Friday Fiction: Notes and Notes on the Notes to "Delphine"

THE DAY DAPHNE DISAPPEARS NOTES

Original Dream:

There is a teen-age girl, about seventeen years old. She has just come out of the hospital after a life-threatening episode. She is highly intelligent and has superpowers, like great fighting abilities and invisibility, tied to a skull ring she has. But she has been keeping them secret, just going through high school like a normal kid. She goes back to high school for one day and is loaded with a bunch of homework. She looks at it, and considering her near-death experience, it doesn't seem important. She realizes she may not have much more life to spend, that it's not guaranteed her.

She and her friends (who know about her powers) at the end of the day are in the parking lot, going to eat at Gatti's. She looks up at the sky and sees storm clouds gathering. She knows it is the Dark Powers gathering to strike, and she is greatly pissed off that they tried to kill her. It's Halloween. She turns to her friends and tells them, "Today's the day Daphne disappears." She wants to do it discreetly, to draw the evil off.

A group of evil minion thugs suddenly attacks Gatti's. The girl (let's call her Daphne; don't know if that's her real name or her alias) attacks them in an all-out beat-down, punching them, disappearing, then re-appearing to punch them again. The fight moves to a nearby gas station, and then goes to the KFC. Her friends follow. After she triumphs, one of her friends says, "If you want to be discreet, this might not be the way."

 

How can I find Daphne? She must be, in the way every character that comes out of my mind, me, and yet recognizably a seventeen-year-old girl. She has elements that are not very strong in me, but that I want to be strong: a sense of purpose, a sense of decision, a sense of action. Strip the incidentals of age and gender away and deep down we all have some very basic things in common; I'm not saying that age and gender and the things that make us ourselves do not matter. You get a very different experience when you eat raisin bread or whole wheat. But they are both breads.

And this story would introduce into the Bureau of Shadows stories a new element that could change the whole shebang: the Reals, both good and bad. People with Wild Talents; some organized into a monolithic block, others that fall into loosely allied teams, both monitored by the Bureau. The Block sees itself as above ordinary people, the Teams as simply outside them; both are, in their own ways, selfish. The Block sees people as a herd to be manipulated and plucked; the Teams are self-absorbed in their fate, almost 'Goth' if you will.

The Block wants to either recruit or stymie Daphne; Daphne would rather join a Team or start her own Team. Blake (now a full-fledged agent of the Bureau) wants to recruit her for the Department; the first 'Talent' to be so recruited?

Hospitals, churches, and schools are off limits, neutral grounds for the Reals. An old pact, or are Talents warped and unchancy there, or both, one consequent on the other?

The ring a focus, a kind of mental crutch. Not a source of power by itself.

Blake Martin would be about 28 now. Possibly Daphne is attracted to him? Some tension there.

Daphne could be Delphine: Dolphin, Delphi, delphinium (a bluebell-like flower).

“The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." ― J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds

Opinari Potest Mirabilius = stranger than we can suppose

Byron - logical abstainer, too outside for the outsiders

Cal - pragmatic gal, lantern jaw, frizzy hair

Albert - bulky, brainy, manliness enthusiast

ABC Squad

 

278. SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 (The end of the original dream)

THE DAY DAPHNE DISAPPEARS

Daphne turns to the thugs and delivers an ultimatum. "Now listen to this and listen good." She then delivers the speech in some weird language (Klingon? Vulcan?). The scene shifts. She has come aboard the Enterprise. She has disguised herself as a bounty hunter, let them arrest her and take her on board, to get on the ship. Now she intends to say she's reformed and to join the crew. One of her friends who has followed her says "With your shape-shifting powers, we could rule the galaxy." Daphne says, "No, I want to do this." By which I guess she means she legitimately wants to be part of the crew.

 

Notes to the Notes

So here are the original Notes to ‘The Day Delphine Disappeared’, originally titled ‘The Day Daphne Disappears.’ Included is the end of the dream that inspired it, where it descends into various absurdities.  The Notes written after the dream show me gradually developing it into the story it would become. You can watch it being adapted into a Bureau of Shadows story.

I thought about it becoming the first chapter of an entire novel and had vague ideas about the shape that it would take. After a few episodes ‘on the road’ Delphine would reach the Bureau, where she would be enlisted into a battle against the Block. After her powers develop and grow, that threat was defeated and she was revealed as the most powerful talent ever recorded, she would disappear again, this time from the Bureau, to follow her own path.

Why did I change ‘Daphne’ to ‘Delphine’? Maybe Daphne was too ‘Scooby Doo’. And Disappears became Disappeared. Wow, 2016. I think that was before I was even keeping a serious diary. Years later I though that other next generation Bureau of Shadows characters like Bazzel Butzehauser (Brother Silas, J.A.B.S.) and Cassie (A Friend You Haven’t Met) as well as Henry Byrd (Lovett’s Last Task), the Head of the Bureau, could all be part of the tale.

Mr. Gatti’s became fictionalized into Mr. Chezzi’s (i. e., Mr Cheesy’s). Man, do I miss the buffet. I still dream about working there; in fact, I did last night, probably brought on by reviewing this story. This time it was much more pleasant than it usually is. The skull ring is actually based on a purple plastic skull ring we've had for years, probably some kind of party favor.