In the world of journalism, there is a place known as the morgue. This is the place where old stories are kept on file. I borrowed from this idea and called it the tomb. The tomb is where I put my stories to rest while I work on another one before I return to it. Last night I was able to finally put “The Tower” into the tomb. This also explains why this blog entry is late. I apologize to my blog readers, but I was pushing this short story into its 6th (or tomb) draft.

I have described this story in the past and on my website at www.davidalanlucas.com. As I wrote the story, I left the moral dilemma unresolved. At first that bothered me, but as I revised it I found that the moral dilemma was meant to be unresolved. Life is not like the one hour (or really 40 minutes after you remove the commercials) television shows where all the moral dilemmas are resolved quickly. Most dilemmas in real life take years, generations, or are never solved. I wanted “The Tower” to show the beginning of the dilemma that is faced by a handful of surviving humans who are exiled to a hostile planet because the Earth is no longer able to support life.

In the story, mankind has settled on a new world. They are having to use the last of their resources to colonize and terraform this “lifeless” world. However, they learn that the world is not lifeless. In fact, the environment that mankind finds deadly is the natural environment to this other life form. I want the reader to walk away from the story and ask themselves, “What would I do? “ and “Is there a middle ground?” What would the last of mankind do if faced with the idea that for man to live they must commit genocide of an indigenous sentient life? “The Tower” does not answer this question. It poses it for debate.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on my stories and blogs.