Hey everyone. I'm writing a SciFi thriller, set in 2045 Boston (A very realistic version, that's not so far off from Boston today. not a cyberpunk "Neo-Boston"). Tom, my MC is an Army veteran who was in Afghanistan and is suffering from early-onset dementia due to a head injury. He recently lost his daughter and met an old army buddy (Julio) at the funeral. After an attempt on his life during treatment at the hospital, he kills his attacker and escapes, not knowing who to trust, and not fully understanding where he is. (and seeing flashbacks of Afghanistan). Eventually, I want Julio to save him and take him to a survivalist hideout in the woods somewhere. Assuming that Julio sees the APB on Tom, I'm having trouble thinking of a way for him to find a wounded and disoriented man that's wandering/hiding out in the streets before the police do (who are also using drones for the search). Tom does not have anything on him but his clothes and is in an extremely confused state, which means the burden falls on Julio. Also, I want Julio's appearance to be a last-minute rescue, just before the Police get to Tom and have the POV follow Tom, not Julio. Any thoughts? Ideas? Thanks in advance.
Can you have Tom subconsciously/confusedly muddling his way to a place that means something to him, that Julio (and potentially the police) would know about? Maybe something connected with his daughter or her death, or else something which would make sense to a soldier in combat? Then Julio would be able to work out where he's heading and meet him there.
That's easy. If he's his buddy, he would know things the cops don't. Like he really likes (insert favorite food) and would likely have been spotted at (place where favorite food would be sold). Or he really likes (insert favorite activity) and would might have been seen at (place where favorite activity is likely to occur). I know you said Tom was confused disoriented and on the run, so that might make drinking coffee or playing racquetball problematic, but maybe there's something in their shared Afghanistan experience that Julio could use? Not sure what that would be exactly, but if Julio and Tom have some kind of shared trauma, and Tom seems to be reliving it, Julio would be able to predict his actions better than most. On a side note, if the story takes place in 2045, is the Afghanistan thing referring the familiar conflict or something that happened in the "future." If it's the early 2000s conflict, that would place Tom and Julio in their 60s. Which it totally fine... I'm just curious. If it were to be a future conflict (to us) you could go hog-wild and create all sorts of societal fallout. Massive veteran homeless camps. Displaced generations. Wide spread psychological effects. Agent Orange effects from bio-warfare. Endless possibilities.
Yes, they were there in 2010. Tom is about 60 and Julio is about 55. I really like the shared Trauma angle, thanks. I just need to figure out how to translate the trauma that he's hallucinating into Boston...
Have you lived in Boston or visited recently? I'm an hour down the road in Providence, but don't get up there much anymore. It's... fairly typical as far as Northeastern cities go.
Nope, not even close. I'm from Israel (Boston was just a perfect match for me for a lot of reasons and things I needed in other parts of the book). But I do have the added "advantage" of having military experience.
Yeah. That's like Mars in the "not close" department, haha. You're going to want some Bostonian beta-readers down the road. Like my fellow Rhode Islanders, they are a very specific breed. People are always people of course... until you get to my neck of the world. The same would probably apply to y'all over there, too. Curious as to which plot elements you attributed to Boston from an Israeli perspective.
The police find Tom because they have an APB and, well, they're the police. That's the job and a passing patrol car sees the man fitting the description, unaware Tom is walking along the street of his childhood home/early married life/something else of significance. They call back up and pounce. Julio thinks to search this area because he knows its significance from something said when they soldiered together. He arrives just as the police move to pick Tom up. Makes sense to me.
Julio wouldn't necessarily know about an all-points bulletin being out on Tom (an APB implies a major manhunt. Actually, I'm not sure if all homicides rate an APB. Maybe you've checked and they do?). You just need to come up with a logical way he would know Tom had slain the guy. He'd automatically know the cops would be after him and take it from there. By the way, harboring or assisting a fugitive is a felony. You need to give Julio a darn strong motivation for spiriting Tom away to the woods vs. finding him a good lawyer (I mean, Tom was defending himself and was in a state of diminished responsibility. A good lawyer should be able to get him off). Like he feels he owes Tom a favor from their Afghanistan days, or he has his own mental issues per the survivalist thing and thinks he needs Tom to help him with his private war, that kind of thing.
Easy. Read up just a bit on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Severe cases basically never recover. I came home from Vietnam in 1968. I lived in a small town, so initially I had no problems. But I came home in November. The next year I was accepted at an architecture school in a large city, where I lived in a run-down apartment in a "fringe" neighborhood. If a car backfired on the street, my immediate reaction was to find the nearest doorway I could duck into to escape the "incoming." It's not at all uncommon for people who were in combat to have PTSD, and it doesn't need to "translate" into Boston. It follows its victims wherever they are.
Thanks, SepereAude. Yes, I know what you mean. I too got messed up during my service (combat experience in Lebanon). And I did read a lot about PTSD. The "translation" I need isn't because of that. It's because he has dementia (which I also read a lot about), and is extremely confused and stressed. He is basically "seeing" Afghanistan in Boston. That's the translation I need to figure out.
No, you're right. I just tried to explain a complex situation without boring everyone with all the details. The bottom line is that Julio has a source that tells him what happened and that the police are looking for Tom. And also he has reason to believe that the Boston PD might be behind the attempt on Tom's life.
That could make things interesting. Like Julio nabs Tom and says, "Let's get outta here," and Tom says (providing he's lucid), "Wait a minute, I gotta talk to the cops. He attacked me, it was self-defense!" and Julio says, "No cops. I'll explain later. Let's go!"
Your premise sounds very interesting. I'm curious about how did his daughter die? If not by natural causes does Tom think someone killed her, as I assume if he has PSTD and dementia, he also probably has some form of paranoia. You could also use the paranoia for him thinking why after all these years did Julio turn up for his daughter's funeral. He might think did Julio have anything to do with his daughter's death, and also is Julio here to kill him. Your story is set in the year 2050, so by then drones, police surveillance, etc will probably be of a higher standard than they are today, Maybe show Tom has a keen interest in surveillance and technology, cos if he doesn't how can you explain him not being caught so easily. I think the idea of there being some kind of thing that connects Tom and Julio to Afghanistan is very good, maybe there was a mission they were part of that went horribly wrong and it was covered up and this haunt Tom. There could be a landmark in Boston that always reminded Tom of Afghanistan but he always stayed away from it, but now that his daughter is dead, he consciously or unconsciously is heading towards that place.
