Preview: New Chapter 2

          It was noon the day after Mendel had stayed late at work with Charlie going over his team’s discovery. Mendel was about to reach for the lunch he’d hurriedly thrown together on his way out the door, but the morning’s events were racing through his mind. He couldn’t tell his wife what was bothering him; he came to the same conclusion he always came to. I’m going to call Vela. I have to tell someone about what’s going on, and my brother is the only one I can talk to that understands what I’m dealing with, AND has the security clearance to hear what I’ve got to say.
          Vela Omichron, Mendel’s brother had volunteered to be one of the first off-world colonists from Earth. The government offered to provide the colonists with everything they would ever need during their lifetime in exchange for their services as pioneers on other worlds, and preservers of the human race. While money would be of no value to early colonists, the money they earned as colonists accumulated throughout their lifetimes, and upon their deaths, the money was divided equally among designated beneficiaries who were also colonists. This “salary” of sorts would continue through the third generation until the colonies had become cities with economies of scale and trade with other worlds begun.

Preview: New Chapter One

          It was around six o’clock in the evening when Mendel found himself looking out the window of his office, watching the sun go down from behind his desk instead of from the living room in his home. His faint reflection glared back at him from the shiny surface, showing his medium length jet-black hair, prominent nose, and square cheek bones. His office was not lavish, but was well appointed with all of the things a very good physicist would need. So, all he really had in his office was a desk, his chair, sofa, and a cabinet about five feet wide and eight feet tall with a myriad of electronic gadgetry neatly organized inside. His gaze returned to his office walls which were, of course, covered in dry-erase board which themselves were covered with a lacework of equations, molecular diagrams, and multi-colored fingerprints and smudges where markings had been erased unsuccessfully. 

          Mendel turned his gaze back to marking on the wall he had been previously examining, and when he couldn’t regain concentration momentarily, he turned his neck to the right to look out his window again. He knew the sunset he was looking at was not real, but was a computer generated recreation of what was actually happening four thousand feet above his head on the surface. He hated the feeling of being locked deep underground in his own personal mausoleum that his agency called an office. He understood the need for security, as his interstellar travel research would be highly prized by any government or private organization looking to find a way to move between colonized planets faster than the three years that was the current norm between neighboring planets. He once again tried to turn his mind back to his work, this time by turning his head back towards the holo-display on the desk. After a few moments, when something didn’t seem to make sense, he noticed that there was a portion of the hologram missing. Mendel reached out in front of him and cleared the notepad from the corner of the projection area allowing the image to refresh and fully display. Ah. Now that’s better.

A New Approach

I decided I need a little motivation to keep moving things along. So, every week or two, I'm going to post the first one or two paragraphs from each chapter of The Mendel Chronicles.

Writing is...

...so much harder than I had imagined. OK. Not the act of actually putting pen to paper (I mean finger to keyboard) so much as finding the time to actually perform the act itself.

I have a new found appreciation for those of my acquaintances and friends who write, edit, revise, and publish their works either by themselves or in conjunction with a publisher.

That being said, I haven't forgotten the project; rather, I've had much going on lately, and not so much time to dedicate to my story line.

There will be an end. Somewhere. I just don't know where right now.