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The Neverland

The Neverland

The Darling House, 11:15 AM

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Wendy laughed, looking over her brother’s shoulder. “You’re not meant to do that! It’s right there in the text. You always play things so safe.”

“I wanted to see what you’d coded for the ‘wait’ option since we last played,” John replied mildly.

“It just said that, John! Weren’t you reading?” complained Michael, seated to his brother’s right. “You always type pointless stuff.”

“I have to try every course of action, don’t I?” John defended himself. “Go on, if you know better, what do I do now?”

“Hide somewhere! There must be barrels of gunpowder and stuff in the store.”

“Hah,” said John smugly. “Now who’s typing pointless commands?”

“Mine was better than what you wrote,” said Michael, but John was no longer paying attention. He clicked his fingers triumphantly.

“I know!”

“Yeah! One pirate down,” John cheered, as Michael sulked over not having thought of using the dagger.

“When do I get a go? You always go on the computer first, it’s not fair.”

Wendy smiled at her brothers’ bickering. She was secretly pleased that they found her game gripping enough to puzzle and argue over it. She’d poured a lot of hours into ‘Pirates’ and sometimes wondered if she’d be better off dedicating her time to something else, but John and Michael’s reactions encouraged her to think that maybe she could have some success as a game creator one day, if she kept at it and did well enough at university.

Just then, their father’s head poked around the door. “Boys! Your mother and I can hear you arguing from the garden. Either play nicely with each other or you won’t be allowed on the computer again.” It was an often-repeated threat, but the three children had no doubt that their father would carry it through, so John and Michael immediately quietened down.

Mr. Darling turned to Wendy and gave her a significant look, then beckoned. Wendy sighed and reluctantly followed him out of the playroom. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next.

Mr. Darling shut the playroom door behind them and addressed Wendy quietly. “Wendy, I bought that computer and modem for use with my work, and I gave you, and only you, permission to use it for preparation for your university course. It is a serious tool, not a toy for you and your brothers to waste valuable time on.”

Wendy bit back several comments regarding how little her father would even know about what a computer could be used for. His grasp of the world of computing was so limited, yet he tried to come off as some sort of expert. Still, she depended on him allowing her access to the computer and so she had to play by his rules. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just wanted John and Michael to test out my newest programming venture.” She tried to phrase it in terms that would appeal to her father, but Mr. Darling was not fooled.

“A game, Wendy. About pirates. How is this relevant to a course in computing at a leading university?”

“Dad, I don’t leave for Durham for another month!” Wendy burst out in frustration. “You can’t expect me to be preparing for it twenty-four hours a day! And the game is relevant. A lot of the most well-known programmers and System Operators on BBSes develop and play these sorts of games. They’re at the forefront of computing.” This was fudging the truth slightly, but her father didn’t know enough about modern computing or BBSes to contradict her.

“And that’s another thing, Wendy,” said Mr. Darling, his nostrils flaring slightly. “These BBSes. Do you know how much our phone bill cost last month thanks to you dialling in day and night?”

Wendy wilted slightly. She knew she’d cost her parents a lot of money through her ignorance about long-distance calling charges and her eagerness to explore this new network of computer users that had suddenly opened up to her. But she’d already been lectured, apologised, promised to be more careful so many times that she didn’t know what else there was to say. “I do know, Dad. I didn’t realise how much it was costing at the time but I won’t do it again. I’ve already promised that.”

Mr. Darling’s glare didn’t soften. “Make sure you keep that promise. And I don’t want to see you wasting time on the computer with your brothers in future.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked towards the door, adding, “You must have course reading to be getting on with,” as he left.

Wendy ground her teeth together; her father always had to have the last word. “I’ve already done all my course reading,” she muttered bitterly.

“Wendy?” Michael peered timidly through a gap in the playroom door. “We’re stuck again. Can you come and give us a clue?”

Wendy smiled down at her youngest brother and ruffled his fair hair. “Of course.”

“Did you get into trouble because of us?” he asked anxiously, trailing behind her into the playroom. John leaned on the back of the computer chair and waited for her answer in apprehension.

“Oh, just the same old stuff,” said Wendy, lightening the mood for her brothers’ benefit. Her dad couldn’t take away from her the enjoyment that came from creating this game, or take away her brothers’ excitement at playing it, no matter how hard he tried. “Dad’s all bark and no bite.” And in a month’s time, I’ll be free to do what I like, she thought.

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Author's Notes: So, this is a great start! One entry in to my new routine and I'm already a day late x3 Yesterday I had a completely free day and managed to forget to do my blog post. Today I was busy all day but made myself squeeze in some editing so that I could get this up before midnight. Let's see if I can do better on Tuesday ;)

I considered posting up another random excerpt from midway through the story, but decided to treat you guys to a longer chunk of writing, the first half of Chapter One. Though I may edit it a lot in the future, I'm pretty set on opening the story in this way, with text from Wendy's 'Pirates' game. In case you're not familiar with text-based adventures, that's what this is. You can read a bit about them here, and I also highly recommend the online documentary 'GET LAMP', which will appear in a future Tuesday post. I based the wording and format off transcripts from Will Crowther's Adventure, the first and most famous text adventure game.

Originally this passage featured Hook and Starkey of the Jolly Roger rather than Blackbeard and Bonnet of the Queen Anne's Revenge, but then I realised it would be rather stupid to have those characters appear in Wendy's adventure and also be characters in the novel, so I quickly changed the names. xD Bonnet was the only member of Blackbeard's crew that I could find a name for (on Wikipedia, anyway).

This is all still first draft territory, but I hope that you find it an interesting opening nonetheless :) Critiques are welcomed.

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The Darling House, 11:47 PM

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Author's Notes: I tried SO hard to get this post up on time. I really did. I sat for hours yesterday with a blank document open and couldn't think of the right words to start off. I stayed up until 1 in the morning trying to write something that didn't sound godawful. I managed a couple of paragraphs before giving up. Then today, I went to visit a friend who lives in another county. On the train journey there I opened up the Notes on my iPod and immediately knew how the next bit should go. On the way back not only did I finish the post but I started planning out character arcs and suddenly a whole load of ideas came together. I won't spend forever talking about them here, but I am super stoked. Clearly what I need to do is just write every word of my novel whilst riding around on English trains x3

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That night, Wendy lay awake for an hour after her parents had gone to bed, until she was sure that they must be asleep. She crept out into the corridor and strained her ears for the murmur of her parents’ voices, but all she could hear were the sounds of deep breathing and John’s light snores coming from the bedroom he and Michael shared. Perfect.

Wendy stole downstairs and into the playroom, skirting around the patch of creaky floorboard in the middle of the hall, picking her way over John’s discarded skateboard and Michael’s old teddy bear. She threw a blanket over the modem to mute the noises it made, and dialled into her favourite local message board, a lively London BBS called CompuChat.

Her father would be apoplectic if he found out what she was doing, but Wendy was willing to risk getting caught every few nights in order to connect with like-minded computer enthusiasts from around the country. Sure, there were plenty of idiots on-line, but there were also people who understood the amazing potential of computers and software, who dared to bend rules and think in new ways and who weren’t above fooling around for a few hours every day just to see what they could do. In just one more month, she hoped to be spending all her time with those kinds of people.

Wendy scanned the list of recently posted messages and frowned as a familiar name caught her eye.

Wasn't PremiumWarez that notoriously awful rip-off board? She couldn't believe anyone would even miss its presence. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, she clicked on the thread. Her eyebrows rose further and further with every post she read.

Wendy's heart was pounding as she reached the bottom of the thread. It felt as though a fire was alight inside her chest. The epic battles between good and evil that she wrote about in her stories weren't just fantasy. There were real people out there on-line, fighting to eliminate the selfish, the corrupt and the unjust.

"Peter Pan..." Wendy murmured, touching a finger to the name on her computer screen. "Who are you?"

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Author's Notes: This is the second half of Chapter One, which will lead straight in to the excerpt from Peter's point of view that I first posted on this blog. Originally I hadn't planned to introduce our hero so early, but it follows on quite naturally from that last line, and really there's no reason not to. It works much better than what I wrote for chapters One and Two back in November. You live and learn.

I'm most interested in getting opinions on the thread transcript in this half of the chapter. How well does it work in its current form? I wrote the whole thing out mainly for my own entertainment (I love writing fake Internet exchanges, I've no idea why but I definitely have a wealth of experience to draw on) and only planned to include a short extract from it. Then I changed my mind and shoved the whole thing in. Is it too long? Fun or boring to read? Flows well or doesn't flow?

As always, this is only a first draft but every comment that I get will help towards making subsequent drafts much better ;)

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Interlude

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Durham University Computer Lab, 10:09 PM

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Author’s Notes: This is the same excerpt of the story that was on my NaNo profile, but there’s extra context at the beginning and end so that there’s new stuff to read even for those of you who’ve already read it. I chose it for my profile excerpt because I think it’s a good representative of the story content, plot and style. There’s a mixture of narrative and online chat (and I admit, I’m not sure how accurate my descriptions of BBS chat are, but I based them on the information I have available), a bit of late 80s technology, some familiar names from the Peter Pan canon, an interesting revelation or two and hints towards the larger plot. I wanted to give people a flavour of how the characters will be depicted in this universe, and give them a sense of the setting. By and large, I used the same criteria when I picked the first excerpt to post in this blog.

On with the show!

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The building was dark, but not deserted at this time of night. There were a couple of guys sitting at terminals who looked up and nodded as Wendy came in, then went back to what they’d been doing. Wendy sat down and dialled in the number for the CompuChat BBS, which by now she knew off by heart. It felt like forever since she’d last accessed the board at home.

By now, Wendy’s reply to the secretive user ‘Tiger Lily’ had disappeared off the board, and in the week or so since she’d made the post, nothing had come of it. Wendy was relieved and disappointed in equal measure. Her search for ‘The Neverland’ had already hit a dead end and she wasn’t sure where to go from here.

At almost the exact second she thought this, her screen split in two and a chat opened up on the right-hand half of the screen, headed by the words,

Wendy sat bolt upright in her chair, accidentally banging her knee on the underside of the table. A hundred questions whirled through her mind, but before she could begin typing any of them, Tiger Lily was already talking.

Well, that doesn’t sound ominous, Wendy thought.

And nor does that. Wendy frowned as she read over Tiger Lily’s second message. She was looking for The Neverland, but Tiger Lily couldn’t know about the notes that she’d scribbled onto a pad of paper or the board histories she’d read through trying to find a mention of the place. The only thing that Tiger Lily had to go on was the post that Wendy had made on CompuChat a week ago, but all she’d done was make an observation. To then assume on that basis that she was actively searching for The Neverland seemed like a bit of a leap of logic. Tiger Lily was pretty obviously paranoid – but why?

Wendy realised that she should say something in reply. It was clear that Tiger Lily had some vested interest in The Neverland; maybe they were a hacker. This could be the lead that Wendy had been looking for. With her heart in her mouth, she began to type.

The reply was almost immediate.

Wendy’s eyes narrowed. How could Tiger Lily say that when they were the one who had been forcibly involving themselves in what Wendy was doing on-line?

The problem with BBS chat systems was that the text appeared in real time on the other person’s screen as you typed, and if you changed your mind about the wording of something and deleted it, they could see what you were doing. Wendy slightly regretted the rudeness of what she’d just written to Tiger Lily, but there was no taking it back. She waited to see how the other user would react.

The message she received took her by surprise.

The user name ‘Wendybird’ was fairly obviously feminine, but Wendy refrained from a sarcastic response.

Wendy felt strangely as if she’d just made a connection with the other girl. In spite of her annoyance towards Tiger Lily, they’d found common ground. Women were rare enough on BBSes that there was always a sense of solidarity when you encountered another woman. Female System Operators – and female hackers – were rarer still.

Perhaps prompted by this, Tiger Lily began to open up a little to Wendy. Wendy read with interest as her typing appeared on the screen.

There was a pause in Tiger Lily’s typing; Wendy imagined the girl at the other end (though she had no idea what she might look like) hesitating with her hands poised over the keyboard.

Wendy had not expected that one. She was dying to question Tiger Lily about this history and euphemistic “involvement” with Neverland’s SysOp, but she felt like it would be too forward. Instead she asked,

There was a long pause, and a few times words appeared on the screen and then were deleted as Tiger Lily changed her mind about what she wanted to say. Either she was trying to find the best way to express herself, or she was withholding some information. Or both.

Which was all very well, but Wendy didn’t really want to know what The Neverland wasn’t, she wanted to know what it was.

But before Tiger Lily could finish her sentence, something strange happened. The screen blinked, quickly, and the text when it reappeared was altered somehow. There were odd symbols dispersed throughout the chat history. Then a message appeared below what Tiger Lily had been writing.

Wendy stared in disbelief. It wasn’t possible for three users to converse in chat at once. Sure, the idea had been thought of and there was a possibility of it developing somewhere down the line, but as of the moment no BBS on BITNET or ARPANET could support three-way chat. What was going on? The modem began to whir and gutter even harder, as if struggling to cope with the presence of this intruder.

The strange font appeared instantly in a line on the screen, with no laborious letter-by-letter assembly. In the next instant, Tiger Lily disappeared from the chat.

Wendy sat stunned, with no idea how to react to what she had just witnessed. She tried to type something, to communicate with this ‘Tinkerbell’, but the computer only beeped at her in response. Then, abruptly, the screen went black.

“What?!” Wendy exclaimed out loud. “No, no, what just happened?!”

“Someone must’ve tripped a wire,” said a voice, and Wendy jumped as she remembered that she wasn’t, in fact, alone in the room. One of the guys from earlier was still sitting at his terminal; he gave her a sympathetic smile. “It happens at times, but the system will be back on-line soon. Were you working on something important?”

Wendy blushed slightly. She must have looked like a real madwoman, shouting at the computer screen. “No, I just thought I’d caused an error or something. My screen was doing these weird things…” She trailed off, unsure as to whether it was a good idea to tell anyone about what had just happened.

“What number terminal are you at? I’ll have someone take a look at it,” the guy offered.

“Don’t worry, I think it was just a bug in the BBS,” Wendy said quickly. She didn’t want the university technicians to start investigating an error which Wendy was sure had nothing to do with the hardware. She stood up. “I should get back to my dorm now, it’s quite late…”

“All right,” said the guy, smiling at her. “See you later.”

---

Heh, I just realised that both my excerpts begin by talking about darkness. That’s mostly a coincidence, although a lot of the online exchanges do take place at night. In the words of one of the users interviewed for BBS: The Documentary, “There was something alluring about… just, y’know, staying up nights – it was something you’d do at night, it wasn’t something you’d really wanna do during the day.” Unless you’re Peter and have a very flexible concept of daytime.

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Peter's Room, 04:34 AM

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Author's Notes: So here we have an excerpt from Peter's point of view. I wrote this as an exercise in character development and titled it "Random Scene From Peter's POV" in my Word document, but I think I know whereabouts in the plot it will come. That's a secret, though ;3 I decided it would work best as the first story excerpt for this blog, because it pretty much stands on its own. There's some context that you can probably infer, but not so much info as to give everything away. Enjoy!

(The setting is in the late '80s, for those of you who got interested in this story back when it had a more modern setting - I decided to push the setting back a bit because late '80s Internet was SUPER COOL).

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It was always dark when he woke up these days. Peter supposed that in the time zone of some country he might be keeping normal hours, but he had yet to figure out what it was. When he peeled himself from the pillow after two, three, four hours of sleep he always felt groggy, but then he never really rested. The clicks and beeps of his modem wove themselves into his dreams, creating bright patterns. He watched the patterns spin themselves into being around him, admiring the interplay of colours. If the pattern ever broke, he would wake up immediately, stumbling towards the computer to fix whatever bug had presented itself. He couldn’t sleep at all when there was a break in the pattern.

The first thing he did upon waking up was always to check The Neverland. However many posts had appeared during the night, he would scan them all and post replies to most of them. Then he might be able to find the energy to take a shower (always cold; the hot water had been cut off months ago but Peter honestly didn’t care) and drink something. He wouldn’t be able to handle food for a few more hours at least.

Every pair of curtains and set of blinds in the flat was closed, so that he staggered from the bedroom to the bathroom or the kitchen and back in darkness. His eyes were adjusted to reading the green words on the computer screen, not to dealing with the glare of outdoor light. He wore only a loose pair of tracksuit trousers to bed, and much the same in the daytime (or what passed for daytime in Peter’s world), whether the heating was turned on or not. He didn’t feel the cold, or he pretended not to.

On the occasions that he needed to go outside (for food, mainly) he would put on a hoodie and a pair of dark glasses, if it was still light out. But being outdoors always felt too open, too exposed, with so many people’s eyes on him. There were so many colours and noises and sensations all getting mixed up in his head, too many for him to sort through.

In his own flat there was only the sound of the modem working and the keyboard tapping and the patterns they wove in his mind. He could focus on those and be content. Everything else – people’s company, their intruding presences in his personal space and their voices in his ear – he could do without. He had his connection to the rest of the world. Who was lonely? Who was deficient? Not him.

Peter sat down at the computer, hair still wet from the shower, and checked The Neverland again. No new posts. The pattern went on, steady and unchanging.

It was Tinkerbell. He’d almost forgotten he’d left her running overnight, in case the Mermaids came back with more information on this Red-Handed Jill character who’d been asking too many questions on the Jolly Roger.

Peter slammed his hand down on the desk in anger.

Peter sat back in his chair, running his hands through his hair. It seemed like he’d been arguing with Tinkerbell a lot more lately, and he hated it. He knew that bringing up her lack of humanity was a low blow. After all, Tinkerbell hadn’t made herself the way she was; he had. He was responsible for everything she was, and that included her decision to cut off Tiger Lily from the Internet. But he still felt angry at her and he still had yet to decide whether or not he could trust her completely.

This is the other reason I don’t like having to deal with people – I get enough grief from the program that inhabits my computer.

Peter reflected on what a strange, strange statement that was.