Omega

Recently on Dinosaur Comics, we've been learning the story of Robert Scott. In case you do not care to click on links today, I will sum his story up thusly: tried to be the first to reach the South Pole, ended up coming in second, and then dying on the way back. Oh, and the rest of his crew, too.

Tragic, tragic.

Anyway, part of what we learned about in Dinosaur Comics was that Captain Scott (whose middle name was Falcon how cool is that?!) wrote a final letter to his wife, which, quite frankly, made me cry, especially because he goes on a great deal about how much he loves her and his main regret is that the price of his mission is that he will never see her face again. I mentioned this to Nathan, and he said (incredible paraphrasing going on here), "Don't worry- I have no plans for adventuring: don't want to be the first at anything. I'll be the last."

This, of course, got my story-brain going down the path of people who want to be the first to do something, and what if a guy really wanted to be the first at something and kept narrowly missing, so instead he decides to be the last to do something. And at first I cracked a joke about this guy getting to the South Pole and sitting there and shooting anyone who got within a hundred yards of it, thus ensuring he'd be the last to reach it. But then I got to thinking- well, he's going to die eventually, and then someone else will just come along and do it. So I thought, well, he could do something similar with a planet. Booby-trap it, or something. And now my mind is a whirl with "How would I permanently ensure that my character be the last to do a given thing?"

Excellent fodder, I think. But it will definitely have to percolate for a while. Maybe I'll turn it into a writing prompt for my writer's group...