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Post by J.O.N ((Dragonwing)) on Jan 12, 2013 3:08:11 GMT -5
Entry One Arthur Wendell was a mid-level accountant for a consultancy firm in Spokane. He was a bachelor and an only child; dead mother, estranged father. He did the crossword every morning, and played racketball with a work friend every other week. He received the same hair cut on the third Thursday of every month, and ordered from the same Chinese restaurant every Tuesday night. Four times a year he would attend a singles event at a local hotel. He would meet several nice girls, and roughly half the time he would go home with one of them. He would make them eggs benedict the following morning, but he could never get the Hollandaise quite right, and he would never call them again.
Arthur Wendell was perfectly boring, perfectly self-reliant, and perfectly content in following a routine. For this reason, and this reason alone, The Company recruited him, gave him a new body, and sent him alone into outer space. On a clear morning in Dubai, Arthur's ISSC-440 launched from an asphalt square with enough velocity to break through the earth's atmosphere and go rocketing off into the vast black void.
Arthur had played his last racketball and eaten his last Chinese food. Company assignments were not temporary commitments. ISSC-440's carried no fuel for return journeys. There was no steering override; no manual controls. Arthur was in a steel-and-carbon bullet, 284-feet long. He had freeze-dried, dehydrated food and water to last for 98 days and not one bit more. He had basic medical supplies in time-released bottles. He was monitored by 36 cameras. He was woken by an automated lightning system and went to bed when it shut off. He occupied whatever free time he had with memory-laden empty stares through one of two small, round, 5-inch glass windows.
Arthur was carrying a payload capable of destroying all life on the planet from which he came. It was armed.
In a dream, his mother came to him. He woke up in a cold sweat, automated lighting still pitch-black. She told him, "Go easy. You are home already." His heart pounded. He read two pages from a small booklet entitled, "Solitude and Space". He laid back down and stared into nothingness until the lights came on.
On day 97, a small red light turned on overhead. The words, "DAY 97" were backlit by a cold, red glow. Within 48 hours, a computer panel would be exposed from behind an armored panel. His ISSC-440 would become unstable and increasingly uncomfortable. Depending on the subjective details of the launch and the position of his moving target, at some point, a small led panel within a round button would turn on. He would press it. Arthur Wendell of Spokane, Washington would be vaporized by an explosive beyond his ability to comprehend.
On Earth, a signal would inform them of the successful detonation. Launch command would stand, close their eyes, and have a one-minute moment of silence. Outside the center, a placard would be installed on the wall, with his name, birth date, death date, and photograph. It would read below it, "In Selfless Duty". It would exist among some four-hundred others. Tourists would look upon them with blank expressions. Soldiers would salute them. Nobody wept.
Day 97 consisted of two small blocks of dehydrated food, microwaved with two tablespoons of water each. The first tasted of gritty brisket. The second, a paste of unsalted greens. He poured a sealed packet of bright pink powder into a bottle of recycled water. It tasted sweet and sharp.
He logged his last entry into the ISSC's monitoring panel.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 94
14:04 PM GMT
Food rations consumed at 13:00.
No health issues to report.
All systems functioning.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 95
14:33 PM GMT
Food rations consumed at 13:00.
Poor sleep. No effect on performance or health.
All systems functioning.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 96
13:53 PM GMT
Food rations consumed at 13:00.
No health issues to report.
All systems functioning.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 97
14:38 PM GMT
Food rations consumed at 13:00.
No health issues to report.
All systems functioning.
Arthur stared at the screen for three hours.
At 17:49, he pressed the 'confirm' button and the computer shut down.
The automated lighting system shut down. Arthur sat down and urinated in the darkness. He knelt down onto the floor and slept on the ground. He stomach clenched into knots. His hands felt cold.
He didn't sleep. Eight hours later, the words, "DAY 98" lit up in red. He did not heat food. He did not perform his daily physical or mental exercises. He laid on the floor until 16:00. He got up to use the toilet. He admired bruises on his elbow where the floor had pressed into his skin. He pressed against them with his thumb and felt the large, heavy pain run through his arm. He dug his thumbnail deep into the skin, watching it turn red.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a panel protruding from the wall. It had two buttons on it. The left was labeled, "AUTOMATED". The right was labeled, "CONFIRM". Neither were lit.
Arthur threw up into the toilet. He swished water through his mouth and spit it out. He stared at the cupboard for fifteen minutes before opening it. He took out the final two meals, added two tablespoons of water each, and microwaved them. The first tasted like pasta with tomato sauce.
The second was eggs benedict with Hollandaise.
Arthur didn't eat. He turned on the computer.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 97
14:38 PM GMT
Food rations consumed at 13:00.
No health issues to report.
All systems functioning.
Arthur Thomas Wendell
Day 98
17:03 PM GMT
Food rations not consumed.
No health issues to report.
All systems functioning. Detonation panel activated.
Arthur stared at the screen.
I'm scared.
I want to go home. I can't do this.
Arthur sat in the corner of the room with his arms wrapped around his bent knees. He dug his thumbnail into his elbow.
Just after 18:30, both buttons lit up. The steel frame of the ISSC-440 creaked. Arthur thought about his mother.
On a clear morning in Dubai, 46 men and women watched a blinking word on a large projector screen.
They glanced around at one another, put down bottles of water, put away cell phones. They stood, coughed, fidgeted. Bowed their heads and were silent. A man was given instructions to install a placard. A woman in downtown Washington got a sudden craving for eggs benedict. Entry Two Arthur Wendell was a mid-level accountant for a consultancy firm in Spokane. He was a bachelor and an only child; dead mother, estranged father. He did the crossword every morning, and played racketball with a work friend every other week. He received the same hair cut on the third Thursday of every month, and ordered from the same Chinese restaurant every Tuesday night. Four times a year he would attend a singles event at a local hotel. He would meet several nice girls, and roughly half the time he would go home with one of them. He would make them eggs benedict the following morning, but he could never get the Hollandaise quite right, and he would never call them again.
Arthur Wendell was perfectly boring, perfectly self-reliant, and perfectly content in following a routine. For this reason, and this reason alone, The Company recruited him, gave him a new body, and sent him alone into outer space.
Arthur found space to be a rather boring place. When he got lonely he would think of his mother. He would think of those saturday afternoons she would take him to the park. She would sit on a bench reading while Arthur counted rocks.
He sat in his room, floating through space. There were no rocks for him to count, so he counted the marks on the ceiling. The small holes in the acoustic tiling, the kind you would find in a large, depressing office building. When he had agreed to go to space, he imagined it to be a much fancier place. He thought he would be treated to the finest in rehydrated food; Just like in the old movies. What he got instead was a gray slop as unappetizing as the acoustic tiles over head.
He longed for that Hollandaise sauce, so wonderfully imperfect. Always slightly wrong in a different way, always different. The food here never changed. It was always the same balanced mixture of completely tasteless and untextured. He thought maybe he should eat his foot; At least it would be a change. He knew many methods of removing, the ideal tools for tearing through the cartilage and sawing through the bone. Sadly, the sharpest object in his room was the metal post running along the side of his bed, which he would unfailingly stub his shin on every night while climbing into bed.
“29,541,” Arthur sighed to himself.
The number of marks he had counted so far.
“Fuck.” He sighed again.
“Maybe I should just end it,” he thought, “I should certainly do something!”
“If I killed myself is there any guarantee I would stay dead? Or would they just bring me right back in a new body? Fuck this, fuck them, and fuck space. Who would actually want to come to this dreadful place?“
Arthur paced the room, muttering obscenities to himself. When he was offered this job he was told everything would fall into routine, but this was not routine; This was fucking space! What's less routine than space? The chaos of it all, objects floating aimlessly, shifting and constantly rearranging themselves. A flux of mass and matter, and Arthur now found himself in the midst of it all.
He had expected space to be lonely, but he hadn't expected it to be -this- lonely. |
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Post by J.O.N ((Dragonwing)) on Jan 15, 2013 3:22:22 GMT -5
Entry One
This is a tricky one. I’m in mixed minds about it.
First of all, it was written very well. I didn’t spot any obvious mistakes. It was easy to read and flowed nicely. There was a simple edge to the narrative, as if it had been stripped down to bare necessities, which reflected the story nicely. I really liked it. I really loved how it was written. The little touches (like how the people fidgeted during the one minute silence) really helped your piece.
It was the –what- was written that holds me back from really liking this. You made me feel sorry for Arthur in a short amount of time, which was excellent. But, why? That is what’s missing. I’m sure it’s completely intentional. You hint at it. Let the reader guess what is going on, why it has to detonate and so on. Which would be excellent… but after reading how everything is automated, how he’s watched by 36 cameras, how there’s no manual override… I don’t know why he’s there? Why do they need Arthur? It just nagged at me.
I don’t know. Even with that problem, I still really like your piece because it was just so well-written. And the Eggs Benedict comment at the end was an excellent way to end things.
Good job.
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Spelling & Grammar
There weren't any spelling errors that I could see. Grammar didn't have many things wrong with it, either. The things I found are listed below.
"LED" wasn't capitalized. It should be. It's an acronym, after all.
"On Earth, a signal would inform them of the successful detonation."
Who's 'them'?
"Nobody wept."
This seems out of place with the other sentences. Should it not be "Nobody would weep."?
"They stood, coughed, fidgeted. Bowed their heads and were silent."
All the other sentences were complete. The second one here isn't.
You did fantastic.
Ease of Read
I found this very easy to read. There were only a couple of out of place sentences that made me re-read them. The way this was written, especially, lended itself well to the flow of the story.
Characters
Arthur was a robot for most of the story. The beginning made sure of that, but throughout the story, my opinion didn't change. That is, until the end. Still, I didn't feel anything for him. Perhaps that was the point.
Story
The story felt complete, but it wasn't entirely an entertaining one. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. Things happened in a linear fashion and nothing was unexpected. I felt the story was intentionally written this way. It's something that happened and then it was gone. Perhaps that was also the point.
Entertaining
As I said, I wasn't entirely entertained. Perhaps I should say it was interesting, in a way. It held my attention, at least, but that was more with how it flowed. It didn't have a sudden break or random event. There isn't much to say other than I still believe it was written better than its competitor.
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No grammar mistakes, flowing narrative, and a sympathetic character! Mind you, I’m not sure why they’d need a person to blow something in space – coulda just nuked it. Oh well, it was pretty engaging – and it had a rather haunting ending.
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Spelling & Grammar
Not a mistake I could see, honestly.
Ease of Read
in some areas it was a bit…well, clunky. The paragraphs seemed to be really short, but at the same time some of them just seemed to be short for no reason. There’s dramatic effect and then separating related actions for seemingly no reason. However, it all strangely worked really well, and I can’t say anything that I said above is actually a bad thing.
Characters
With their only really being one character, it seemed that this was a no brainer. It was perfect, in a way, how he was being portrayed. He was exactly as the prompt described, albeit allowing for the situation to change him. Well done.
Story
The story was well written and I really couldn’t complain about where it was taken, although it wasn’t entirely clear why he was being sent up into space. To get rid of the nukes? I guess that sort of makes sense…but it doesn’t describe much else to give the situation context.
Entertaining
Great use of visual stuff and overall a short, but fun trip. Nice job.
Entry Two
First of all, for your benefit, I just want to tackle a few mistakes I spotted throughout the piece. They looked like mistakes that you might continue so I though it’s worthwhile to do so:
“He would think of those saturday afternoons she would take him to the park.”
“He thought maybe he should eat his foot; At least it would be a change.”
Weekdays are capitalized in English. Meanwhile, you don’t capitalize after a semi-colon; it’s not a new sentence. Besides that a few of your sentences didn’t quite work. They felt a little clunky like:
“He knew many methods of removing, the ideal tools for tearing through the cartilage and sawing through the bone.”
Something about that just doesn’t work for me. It would read better if you broke it down or just cleaned it up a bit, like: He knew many methods for removing a limb, picturing the ideal tools for tearing past cartilage and sawing through bone.
Except for those few mistakes, it was quite well-written. I really liked the little bit about the Hollandaise sauce; it was a nice touch to highlight home-sickness. And I think you did quite a good job of highlighting the loneliness of the situation. Everyone can relate to counting spots on the roof. I think the problem was just the length and the fact that nothing happened. You gave us a scene instead of a story. I came away with a bit of a “… so?” feeling.
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Spelling & Grammar
You didn't misspell anything. Congratulations.
You used the semi-colon wrong. Only use a semi-colon when the conjoined sentences could stand on their own, or, you know, to separate cities. It's irritating to readers when used incorrectly. Also you incorrectly capitalized the secondary sentence in the semi-colon twice.
A lot of the sentences were incomplete, like you forgot what you were saying halfway through. Some were just sentences that played off of the preceeding sentence, but I don't believe it works with the way you wrote this. It feels off.
Ease of Read
I found this difficult to read through. As I said before, a lot of the sentences were incomplete, or run-ons, and I found myself grimacing at them each time. Perhaps that is personal preference.
The dialogue bothered me, as well. Why would you not put spaces between new dialogue? It's distracting and wrong, at least to me.
Characters
I felt nothing for Arthur until the end. Then he annoyed me. He didn't really feel like a character, either, not like the one in the other entry.
Story
Perhaps the dialogue would be something he would say if he was bored, but if that was the case, I rather think you should have focused on his dialogue rather than spending most of the story with him silent, similar to how the other entry used silence all the way through. Using both here, especially how you wrote it, felt disjointed. It also ended abruptly. I didn't feel this was a story more than a half-thought idea never completed.
Entertaining
I wasn't entertained. Like I said, I don't even really see it as a story and what I did read was uninteresting. Unfortunately, that was probably more to do with the beginning than anything else. I'm glad I didn't get that one.
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Me no gusta el 6th paragraph. Chunks of dialogue aren’t really engaging. This was okay~.
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Spelling & Grammar
Not a mistake I could see, honestly.
Ease of Read
It was really easy to read. Felt way too short though. Otherwise, technically perfect for ease of reading.
Characters
Characterization was a bit off from what was presented in the prompt, but that’s alright I guess. I wasn’t expecting it that much, but while it did differ it was still creative in its own way.
Story
The story was…honestly kind of boring. He’s in space. He’s bored shitless. Okay then.
Entertaining
It was kind of fun I guess? I mean, a guy is slowly going insane in space due to boredom and loneliness, but there really isn’t much buildup. It just…happens.
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Post by J.O.N ((Dragonwing)) on Jan 15, 2013 3:39:47 GMT -5
For Both
So, I'm just going to do one review for this round, because most of the things I have to say apply equally to both.
I thought that both entries were competently put together from a technical perspective; the word choice and flow were both good, and I don't think I picked up on any spelling or grammar mistakes at all. On top of that, I think both entries also created a very effective atmosphere. It was rather evocative of the classic 50s rocketpunk stories, in fact. The descriptions of space life somehow felt very visceral and retro, which I liked a lot. Entry One in particular did this well; its description of an orbiting weapons payload actually immediately reminded me of a classic Robert Heinlein book called "Space Cadet."
Having said that, though, while both entries succeeded on atmosphere, I thought their actual uses of the topic were very uninspired. Now, full, disclosure, I'm the one who wrote this beginning, so I may have had some biased expectations going in. But it's a fact that both entries ignored part of the topic entirely (the part were Wendell was "given a new body"), and also didn't give much of a satisfactory description on what the character was actually doing.
Obviously, it's your story by that point, and I'm not going to judge you negatively simply because you wrote it differently than I would have, but even from a basic narrative standpoint I found the story's motivation very lacking. Entry Two offered no real goal or motivation at all, while Entry One created a scenario that I frankly just didn't get. Why was he up there, exactly? And why did he have to blow himself up at the end? They both seemed like fairly flimsy pretexts to tell a paint-by-numbers story about loneliness.
Again, I'll acknowledge a certain level of bias, but I just think that there was a great deal of potential to be creative here, and neither entry took advantage of it at all.
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Post by Kaez on Feb 14, 2013 14:31:37 GMT -5
One was mine. Nothing special, but I was happy with it.
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Feb 14, 2013 16:17:13 GMT -5
One was mine. Nothing special, but I was happy with it. I meant what I said that it reminded me of "Space Cadet." I don't know why, but it did. Still don't know why he had to blow up, though  |
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Post by Kaez on Feb 14, 2013 18:36:35 GMT -5
One was mine. Nothing special, but I was happy with it. I meant what I said that it reminded me of "Space Cadet." I don't know why, but it did. Still don't know why he had to blow up, though Neither do I. |
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Post by James on Feb 14, 2013 18:37:54 GMT -5
I meant what I said that it reminded me of "Space Cadet." I don't know why, but it did. Still don't know why he had to blow up, though Neither do I.  |
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