Volcano Virus!! (Creativity Gone Amok)

Writing for MindTweaks is an exercise in staying focused, on track, on  topic and targeted.  I know, I know…  MindTweaks  may not *seem* particularly focused, but in the great creative chaos that is my life, this blog stands out as a beacon of consistency and order. (scary, isn’t it?)

Still every once in a while, I need to indulge in a bit of writer-ly spring-break madness, let my hair down and spew out free-form insanity. 

It may not be spring, but I need a bit of madness this week - and lucky you! I’m willing to share.  So without further ado, I present my notes for the Next Big Hit!

It’s a novel.
It’s a movie.
It’s a hit album.
It’s an uber-moralizing-epic-eco-horror tale.
It’s…

Volcano Virus!!!!

Our story opens with an idyllic beach scene.   Sunshine, blue skies, binkini’d babes and tanned hunks with six pack abs.  Toss in a bit of suntan oil and things get a bit steamy… no, I’m not talking about hot girl-on-girl massages.

Steamy  geysers erupt from the water.   Girls scream.  Surfers ride the vents  for brief moments of glory before being turned into lobsters. 

And then IT rises…. a SuperVolcano.  The scene is repeated around the world, toppling the Eiffel Tower,  erupting from beneath the Great Pyramids, all sorts of wonderful unlikely and absurd locations.   Buildings, cars, streets and people around the world are forever encased in lava, in a modern day Pompeii.

But why are these volcanoes erupting everywhere? What has brought this horror upon the Earth?

Enter the Obligatory Corporate Evil! In their rush to get more oil and natural gas from the underground reserves, they’ve used increasingly invasive drilling techniques, most notably the common method of  salt water injection. Turns out that salt water injection drives more than oil to the surface.. it drives lava upwards, too! But they don’t care! They’re Corporate Evil!.  Ooga booga BOO!

But our story isn’t JUST about volcanoes!

It’s also about a virus epidemic.  You might not have noticed, but its foreshadowed in the title:  Volcano VIRUS.  Get it??

When the ancient ancestors sacrificed virginal enemy warriors and sacred cows to the world’s volcanoes, the bodies didn’t *entirely* burn to ash. No! Underground lava lakes became giant petri dishes. Heat and lava resistant viral strains developed, interbreeding with the mad-cow villains, prions.  (and the occasional Toyota Prius, too. I’m sure some of them have been sacrificed by now, don’t you think?)

So when the Obligatory Corporate Evil forced the lava to the surface, they also released these new heat resistant horrors upon the world.   The steam vents and ash clouds are full of this bio-disaster — and as humans begin to breathe it in, the viral strains find their lungs far too cool for comfort. In response, they raise the body’s temperature until the person spontaneously combusts.

Entire hospitals go up in flames. Whoosh. 

There’s plenty of room for people, planes and trains to be chased by the apparently sentient virus in the form of streams of lava, clouds of ash, and steam geysers.  

Luckily, the epidemic is self limiting, since it destroys its hosts.  Once the Obligatory Corporate Evil has been covered by lava and turned into a modern Pompeii…  things settle down quickly.  The only people to survive are those who were quick thinking enough to immerse themselves in glacial ice-water or flee to the Arctic…  (more proof of the importance of the frozen tundra!).

I’m still fuzzy on our hereos,  but they are no doubt a typical American family,  with 2.5 kids (a boy a girl and a standard poodle named FiFi) and divorced parents that are brought back together by the crisis.  The father of the family almost certainly worked for Corporate Evil, and his workaholic ways had driven the family apart.  Still, he’s a good man and was going to the press as  a whistle blower when everything went kaboom.

I suspect the family survived by locking themselves in the company lunch room’s walk in freezer.  Cool, huh?

The closing scene? The family is planting flowers in the memorial ash and lava garden, once the site of Corporate Evil’s headquarters.  Throughout the garden are lava covered statues of the leaders of Corporate Evil, human beings encased  in lava, their evil greed forever frozen.  

Fade to black. Shudder.

Thus endeth this episode of Creativity Gone Amok.

I’m done with my creative venting, for now.  And I promise to be more rational and helpful next week.  Really