Action Adventure / Synopsis: Lottery Dreams

Synopsis: Lottery Dreams

        Lottery Dreams is the title of a novel I’m thinking of publishing on this site. If you want to know more, please stay tuned. Steve.

This is the story of a group of simple working class men who win the lottery. You follow them on their adventure through the hell of factory life, with its crushing boredom, to the heady heights of having more money than they can spend.

        Throughout all this lurks the sinister figures who really run the world, granting the men their fortunes for their own terrible reasons.

        Caught up in all this are such characters as Charley and Natasha. Charley is a simple factory worker, trapped by his own weakness. So when the millions of the lottery come along, he realizes this is his chance of escape. To make something of himself and prove to the world that he has a reason to exist.

        Natasha is a very different person. Starting life as a sex worker, could have trapped her in the usual nightmare. But this is no ordinary woman, and where a lesser person would have buckled, Natasha sees life as a challenge. She rises to become a very powerful character in the world of pornography, and the new world of global television. Here is the heroine that is not afraid to take on the world. Confident in the knowledge that she will always win.

        Overshadowing all this, is the character of Pierse. Born to a family that has striven to become amongst the most powerful in the world, he realizes things have to change. They do not have a God given right to rule, and each generation has to prove itself. Caught up in a struggle for domination, he sees the lottery winners as tiny cogs in a huge wheel. He has his own sinister reasons for the manipulation of the men, and has to try his best to take the winnings away from them.

        The thing about this lottery win, and which marks it out from any other, are the amounts involved. Not only do they land £50,000,000 but also have the tantalizing chance of getting another £200,000,000!

        But here is the clincher. Although the men get their hands on the lowest prize, they cannot claim the largest, as they have lost the ticket! Trapped inside one of the old machines at their own factory, Charley has to chase it around the globe, in order to retrieve the money. Set against the backdrop of global trade and asylum exploitation, the main character in the story, sinks deeper and deeper into the nightmare that is preventing him from claiming the final prize.

        You follow the lottery winners through the struggle of climbing out of the factory, through the spending of the money, to a race around the world to find the final winning ticket. Here is a world inhabited by evil men who are hell bent on setting life back to a new Dark Age.

        With islands that operate slave camps, and even use human beings as spare parts for operations, the main character: Charley, has to face the terrible truth that he alone has to bring the ticket back from the other side of the world. To make matters worse, it is not a simple matter of picking up a piece of paper and running back home. For this particular piece of paper is stuck in the machine itself, and the only way to get it home, is to manhandle a huge piece of steel around the world.

        Always in the background, is the figure of Pierse. Most of the money in the world is not enough for him, as he wants it all.

        The story starts in the little backwater town, set in the English East Midlands. Here the men are trapped by factory life. Never having the courage to climb out. Their boss: Eurco, is a typical bully, who knows he can exploit the men for his own sick enjoyment. And no one stands up to him. The only way the men are ever going to escape this nightmare, is by a piece of luck, so fantastic, that it could only be beyond their dreams.

        Taking the lucky numbers from the vital statistics of one of the pinup girls on the factory floor, they find by a strange twist of fate, that they have actually done it! The very same pin-up girl, is to hand them their cheque for the fortune. However, life is never quite on their side, and although they have some of the money, the final fortune cannot be claimed.

        The rules of the game are, that you need two pieces of paper to prove you drew the ticket, and they only have one. After wracking their brains, they reach the only horrible conclusion, that the ticket fell into one of the machines at the factory. But strangely the very same factory is now closed, and there is no way they can retrieve it. So one of them: Charley, hatches a plan to follow the machine, only this particular machine is destined for the other side of the world.

        The running theme of the whole piece is that their world is changing, for a new world of the global economy, one that they can do nothing about. So they are caught up in the global struggle to make sense of a world, out of their control.

        All the time, there is one man who does know how to control the world. Pierse comes from a family that has risen up through the ranks. He is determined not to make the same mistake as his father and grandfather before him. He wants to rule with wisdom, and not through fear. But he is up against the most sinister organizations in the world. Not just the obvious ones, that give people something to fight against, but the hidden; covert ones that only make themselves know, once they see a threat.

        In Pierse, they see a new era. Knowing that they cannot fight him, they ally themselves to his family, and ask him to rule the world, in the same way that they have done. Through clever manipulation. A slight of hand, which none must know anything about. None of this must be leaked to the outside world, and they are experts at making sure it stays quiet.

        So when leaks begin to appear in the system, no one is more alarmed than Pierse himself. The last thing they want, is for the truth of all this, to be highlighted in the media.

        Meanwhile back on the island, Charley finds himself a prisoner of these sinister forces that are trying to stop him getting his hands on the winning ticket. After sparking a prison revolt and a final revolution, he then finds himself in charge of the island. Full of asylum seekers, all wanting a better life in the west, they achieve the impossible, and make their escape in an old ship. Here Natasha finds herself trapped on the island, a victim of the callous attitude of her employers. She vows to team up with Charley and get back home.

        Although the ships gets them further than anyone expected, even through adventures with pirates, in the ends it breaks up. Landing them on an island that traps the asylum seekers for spare body parts. But even this is thrown into chaos. Throughout the story, we face the facts of change in a changing world. Nothing can stay the same, and finally they escape even this.

        Making their way back home, they succumb to the inevitable conscience of thumbing their noses at the world. The final ship they board, is sunk off the coast of Norfolk. No one thought they would get even that far, but it was all done for a reason.

        That reason being, that Pierse wanted the world to know about the threat of asylum seekers coming into the country, to cover up, what he was to do next.

        Finally he discovers who leaked the information about who he really is, and what he’s trying to do. When the terrible secret finally comes out, Pierse takes revenge on the media, in the final confrontation. One which will change everything forever.

        When Charley finally gets back home, he has to face some terrible truths. He had vowed revenge on the people who had made his life such a misery, and no longer interested in the money, he finds who he truly is. Vowed to seek revenge for the asylum seekers, he finds out that Pierse is behind it all. But Pierse saves him the trouble, and they face each other against the backdrop of changing world events.

        Charley finally grows up, and faces the fact that he cannot change anything. Grateful that he is allowed to keep the money, he resigns himself to living life as best he knows how. They return to the factory, but to run it themselves, and after much soul searching, joins Pierse in keeping the new world order.

Sample 1
What is a story?

        It can be a journey to a far off place, or just a way of escaping.

        For the people trapped in the factory, it was the story of how they escaped. Escaped their jobs; escaped their dull little lives and escaped from the story altogether.

        Life was bleak stuck in the sheet metalwork factory.

        “There’s only one thing we make here,” laughed the Foreman with a sneer, “old men!”

        What he meant was, they were here to be turned into old men, and every one of them would think: “It can’t end here. Surely not for me?”

        But it did.

        Where were the fabulous lives of sports cars and speedboats? Of long legged beauties basking in the hot sun? Of men in costumes opening the doors of their limousines, so they could pay a fortune for a meal they hated? Where was their share?

        It certainly was not here.

        On the morning Charley looked into the oily surface of the sheet of metal before him, that world was further away than ever.

        Hope was in sight. There was a way out, and Charley knew what it was.

        “How the numbers do on Saturday night Charley?” said Old Dave.
        
        Old Dave was not really that old. It was a name that just stuck. At 60 years of age, he was one of the oldest in the factory and by far the oldest on the factory floor. His experience made up for so much, the others were put in awe of him. When a management decision came down to them, Old Dave would cut through the jargon and the deliberately muddied waters, to deliver his opinion of what it really meant. The management hated him, and the men loved him. Long ago in the old Union days, he would have been a firebrand. A real lefty, who would pin down the greedy management with his expert knowledge of employment law, and a hatred of the bosses.

        Those days were long gone now, and no one wanted to return to demarcation and a choice between strikes and the dole. But the old hatred was still there.

        “The lottery?” Charley had almost drifted off, and came back to concentrate on their favourite subject. “We got two, but the system fell to pieces, as usual. I tell you Dave, we are never going to crack it. All that talk about a winning system, it’s just more bull….”

        “Now the system works Charley! No one can say it doesn’t” Old Dave was adamant about defending the system.

        “When has it ever worked?” Charley wanted to know.

        They would have gone into a long discussion over the mathematical implications of their system, if it were not for the foreman, Eurco, wandering over to them at that very moment.

        “We are not paying you to hold a Mother’s Union meeting here. If you don’t like the work, there’s the door.” His nasty bony finger pointed at the main door of the factory, and every man bit his lip to return to what he was supposed to be doing.

        “Never worked on the machines,” said Old Dave under his breath, once the man was out of the way. “Landed his job by befriending the management.” He had good reason to hate Eurco, even giving him the nickname. Old Dave had taken it from Planet of the Apes. Eurco was the ignorant leader of the Gorillas.

        “Well he landed on his feet, that’s all I can say. He doesn’t even have to bother doing the lottery, with the money he’s got.” Charley pondered the implications of such a position, as he heaved sheets of steel into the blades of the machine. The heavy blades hammered down on the thick sheet to cut it in two, and let the other piece fall away in the back. How many times had he watched that happen? How many times would he still have to witness it? Would he see nothing else, until the day he died?

        Panic set in, and Charley felt a cold sweat cross his body, as he looked around. He had to get out. He did not know how, but he just had to escape. He could not spend the rest of his life watching steel being cut every day.

Sample 2

Many of the crew chose to join the pirates, and Charley convinced them this was for the best. By now the pirates were pale with the horror stories of the island; the revolution, and the terrible retribution, which would follow all those recaptured.

        The skeleton crew of the good ship Lottery pushed on into the Southern seas, and a passage back to England.

        Just how far Charley hoped to get in this old ship was never clear. Matters came to a head when one of the driving rods snapped clean in two. It was so central to the working of the engine, that everything came to a grinding halt.

        “Can you not rig something up to get round it?” Natasha stood with the others in the torchlight, whilst they examined the engine.

        “No, this is a main feeding rod. Without this the main drive shaft will not function properly.” Charley knew this was serious.

        “Will it not go at all?” Raj wanted to know.

        “For a while.” Charley held the severed length of metal in his hands. “But eventually the whole damn thing would seize up. And then we are really lumbered.”

        “Let’s go back and ask for help from the pirates?” Natasha was thinking of a way out.

        “We might not make it. If we use up the last of the engine getting back there, we risk destroying the ship for ever.”

        “Then let’s do that?” said Raj.

        “What happens when they find out about the lottery ticket? They might worship the Goddess here, but £200 million stirs up a lot of blasphemy.”

        “He’s right,” said Natasha, sitting on the engine. “They would turn on us, for the money.”

        “But, only you can get it, right?” Raj pointed out. “You have the other ticket?”

        “They might not be so agreeable this time. What if they send some of my body parts back home, mailed in a box? I think the other guys from Cobol would give in and Air mail the other ticket back. I know I would.”

        “So we can’t go forward, and we can’t go back?” Natasha stood up to pace the room. “What can we do?”

        “We could try repairing it?” Charley pointed out. “We had to mend old machines every day back in Cobol.”

        “What would it mean?” Natasha knew it was no small fete. “I mean you will need welding rods and things, right?”

        “Not with a cast piece. We will have to brazed it together.”

        “Just strap it together!” Natasha clearly had no patience with technical things.

        “Once set sail across the Indian Ocean, we have to make sure we can reach the other side. You saw the faces of the pirates when we told them where we were going? They did not believe we would make it. And now, we have the proof.”

        “Why can we not weld the piece?” Raj wanted to know.

        “Because it is a cast piece of metal. If you weld it, sure enough it will stick, but the weld will be harder than the metal surrounding it. So it will always fail. Once we start welding it, we will end up welding every inch, and by then we will have run out of gas for the blow torch.”

        “What do you suggest?”

        “We braze the pieces together with brass.”

        “Let’s go for it?” said Natasha.

        “The problem is,” pointed out Charley, “that we need something to act as a flux. In order to make the brass flow evenly. Needless to say, we don’t have any.”

        “What?” asked Raj, smelling defeat.

        “Then what can we use in its place?” Natasha was not beaten. “What does this flux stuff actually do?”

        “It helps the two joined parts flow together. Even temperatures, with even results.” Charley looked around and wondered what he would do.

        “You are clever Charley. Just find something which looks the same and does the same job?” Natasha was not prepared to throw her chances away on something so obscure.

        “We have to be very careful on that score. I once saw a guy set himself on fire by mixing the flux up. Back in the factory in Rutland, we had a real mean bully, like Rufus. Only this asshole just threw anything in the flux. Stuff from year’s back. Well, no one really knew what was in it, so when an innocent body came along and began using it: wham! Up he went.”

        “We certainly don’t want any accidents out here,” said Raj. “We are so far from a hospital, what would we do?”

        “Burn to death with the ship, more likely,” added Natasha. “Look Charley, we can’t just give in. There must be something lying about that can do the same job? What about all that stuff we brought from the island? The machines from the satellite studio?”

        “Brilliant!” Charley sprang up from the floor. “There must be something attached to all that equipment?

        With that, they all sprang into action.

        The piles of equipment, which had been salvaged from the old broadcasting studio, were laid out across the deck. In the sunlight, they took a very close look at it.

        “I was on the verge of tossing this lot over the side,” said Charley, as they walked around the piles of wires; switches; circuit boards, and electric junk.

        “What are we looking for?” Natasha joined in the search.

        “Anything with a funny looking colour about it.” Charley held up a piece of equipment from the guts of a large machine. “Anything like this!”

        “It just looks like mould?” Raj could hardly believe his eyes. “Is that it?”

        “That’s the very stuff we are looking for.”

        “But that’s tiny,” added Natasha. “How much of this stuff do we need?”

        “About a pound,” Charley cupped his hands together to show, they had to be filled with the magic mixture.

        “We will have starved to death by then!” Raj threw up his hands in despair.

Sample 3

When he awoke things were very different. First of all there was the sound of barking, filling the air, and looking around, Raj saw the sight of two dogs snapping before him.

        Suddenly he realised they were snapping at him, as his legs had been chained apart, for the dogs to strain on their leashes, only inches from his genitals. Desperately he pulled on the shackles binding his arms and legs. Who would have done such a thing to him, and why?

        “Help me! Please!”

        “What the hell is this place?”

        Natasha sat up and felt the chain pull against her arms. Looking around the cell, she sat bolt upright, as she saw the predicament with the dogs.

        “What the hell happened to you?” she asked as the dogs snapped forward, and the boy pulled back.

        “The more you try to struggle, the worse it gets.” Doctor Creek walked into the cell, holding a syringe.

        “What kind of set up is this” Natasha wanted to know. “You making an S&M movie? Because I’ve been in a few, and this is a lousy set.”

        “I know where I’ve seen you now,” Raj edged away from the dogs. “Dr Creek, or whatever you call yourself. You were called Dr Death in Iraq.”

        “The media! What do they know?” The good doctor toyed with the syringe as one of his assistants brought a tray of bottles into the cell. “For years the Americans mocked my work. Then when the Gulf wars began, I was in such demand, we could not keep up. The lab subjects came thick and fast in those days. Now, I have to make do with refugees and asylum seekers.”

        “Is that what we are? Lab subjects?” Natasha knew a nut case when she saw one, and realised things looked bleak.

        “What the hell sort of experiment is this?” cried Raj, as the dogs bit on their chains. “I’m about to lose my most private parts!”

        “You never miss what you’re never had,” laughed Natasha, nervously.

        “I’ll never get a chance now!” cried the boy.

        “Keep quiet, they smell fear,” said the Doctor.

        “They’ll smell something else in a minute!”

        “Now look here buddy,” said Natasha trying to negotiate with the man. “I have over a hundred thousand dollars in an account in California. I can wire it through, and no one need know what you have been up to here? How about it?”

        “I don’t do deals with hookers. Perhaps you would like to talk it over with one of your colleagues?”

        Just then a guard dragged someone into the cell and threw them on the floor before Natasha. The face looked up to reveal a bruised and beaten girl.

        “Clare how did you end up here?” Natasha stared open mouthed at the girl they had seen disappear beneath the waves.

        “I got washed up on the beach, and these crazy people found me. Jesus Natasha they are evil. Rufus was bad, but these bastards just cut people up.”

        “Shut her up!” snapped the Doctor to the guard.

        “Don’t you hit that girl!” shouted Natasha. “The whole world will be watching this place. We just left an island, which was about to be swamped by the world’s press. They will be following our ship.”

        The Doctor hesitated. “How could they be following a bunch of runaways, in that old tub? Who would care?” He sneered now, knowing he had the upper hand.

        “We had a satellite dish onboard. Charley always said that if we beamed a signal out, they could triangulate it, and pinpoint us anywhere on the planet.”

        “You’re bluffing?”

        “Am I? How do you know there’s not a fleet of US warships looking for us right now?” Natasha wondered if he had taken the bait.

        “Why should they be looking for you?”

        “Not us. The guy who got us this fare was one of the multi million pound lottery winners.”

        “There are plenty of those, and they don’t command the attention of the US navy.”

        “The double winning Euro lottery. Heard of them now?”

        The Doctor stopped examining the tray of drugs and looked at the guard. “And where is he now? This double winner?”
        
        “We parted company, but he never gives up, and I bet he’ll be here soon. He’s turned into some kind of campaigning angel for justice. That island back there was a slave camp. He was dumped there by a big syndicate that wanted him silenced, and now he’s escaped, there’ll be trouble.”

        Trouble there was.

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