Since the story will be in the Koontz "spirit", we'll need a heroic couple,
a villain and a minor sidekick (let's opt for a dog, as suggested by Pete
above). Let's give the brains to the girl, and the brawn to the guy.
I'm also going to use from Pete's list: the "suppression of widespread
knowledge of technology" and the "control of development of scientific
progress". The industry whose practices really scare me for the moment is
pharmacology, so I'll use that.
_____________________________
Plot:
- Girl finds cure/vaccine for some major disease. She's been working as an
independent researcher, and plans to make it available to the world.
- Some big pharmacological group has been secretly spying on her work, and
wants the cure/vaccine. The group sends the Villain to get it, blow up the
lab and kill the Girl.
- She is saved by the Guy, who is in charge of the security of her lab.
That's how the heroic Couple meets.
- The Couple flees from the wrecked lab. As usual in Koontz stories, they
cannot turn to the authorities for help.
- The Villain hunts them down.
- The Couple decide that they cannot run away any more and make a stand.
- Major conflict when Couple and Villain clash (the Finale).
- The resolution.
1) We are first introduced to Doctor Jessie Jay and his pet pooch
(species unspecified) Murray. They are walking through thick forest in
driving rain and the dog is off the leash. We are told that Dr. Jay is
possibly under some kind of stress. They make their way to a secret
entrance to some sort of underground facility (very high-tech!) which is
obviously engaged in monitoring the surrounding forest. This monitoring
suggests that ten other people are also out in the storm, "aimlessly"
wandering around the forest, and that some are shooting at others. A
helicopter has been summoned, presumably to airlift the victim/victims
(corpse/corpses?) out of the area. In counterpoint to his "stress", Dr.
Jay merely smiles when he hears this. He and Murray depart the room,
leaving "several million dollars worth" of electronic equipment behind
them.
2) Either Dr. Jay is incredibly rich (I'm thinking Bruce Wayne and the
batcave, here) or he works for an individual/organisation who is.
Obviously, whatever work is being undertaken here is secretive, with many
layers of security checks before entrance to the facility is granted.
3) Obvious questions immediately triggered by the text: Who is Jessie
Jay, what work is being done at the secret underground facility, why are
these ten other people wandering round a forest in the middle of a stormy
night, and why are they shooting at each other?
4) My initial impetus was to try to expand on Jessie's raison d'etre, to
flesh out the character, and give an answer to all of the above questions,
but then I thought that it was probably too soon to do this. I noticed an
urge to finish the story before it had even properly begun, and I thought
that if I went down this route it would only make things difficult for the
following contributors. So instead, I decided to just partially answer
the last question instead, and to introduce a new character to the story.
When I began to think about this character, I chose (was chosen by?)
Emily. She's one feisty lady; I hope you like her. I also attempted, in
a rather fumbling manner, to include a few of Ravin's initial suggestions
to broaden out plot possibilities.
Cheers,
Pete.
After inital nerve attack came up with a number of possible plot ideas, then realised this is early days and big reveals would be a mistake.
Koontz does a lot of atmospherics hence enough rain mentions to make any fellow Brits feel right at home!
One of my favourite aspects of a Koontz is his way of bringing characters together, hopefully there'll be some more of this happening. My idea was to bring back Dan. Also, referred to Sam but didn't give to much away so he may or maynot have a bigger influence on the story.
Wanted to add a fight because the last chapter ended with Jesse's attention being drawn to the fight, my efforts weren't the most realistic but I can always edit it later.
Clare
I thought it was about time the readers met the REAL villains of the story...
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! I'll warn you beforehand - this one's going to be a real
stomach-churner!
Okay so this took ages to write sorry. With Christmas, life, an everyone going down ill here I had to update in two parts and while the writing didn't take long the sitting to do it took ages.
Anyhow.
I figured the story seems to have lots going on and lots of characters. This is where RR tend to flounder as busy people can't keep track and characters get lost along the way. But, Golda was working on this same problem so I decided to let her have her way! A new character, but I do leave it with all our heros gathered at the secret lab..so, what happens next? I look forward to finding out...