4-1-02, Voice in the Crowd
Voice in the Crowd
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
The Story of "Angel's Walk"
Some years ago I wrote a science fiction type
novel called “Angel’s Walk.” Into
it went a lot of background I had accumulated—newspaper work, study of
hypnotism, military intelligence experience and a love of this old planet.
The main character I chose was Gabriel Day, a big,
muscular good ole boy from the hills with more brawn than brain.
I put him into an army intelligence camp in Germany where he was an MP
with chevrons that came and went according to his latest brawl.
He met a bookish young newsman from Carolina who was a student of
hypnotism and practiced on Gabriel.
A letter bomb exploded in Gabriel’s hands and he was
more dead than alive in the hospital where a series of experimental drugs were
tried. In a coma, his body
developed a regenerative power that quickly replaced scar tissue. He became a guinea pig for the scientist who injected him
with infectious concoctions and watched the immune system quickly overpower
them. The experiments were
interrupted by the bookish friend who brought Gabriel back to consciousness
through voice contact. But Gabriel
had no memory of anything before the moment of awakening.
He did have the power to control his muscular structure completely and to
use all of his brain as opposed to the small percentage a human normally uses.
Now came the antagonist, or villain, depending on your
point of view. His goal was to save
the earth from mankind.
The “bad guy” reasoned that overpopulation, global
warming and abuse of natural resources had reached the point of no return and
the earth was doomed. Only solution
reasonable was to eliminate mankind and let nature start over again.
“The cockroach will be king,” was the premise.
“This time maybe a better creature would show up in a few billion
years.
He reasoned that since the days of the cave man
propagation had been the goal. First
it was for self defense with safety in numbers.
Nations and churches wanted the same.
And the poor man had nothing but his children. They were a source of labor.
Overpopulation led to overuse of natural resources and food supplies.
The villain reasoned mankind was hopeless and would never change.
Man had to go.
Computers got into the plot with the destroyers turning
control of themselves to the computer and a new deity—the Host.
Gabriel’s job was to stop them. But, since his own brain is more computer-like than human, he
saw the logic of removing man to prevent destruction of the planet.
The “bad guys” tried to recruit him.
An angel named Gabriel appears in many religions.
Most notably he’s the one with the horn to sound doomsday.
That was the story.
The plot bounced around in my head until I quit a well paying newspaper
job, put a second mortgage on our home and began to write.
There was a small cottage behind our home and each morning I got up at 6
AM, had breakfast and walked down to the typewriter and coal fired stove.
I wrote 15 chapters in 15 days, 5,000 words per chapter.
I was certain it would sell, even picked out the actors who would play
the characters in the movie.
It was good enough to get an agent, Bertha Klausner in
New York, but not good enough to find a publisher.
It ultimately cost me our home. I regret losing the home, of course, but I don’t regret
writing the book. Nothing gives a
writer more pleasure than just sitting down and putting one word behind another
to tell a story.
I got tired of trying to sell “Angel’s Walk” and
put it on a shelf. I don’t even
remember which shelf if put it on.
I think it was Erskine Caldwell who said a writer should
write as much as possible and publish as little as possible.
Maybe the bottom line should just be the pleasure or the writing itself,
and the possibility that even one person will read and appreciate what has been
written.
Maybe one of these days I’ll write “Angel’s
Walk” again. Maybe I can
recapture the thrill of reliving the scenes with the fictional characters in the
land of make believe. Maybe I can
figure out a way to write a novel and keep my home, too.