Two excerpts from a short story I'm working on...

[Gravitycollapse]

Last edited Sun May 19, 2013, 04:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Fair warning, this is all a vast work in progress. Names and places are still up in the air. Grammar is not perfect. But I really wanted to post this first cut to see what you guys thought.

First, some music to set the mood.

There is a place in the back alleys of the city; a ramshackle haven the color of moist Earth. As if emitting an infrasound mating call, the destitute and beggars and men and women down on their luck flock to the must, and cough in collective underneath soggy cottage cheese ceilings. It is a Michael Stipe’s Mad World among this sorry bunch.

Looming over the homeless shelter is the Danjar Business Complex. 84 stories of brittle modernism. 84 stories and not 85 because the architecture firm felt such a figure made it quainter, less intrusive into the landscape of the old city and it’s crumbling 19th century infrastructure. The façade is tall metallic windows, reflecting the surrounding landscape back upon itself; a constant intervention whispering in anodized indifference, “look what you’ve become.”

The elevator is broken above the 51st floor; something the district fire marshal has been livid about for 2 months. But the building owner does not seem to care about the old men and women laboring up and down the stairs. Their ancient shoes of worn down leather and resoled vulcanized rubber scuffle and stumble on the concrete steps. Fortunately, the top 26 floors are unoccupied excepting the abandoned cubicles and dust laden break room tables.

Sharing a common wall with the staircase, on the 55th floor, is Brett’s office. He sits at his mahogany desk snapping pencils and growing weary as he hears the faint labored shuffling. He hates the sound. He hates the old men and women who pathetically deny the message of nature telling them to stay on the ground. He hates knowing these geriatric fools work above him. Who do they think they are? Give it up you old pricks. Most of all though, he hates himself for taking a job on the 55th floor and not the 56th or 58th. He hates knowing he will one day grow old and shuffle up and down the stairs taking breaks for breath along the way.

He looks out the metallic window onto East Plantown and wonders about Melinda, four offices to the North. The crotch of his pants grows taught as he daydreams about her uncrossing legs and high arches. Four offices down, Melinda is sipping dismally on a stale cup of coffee that lost all its heat 5 hours ago. Her gaudy fire engine red pants suit is uncomfortable today. One of the shoulder pads has come loose and deformed into her rotator cuff. She squirms around trying to find relief but gives up after making it worse. Melinda’s head is somewhere else this early afternoon. She’s thinking about what’s above her. Not the old men and women like Brett. Not even the building. No, she’s lost in the upper atmosphere with the orbitals of satellites. Why don’t they fall back to Earth? Is there any air up there? I bet Matthew would know. She's thinking about him again. A delicate smile grows in her lips as she gazes out her office window. The dank city sprawls out towards the horizon.

One office to the South, Matthew is slumped over his desk, face first into a pile of actuarial paperwork, dreaming about his teeth falling out. He’s losing control; fingers and legs spasm little twitches like a puppy being chased through its slumber by group alphas and animal control specialists. A small radio sits upon a collection of used books in one corner of his office. The dial’s turned to 1540 AM, smooth jazz and adult contemporary drift lazily out of the fatigued, antiquated single speaker and lose a bit of essence meandering across the room into his ears. A slight electric twang of a gaudy guitar solo is abruptly interrupted by a deliberate pulse of middle frequency, followed by a few seconds of high pitched scratching alternating with deep ripples of fidelity. There is a moment of silence, a vacuum in which the broadcast takes an anticipatory deep breath. The tinny, artificial voice of a news anchor breaks in…

To any and all listeners, this is a preliminary attempt to utilize the national emergency broadcast system. The following message is not a drill. Please listen carefully for details and instructions that may be important to the maintenance of your safety: Due to recent developments involving the domestic security of the United States, we ask that all citizens seek immediate shelter from windows, building openings, ventilation systems, reflective surfaces and move towards central locations of buildings. If the building you are currently occupying is multi-storied, please make your way to the lowest possible floor immediately. This is a preliminary attempt to utilize the national emergency broadcast system. The following message is not a drill. Please listen carefully for details and instructions that may be important to the maintenance of your safety. The United States Central Authority has issued a level 6 emergency preparedness bulletin to all persons living within the lower 48 contiguous United States as well as: Alaska, Hawaii, Guam... Upon the advice of the President of the United States, we ask that all persons within the advised area seek shelter immediately. Find a space away from windows or building openings; preferably beneath central support structures. If at all possible, shut down any ventilation systems open to the outside. Help children, the elderly and the infirmed into these shelters before entering yourself. If you are within short distance of a known bomb or blast shelter, such accommodations would be advantageous to the maintenance of your safety and the safety of those around you. Please do not be alarmed. This broadcast is not a drill. Upon the advice of the President…

…Matthew is stumbling through some archetypal dark hallway searching for his teeth. But the darkness is lifting and after several foggy moments, he jolts awake on his desk, face breaking out of a semi-dried puddle of drool. He walks across the room, shutting off the radio and grabs a pen and notepad. Things to do: Buy more coffee; pick up MP3 player. The slightly greened, off-white fluorescent ceiling lights flicker almost imperceptibly. Matthew stares briefly up at the bright tubes, shrugging, “nothing out of the ordinary.” He walks out of his office, into the forest of central cubicles. All of the staff appear to have crowded around a single pod near the restrooms. Bored and curious, Matthew makes his way over to see what’s so important. As he leans into the outer layer of workers, one turns around.

“Have you heard this shit, boss?”

“Heard what shit?”

“The broadcasts. They’re all over the place. TV, radio, Internet. Just got a call from a friend in Louisville and she said there was some sort of giant earthquake or something.”

Matthew blinks despondently and grabs the bridge of his nose with the tips of his left thumb and index finger.

“Ben, what the fuck are you talking about? We don’t live anywhere near any active fault lines or volcanoes. The local plate this entire county is situated on has been geologically dead for thousands of years.” The buzzing of his cellphone in his coat pocket interrupts his recollection of sophomore year geophysics. He reaches into his jacket. It’s Jennifer.

“Hey, Jen. What’s up babe?”

“Matt, baby, are you there? Listen, I don’t have a lot of time here.” Her voice is startled.

Matthew is puzzled. “Time for what? Is everything alright?”

“Matty, I don’t know how long this connection will last. I’m just calling to say I love you so much. No matter what happens…no matter what’s happened, that will always be true.”

“…Babe, I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“I’m here with a lot of friends. I’m glad my friends are here. I’m not alone. I won’t be alone when it hits. I just…I didn’t want you to think I was alone.”

Matthew can barely make out what she’s saying now. Each sentence is broken up with giant gobs of sobbing. In the background, he can hear other people crying too. Suddenly, through the digitized remoteness of the call, he hears a thump followed by flat static.

“Jen. Jen? Jen, can you hear me?” More people in the office are turning around now, eyes wide like great saucers, watching him; confused.

“Jen, are you there?”

Once again, the fluorescent ceiling flickers. The lighted tiles begin to alternate off and on. All at once, they collectively brighten and explode like popcorn in a microwave. The glass from one bulb missiles into the face of Matthew’s assistant, John, who lets out a yelp and falls to the floor. Everyone else follows suit, seeking cover under various office furnishings. It is dark now. Doors of private offices creak open as dazed company executives and upper-management crawl along the ground.


--

The following is a long-archived message from then anarchist and now current leader of The New Female Revolutionary Front, a prominent political faction grown out of the remains of the former US national state:

"What did we lose that day? What have we lost? It has to be more than the changing of a trillion thousand atoms of one element into another. It has to be. What was removed from humanity? Forsaken by the evidence of time and observation. This was not one single grand erasure or even 156 erasures. It was an explosion of souls. Two hundred and forty million, nine hundred and thirty six thousand, four hundred and eight explosions. Each with their different emission spectra. Great rainbows of humanity cast across the sky. How can the absence of such incredible intellect, the complete removal of a portion of history, be gathered, logged and measured? Not just lives; although life, so tenuous already, was shattered into a confetti of nascent irrelevance. No, this was a holocaust of dance and philosophy; weekends at the lake with friends; surprise birthday parties; lecture halls packed with students taking mid terms; swimming naked in the ocean; great advancements in all fields of science; a gap in ten million family trees sending out columnous branches of shadow to expand into the future forever.

"All of this gone. My God in heaven. It’s unbelievable; a word not used just in hyperbole but to mark that which seems semantically separate from that which can be believed. Even now, with entire floors of investigation bureaus filled to the ceiling tiles with evidence, it’s difficult to confront the truth. That truth is that man could take the wonder of nature and use her to such dubious ends.

"We could mourn if we could only see some fruition of what was taken. But there is nothing excepting great vacuum and endless unbeing. How can we mourn the literal absence of all. A slate not just wiped clean but obliterated backwards in time to a point that negates its entire reality birth-to-death. There is nothing. Nothing to see. Nothing to do. Nothing to save. Nothing to remember. Nothing to hope for.

"This nothing leaps out at those still alive and burns them horrifically. Madness reigns in chaos and interminable redundancy of cause and effect. What kind of madness exists when that is all gone? The truest form. A form that resists even the most reasoned comfort. When psyches are leveled and the mind of just one man effected by this terror is a sea of finely pulverized synapses. There is no way to console the living. Redemption was cast out of our vocabulary the second the trigger mechanisms imploded the cores.

"We are all lost children. Born of our mother, nuclear death, and our father, all that will never be again. Both are within us; engrained in our DNA."

[In_The_Wind]

1. Excellent!

[Gravitycollapse]

2. aww thank you.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

3. Great read!

Your message is clear. Keep at it.

[RudynJack]

4. small note

"Allies" is the plural of "ally" (friend). "Alleys" is the plural of "alley".

[Gravitycollapse]

7. Thanks for the correction. As is probably obvious, I did very little editing.

Although misspelling alleys is kind of embarrassing.

[RebelOne]

5. Very good. But it will need some heavy editing. n/r

[nolabear]

6. Good beginning. Get it down and go back and research and edit later.

You do a nice job of stage setting and getting the reader's attention early. Might need a bit more of that, depending on whether you're completely inventing a world or conveying some form of this one. If it's this world the "voice" of an Emergency Broadcast would be quite specific. That's easily found out. Someone caught "allies" but the other one I saw should be "vulcanized."

Keep going.

[Gravitycollapse]

8. I think I'm creating an alternate world with characteristics from both fact and fiction.

I haven't even determined where the attack came from. I wanted to make it a cold-war commentary. But that's been beaten to death.

It's actually going to hopefully be a sci-fi story from the feminist perspective. Hence, the second excerpt.

[nolabear]

9. Makes sense. Keep writing. You'll figure it out.

That's the fun part, figuring it out.

[nomorenomore08]

10. Not bad. Doesn't necessarily come across as an obvious first draft.

Is this supposed to be a full-length novel eventually? About how 250 million people were vaporized in an instant by some futuristic weapon?

[Gravitycollapse]

11. Not sure on the length.

I'm writing a bunch of random chunks and seeing if they fit together.

The attacks are suppose to be a large series of nuclear explosions across the United States. I haven't developed the plot very far yet obviously. Although my primary concern is suppose to be with what happened after the attacks.