90 Has No Secant

90 Has No Secant is a horror novella by the literature division of Dozerfleet Productions first written in 2002 and has been revised slightly since then. It remains to be officially published.

Plot
A wealthy stock investor, Eva Rintel, awakes one morning after having a very disturbing dream filled with visual and verbal riddles. In the dream, she encountered a hostile hag with green metallic skin and red eyes, who was hiding behind a magenta cloak and a cauldron. The glowing, green substance inside the cauldron let off a vapor, which hovered over the cauldron in the shape of a hurricane.

She initially thinks nothing of the incident, and prepares to leave for the LaFoe Airport early that morning. Her emphysema-stricken and wheelchair-bound husband, Rick stays behind with their two kids Mandy and Tom. Meanwhile, a severe magnetic storm combines with the dreaded Category-5 Hurricane Nekoda in the Gulf of Mexico and destroys a cruise ship called the Landana. The Rintels get the warning that Nekoda has picked up speed and that an immediate evacuation has been ordered, but the TV explodes and Rick is unable to warn his kids. The kids are then attacked by objects inside the attic, and escape to rescue their tipped-over and helpless father. Before they can evacuate, they are forced to hide in the utility room when a pedophile named Dewey Reynolds breaks into their house. Dewey, also a professional thief, orders his drug-addicted Bahaman sidekick Lenny to steal objects inside the house while Dewey guards the entrance to the utility room.

Eva finds herself trapped in the LaFoe Airport with all the flights grounded and security set high. She rescues a young child named Annabelle from a falling TV set, and meets a young couple named Tim and Cassie. Cassie's cell phone begins receiving cryptic messages, as she and Eva try to figure out what's going on. Eventually, Eva meets a girl named Jessie who introduces Eva to a book. The book tells of the Rintolin clan that the modern Rintels are descended from. It also mentions that a witch named Sarah "Meshaluta" Umpid had cursed the family out of revenge for plotting her murder, and that certain "marked" Rintels are the subject of Meshaluta's desperate thirst for revenge from the grave.

Inside the utility room, several electronic devices begin to engage in paranormal activity. This forces the family to struggle for survival while various items from Eva's prophetic dream manifest. When a school bus from the dream crashes through the roof and the utility room becomes intolerable, the Rintels take their chances inside the house with the burglars. Lenny, being pacifist in nature, pleads with Dewey to be rational about their situation. However, Dewey obsesses over Mandy and takes her to the end of the large hallway. Lenny follows with Tom, as they continue to beg for Dewey to be reasonable. When Dewey refuses, flying debris meant for Mandy crash through a window and hit Dewey instead. A bolt of lightning also strikes, and Dewey dies immediately. Tom reasons with Lenny to help him rescue Mandy, and the magnetic storm dies. Nekoda picks up speed in sending its eye right over the house.

When Lenny dies after reuniting the Rintels, a part of the ceiling collapses and traps Rick and Mandy in the short hallway. Tom receives a phone call from Eva telling him that a helicopter will be attempting the family's rescue soon; but that Tom needs the attic transceiver to alert the helicopter crew to the house's location. Tom races against time to recover the transceiver and then find cover before Nekoda destroys the family's house.

Geography
As with most of the Gerosha comic book universe, 90 has a slightly altered US geography from real life. The Rintels live in a small town called Murian Twp., which is located in approximately the same location as the real-life Grand Isle. The LaFoe Airport is inspired by the South Lafourche Leonard J. Miller and Gerald R. Ford International airports. While the Rintel house is said to be on Plum Lane, there is little indication that Plum Lane in Murian looks anything like Plum Lane in Grand Isle.

Even the archhitecture of the family's house was cause for some concern. The original plan for the house was to have it include a basement for the family to hide inside of. This was replaced with a utility room when research of the Louisiana water table ruled out all possibility for the family to have a basement. Even so, their house is built in a manner in the conceptual art that is inconsistent with typical Louisiana architecture. This is because the original inspiration for its design came from a small house in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The Rintel family
The Rintels are a large family with branches all over the United States. Each branch, defined by state, is specific to one or another Christian denomination as well. The Louisiana branch is mainly Baptist, though their church attendance is somewhat erratic. Their Colorado cousins are Catholics, and their Massachusetts cousins are divided amongst several denominations.


 * Rick Rintel: Eva's husband; a wheelchair-bound sufferer of emphysema and chronic nosebleeds. With Eva leaving for New York, Rick soon realizes he will need to depend on his two kids to survive.
 * Eva Rintel: A wealthy stock investor who lives in Murian Twp. with her husband and two children. She is preparing for a flight to New York, when she awakes from a disturbing dream that foretells Nekoda's diabolical alliance with Meshaluta and a magnetic storm.  As Eva soon learns, she and the other Rintels are under a curse that could kill someone in her family.  Her maiden name was Flanning.
 * Mandy Rintel: Rick and Eva's 16-year-old daughter. She enjoys trigonometry, and looks forward to a productive upcoming school year.  Generally reclusive and sweet-natured, she cannot comprehend why most of Nekoda's wrath is targeting her.
 * Tom Rintel: Rick and Eva's deadpan but religious 8-year-old son. He alarms the others in his family with his unusual lack of childhood fear.  His determination and courage keep his sister and father alive, in spite Nekoda dishing out particular abuse on them.

Other characters

 * Dewey Reynolds: An obsessive, over-the-top professional thief who has been stalking Mandy. Taking advantage of Nekoda, Dewey breaks into the Rintel family house in the hopes of capturing her.  His ruthlessness and arrogance put him right into the path of danger.  He reveals to Lenny that he had a cousin aboard the Landana.  He is 31 at the time of the burglary.
 * Lenny Hidds: Dewey's weak-minded sidekick. Lenny is generally kindhearted, but is dependent on drugs.  His child-like nature makes him dependent on Dewey, whom he views as an older brother in spite his objection to Dewey's stalking of teenage girls.  He originates from the Bahamas.  He is 28 at the time of the burglary.  Eccentrically, he refers to his drugs as "pixies."  He and Dewey's lack of morals fit the theme of inverted values consistent with the theme of secants.  Likewise, when Nekoda's eye gets closer, these inverted values grow more intense right before their demise.
 * Meshaluta: An ancient witch's ghost that uses a Marlquaan-enhanced curse to stalk and murder Rintels as well as their friends associates. She invests a large portion of her allotted power towards her resurrection ceremony in trying to use Hurricane Nekoda as a physical manifestation of her will.  However, as its name should be an indication to her, Nekoda is a treacherous storm.
 * Nekoda: A category-five hurricane combined with a magnetic storm that serves as a partial manifestation of Meshaluta's ill will. It is the successor storm to Hurricane Mahalia.
 * Cassie: A girl whom Eva meets in the LaFoe Airport. Cassie's phone begins to receive cryptic messages from Meshaluta, and continues doing so long after the magnetic storm ceases.  Eventually, Cassie finds herself lending aid to Eva's cousins in Colorado and Massachusetts.
 * Tim: Cassie's boyfriend.
 * Mr. Lumthar: A wealthy man at the LaFoe Airport, who is curious about the Rintels and their predicament. He agrees to aid in the rescue of Eva's family, once he has the means to safely send a rescue helicopter down.
 * Jessie Lumthar: Mr. Lumthar's granddaughter. Jessie has some literature that alerts Eva to her family history and to the Meshalutian curse.
 * Jim: The Rintel's neighbor across the street. His house is pummeled by the effects of the magnetic storm before that of the Rintels, and his is violently killed by its effects.
 * Karen: Jim's girlfriend. She comes over to his house to visit, unaware that he means to propose to her.  Before she can accept his proposal, the magnetic storm kills them.
 * Jeff: Jim's friend. He witnesses Jim and Karen die, and then has a stroke due to the magnetic storm interfering with his brainwaves.
 * Annabelle: A young, blond girl that Eva rescues from a falling TV set.
 * Control Room Operator: A lone man operating the control room of a small cruise ship called the Landana. He is the first to witness and experience the wrath of Nekoda on the ship, and appalled at the speed with which the storm heads for the ship (much sooner than predicted by meteorologists.  Unable to get the ship to safety, he is forced to watch helplessly as a giant wave destroys his ship and everyone aboard it.  His experiences with the magnetic storm become a foretaste of its effects on Murian Township.
 * Ticket Man: An eerie man who hands Eva her plane ticket. She is unsure what to make of his creepy gaze, or of his intentions behind it.
 * Pythius Crew: The crew aboard the space shuttle Pythius. When their shuttle flies right over the eye of Nekoda, their ship travels back to the year 709 BC and nose dives into the desert.  Via viewing field opened up by the oscilloscope, Tom is able to witness the carnage.
 * Security Guard: A rude security guard that threatens to arrest Eva if she doesn't cooperate with him.
 * Ripper Ghost: A skeletal monster with ragged hair that climbs through a wormhole and tries to kill Mandy. He is thwarted by Tom and sent back into his hole screeching, never to return.
 * The Viking: A viking warrior ghost that attacks Cassie while she is sitting on a toilet. Cassie informs Eva of this when Eva is curious why Tim is trying to comfort her.
 * George and Hank: Two designers whose laptop begins behaving strangely during the magnetic storm and sending them cryptic images.

Gerosha timeline
90 happens in 2011, around the same time as Navyrope. Meshaluta has been (poorly) attempting for years to apply her curse on the Rintel family and achieve her goal of averaging 30 deaths every 11 years (nearly equal to the natural logarithm.) She need only perfect her ratio from time of death until the year 2013, when her cult of followers may attempt to resurrect her with the aid of the Marlquaan. She has grown increasingly serious about killing Rintels and their close friends by 2011, and the Louisiana Rintels become her first major targets. She exploits the situation of Hurricane Nekoda's arrival to her benefit. Therefore, the events in 90 happen just one week after Nekoda's sister storm Mahalia attacks. This is eight years before Candi Flippo flees Gerosha and 21 years after the Battle for Gerosha. It is a few months before Meshaluta stalks Trisha Montoya and the Colorado Rintels with the aid of Honeybee Samuel. (Oddly enough, Honeybee Samuel is an ancestor of Shalia Flippo.) 90 also happens 12 years before Rob and Hannah Marrington destroy the Ming-Cho.

Development
The novella was written over the course of three years, from 2002-2004. A very early version of the story was written and completed in December of 2002. In that year, the author had been attending Lansing Community College. Among the classes taken the fall semester of that year were a foreign film studies class and a design theory in photography class.

Inspirations
Among the films viewed in the foreign film studies class were Picnic at Hanging Rock and Ringu. The former would inspire most of the science fiction elements and reactions to paranormal magnetism found throughout the story. The latter film, Ringu, became the inspiration for the visual style and the dreary atmosphere of 90. This, plus the vengeful side of the occult Meshaluta's personality, would be reinforced and refined after viewing Gore Verbinski's version of ''The Ring.

Additional inspirations for 90 include TV specials on Bermuda Triangle paranomality and legend, the TV series Unsolved Mysteries, and more. The character of Mandy Rintel was inspired by Mandy Moore's role in A Walk to Remember. Many characters were named after characters from Uncle Tom's Cabin, but possess very different roles and personalities from their namesakes.

Math and design theory inspirations
The design theory class taken the same semester as the film class in which Ringu was viewed made mention of using lines to convey energy. The more that a line is tilted vertically, the more energy it has, until it is at a complete 90-degree angle from horizontal base reference. At this point, it symbolizes strength and calm rather than energy. This concept brought about the thought of a hurricane, which has varying intensities until the eye of the storm, where there is calm and solitude. In turn, this begged comparison to the secant function on a rectangular graph. No violent wind gusts exist in the eye of the hurricane; because like the secant of 90 degrees, the solution would involve division by zero.

Meshaluta
Main article: Meshaluta

Meshaluta was not initially ruled to be a real entity; but just part of Eva's dream. She would eventually evolve a more significant role as story development went on. Frequent symbolism suggests that the hag's ghost is haunting the Rintels throughout, but her exact history and the fullness of her motives (and her power) are not revealed until sequels.

Eva's dream
Meshaluta, in order to taunt her victims, will sometimes warn them poetically in a dream of things they should watch out for right before she kills sends her minions (or a fluke of nature) to kill them. She often recites the poems in an overly dramatic manner, including parodying the Weird Sisters in Macbeth. Eva's dream contains the following warnings:

''Woe, oh Woe! For Nature is a-mess with self and style!'' Take cheese, take crackers; All the magnet, give sway! Puppy sandals and snail shoes and pitiful day! ''There's a bus outside; grab it; You just keep wasting time! ''Hear the lamps! See the wind!'' Give the hourly chime!

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN!!!

Manifestations

 * Woe Oh Woe: This line is repeated under breath by an old woman reading a newspaper in the LaFoe Airport.
 * Nature A-Mess: Nekoda and the magnetic storm's paranormal behaviors.
 * Cheese and Crackers: What the Rintels primarily had for breakfast that morning, early as nobody could sleep. Lenny also desires to eat some.
 * Magnetism: The magnetic storm that causes the household equipment to act up and attempt to kill the Rintels.
 * Puppy Sandals and Snail Shoes and Pitiful Day: References the puppies on a pair of Mandy's old sandals, being stored in the upper bedroom closet of the house. Curiously, this same basement becomes infested with snails, much to Lenny's horror.  The "pitiful day" also destroys the Landana cruise ship, and scrap metal from the wreckage flies through a window and nearly impales Lenny.
 * School Bus: A school bus crashes through the roof of the utility room.
 * Grabbing the Bus: This is how the Rintels rescue themselves when Nekoda starts sending debris and rain into the utility room. The old woman with the newspaper also comments about a boy killed during an incident involving a school bus, which was mentioned in the paper.
 * Hear the Lamps: Electronic devices begin to engage in eerie behavior, including strange noises.
 * See the Wind: Flying debris that can kill the Rintels (or the burglars in their house.)
 * Give the Hourly Chime: The grandfather clock in the living room, which chimes when the magnetic storm expires.
 * "Now It's YOUR TURN!!!": Someone in Eva's family unit is marked for death.

Nekoda
Hurricane Nekoda (and its predecessor Mahalia) gets its name from an obscure Bible verse. "Nekoda" is the name of a temple servant listed in Nehemiah 7:50. The name means "white-washed wall," which can translate as either "clean slate" or as "treacherous." As Meshaluta learns, Hurricane Nekoda makes for an unpredictable ally for her agenda.

Oscilloscope horrors
In keeping with how the magnetic storm works, inversion of the normal properties and behavior of energy waves becomes a recurring theme. The oscilloscope in the utility room is able to turn itself on just by Tom motioning it to in his mind. Once on, the oscilloscope depicts "broken sound" as a constantly-moving secant graph on its screen. In cooperation with the magnetic storm, the eye of Nekoda temporarily becomes a pathway to time travel. This leads to a space shuttle and crew traveling backwards in time and crashing in a desert. Tom witnesses this in mid-air while he is petrified and his body begins to dematerialize.

Ripper Ghost
Meanwhile, Mandy is attacked by a ghost that is assumed to be that of Jack the Ripper. It takes the effort of Rick unplugging the oscilloscope and Tom snapping out of his trance to send the ghost back into its wormhole before it can decapitate Mandy. The Ripper Ghost is portrayed as having ragged hair, wearing mostly black, skeletal hands, and an indefinite black mass for a head with no face save for two bright-glowing white eyes. Body parts that come into direct contact with the ghost become invisible, save for the bones underneath.

Revisions
Revisions to the original story were made in 2003 and 2004, to make Nekoda's movement through the sky and the architecture of the Rintel house more consistent with the geography of Louisiana. Dialog was altered, as well as narrative style. In late 2008, the story was reviewed for the possibility of more revisions. A submission date for publication remains pending.

Allusion to other works

 * Eva Rintel is named after Evangeline St. Clare in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Likewise, Tom Rintel is named after that book's titular Tom.


 * Likewise, Cassie is named after a UTC character. Her oriental appearance is inspired by former Pink Power Ranger Cassie Chan, as played by Patricia Ja Lee.


 * Annabelle is named after the obese pink cat from Eek the Cat. Her physical appearance is inspired by that of Jean-Marie from FeardotCom.


 * The transceiver in the attic is inspired by the transceiver in the film A Cry in the Wild, which is in turn inspired by Gary Paulsen's book Hatchet.


 * The intended gray-green color grading intended to be employed to much of the story's atmosphere is inspired by the blue color grade used for The Ring.


 * Some of the magnetic storm's effects on Murian's electronics is similar to events in the 2001 film Lightning: Fire from the Sky.


 * The magnetic storm's infliction of agonizing sweat and paralysis on some of its victims is inspired by scenes from Picnic at Hanging Rock.


 * Tom's face was initially inspired by an illustration for A Wrinkle in Time.


 * The snails in Rick and Eva's closet are inspired by maggot piles in the outtakes for The Ring.


 * The implied camera angles for Eva's long drive to the LaFoe Airport are a reference to Rachel's drive through Deception Pass in The Ring.

Trivia

 * Of the various works created by Dozerfleet in 2002, only Gored By Them Things and 90 have survived fully intact. This makes 90 one of the oldest Dozerfleet works still in existence.


 * A few actors have been speculated on concerning who could adequately play certain characters in a film adaptation. This includes Ashley Judd as Eva and Jason Alexander as Rick.  Mandy Rintel's appearance and namesake are both inspired by Mandy Moore's early career.

Web
A website to promote 90 and its sequels was created in November and December of 2008, as part of a Streaming Media class at Ferris State University. It featured a home page with a constant-looping "static feed" audio. Interlacing and other motion on the home page's background are to indicate magnetic interference and a bad video signal, suggestive of the environment of the Rintels' home during the magnetic storm. When the story's label is hovered over, its background secant graphs begin to glide faster across the screen. Navigation comes from various oscilloscopes on a navigation panel to the left.

That same front page also includes a picture of Mandy's trigonometry chart, which she and Tom discuss in the third chapter. On the site's novella page is a plot summary, along with book cover art. The Trilogy page promotes 90's two sequels. In addition, there is a Contact Author page and a Gallery Page titled "90 Has a Gallery." On the Gallery page, 90 is related in timeline to other events in the Gerosha universe. This includes The Blue Face Film Strips, Volkonir Journals: Attempt #43, Path of the Ming-Cho, and more. Artwork for 90 from 2002-2008 is also included. The gallery has a different look and navigation scheme from the rest of the site. Also included on the gallery page is a video offering a special tour of the Rintel family's house as recreated with The Sims 2. Finally, the site has a link to this wiki and to The Dozerfleet Forum.

Overall, the site has been uploaded to a web host once from December 2008-May 2009. It was hosted by a Ferris server to promote the TDMP program.