FLICKER STREET Treatment # 1: Backstory

So here at last is an extended treatment for my magnum opus of sorts, Flicker Street. I began aiming for a 15,000 word 3 part master treatment but found the research (into my own work...) daunting for now, in that I wanted to post something as promised on time for once. Thus I'm posting only part one, followed by answers to the basic questions of just what the hell Flicker Street is/ means/ etc. 

The main action of Flicker Street will transpire between the years 1987 and 2016 (I am currently working on the events of 2010), but this backstory will hopefully give a small taste of the background elements that, truthfully, as in the case of the forthcoming genealogical charts, will enhance one's experience of the tale but one need not feel beholden to them. 

One will notice an open-endedness to each segment, and a hopping about chronologically. Some things will come into focus after one has digested the overlapping sequences; much more will be made apparent in the next treatment. As noted at the conclusion of this post, character is tantamount in this saga, but the genre trappings give one a wide berth when it comes to the kind of stories to be told. when it comes to telling this story - nihil obstat!

FLICKER STREET
by Henry Covert


Treatment # 1 - Backstory


I. The Soft Conquest


Like many a tale, Flicker Street begins with war. This, however, is a war where both sides are too jaded to actually fight. It is, nonetheless, A millenia-spanning cold war - between the Omegans: explorers, wanderers, adventurers, decadents ...star gypsies roaming the cosmos; and the Pisceans – mystical, spiritual, beyond the temporal or corporeal... soul fish swimming the current of the ether.


Omegans, natives of the star Omega Ceti I, have allowed technology to render them a life of opulence. The class wars that plague Earth are rarely problems here. No one is starving, no man consumes another beast for food. Omega's utopian existence is monitored carefully by its orbital capital city, the starfaring Hemiopolis Fractorium.


Pisceans are close to nature. Alchemy is their passion, and yields medicine, well-being, and heightened consciousness. They commune with presences that inhabit non-corporeal spheres. They have mastered the healing arts. Saurian in nature, they can physically shape shift (as can Omegans). Pisceans consort with true magick. Life, as for Omegans, is lengthy by Earthen standards – and filled with experience and new sensations.


Both races have reached the seeming apex of their respective technological and cultural development. And hence, fighting off inevitable entropy, they both begin annexing other races, “soft conquests”, so to speak... Rather than pool their monumental knowledge for an even greater harmony, they seem bound to be rivals – to compete for the attention of “lesser” races – i.e. those races that appear most receptive to their aims and philosophies. Neither race is, despite their ostensibly benign nature, above manipulation and infiltration of their target races. Neither side is particularly aggressive, hence the temperature of their conflict; thus, subterfuge suits them well as they both find invasions distasteful. Thus it behooves them well that both races can alter their appearance at will.


It has been estimated that twenty thousand of our years ago, the Omegans were the first alien race to reach Earth, in a magnificent starship they called the Terminus. They landed in the mountains of what is now northern Massachusetts. The native Americans believed them gods and helped them erect a huge pyramid-like structure around the mountain. This became an enclosed site and the highest peak in northeastern united states. It was eventually known as Mt. Mosaic.


The Pisceans first arrived on Earth shortly thereafter, in pursuit of the Terminus. Though they lost the epic “space race”, which by now was mere sport to them, they were welcomed by the native peoples of Central America, who constructed the Holy Ziggurat to house the captain of the expedition.


After a time, it looked as though real war would break out between the longtime rivals. But neither wished to use such an unspoiled planet as a beachhead for conquest. Hence the shaping of a new paradigm, a concept that was obvious to both races for eons but bypassed by their own stubbornness. They agreed to a grand experiment – a cosmic working. They called this Exodesia.


II. Exodesia


In an unprecedented move, the two stubborn races born of Omega Ceti I and of Pisces, agreed to allow test subjects from each race to mate and mingle. And to procreate. Their genetic structures, despite their outward appearances, were compatible enough to produce offspring. Some resembled their Omegan parent, and hence could “pass” as human; some their Piscean forebears. Some were hybrid. This gave the thinkers of the respective races much to ponder upon.


After a generation was fostered, they were given a new home. It was dubbed Exodesia, and ruled by a hybrid child grown to a powerful adult named Phallasma. Phallasma was a hermaphrodite and wielded science and sorcery with equal dexterity. Most hybrid children were male or female, but the birth of a hermaphrodite was always a cause for awe and celebration, for those fully attuned to the cosmics of their two parent races, and their two sexual selves, could wield great power. As thousands of years passed, the hybrid “look” became dominant in Exodesia, thus fully marking them as their own race. They, like their alien forebears, were blessed with longevity – an Exodesian could live as long as 2000 years at the utmost, though it was rare for any to reach that sacrosanct number. Omegans clocked in at 5000 years, and it was rumored that a Piscean could see 10,000 years of life.


The Exodesians lived in peace and solitude for millenia, honing their society into one steeped in the esoterica of Piscean religion and magicks and leavened by the luxury of Omegan tech. Humans rarely encountered Exodesians, who could pass for human (albeit odd-looking humans) by this point. Exodesians generally were careful not to mate with humans though it did happen on occasion. When it did, the offspring invariably appeared human but possessed special talents due to its unusual parentage. This new form of hybrid being generally could live 400 or 500 years and manifested various ultra-normal abilities .


In time, the offspring of Exodesian and human blood sought each other out. After many years of searching, a small aggregate was formed. These men became explorers, searching for the truth of their origins. One group of Dutchmen became determined to explore the mystery of Mt. Mosaic. Their guide was an ostensibly half-Exodesian mercenary called Ewen Cromwell (also known as Carnifex). The dutchmen founded a town in the late nineteenth century that came to be known as Hallmark, in Hallmark County, MA. The path the dutchmen followed Cromwell on was a straight and narrow trudge through snow, and flickering lights from where no one knew shone the way to the mountain. And so, in time, this path was paved into a road that ran straight through Hallmark and on to the highway. In Hallmark County, the road was called.... Flicker Street.


III. A Tender Alchemy


It was decided by the Omegans and Pisceans alike that the actions of the Exodesians in spawning with humans, and the actions of those spawn which led to the discovery of the Titanus wreck, were intolerable. They feared humans would one day breach Exodesia. But stealth remained their style, and so they elected one exceptional individual from each of their races to go to live on Earth as humans in human identities, and to monitor and influence events. Rather, to negate the influence of the half-breed who now craved their secrets. This was the first treaty enacted between the two races since the creation of Exodesia. The individuals chosen prepared by pooling their knowledge and each shape shifted into a more human form. The male of the two, Asenath-Zayan, a Piscean, went to Earth to live in Germany as a scientist called Friedrich Einnhauser, while the Omegan female, Ish, became the Chinese master of many disciplines called Shun Ti. The councils of each world preferred the two agents take more inconspicuous guises but they wanted to be placed highly enough to affect change. They arrived on Earth in the nineteenth century, shortly before Cromwell's party coalesced.


Unexpectedly, during their training Asenath and Ish fell deeply in love, but vowed to see each other on Earth when they could. During one of their meetings, Ish became pregnant with twin sons. The twins were born in 1872 (roughly). One appeared Omegan, human-like for the most part, and was named Ursulin. The other was dubbed Anaximader-Zayan and resembled a full-blooded Piscean - saurian but humanoid.


The Exodesians, for their part, were sick of the humans and wished to take over their world, using resources gleaned from their parent races. Again stealth and espionage, rather than outright invasions, remained their modus operandi. The history of the races infiltrating humanity is fraught with the exploits of spies and secret agents all the way up to the present day.


IV. The Cromwell Party in the Shadow of Mt. Mosaic


The expedition to Mt. Mosaic began in 1886 and consisted of the guide, mercenary Ewen Cromwell (AKA Carnifex, though not known as that to the party, but to his patrons and victims) and his son Cormac Llewyn Paige, as well as Cormac's Indian wife Janella Two Trees and their infant son Miles, and the Cromwells' cabin boy Cullen Darby; The Dutch explorer Ananias de Ruyter, his business partner Hendrik Van Hoke, and Van Hoke's South American assistant Guillermo Renova; the British plantation magnate Dr. Basil Orlison; the Dutchman who bankrolled the journey, Ambrosius ver Dorn; ver Dorn's employees Marcellus and Lotte Vossius (also one of Ewen's lovers); and the true leader of the expedition – the renegade Exodesian Jerissen. Ver Dorn had hired a passel of workers to develop the land surrounding and leading to the mountain and thus developed a small town for shipping in supplies and such along the “flickering path” (as Janella called it). Ver Dorn declared this the hallmark of their journey and hence the small town of Hallmark was established in 1887.


Cromwell, against Jerissen's orders, plundered the base of the mountain for minerals and gems – great riches were found there. Who left them, they could not discern, though many occurred there naturally. Hundreds of rare Indian artifacts remained as well. It was as though there was a centuries long trail of jewels and corpses winding its way up the mountain – but had anyone penetrated the deep rock housing The Terminus? Only Jerissen and Ewen suspected an interstellar or extradimensional craft lay covered in stone and ice, as only they were versed in Exodesian lore (though there was more to Ewen than met the eyes). What did Jerissen and Ewen find inside that mountain? What secrets still lie waiting in the hulk of the Terminus?


In any case, the founding and development of Hallmark led to a coalescence of immigrant families settling the outlying areas, specifically the town of Gossingham. Soon families such as the Vossiuses, Cairnes, the Fausts, the Palmers, the Parminters, the Rudisills, the McClearys, the Greers, the Westins, and many more poured into Hallmark and Gossingham – and all will have a bearing to some degree in our larger narrative.


V. One Hundred Years On...


Please excuse a brief flash forward to gain some perspective on the repercussions of the Cromwell party. 

It is 1987. Hallmark is a booming American city clutched, like most, in the throes of its excess - trickle-down economics, rampant capitalism, heavy metal and big hair. The major conglomerates based in Hallmark feed into all of these memes – ORDER Enterprises (Orlison-DERuyter), Renova Inc., and the Paige Foundation are foremost among such corporations. The names of Hallmark's founders adorn shops, signs, and skyscrapers in their ubiquity. But the most massive, troubled yet wildly pervasive corporate entity in our culture remains SkullCorp, based, but not originated in, Hallmark MA. In recent years, the feds, the police, vigilantes galore have tried to upend Skull and find the rot beneath – and have scored many a success. As the 80s wane, however, Skull is on the rise again, finding new ways to package its pop-culture omniscience. For Skull is not like the hallowed bankers and industrialists that built Hallmark. Skull is a “leisure corporation” - focusing on news, media, entertainment, keeping the masses occupied and empty of revolutionary thoughts – hence, Skull's resurgence is a prefect fit for the “age of excess”.


VI. The Machine?


The story of the so-called “Machine”, the entity that birthed SkullCorp, lies with a number of men hungry to exploit the growing rumors of power emanating from certain locales and personages. Greed was the major engine, it seems, that drove these men, as well as the hybrid races, and the Exodesians themselves. But in time there arose those who would challenge this state of things. Sadly it took quite a while...


Matthew Brighton (b. 1903) was a petty thief with heavy delusions, though tenacity was his redeeming trait. An impoverished Cockney teenager, an almost Dickensian figure, he stowed away upon a freighter to Massachusetts from England in 1920 with his pregnant mistress, who soon gave birth to his son Artie. Matthew was a jack-of-all-trades, a flim-flam man, constantly in trouble with the law in Hallmark. Inspector Withrow Saunders doggedly attempted to have him incarcerated, but Matthew was given special treatment by a shady lawyer, Kryle, who persuaded Matthew to wed the mother of his now two children. Thus Demelza Fluke became a Brighton and was soon pregnant yet again. He had a near-fatal brush with Saunders, but killed him. He went to live in a nearby small town, Gossingham, and raise his family under the name Burden. Kryle assisted him immensely, not part of which was that Kryle, it was rumored, had a taste for Demelza (now “Elza Burden”), and, some said, for Brighton/ Burden himself.


In Gossingham, the man now known as Massey Burden raised his three sons: Arthur Burden (formerly Artie Brighton), David Burden (ex-Davey Brighton), and Gregory Burden (ex-George Brighton). The thief and swindler Massey Burden was nearly apprehended for theft and was shot to death in 1934, alongside his wife and Kryle. The three children were remanded to foster care. Arthur began working at 15. All three men had much luck after being turned out of the orphanage (which they nearly set fire to). Indeed, it was hard to believe they were Brighton spawn, for each excelled at any number of felonious arts but managed to stay out of the hands of the law.


In the 1940s they naturally eased into organized crime (who helped them evade the draft), until they were informed of a nascent organization that would function as a clean entertainment corporation fronting an international cartel of vice. They were told this process was dubbed “The Machine” and fell ultimately under the rubric of a Mr. Drang, whom no one had ever spied. The three brothers had their first substantial disagreement over this direction. David and Gregory were wary; Arthur determined to climb to the top of the Machine. The brothers were ultimately in congress in 1951, when they changed their identities one last time, becoming, respectively, Artemus, Augustus, and Geoffrey Thorne. This was the year they ascended to the board of the Machine, alongside the men called Donal Rykards, Phileas Caleb, and Bromley Chamberlain, to name some key personnel. There was even an African board member, Kith (Abassi Mathabane); a self-professed German expat, Coyle Einnhauser; and a mysterious bronze-skinned man called Urias. This was the inner circle of what was dubbed the Skull Corporation aka SkullCorp, its name derived from an organization ruled in the East called the Black Skull Society. Did any one agent of Skull run things behind it all? A question many asked – and many paid dearly for asking. The answer was Mr. Drang. Finding out who Drang really was will be covered later in this narrative.


SkullCorp's goals were simple: keep the inner circle (“The Machine”) shrouded in secrecy; maintain an entertainment empire as a facade; orchestrate arms for drugs operations to bankroll a physical army of revolutionaries serving Skull (under the command of a man who ascended to the inner circle: Captain Vargas Llosa; Llosa lived in Libania, the country where the Holy Ziggurat was located with the buried Piscean artifacts); and to use cutting-edge science to experiment tirelessly with Omegan, Piscean, and Exodesian tech for their own twisted aims, be they conquest or pure pleasure. Perhaps not so simple after all.


VII. A Tender Alchemy Refrain


Shun Ti and Friedrich Einnhauser continued their affair; their children were sent to the planet each fit in best with physically, i.e. Ursulin was raised an Omegan; and Anaximander a Piscean. Shun Ti, whose disciples generally believed her to be a man, had founded the Tamerlane Overlords in 1823 and claimed descent from the conqueror Tamerlane (a figure Ish personally found distasteful but was legendary in China). She trained and honed students in a magnificent temple, utilizing what would be termed mixed martial arts today, but which were ancient among the Omegans for millenia. Rather than experiment as her race and the Pisceans had in creating the Exodesians, Shun Ti/ Ish saw herself awakening the natural chi life energy of her students. Hard science was of little interest to Shun Ti. The point where science and mysticism meet – that rare alchemy – was what drove the woman once known as Ish.


Shun Ti's greatest student was an outsider who mastered the Overlord techniques. He was an escaped African slave who stumbled upon the sanctuary Feng Qi (meaning “ethos”) in his flight from his European masters who were attempting to locate the legendary reserve but failed. He was captured by the students of Feng Qi and brought to Shun Ti, who soon mastered his tongue and told him he could never leave or share their secrets, but he could become one of them if he passed the training. For food and shelter, the highly intelligent and cunning man Abassi Mathabane traded one form of servitude for another. Dubbed Kith by Shun Ti, Mathabane remained at Feng Qi from 1844-1871, when Shun Ti declared him no longer trainable; he had reached the apex and was second only to her. He was acquitted with honor but craved more of the secrets of the Omegans and resolved to find Exodesia. He had learned much spying on his master; but what he failed to realize was that Ish wanted the tenets of Feng Qi exported. Hence, after she gave up her children, she accepted a brash Brit for 15 years of intense training – Ewen Cromwell.


Asenath-Zayan fared worse in his double life. He began his life as an orphan teenager in Berlin and altered his appearance as he grew “older” (though he really didn't age appreciably). When “Einnhauser” was in his 80s, Asenath faked his death and reinvented himself as his own grandson Friedrich Einnhauser II and at this time (the late 1890s), purported to be around 30. Einnhauser excelled as his “grandfather” had, and by the 1920s was firmly ensconced in the halls of academia. He was the first true physicist. Sadly the Nazis coveted his knowledge and he fled Germany in the mid 1930s. He shape shifted into a new identity and reached America, where he hoped to reach allies, but was found by a mercenary working briefly for the Axis – Carnifex AKA – Ewen Cromwell, who slew him, much to the chagrin of Ewen's employers. Cromwell became a wanted man in even more countries then.


VIII. The Chaos Song


There was one man who plundered the secrets of both Mt. Mosaic and the Holy Ziggurat (located between Libania and the trading town of Serafina). He also trained under the Tamerlane Overlords and was given access to Exodesian knowledge. But he began life as a seemingly ordinary Midwestern man called Caine Ledge (b. 1901) – ordinary save that he exhibited an intellect well above his peers in school, winning the lower middle class Caine a scholarship; he was superlative at sports but had little interest in them; and, some in the town opined he may be a “mongoloid” - an uncharitable way of saying “someone with Down's Syndrome”, due to the vaguely Asian slant of his eyes. But it was three key events that changed forever his suburban existence. First, as a teen, he entered into an affair with an older, apparently Asian woman called Ona. After weeks together, Ona abandoned young Caine.


Second, his father Richard Ledge (a traveling salesman) disappeared when Caine was in his twenties, and his mother Inga sank into depression and lethargy. Next, when Richard at last returned, Caine had this feeling that the man calling himself Richard Ledge was not his father, though they were identical in appearance. Foremost of all, he was actually kind to his son for the first times Caine could recall.


In any case, Inga and Richard had another son, called Coyle. Inga and Coyle left Richard, never to return, when Coyle was an infant. Inga left behind a journal for Caine. Caine was by now married to Claudia Clarke, and had three children of his own. “The new Richard” was more an avuncular figure to young Thomas Ledge, Caine's first born, but this ended when Carnifex slew Asenath-Zayan. Caine found his alleged father dying (the third key event in Caine's awakening) and was warned – he was admonished to study Inga's journal and he was told that the real Richard Ledge was dead; that he was the scientist Friedrich Einnhauser, and, above all, a Piscean by birth – not of this world. Coyle, therefore, was half-human. Asenath told Caine as much as he could before he passed, and revealed that Richard Ledge, the hard, cold man who raised Caine, was no more Caine's biological sire than Asenath was. Asenath's final utterance to Caine sounded nothing so much as, “Chaos...Song...”


Caine left the U.S. shortly thereafter, to follow the uncertain trail left by the two people he had considered his parents but whom now were strangers. In his selfishness and sense of betrayal, he left his wife Claudia behind with three children – Thomas, Delores, and Clarke. Inga's journal eventually brought him to Feng Qi, and a meeting with his real father, Sun-Kao Qua, and Sun-Kao's remarkable mother – Shun Ti, who addressed Caine Ledge thusly: “Welcome home, Kaosong Qua”. Caine Ledge preferred to choose his own new appellation, and answered, "Grandmother? Call me Kong".


IX. The Baron in Shadow


Though they were heirs to his genetic legacy, not all of Ewen Cromwell's descendants inherited his thirst for power. One branch in particular eventually proved his undoing. These were the Bradcrofts. In England, Cromwell dallied with a married woman, and the son was Mason Randell (b. 1850). Mason's daughter Suzette, wed Vincent Bradcroft (b.c. 1875) , a minor member of the peerage, a baronet (see Burke's Peerage). Vincent and Suzette had two sons, Dunne and Malcolm. Vincent was an occultist and learned the truth (or somewhat of the truth) about his wife's sinister grandfather. Vincent was fascinated with the founding of Hallmark and the notorious Cromwell party, as well as the fabled Holy Ziggurat. He founded a company, Bradcroft Ltd, dealing in occult paraphernalia, and hoped to raise money for archaeological expeditions to the mystical sites. Vincent became obsessed by the idea of another race co-existing with humans, and wondered what sort of mystical land they must inhabit. Most just thought Bradcroft mad, alas.


Each of Vincent's sons in their own way carried on his work. Malcolm became so intrigued by Mt. Mosaic that he moved to Hallmark in 1923. He soon wed Blair Paige, daughter of Miles Paige, who was born during the Cromwell Party's expedition. He opened an occult curio shoppe in Hallmark. Malcolm's brother Dunne was a bit more conservative and a total skeptic when it came to Vincent's claims. However, his twin sons, Ashton and Cary (b. 1925) were avid listeners to their grandfather's tales – especially the ones about a second race existing alongside humanity and armed with unfathomable occult powers. Their mother Elizabeth encouraged the boys behind their father's back, and encouraged them to begin saving for their dreams of expeditions into the unknown.


Vincent warned of other races manipulating humans, who had no chance, no say, none to protect them. Ashton and Cary were true believers and vowed that they would protect humanity. Their grandfather eventually went mad from the visions he had during his magickal workings – none realized he had glimpsed the Pisceans' eldritch alchemy and presences that they communed with - though the twins suspected such a thing was possible. They had begun learning magic from their grandfather secretly since boyhood, and when Vincent finally “cracked” in 1938, rather than be deterred, the brothers dove full tilt into the world of the occult. They formed a coven in college with a classmate, Remuel Van Juss (son of Dutch emigres). It was small, consisting primarily of the Bradcroft twins, a young half-Indian girl named Jerusha Dharma, and Remuel's siblings Katherine and Rachael. Soon, a socially awkward and aloof 17 year old with the unlikely name of Myrus T Fellbane was initiated as well.


Katharine soon gravitated romantically towards Ashton and they began an affair, while Cary fell deeply in love with Jerusha Dharma, much to the chagrin of Fellbane. The coven studied all through college and beyond. One of their teachers was Janos Disraeli, a world-renowned occultist who had made contact with presences from other planes. Remuel and his sister fell under Janos' spell and quit the coven. Rachael remained, and the Bradcrofts declined Disraeli's help, feeling it was a path that led to evil. They were more determined than ever to find Exodesia.


In 1954, they embarked for Exodesia in Africa. They were soon captured by two Exodesian priests, Alataris and Urias. The Bradcrofts attempted a peaceful exchange but Urias insisted they were encroaching on holy grounds and must be transmogrified in the “birthing chamber” to be alchemically cleansed of physical and spiritual impurities so as not to “pollute” Exodesia. They went along with this but once in the chamber, Ashton, ever rash, blasted Urias and Fellbane, coward he was, ran, taking Jerusha. Alataris subdued Cary and the twins were tortured and forced to prove their worthiness. But Cary broke free, yelling after Myrus to take Jerusha far away, down the path they'd marked. Cary attacked Urias and Alataris, and dove into the “birthing chamber” where Ashton was captive. Ashton was destroyed, or so it appeared, even as Cary made it into the transmogrifying chamber during Urias' final ritual.


Fellbane took care of the confused Jerusha, and the two made it down the narrow mountain steppes, even as a bright explosion flared in the air above them. Fellbane avered that the brothers were lost forever to them. This was doubly crushing for Jerusha, in that she realized she was pregnant with Cary's child. Fellbane took Jerusha to England, where his wealthy cousin Vanderville Tippett gave them both employ. They both apparently forsook magic, and Jerusha had a baby son, but refused Myrus' proposals of marriage. Jerusha wished to visit the twins' uncle Malcolm in Hallmark at his curio shoppe, but Tippett forbade the vacation.


In 1956, a man calling himself Cary Bradcroft came to attend his uncle Malcolm's funeral. Cary established that he was alive, and had been in touch with the ailing Malcolm, who willed him the shoppe – and his fortune. Cary immediately began the erection of Bradcroft Manor and got to know the citizens of Hallmark. Many times he had to relate the sad story of his “big brother” Ashton's passing. He was open about his mystical proclivities but most felt him harmless – though there were many sorry to see he survived his epic journey. He was passed on an honorary title in England of baronet, and was so amused he laughed aloud one day in his sprawling manse that he was the “baron in shadow”. A cold voice answered, “you shall be the Shadow Baron. And I – I am now merely Nocturno”. The voice was Ashton's.


A Quick Q & A:

“What is Flicker Street?”

A main street in a medium sized but flourishing American city. A community in the center of that city where all manner of bohemians and "freaks" find solace and refuge. A "flickering path" that leads far up a winding mountain that holds secrets humanity is likely not ready for yet, but which have shaped its history for millenia.

“What is the Flicker Street Family?”


The Flicker Street Family, as I've come to call it, is a genealogical chart consisting of dozens of families and hundreds of characters interwoven through blood, marriage, and other intimate partnerships. To quote Michener, “It's damned near incestuous”. Or, to honor Philip Jose Farmer, let's just admit that it is, in fact, in spots, rather incestuous.

“What Does Flicker Street Do?”


Flicker Street follows the modern-day lives and adventures of the descendants of two co-mingled alien races vying for cosmic supremacy. Flicker Street focuses on the inhabitants of a city perched near a mountain holding secrets of their very existence... and of otherworldly power.


The story is told in an open-ended, serialized fashion. It is like a multi-genre, multi-generational soap opera where we follow the lives (and deaths) of those that have inherited cosmic misfortune. The emphasis however will always be on character above all. How do these characters live? Where do they work? Who do they love and hate the most? You will become invested in this extended family of modern urban characters whose roots derive from an interstellar cold war.


"What is the Format?"


Much of the story points in the treatment above will be shown in flashbacks and cutaways. Side story arcs set in the early days enumerated here will be woven into the modern narrative as appropriate. Consider the fragments above to be chapters of unfinished tales. This treatment has been concocted to garner interest in the Flicker Street concept and brand. It is an origin story of sorts for the urban phantasia to follow...


Welcome to Flicker Street!


Henry Covert
June 15, 2015

Flicker Street, all images, characters, and story elements are Copyright 2015 George Henry Smathers Jr.