The Survival Engine

“The Survival Engine: Cold” was originally written as an eight page short comic script around 2009. It was written as a teaser for the larger animal, which is “The Survival Engine”. So what was the larger animal all about?

“The Survival Engine” script clocks in at thirteen chapters and 315 pages. It’s big and nasty and very personal for me. That’s probably why it’s still a script and hasn’t been submitted to an artist yet. It’s a story within a story within a story and, yeah, I know how pretentious that sounds.

It is, on the surface, the story of a man surviving on his own in the wake of a biological apocalypse. The word “zombie” is never used at all throughout the book and, point of fact, you don’t even see one until the last chapter. It is a zombie survival book with almost no zombies because at the end of the day it has nothing to do with zombies. It has to do with survival.

Under the surface it’s a story about surviving in the real world and how easy it can be to lock yourself away just to stay safe. The main character, only ever referred to in the script as “HE” or “HIM”, has chosen to armor himself against the world for fear of getting hurt. You can’t be harmed if no one can touch you.

At its heart “The Survival Engine” is autobiographical. It was about me and where I was emotionally in 2008 and part of 2009. I was a pretty miserable bastard. Then I met Laine.

It’s now July 21st, 2012 and we’ve been together for three years. We’re getting married next year. She’s the one who showed me that life isn’t just about surviving. Life is meant to be lived. It was then that I wrote “The Survival Engine”. I hope it translates well to prose. Enjoy.

July 21st, 2012,
Boston, MA
Darwin Law