I have a lot of ideas for
stories. Like, if I wrote a novel’s
worth of them every month, I’d still most likely die before getting through
them all. I will admit that some of the
ideas probably suck, but I think there are some that a good writer could make
something of them. I’ll just never get a
chance to. So, I give them to the
world. If you can make something of
these, go right ahead. And if these are
the ideas I’m giving away, maybe check out the ones I keep.
This novel is almost
written backwards. By that I mean
there’s an archeological excavation on an alien world. The novel is broken up into ten or so parts,
and each part starts with a page or two of the archeologists finding some
item. Then the rest of that part is set
in the past showing how that item ended up at that location. The next part follows another item a few
meters lower down, meaning it was left there decades or centuries before the
previous item. Basically, we learn
aspects of this world’s history, but we just start at the last chapter and read
back to the first one.
So what’s this novel
about? At some place on this alien
world, there is a giant sinkhole, like a hundred meters deep. (You’ll need to do some math to figure out
just how big it is because you’ll probably want it to take at least a thousand
years for it to be filled with fist-sized rocks.) Near this sinkhole is a monastery. The story goes, that one day this monk named
Petep was meditating and reach a point where he split himself into his good and
evil halves. The two fought, and the
evil half was thrown into the sinkhole and a boulder was rolled down to bury
him. Petep took on some disciples, before
going directly to the afterlife. The
disciples built on his teachings and started a religion. The followers of the religion began writing
their sins on some paper, wrapping it around a rock, and throwing it into the
sinkhole, thus casting away their “evil halves.” And they believed that once
the sinkhole was filled, it would be the end of the world. Oh, and “By Petep’s Boulder” is a saying that
over the centuries has been a battle cry, their version of “Goddamnit!” as well
as their version of, “Aw jeez.”
The novel begins with
human archeologists starting to excavate the filled in sinkhole. After removing a layer or two of rocks, they
find some of the sin papers are still there.
They find one with some mundane sin, and that becomes the item for the
first part. We see what the person who
wrote it was going through.
As the archeologists dig
deeper, it will be harder to find distinct items. I think one item could be a special
rock. Like most of the rocks thrown into
the sinkhole comes from a nearby quarry, but maybe they find a chunk of
obsidian or something that came from the other side of the planet, so we learn
why that person went through the trouble of carrying it all the way there. Maybe for a time people carved their sins
onto sheets of metal. But that only
lasted for a short time, since it was a waste to throw all of that metal
away. And maybe Big Quarry stepped in to
stop it.
But there are also darker
items. Like maybe somebody stabbed
someone and they throw the knife into the sinkhole. This casts away their sin, but also
conveniently disposes of the murder weapon.
Darker still is when they find a skeleton. This turns out to be the last
Pope-equivalent. Petep had two main
disciples. At first, they worked
together for the religion, but over the decades they started to split over
doctrine. Eventually two branches of the
religion developed, we’ll call them A and B.
For the first two or three parts we read, there is no mention of A. But then maybe the guy with the knife killed
someone because he thought they were an A heretic, or whatever. During the part with the skeleton, we learn
that there was a civil war between the two and that B won. To cast away the sin of A, they take the last
A Pope-equivalent, and throw them into the sinkhole. The two sides had lived mostly in peace for
centuries, but they grew more antagonistic towards each other, eventually
leading to the war. And we learn about
all of this in reverse.
Eventually, the
archeologists get to the bottom of the sinkhole where there is a boulder that
had been rolled down from the surface. What
is underneath it will depend on what kind of story you want to write. There could be nothing under it, and we could
find out that Petep just got high one day and had a vision that got blown out
of proportion. To the point that
centuries later, when the people had finally filled in the sinkhole, they – on
their own – fulfilled the “prophecy” that it would be the end of the world and
they destroyed themselves, which is why it is human archeologists doing the
excavating.
Or maybe there is a
skeleton under the boulder. But whose is
it? There are several ways this can be
taken. Maybe Petep wasn’t a monk, he was
just the guy that grew the mushrooms the monks used for their visions. Maybe some of the monks in training befriended
him so they could get some of these mushrooms.
And one day they were out by the sinkhole goofing off and one fell in,
and they thought it was all a vision or whatever and rolled a boulder in on top
of them. When they sobered up they panicked,
and came up with this “Petep split off his evil half story.” But Petep could
only stay “good” for so long, and to keep him from blowing his part of the
story, his disciples made him disappear, saying he went off to the
afterlife. But years later, one of the
disciples wrote out their confession. Maybe
they threw it into the sinkhole, and somehow it survived the centuries, or
maybe it was just hidden away in the Vatican-equivalent vault and the aliens
only recently discovered it. After the
sinkhole was filled, and the world didn’t end, the religion died off. So they started studying the history of it
more. The reason they aren’t doing the
excavation, is that the site is still sacred, or taboo in some sense, so they
hired human archeologists to excavate. Any
interesting items will go to a museum, and all the rocks will just be dumped
back into the sinkhole.
Or maybe it’s Petep’s
skeleton under the boulder. Maybe, Petep
was a minor monk who often meditated on the rim of the sinkhole. From there he could see several boulders already
on the bottom of it, and one day – after some mushrooms or other items – he had
a vision of splitting off his evil half and imprisoning him in the
sinkhole. And for whatever reason, this
idea took off. Petep went from some
nobody monk to someone with disciples. But
the power corrupted him. Maybe he
started sleeping with some of his followers, but things went too far and for
whatever reason a couple of them killed him.
Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing, so they were limited in how to
hide the body. So they threw him in the
sinkhole and rolled a boulder in. Although,
I’m not sure how well you could aim a boulder to cover a body. Or maybe they planned things out and took the
risk of going down into the sinkhole to bury him. Although, would they have easy access to a
hundred meters of rope strong enough to be able to climb down into the sinkhole?
Or maybe the monks were
strict on celibacy, but Petep got a woman pregnant who threated to go to the
other monks, so Petep threw her in. Or
maybe Petep was gay, and that was illegal at the time, and his lover threated
to tell everyone. Or maybe Petep figured
out he could climb down into the sinkhole each night and find everyone’s sins
to blackmail them, and one of the disciples killed him. Or maybe the disciples were doing that, and
Petep threaten to stop them so they killed him.
Or maybe Petep was actually a woman, but at the time women weren’t
allowed to be intelligent. So she became
monk Petep to speak her mind. And when
the disciples discovered this, they killed her.
Or maybe Petep was like
the Intro to Philosophy teacher at the monastery who taught this “split
yourself into good and evil” bit as a thought experiment. But a couple of his students made a cult out
of it. At first Petep was happy that
more people were thinking about his ideas, but over time he saw his students
were just using it as a way to gain money and power. When he tried to stop them, they killed
him. But Petep had told his wife
everything, and she wrote it all down. And
maybe this account was passed down through their family for a thousand years or
more, until the world was ready to know the truth. Or maybe it was hidden in the monastery. After the religion died off, it was being
torn down and the true history of Petep was found. Or maybe the monastery was damaged in an
earthquake and the documents were found while repairing it.
There are a lot of
ways this novel could go. Any of the
ideas I had, some combination of them, or something completely new. That’s for you to figure out.
