I hang out with Nathan Lowell pretty often on the interwebs, and as he closes in on the end of the last book in his “Solar Clipper” series, we chat about different directions the story could take (he always keeps me in the dark about his choices, so I’ll make a good alpha reader).
So recently, I started coming up with potential fake endings for “Owner’s Share”. We’ve had a good laugh with it so far, but this one’s my favorite:
As the bulbous, pulpy thing shuddered around the ship, I heard the seals crack, and the hiss of air escaping joined the blare of warning sirens. The red and yellow lights spun madly, throwing crazy shadows across the leathery tentacles that surrounded us. I looked into the mouth opening and closing as it covered the armorglass plating. Over the intercom, I heard it again, “Your crew is dead, your people are dead. You will not survive. Who could face death like this without the madness and fear of a frightened child?”
I wiped sweat and blood out of my eyes, pulled back the release on the anchorshot missile, and smiled, “Call me Ishmael.”
Have you got a suggestion? Throw it into the comments!
that or the one about the StarShip Cthulhu 🙂
This is the kind of ending that would provoke a reader to go back and read the whole series again just to look for some sort of foreshadowing. “He had to hint at this somewhere.” I mean really space whales… He has to have mentioned it somewhere. I don’t remember anything about deep space angels, or giant worms that lived off rock, or baby creatures that would suckle the mysterious external power port on a ship with a smooth hull. I just can’t be real… This can’t be happening. There has to be more. Let me see here. Well there is that reference int he beginning, about “you can call me Ishmael.” but nothing there about giant space beings. Odin’s out post, no. Nothing in the star charts, nothing in the Bad Penny’s living room… Oh I know, what about in South Cost… no no, I am thinking of Dune and the lightening creature. What about, in the pirate tales from Billy, but no he was just talking about human pirates. Did Libby, or Woody say anything about giant space whales? For that matter I don’t think Woody or Buzz Lightyear ever talked about giant space creatures of any kind. Well that was that joke about Buzz Aldrin on the sea of tranquility and the moon creature, but I think Eddy made that one up. It just can’t be happening. How could it end like this. I mean won’t the hot tub slosh if the ship is being eaten by a space whale. What will happen the coffee urns, whose going to show new recruits how to keep ’em clean. Where is Alice? Didn’t the Lois have some sort of cutting torches on it. I bet Mal could get him out of this mess, if only the Serenity was not clear across the verse by now. It is just too much to take. Say it ain’t so Nathan!
He he. And that would be the best way to end it. Don’t even tell them if Ish survives this one. Just leave them hungry for more. Oh, how they would hate him.
Why do I suddenly see a crazy lady with a blow torch standing at Nathan’s door.
But you know he survives, you know after Pip drilled him on all those suit drills, and how to get into the right life boat, he is going to live though this.
@Jeff. Sure, you keep telling yourself that. But he’d never abandon ship until after the squid was dead. 🙂
Ish would be able to name the siren types 😀