I haven’t talked about Polar Bear on the Loose for a long time. It’s the first novel I ever wrote. It’s been critiqued, and it’s sitting in my desk drawer awaiting the proper time to rewrite. Told in first person by a young female polar bear named Inuit (pronounced Eye-Knew-It), it’s a story of her adventures living among humans as if she were human. The opening is terrible, and this snippet is the second scene. It still needs a lot of work, and as I read it, I think I see where I’ve grown as a writer over the last four years. PBN is Polar Bear Network.
While the zoos and polar bears mentioned exist, all accounts are fictional. Feel free to say what does and doesn’t work for you (assuming anything works…).
My plan is for future snippets to be fresher than this.
NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, first draft, certainly contains errors, and possibly not even going to be in the final draft of anything. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.
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The truck comes for me tomorrow. Gus got my counterfeit research plan planted into the zoo’s research database. I’m into the system now and set for the next year and a half. This is one of the riskiest parts of the plan. Fortunately, PBN should be able to intervene if I become trapped somewhere. Chances of discovery are slim. The zoo folks don’t know we have the network. While we need to be careful, they don’t expect us to have these capabilities. Thanks to Gus’ ‘depression’ several years ago, we were able to get everything we needed to build a worldwide, wireless, secure network for captive and native bears to interact with each other. We’ve made massive strides in collaborative planning.
The Central Park Zoo thought Gus was bored, but he was working out the details of how to make the network happen, and he used what the staff thought was repetitive swimming to stay focused. Then he had to come up with something to throw that shrink they hired off his trail. Fortunately, Panasonic just figured the order to airdrop scores of Toughbooks to various arctic regions was for a classified defense project. It was a little tougher to get them into zoos, but somehow, Gus figured it out.
I move into the Assiniboine Zoo in Winnipeg to begin acclimatizing myself to living within the city. Debbie, Winnipeg‘s only polar bear, has been lonely. Since Winnipeg isn’t far from my home in Churchill, I believe I’ll feel better about making the transition. After three months there, I crawl into a truck and head to the United States and the Milwaukee County Zoo. The study’s premise is to see how a strange bear integrates with other bears. I start with a lone female (Debbie in Assiniboine), then I go to a lone male bear (Zero in the Milwaukee Zoo). Then I go back to the Henry Villas Zoo in Madison to see how I do with a male and female (Nanuq and Mischka). Then I go to the Bronx Zoo and spend three months with Tundra, Blizzard, and Snow Lilly (two males and a female). Lastly, I make a stop at the Central Park Zoo with Gus, Ida, and Lilly (one male and two females). Ostensibly, the keepers are monitoring how the captive bears receive an unknown newcomer, and they see how the newcomer bear reacts to the new and varied environments. And, of course, they record the actions of everyone. Several of the keepers are grumbling about it—they think it puts their bears at risk. In fact, that’s going to be our toughest thing—to act surprised to see each other. The PBN has carefully selected each zoo, and each participant has given his or her personal OK to the project. Ultimately, we need to learn human interaction to ensure the survival of our species.
At the Central Park Zoo, I’ll work with Gus, our leader, to ensure the project is on track. Fine-tuning will take place there. After the Central Park Zoo, we enter the next tricky part in our plan. We are arranging a temporary exhibit for me in Virginia, either at the Virginia Zoo or the Virginia Living Museum. We’d prefer the Virginia Living Museum, but we’re not sure if they have adequate facilities to keep a polar bear. This is particularly ironic, because my next step will be to move to a house in Grafton, Virginia, to live with my human host. Given that fact, perhaps a facility without enough security would be ideal for our plans! I gotta tell Gus. We’ve been wondering how to work out this detail. I’ll be an escapee! Perfect.
Polar Bear on the Loose. This is my story.
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I like the idea of this, especially during a time when polar bears are really and truly facing extinction. I have to admit that had a hard time suspending my disbelief though–I just couldn’t get past my own personal sense of the improbability of the whole idea. You know, the lack of opposable thumbs sort of thing that could hinder polar bears from using a laptop.
The writing is good and I like the pace and exposition but I needed that little oomph of something that would make me go wow, I really want to know how polar bears can string wireless. I just couldn’t in this little snippet. Perhaps if the PBN had a secret ally–activist humans, aliens, monkeys, I don’t know. Just something to keep me inside the story instead of distracted wondering how swimming bears have anything to do with wiring a network or where the bear is going to hide his laptop in his cage or etc.
Does that make sense? I really do like the idea and the writing is strong. It will be interesting to see what you do with this piece!
I know what you mean, Crystal. That’s one of the crucial things I have to work out, and your comments coincide with the feedback I got in the critique of the novel. Thanks for the feedback.
What a clever and unique idea! Yeah, smooth some of the suspension of disbelief a little in revision, but I’m very intrigued with PBN. Ha! I love it.
She wants to live among humans? I’m intrigued enough to want to read on, and figure out how they are going to achieve this. Otherwise Crystal pinged the same things I was curious about.
One of the “bad” things I did was get caught up in Inuit’s story and drop the PBN thread completely by the middle of the book.
I’m going to have to change some things for the sentient aspects to work — probably go to a telepathic phenomena vice a technical solution.
You already know what the weakness is, so I won’t be pointing that out. What I’ll concentrate on is the idea. Unique and lovely! Hope you pursue editing, rewriting, and getting this story published.
I always wondered about those bears…
You’ve got lots of really good ideas here. When you work out the communications part, this one will be on its way.
I had no problems to suspend disbelief and accept a world where polar bears have wireless.
After reading the comments, though, I wondered how they would avoid their sites to pop up on Google. Or maybe it could be fun to have humans think ít’s a game out there where everyone pretends to be a polar bear – like Secret Life or World of Warcraft and whatever. 🙂
So the pandas will be studying the scientists while the scientists are studying the pandas? This would probably lead to the pandas having a very skewed idea of human interaction. That would probably lead to some interesting encounters once your protagonist escapes. Very interesting.
P.S. Is your protagonist a male or a female? And, it they are facing extinction, will the bears attempt to breed while your protag is visiting these other zoos? Just a thought.
I liked it.
A good background snippet for a fun idea.
That is a really good idea, Gabriele!
Ann, you’re on track. Inuit is female. There is a love story in the book (no live polar bear sex will be found on the page though). And there is room for more books as the idea of polar bears integrating into human society expands. Which, of course, brings many more cultural and independence concerns to the forefront.