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Wednesday, June 17th
Seven Years Ago
Modern Aquaria
Palm Springs, California
12:16 PM

Life after college had been difficult for Michael.

Shortly after graduation, he moved to Dallas and worked for a tropical fish distribution center. After spending two years making a good living off of something he loved, things took a turn. He suffered something his parents had feared and predicted: A quarter-life crisis.

Desperate to make something more of his life, he saved enough to lease a condo in Palm Springs and started his own aquarium shop, Modern Aquaria. Initially, the shop did well, winning over most of the local aquarium enthusiasts and drawing new people into the hobby. Years later, though, hard times hit nationwide, and aquariums became a luxury few could afford. The shop did worse and worse over time, much to his disappointment. After months of struggling to keep the shop going, Michael was forced to announce that the store was closing.

That was when Benedict found him.

If Michael had a list of the oddest people he had ever met in his life, Benedict would have soared to the top on psychotic wings.

It was the final week of business and Michael was working alone, catering to no one when an unfamiliar face walked into the shop. He was a younger, slightly heavy man who was just shorter than Michael. He wore a long, black wool coat in the hundred-and-six-degree heat. Black denim pants and black dress shoes peeked out from underneath the coat, and Michael could make out a white T-shirt and a black, rectangular pendant around the man’s neck.

“Hey there,” Michael said, welcoming the man as he did all customers.

But the smaller man appeared intimidated, initially drawing back before returning the welcome with a nod and forced smile. He started browsing and was soon lost among the rows of aquariums and supplies.

Looking back, Michael could never place why, but he had felt that now more than ever would be a good time to check the security cameras. Using a system of his own design, he turned on the monitors, knowing that any obvious robbery would be caught on the DVR back in his office. The monitor, hidden under the cashier’s desk, took a moment to warm up before the multi-image screen displayed the four security camera feeds.

He saw the man in aisle four among the tanks of saltwater livestock, hunched over and…

Is he crying?

Michael saw the slow heaving of the man’s chest and the constant wiping of his eyes. He was obviously upset, and he was trying to hide it.

In the otherwise empty store, Michael could hear the man talking to himself, his voice barely audible over the buzzing and bubbling aquarium filters.

“You have to. You need to,” he was saying. “You came all this way, came this far. You can’t throw it away now that you know what he means.”

The man’s head shot up, searching to see if he had been heard, oblivious to the hidden security camera among the décor across from him.

Now, Michael could clearly make out the man’s face. His eyes were red and his cheeks were pink from wiping away tears. He looked down, making more of an effort to compose himself.

Michael tensed. The man could be some kind of nut-bag or drug addict—or worse. He had come across some before; Palm Springs was known for its diversity and acceptance of alternative lifestyles—most of which were accepted and even encouraged—but it was no longer the most “family-friendly” place, once one searched behind the blacked-out windows of supposedly abandoned buildings. Every once in a while, some “undesirables” would creep out from those dark buildings and into the light when least expected. They were far from welcome, even in the famously tolerant city.

Was this man one of them?

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INSIGHTS!

I still find Benedict to be an odd character. He’s more or less the culmination of several scrapped characters filling this role in early iterations of DenCom and unrelated works. Looking back on the earliest iteration of what I would call the “modern” DenCom crew, the first distinct version of Benedict was a side character who didn’t actually run the company but managed to take over by the end of that scrapped project.

Going back even further, I can find similar characters from what was meant to be the final Michael Ridding story. In this novelette, Michael took on many of Benedict’s personality traits; in many ways, this version of Michael was the perfect combination of Michael and Benedict. I do have plans to recycle this concept into current DenCom canon, but not anytime soon.

Many facets of the series predate Benedict’s arrival, including Modern Aquaria, Palm Springs, Michael, Aron, Andrea, and Granger. That doesn’t make Benedict any less of a character, but he’s led the series in a new and hopefully original direction.

Then again, nothing is original. Look out for that blog post. 😉

Anyway, we’ll go a little more into Benedict in the next chapter!

That’s all I’ve got for now. See you next week for another blog post!

-S.T. Hoover

What am I listening to?

Super by Pet Shop Boys

This is by no means a new album, but I recently happened upon the vinyl at a book store, much to my surprise. I first fell in love with their album Electric, and suddenly, I had to have everything they put out, one of the first albums I spontaneously found being Super. Now that I have the vinyl edition, I’ll probably play it to death while I edit DenCom 2.

If I had to name my number one favorite thing about the album, it would be the variety of songs. Yes, it’s all pop, but how the album manages to pull off songs like “The Pop Kids” in the same vein as “The Dictator Decides” and “Sad Robot World” is something I’ve done my best to study every time I put on the record.