Fan Fics, Original Fiction, and Fantasy

I dont do horror. I am currently writign a story based upon a dream i had last week. i dont psot stories up ehre much, worried abtou coppyright etc etc. Have you had anything published, you sem to have an accomplished writign style.
Besides somethig probably has been written about laundry before, you just havnt read it.

 

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I didn't mean to claim that my story was original, only that it was obtuse enough that other people should not be embarrassed to post their literature here.

Also, it was not my intent that everyone write horror stories, which are, on the balance, pretty dull.

I have never had anything published, I generally only write for fun and don't immediately know how to go about getting published. (I thought one submitted to magazines in order to do that, and I don't know how effective that is.)

Finally... WHATEVER YOUR STORY IS POST IT!!! (Unless you're really, really worried about copyright, which I understand.) This thread is gasping its last... the great JavaAdvisor wrote us off weeks ago.

(If it's one of those dreams where you are hanging around a giant athletic bag with some eighteen foot tall mummy that has antlers and whistles Dixie, that's fine. I like those.)

 

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WEl, from what i read it wasnt that obtuse. Its not obtuseness thats the problem here.
AS for submitting to magazines, your in the USA, right? Youve got 3 or 4 good ones, here in the uk we've got one, and thats rejected 2 of my stories (one deserved it, teh other i still cant see why, even though it is perhapa a little lacking in polish.) All yuo need to do si buy a copy or two of each, see what kind of story they publish, and if any of yours will fit. Then make sure its within the word limit, and then post it off, making sur eyou have printed it according to their guidelines for submission. Its a little bit of hassle, at least 20 minutes i suppose to make sure its all printed right etc, but possibly worth it. Use the correct kind of envelope, postage etc, enclose a stamp addressed envelope if you want the manuscript returned, so you can try it somewhere else. Its not necessarily effective, it often takes many attemots adn rejections befor eyou egt published. I suppos i want to try it becasue i want a bit of fame, and I have been reading so long i want to write as well, and being published would i think justify my writing ability in its reaching out to other people and entertaining them, which for an introvert like me would be nice. But i also write because i like it, i have all these ideas and stories etc to do, things to say.

Sorry, i stil dont feel alright putting it up here. I might send you one or two if you pm me, but I dont really want to. Maybe i'm afeart someone wil steal my ideas.

 

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I see what you mean - I guess Sciforums isn't a periodical for the purposes of copyright. If it worries you then don't post it.

Write us a throwaway instead! Something you would normally use for wiping dirty parts of yourself.

 

Why isn't this a sticky? Like the poem thread.....come on Coffee.

 

Okay, a couple of pieces of a story segment I'm working on, I want feedback. How do I do divinity properly? I've seen stuff like in Dragonlance and with David Eddings. I see divinity as much bigger, so how to do something you can't really comprehend? And then I just couldn't wait to show off the other scene.

A visit:

Two minutes later he led the way out of the shelter, the soldiers taking everyone else torwards the choppers, while he headed for the front. The shadows closed around him, and he was on his way. His first encounter was not with the attackers. At first glance he was not that imposing, actually quite handsome, black hair styled like a 1980's stockbroker, his robe the same off-white color as the ashes from the cigar he was smoking. I ignore him, and keep running.

"Ignoring me won't make me go away!" He shouts after me.

I continue around the hanger. Before I get there, the area is lit up in white. Shadows flare out, stretching themselves in obiesence to the figure standing in front of the aircraft shelter. Very white robes, fair skin, combed beard. closer up, the holes in his hands and bare feet become visible, My knee smashes into the ground with a report that would normally indicate a broken kneecap. The shotgun takes the place of a sword, the muzzle pointed skyward. Bowing my head lets me see how each and every tiny crack and ridge in the pavement casts a shadow. I raise my eyes high enough for him to que me ot get up. At the slight gesture, I sit back on my feet, and wait. He stands there, a tower of light.

"The poor fool. Condemned at the beginning, he sought that which he could not have. You were patient, willing to be content with what you have. At the beginning, you took the chance, rather than siding with the guarantee. And so you were given a lesser glory, and now have the chance for a higher glory." His smile is joy. The gesture to stand up a sunrise. "The Father is a God of order. some of his Brothers and Sisters were not, but they went along with the plan. Because of you.

"When we created the world, we sought order. But free choice is somwhat chaotic. You cannot perfect chaos, so the extra must be contained. Several ways were used to do this. When we decided what everyone was going to do, you decided you were going ot be the chaos factor. This was distressing, because even without this additional handicap, you knew that the chances of making it back were slim. But you saw that if anyone else did it, they would pass up oppurtunities that only you could see, no one would listen to it, and most of the qualified ones would not benefit at all from it. So you took it, and managed to get to this point." He sits down on the air, seeming to prepare for a long-winded story. Chaos was neccasary to balance our order. Otherwise the universe as we wanted it wouldn't work. This happened alot, and there are different ways to do it. We chose to use a chaos factor. You are the embodiment of chaos. The Sly One would have you think that this is evil, and so the only way for you to go is evil. Chaos is not evil. Order is not good. Either one can be either. You chose to follow me. And now you will begin to reap some of the blessings of that choice. You were told that you would get to see visions. When you go into battle this day, I will go at your side, and show you how to defeat your enemies. These are your visions. You will get some of the conventional type, but these will be yours." The light fades, and he's gone, leaving me in the shadow of the concrete arch, the silver moon lighting up the rest in a pale grey aura.
***
The story goes to his adventures in killing. ultra-violence, I'm not going to do much there, aside from pound home the idea of what's going on in his mind as he does it. Then someone else's perspective:

Agent Hassel went immediately to the front of the chopper he shared with four Marines and twenty terrified airmen. A show of crudentials gave him immediate access to the radio.

"Mosiah, this is Alma. Come in."

Alma, Mosiah, what's your status?"

"Delay tactic is in progress. Casualty estimate below critical."

"Good work, Alma, the boss wants to know how you did it."

Hassel swallowed. This was the sensitive spot. "Moroni has the Plates."

Nothing but static from the radio. "You didn't."

"I couldn't think of anything else that--" The Chinook rocked. Someone was not quite good enough with an RPG. Then he realized that the mortars had stopped. The window showed a LZ was not being peppered by the projectiles. The group with the grneade launcher was shooting at something in the shadows. Then they dissolved. A shadow streaked out of the cloud of blood and gore, slowing only long enough to splatter two more men over the ground with three shotgun blasts. Then the flames from a burning chopper swallowed hiim up.

"Alma, what's going on!?"

"l just saw Moroni in action. I think I just wet my pants."

"Ama, please advise. We've invested too muc hin this man to be scared now. After today, everyone will want to know who Moroni is, and--" Hassel cut the link, and returned the headset to the comm officer, and sat down.

Sargeant Tompson, the crew chief from the aircraft shelter, asked, "Do you know who that was?"

"Yes, sargeant, I do, but you don't want to know."
***
That's where I'm stopping the segment. Just want some feedback! Can you guys not give me some good feedback? Especially on this one. Something, that, if it works right, might play a bit of a part, though I don't think I'll be doing it that way. I'll post a link, since the whole segment will be somewhere else.

 

I think you need to establish the identities of your characters a little more strongly, but I understand that this is an outtake and may not reflect the tone of the larger piece.

Try reading Michael Scott Rohan (if you can still find his books) for examples of strong characterization; Run to the Stars is a pretty short read, The Winter of the World is a trilogy, but not too long... in The Anvil of Ice there is a speech that one of the characters gives about slavery, and it's early enough on in the series that you don't need to get too much of the context to be able to read it on its own.

 

I thought I would give it a try. I haven't ever written anything, but I came up with this general idea, but this is just a small glimpse of what I have in my mind.

***********
"There will be much fighting tonight" The elderly man said between puffs on his pipe. The boy sat looking out the window at the rising smoke that continually filled the sky above Draconis. The boy looked down to see the streets filled with rage and chaos. Woman and Children were crying, blood was pouring as oil down the streets into the sewers. From the window you could see out into the courtyard where bodies were being hung mercilessly.

"What is the cause of all this Valandil?"

"War and Violence are not for us to decide, nor are we to decide one’s fate. We live today with no hope for tomorrow and our Wars today won’t be the same as tomorrow..." As the elderly man was speaking with a raspy and shaky voice, his words to the boy were interrupted by a man in the courtyard standing on a table and shouting, "All men are brothers, like the Seas throughout our world, Why then do the winds and the waves clash so fiercely everywhere. Listen to me, stop the war, stop the violence..." As the zealot was speaking these words, you could hear the fine whistle of an arrow releasing from a bow. The zealot went quiet.
The old man continued, "A man believes, and to death will he believe, that what he does is right. We old men have created a world of war and power and it is up to you Ologan of the house Elensar, to make sense of all of this chaos.”
Ologan felt a coolness come over him and a fear enticed him as he heard the footsteps from down below. As each step creaked and moaned from the men coming up the stairs, a pillar began to erect in Ologans heart. Ologan, but a boy, ran to the closet area to pick up a sword, for he would surely defend the honor of his grandfather, Valandil. When he got to the closet, all he could do is hide, fear had overrun him.
The door to the room crashed open and Ologan sat silently gazing through the cracks at his grandfather, unmoved, still puffing on his pipe. Ologan whispered to himself with shame in his heart. “Forgive me Grandpa.”

 

Done with probably the longest segment yet. I know, there's not much charecter development, but this IS a piece, there should be enough to get the gist of the scene, I got some feedback, what about Jesus? I totally forgot to redo his dialogue to the Biblesy speech. That's the only thing I see wrong.

BTW, now that I have it, I'll be posting this stuff elseware, and linking here, like I'm doing now. Makes it easier that copy/pasting the whole thing several times.

Visions of Viscera

 

was it that horrible?

 

No

 

Thanks, it's just that it doesn't seem like anyone really looks at this thread anymore, suppose I shouldn't read too much into it, it has been kind of slow, now that I'm thinking more, I'll be writing more, and will thus be posting more stuff in this thread. What did you think?

 

I felt like there was a background that I was missing... the imagery of the action was strongly worded but the imagery of the characters was not, so it seemed like a perfectly good part of a story that I was missing the rest of... which is what it is, as far as I know.

 

BBH

I'm going to critique your story so you can return the favor when I post mine

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I read Chapter Six. I liked it! You've read some Lovecraft I take it? In my opinion and from my own experience mimicking or duplicating, or rather, trying to duplicate his voice as I believe you have done and as I know that I have done generally results in limited success. I'm really not sure that it's that possible to accomplish to begin with, kind of like trying to do the same thing with Shakespeare or Poe. Although I haven't tried to write horror for a few months now I am and was planning on incorporating the overall advice I'm about to give to you: be inspired by the masters but don't try to mimick their voice. Come up with your own. The biggest problem I have with Lovecraft's characters is that they all have a perfect mastery of the English language. Screw up your grammar, maybe, if your character is making a statement to an investigator (as is what occurs in some Lovecraft stories) try thinking up a basic idea. Then, get something to record your voice and just rant about the story as your character for as long as possible. Edit it later.

Generally I think you and I can get away with going crazy with description when we choose to make a story from the narrator's perspective. That's just my opinion, though...

Whether you decide to take my advice is of course perfectly up to you. I'm not in love with it myself, it's perfectly debatable.

The story I'm about to post is somewhat unedited. I haven't even finished the first draft of the manuscript itself. It's called "August Caesar: Reborn." This is the beginning of the second chapter. When I'm done with it the story will be roughly ten thousand words long.

Virgil hated the chair. He hated most chairs. As a child he had been chastised over and over again for being restless, for never being able to sit still. Fat teachers in shower-curtain dresses had shrieked at him with annoying voices, over and over and over again. He cramped up minutes after sitting down, his circulation was cut off with even the slightest bending of his legs. It seemed like he just couldn’t handle such a simple task. In spite of this he would have to spend a great deal of the voyage in a chair, lying down on a dark, gothic apparatus that fed his mind into the whirring machines of the starship.

His head was placed in a heavy, black vice. Seatbelts guided themselves around his wrists, ankles, his chest, and his stomach. On each side of his forehead, at his temples, were metallic circles with small, dark holes only wide enough for very thin syringes. These circles were always noticeably cold—they gave him frequent ice cream headaches. After they had first been implanted, in the early days at the Academy, Virgil couldn’t stop touching them. He knew that hundreds of feet of wiring extended from them, looped around his brain, constricted the roots of his cerebral cortex.

He hated the syringes. They always had to put them in slowly, as they were extremely thin and breakable. They called them stingers sometimes. The headaches he got when they first went in left him moaning for as long as he was really conscious, and the ship’s doctor, an incompetent man in a long train of incompetent men, Tyler Travis, didn’t know how to get rid of them. He couldn’t access the UN database because the ship had been ordered to maintain radio silence so as not to be detected.

They really were stingers. He shuddered, repeatedly, as they were silently inserted farther and farther beneath his temple, beneath his skull. It felt almost like a venom, the pain spreading from them, a curling wrath of toxins choking the sides of his head. His teeth gritted tightly at the last leg of their insertion, as he felt the first hints of the starship around him. One moment later, all the pain went away, and the August Caesar was connected to its brain.

If he had been consciously in control of his body he would have shivered. The pumping pistons of the starship became Virgil’s flexing muscles. His electricity lanced through the wiring of the starship as his blood lanced through his veins. It was his body, now. Throttling the engines was like jumping for him, maintaining a steady speed as he moved was like jogging, firing weapons like spitting droplets of water, taking damage like being stabbed in the gut, the flames that would pour out from open wounds like warm blood in his hands. He had felt it all, back at the academy, but had little real experience in the field. No one had ever shot at Virgil before with live ammunition. His life had never been in such danger, as it was now.

He heard something, out there in the void. The patter of footsteps on concrete, something currently one with the darkness, basking in the heavy radiation that clung to the Jovian Planetary System as humidity does to a jungle. A rustle of branches, the chatter of rocks sliding down the face of a red canyon, sliding from an unknown source. Something was out there, in the abyss, something swimming with the shadows, watching the white hull of the August Caesar with patient eyes.

 

My laundry horror was no masterpiece... I kind of wrote it in one take, although I went back a couple of times to fix glaring errors in spelling and word choice. Thanks for your review!

As to August Caesar Reborn... this is a good introduction, but I'm waiting for what comes right after it...

Your evocation of sensation is pretty good... the only unfortunate thing is that I think your imagery of the needles is too good, the entire experience is overlaid with a sensation of a stinging in the eyes, which kind of bites into the description of his sensations as the spacecraft.

For the next bit, which you may or may not have written, I think you've already established that Virgil IS the ship, and you can begin writing the action by referring to him directly. If you ignore specific actions you can bring out the idea of the ship being HIM and not an extension of him... I'll see if I can illustrate what I mean, and you can tell me if you already planned to do this.

Given that he now operates all aspects of the ship, one might say,

"Virgil hid his giant steel body among the rocks, his sensors blinded by their bulk, waiting for the inevitable moment when the thing would show itself. He knew that there would be no hesitation and no quarter; when he saw the flank of the enemy he would strike with his plasma cannons, and it would be decided there."

On the other hand, to give more of a sense of the displacement of the ship by Virgil, you could remove the descriptive terms that refer to his shipness; this would give more of a sense of his own presence there, and less of an alien-ness to his actions.

"Virgil hid himself among the rocks, blinded by their bulk, waiting for the moment when the thing would show itself. He knew that there would be no hesitation and no quarter; when he saw the flank of the enemy he would strike, and it would be decided there."

When you refer to a person's own body, the parts that are used are often implied - you say, "He picked up the bottle," not "He picked up the bottle with his hand." By implying the ship parts as his own, you could get the same sense of natural motion and action in this narrative with regard to his piloting the ship.

Of course, that's up to you...

 

Gifty... I'm sorry I haven't said much about your last submission (I read it off the link) but I can't think of much to say. Your description is good, characterization is okay for such a small space. It's not unique but it's good...

I mostly would want to see the rest of the story to be able to judge properly, since this seems like a fragment. The ideological message of order/chaos that Jesus and the Devil are there to articulate doesn't seem to be complete, but when you include an aspect like that in a story it should explain itself pretty clearly...

So, it seems incomplete because... it's only part of the story. That's what I'm trying to say.

 

Heffy Poost

Ahhh...yeah. I agree with you there. This short story is the last in a series (of which only two stories are completed). Chronologically, it's the first. But I had gone through writing about the sensation of getting hooked up to the starship with another character thousands of lightyears away and I was kind of getting bored with it. Here it is, really--


Then the interface hit me, like a metal can that had been in a freezer for a few hours suddenly pressed against the back of my neck, like long nails on a chalkboard. It was such a rush, I had to close my eyes and smile for a second, let my mind feel and comprehend the status of every molecule on the Ozymandias. My body was no longer a human one; my skeleton was no longer of bone, but of metal, and through the wires of my bloodstream passed electrons instead of blood cells. You really have to love Nanotechnology.

Aaaaaaaahhh…

I was suddenly running thousands of trains of thought, remembering wonderful things, calculating trajectories, projecting future outcomes of events, playing chess with myself, all with the slightest of ease. Everything was going to be just dandy.

Now that I think about it the "interfacing" doesn't seem too extreme, too overdone. Hmm...

The story is about 5/7 completed.

I think I see what you're saying. If I'm right in my perception, throughout the story I go back and forth between saying that "he ran" and "he ran with his legs." Earlier on though in the beginning of II, which was what I posted I thought it was necessary to establish the connection, I guess, so that the reader knows that something has happened to him, that his actions are as easy as moving an arm or a leg, but that his arms and legs are actually quite different than the arms and legs of a human body. I hope this makes sense...

It's funny you mention this. Something very similar occurs when Virgil inexplicably runs into the planetoid Quaorar (if that's how you spell it...I haven't checked).

Virgil felt an enormous boulder in front of him, a mountain spinning silently in the void. He dove out of its way. Its jagged teeth raked against an elbow. The wound clotted itself with flame.

Through the eyes of the soldier he had left back on the Harcourt, he could see his own ship, and the asteroid that had been named over a century ago Quaorar. He quickly moved behind the boulder, his mechanical eyes swiveled back and forth over its surface, searching for a place to hide. Their glowing pupils dilated. He had found something. A hole, large enough for his ship.

This is somewhat later in the story than I or II. Like I said, if I understood you correctly, then I believe that I shift back and forth between saying that he moved, he moved with his legs, or he moved the ship.

Anyway I actually posted the second Chapter of the story to begin with because I still have issues with the first that I have yet to resolve. Namely, the first big paragraph of the chapter just bugs me. I may wind up replacing it.

August Caesar: Reborn
I

“Breathe.”

He heard the voice in his ear, and it told him to breathe.

In the void high above the swirling, chocolate clouds of Jupiter hovered a starship, the August Caesar. The starship’s far end was pockmarked with what appeared to be three large craters. These were the nozzles to the powerful Dmitrikov drive that had brought the August Caesar across the solar system, from its Venusian port to the inner reaches of Jupiter’s gravitational grip in just over a month. The nozzles were cold and quiet, like the calm void enveloping the ship.

Inside the August Caesar there were three sets of ten thousand men. All were shaved hairless. Their heads were heavily wired with electronics, so as to leave only their eyes untouched by the mechanical veins pumping information and nutrients into their minds. Their eyes were open, but they were lifeless. The metal suits they wore were extraordinarily heavy and powerful; their very fingers could crush skulls. These soldiers, ten thousand to one rack, three racks to a starship, were in cold sleep, silently hanging from metallic claws that could, in under two minutes, usher them from the churning insides of the August Caesar to the cold chasm of space. Once there they would speed away from the starship as bees do from a hive, swarming about their target and peppering it with glowing explosive shells. They would cut their way into the reinforced hulls of enemy warships and toss men from their beds into the horrific hostility of space. They would battle other astronauts as torpedoes from the August Caesar streamed overhead. They would do many things, sometimes consciously, sometimes under the direct control of the captain of the August Caesar, who would be safely tucked away behind blankets of heavy alloys at the heart of his starship.

The captain breathed.

The man who had named himself Virgil gulped oxygen. His green eyes opened to the gloom and visible humidity of an amphitheater. Pallid fog poured out of the three-dozen ovular cocoons stacked onto its dark, metallic walls. Each of the light bluish capsules was large enough to hold a single person comfortably. All were empty, their cargo likely prepping the August Caesar for whatever mission lay ahead of it. The room felt as if it was the inside of a furnace, and the captain’s skin was clammy with sweat. Although he could hear little more than ringing in his ears, he did detect the whine of a service robot’s engine.

He felt the sting of a metal needle enter the soft, exposed underside of his left wrist. It pumped a chilled liquid into his veins. It spread across his body, from sore muscle to sore muscle, organ to organ, until the outside heat was no longer a problem. The robot backed away from him as his restraining harness retreated from his chest.

Virgil, captain of the August Caesar, stood from his cocoon.

“Emily,” said the Captain to the air, “how long have I been out?”

“Thirty-three days,” replied the voice in his ear, “and eleven hours.”

Not long enough. That would only put them at halfway through their voyage.

“Why have we stopped?”

“Something important enough to keep us from continuing on to Pluto. I’ll brief you on your way up to the Chair.”
Virgil pushed the wet hair out of his eyes back behind his forehead. He approached the ladder and placed a hand on one of the rungs before pausing in the silence.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Sorry Captain.” There was a buzzing in his ear, the droning of a hive of bees. “Command has received information from a reliable source regarding the whereabouts of a newly commissioned ISA starship, the Harcourt. According to this information the Harcourt is in low orbit on the other side of Jupiter, engaged in weapons testing, and will be there for the next three days. Our orders are to ambush the Harcourt as early as possible. Once the ship has been disabled we are to, if at all possible, obtain as much information regarding the next generation technology onboard. Once this information has been retrieved we are to destroy the Harcourt and leave no survivors.”

Walking down the pallid corridor, the captain spotted one of his crewmates. Ahead of him was a short man, his hair cut liberally and colored brightly blond. He was thin, scrawny—perfect navy material. What was his name…Basil, Basil Miller. They had been classmates. Virgil gave him a warm smile and grabbed him by the shoulders, even though it seemed like they had been apart for only minutes, neither had seen the other for weeks. He remembered at their graduation how Basil had purposely tripped and fallen off of the stage when his name was called, in front of everyone at the academy—teachers, students, parents, two senators. They had had some good times together.
Both were grinning broadly. “Ready for some action, Basil?”
“I’ll take it wherever I can get it. You know me.”
They had hired a crossdresser for Basil as a joke for his twentieth birthday. Basil hadn’t figured it out until the guy’s pants were on his dorm floor. By then it was almost too late to go back.

But behind Virgil’s smile there was a great sense of uncertainty. This man’s life is in my hands. Although Emily hadn’t told him in her briefing, the captain had been out in space long enough to know that the August Caesar was not a state-of-the-art battleship. It was a throwback to the early romantic days of spacetravel, to flag-planting and glorious adventure, far beyond the borders of Earth’s bickering nations and farther still beyond the influences of the homeworld’s materialistic fashions. Virgil could give the Harcourt a run for its money but he knew that a victory was unlikely. Not everyone would survive this fight.

And Basil was just the type of man that the captain dreaded ever having onboard his starship. He was a likeable character, a funny, witty person who had spent years at the academy with the Captain himself organizing legendary acts of mischief that they would never forget. Mischief that he knew Basil would remember and speak of if he happened somehow to die in the Captain’s arms. Coughing over the blood clogging his throat, his reddened lips would reminisce to the nostalgic days of the Naval Academy. Then it would be over. In death, his organic eyes would take on the same photographic complexion as the thousands of dead ones the Captain had seen in his readings at school and at home. The corpse lying in his crimson arms would cease to be Basil. The only evidence of his existence would be a fading memory. His eyes, the unblinking eyes of the dead, tell only a lifeless story.

“Take care of yourself, okay Basil?”

He nodded, in an awkward way, asked himself—what is he trying to tell me?

Virgil gave his shoulder one last shake and walked off, turning back once he had gained some distance to watch Basil round a corner, heading for the mess hall. The Captain leaned on the cold corridor wall, looking down to the gleaming grating at his feet. A strange thought entered his mind, then. His death would be interesting—

“He’ll be fine,” interrupted Emily, as calmly as she could. “We’ll make it back, Sir, all of us—”

“Deactivate Emotional Support, Emily.”

“Done, Captain.”

Virgil turned and continued down the corridor, toward the far end of the bridge section of the August Caesar. “We weren’t supposed to be fighting anyone,” he said, into the air.

“Command says that all other fleets and starships are engaged in operations too important to abort. Our current objective can apparently wait. You know that, Sir.”

He did. Virgil did know that. He was barely a real Captain. No combat experience in the biggest war anyone had ever fought, serving on a starship older than he was, a starship that hadn’t fired a torpedo in almost as long. They had sent him out on a patrol, to Pluto and back, just to stretch the muscles of a starship used to police Earth Space. Go to Pluto, scan around for a few days, come back. Just to make sure that its Dmitrikov Drive still functioned.

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t take on something like the Harcourt. Most of the ships in the fleet can’t take on something like the Harcourt. Not alone and hardly together.”

“What are you suggesting, Sir?”

“Nothing…nothing, Emily. Nothing important enough to relay back to command, at least.”

“Of course not.”

Virgil kept moving. He knew that the autocomp spent most of its time checking for signs of mutiny. Leaving the rank and file was a very bad thing.

“I take it the crew already knows the news?”

“Yes sir. Everyone is in position and awaiting your orders. All Mechanical Soldiers have been brought up to Purgatory Status and are ready to regain consciousness on your orders. Torpedoes were armed twenty minutes ago and the engines are being charged as we speak.”

“When will we be ready to go?”

“About ten minutes. It depends really on how long we take to get you into the Chair.”

 

I would like to say, after several times, that that is a segment, from the middle of the story.

This is a background piece, a vision for some ancient guy whose writings have only recently been found, in the story. I understand that some of the allegory stuff doesn't quite work for what I want, but it's not bad for a first try.

 

Got it. So, is the new piece related to the old?

Standing on its own it it properly biblical... I might mention that in ancient times dogs and wolves would be pretty closely related, so allegory referring to their differences might not have had the same meaning then that it does now.

On the other hand if it's like the flower/weed dichotomy, then that would make perfect sense. "If it lives in your house it's a dog, if it lives outside it's a wolf."

This piece provides a good narrative context for what comes after, in my opinion.

 

Sorry, bumping this thing back to the top where it belongs.

Keep on writing...