The rest of his money was old money, money gifted to him from his parents, who vowed to support him until their end. To them, Graham was still “a young boy,” and that was code for a man who needs funding to sustain himself. He received his house from his parents, and he filled it with furniture he earned from his work. His house was nothing compared to the Curies’, but it was his abode and he loved it all the same. In fact, he was rather protective of it – the reason why he hadn’t left his current employment and applied at CERN, the particle physics research capital of the world, was because he was afraid he would lose his steady income and his endorsement from his parents, not to mention have to move out of his home and into Europe.

That, he thought, could wait for later. It could wait for when he was a more experienced engineer – when he knew enough to truly change the world. And that, he thought, would take decades.

Seeing that power wasn’t going to return anytime soon, he migrated down to his basement and picked up a flashlight, then sat down in the recliner and leaned back – the ottoman popped up automatically. Basking in the warmth of pure sunshine, he fell asleep for a little while, for just long enough…

* *  *   *    *     *      *       *        *          *          *         *        *       *      *     *    *   *  * *

The doorbell woke him up.

Graham was glad that he spent most of his time near his front door. If anywhere else, he would be more reluctant to travel to it. When he opened the door, the healthy-looking Vanessa stood in front of him.

“I sure am getting a lot of visitors lately. What do you need, Vanessa?”

“He’s still not back. When you called him, what did he say? I’m sorry for walking all the way over here, but the power’s still out. I don’t even get why, it’s a nice, bright day out… but what did Adam say to you?”

“He was at a meeting with his publisher, and had to go. I told him to call me later.”

Vanessa’s face contorted. “That’s not right, he always tells me when he goes to those meetings.”

“Listen, you’re sick – shouldn’t you be in bed or something? Or at least watching your kid while Adam can’t.” Graham realized what an insensitive statement he’d just made; nevertheless, he did wonder who was watching the little thing with Adam not around to do so. Suddenly, the sunlight turned to cloud and drizzle, and the drizzle evolved into rain over the course of their conversation about Adam. To escape the rain, the two migrated inside the house.

Graham turned on the flashlight, a Maglite, and unscrewed the top, turning it into an electric candle. It was so bright that he had to place it out of view; neither of the two wanted to be temporarily blinded. Vanessa began to explain that she knew she was sick – but she didn’t know what she had, and didn’t think it had any relevance to Adam’s job. Worried that she might see the project her husband had commissioned him to work on, Graham chose to keep Vanessa as far away from his desk as possible, as he hadn’t been pre-notified of her lock-compromising visit.

It was only natural that she tried to work her way over to the desk. She knew the papers were there, and Graham could tell that she was suspicious that the two men were doing something behind her back. Graham had to urge her to remain seated at once point, and eventually she got up of her own will and refused to sit down.

“I’m just curious what you’ve been working on all this time. I mean, I’ve known you for years, but you’ve never shown me any of your creations. Now I’m interested, and you don’t want me to see your latest stuff? I don’t believe that for a second.” She huffed and walked over to the desk.

“You do realize that those are confidential drawings, and that they’re owned by my commissioners, right?”

“Yeah, yeah – but make life interesting, I always say.”

“You’re sick. You’ll contaminate the vellum.” Graham walked over to her and stepped in front of the desk. “You really can’t look.” But she already had, and it was too late – even with graham in front of the desk, Adam Curie’s name was extended out beyond the side of Graham’s body, easily readable to Vanessa, who cracked a smile.

“I knew it,” she said. “What are you making for him?” She reached around and grabbed the vellum, examining its contents. “What the heck is this thing?” Graham panicked and began contemplating within his mind what else the lock could have been for. Then it came to him: If it wasn’t for a special locked door, it was for a special locked safe.

“Adam said he had some important items he wanted to ensure were safe, and asked me if I would design a locking mechanism to be implemented on a custom fireproof safe. Satisfied? I called him up today to tell him I had some designs ready.” With this, Vanessa backed off, and Graham wiped his forehead. Crisis averted.