Very Like A Whale

     I am Isaac Tracer, Staff Sergeant in the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps. This is my story.
     I had just graduated out of basic on Biko, a colony planet in the Epsilon Eridani system. Fresh out of boot, I was in the barracks waiting to hear where I would shipped out to. Our DI read out the graduates’ names, one by one. When he finally got to me, he looked up and said: “Congratulations, Tracer, you’re being shipped out to Reach for further training. You are being given the option of becoming an ODST. Are you up for it?”
    Orbital Drop Shock Troopers were the stuff of legend. I had read articles on them through the daily newsletter the camp sent out. I had read that they come out of the sky in flaming pods that land right on top of you. Their ops rarely exceed more than twenty minutes and they leave a trail of destruction in their path.

Whale Boy, who is sixteen and obssessed with video games, especially Halo, and with joining the Marine Corps, is writing a novel. It’s up to 20,000 words and ten chapters and completely derivative. That’s part of the first page. We’re on vacation together at the moment and part of what we are doing is editing what he has written so far.

Which is turning out to mean that I read the story aloud as he has written it and highlight punctuation and grammar weak spots for him to correct as he reads along on his laptop. I’m not doing anything else, not sure I could do anything else. I just want him to finish it. And then maybe write another two, or three, before he actually writes one that is Whale-Boy-created and that he might think about keeping.

His spelling is great, his punctuation appalling. Beyond that, I feel totally lucky and so favored because I have a son who seems to want to write.