Catalog · No. 005 of 6
In development
Kick
A kick is the influx before a blowout — the small, correct signal nobody reads in time.
Novel · Industrial fiction · Character study
Slated 2027 · not yet released
The book
Marta Ochoa has been asked to close out the inquiry on the incident at 402. She squares a binder against the laminate, lays a recorder down between them, and leaves it dark. This is not an interrogation. It is quieter than that, and harder — a conversation that keeps walking backward through nearly thirty years in the Permian.
1984. A hand dies on a connection. Ray Hollis is eighteen years old and four feet away, and survives the same moment on nothing but luck. He mistakes it for competence. That mistake calibrates the next twenty-eight years.
1997. Sour gas at a tank battery. H₂S deadens the sense of smell at the very concentrations that matter. The body shuts off its own warning system right when it needs it most.
2011. A man is troubleshooting a live drive cabinet in the SCR house. His partner does what anyone would do and reaches for him. The current kills the first one. Love kills the second.
Present. The paper he signed that morning. He is no longer the kid who didn’t know. He is the man who signs the variance that turns acceptable risk into a number with names behind it.
There is no villain out here. There is a rate. Downtime costs money by the hour, every safety decision has a price, and the antagonist is the arithmetic that worked perfectly. By the last session he understands that he became the interlock. What he does with that knowledge is almost nothing: one quiet, unrecorded change, aimed at a floorhand who will never know his name.
Who is in it
Spoiler-safe · drawn from the public pages
Ray Hollis
Company man · twenty-eight years in the patch
Came onto a kelly rig in Eddy County at eighteen and took the lead tongs his first day. Real craft, honestly earned. Knows the standby rate of every rig he has ever run without looking it up. He reads his survival record as proof of his own judgment, and every year on the job makes him more sure.
Derrick “Cat” Murdoch
Directional driller · oldest working friend
Three years older than Hollis, thin and wiry, and covered in black ink. The nickname comes from how he moves. Buys two coffees, one for himself and one for whoever is standing there. Their careers split in the bust and keep crossing for nearly three decades. He remembers some mornings differently, and never makes an argument of it.
Marta Ochoa
Outside investigator · hired in
She can ask and she can write. She cannot fire anyone or charge anyone. Squares her binders, chews her pen cap flat, and leaves the recorder dark. She asks questions. She never hands down a verdict, which turns out to be worse.
Wayne Vance
Toolpusher · 1984
Nearer fifty than not, built like a gorilla, hard hat more sat on than worn. Keeps the joint count in grease pencil and has few words for a new hand. On a footage well his outfit eats every stopped minute, and he prices them all.
Toby Marsh
Motorman · 1984
Generous and loud. Works the motors behind the tongs on the mousehole side, and is the first man on the crew to treat the new kid like he belongs there. What happens on Hollis’s second morning sets the course for everything after.
kick (n.)
In drilling: an influx of formation fluid into the wellbore, when the pressure in the hole can no longer hold back the pressure in the rock.
The inquiry sessions are present tense and quiet: a binder, a dark recorder, a woman who only asks. Between them, the career movements are past tense and physical — tongs, sour gas, a live bus, the four minutes a string hangs in the slips. Nothing malfunctions. Every page is followed to the letter.