Below is the rough outline for a short story that is in queue for this year’s June Camp NaNoWriMo. You can see a list of all of the stories here, or you can just click on the Camp NaNoWriMo tag and get all the planning goodness.

Verse: Carson and Ship

Working Title: A Song for Vacuums

Blurb: Carson teaches Ship to whistle as she works with unexpected results.

Rough Outline

1. Carson is always singing, but Ship can’t figure out why. Attempts to explain only confuse her more.
2. Carson is doing paperwork (yet again) when Ship starting whistling. Only her version of music needs help. And lo, he teaches her how to improv.
3. They dock at a port to stock up on repair parts, submit paperwork, and other basics of solitary rim assignment life. Ship is bored so she talks to the other ships.
4. Carson gets called back to the docks about a security breach and the fact Ship has now ‘infected’ the other AIs with the desire to sing. Attempts to explain don’t sit well with the Company. He finally convinces them to sing in octaves that humans can’t hear.
5. They are back out in space and Ship casually remarks that they’ve found a better way to sing, and it’s within the data compression algorithms. Carson is amused that the Ships found a way around the Company rules, but he’s also a little worried that he’s teaching them to break the rules.
6. They get a company-wide memo alert later, indicating that the corruptions in the compression algorithms have been detected—but that the additional communications methodology has been subleased to the military and adapted for internal emergency use. Also, whoever started this is in deep trouble, but they aren’t going to go looking for them because that would mean they get royalties.
7. All’s well that ends well, but Carson has to make Ship promise not to teach anyone else to sing.

Cast
Carson
Ship
Other Ships
Dockmaster/Pilots

Scenes/Sets
Ship
Station

Challenges

Carson and Ship have only really been in drabbles before, although I’ve written other short story outlines for them. It’s one of my favorite teams to play with, but since the setting relies on a lot more hard science, I’m always a bit leery I’m going to mess it up. In this case I have no idea if you can send messages through compression encryptions, but I’m going to run with it anyways…