DAYJOB - Short Fiction

Ten thousand eight hundred seconds of hell til another seventy-five thousand six hundred seconds of heaven Neville mused. The seconds ticked by in agonizing slowness, he picked feebly at the grey draw strings that ran from his hooded jumpsuit. Images of maidens and dragons danced vicariously through his head, swords flaring, spells slinging, people chanting. Ten thousand four hundred and twenty-six seconds to go forced itself into his thoughts as he glanced at the cool gun metal clock with it's bright red LED numbers.
Stretching he stood from his ergonomic grey couch recliner and ambled to the door of his small spartan room. His grey uniform sneakers squeaked in irritation on the featureless grey linoleum floor. Sliding a pair of plain black sunglasses onto the thin bridge of his Romanesque nose he waited patiently for the door to open.
With a muted whir the door slid aside and hand in pockets he trudged into a long hallway of identical grey doors marked with neat machine stamped black numbers. With some trepidation Neville marched to the end of the bank of doors to a waiting elevator and entered it.
With mechanical efficiency it slid shut and moved down to the ground floor. Uninspiring flat music chimed from a recessed speaker in the roof. Resigned and committed Neville stepped from the elevator as the doors slid open. He walked through the small empty foyer to the glass doors. He could see the drab world outside and his nose crinkled in anticipation of the assault of unfiltered air.

[This message has been edited by HuntGod (edited December 17, 2004).]

The first thing that jumped out at me when I saw this was that it was one big paragraph. I tend not to like seeing that when I look at a story. It makes me think the entire story is going to be one long paragraph and I tend to avoid stories like that.

The next was the numbers. I enjoyed how you used seconds to show your character's impatience. Reading a large number written out like that crossed my eyes and made me impatient as well. If that's the emotional response you wanted, you got it. I think it would read better if you used numerals, but since I've never seen that in all the stuff I've read, it would probably be breaking some rule to do that.

What's "gun metal"? Is that a special metal I don't know about that's used to make guns? Why would it be used to make a clock?

Stressing the monotony of the color made for a nice feel. It kind of reminded me of Orwell's 1984.

Can a person be both resigned and committed? Those two words don't really mix in my mind. Resigned implies passivity, while committed implies action.

Yes I have edited it so there are breaks at transition points. Which made another problem apparent, I used "With" WAY TOO many times.

I typed out the numbers because I thought you were supposed to, I agree using the numerals would be easier on the reader.

I understand the conflict between resigned and commited, not sure if I intended that conflict or not. Didn't really realize I'd done that til you pointed it out. I can definately phrase that better.

Gun metal is basically flat stainless steel grey. It is a popular paint color in modelling and though I use grey OFTEN through the intro (which is intentional) I wanted to intersperse variations for grey in a few spots.

The premise is from a weird dream I had the other night.

It's an Orwellian society to a degree. Neville spends 21 hours a day in a virtual fantasy world (haven't decided whether this is an isolated thing, just him and a few thousand other employees) or a worldwide thing. The body needs 3 hours a day outside of the VR or there are serious negative health issues. So he and others spend the vast majority of their time is this utopian other world (heaven) and 3 hours a day in this Orwellian grey world (hell). Through the story I am going to have his values shift and by the end I will have reversed the two so that it ends with 10,800 seconds of heaven before consignment to 75,600 seconds of hell.

I think the real world would need to be much more unpleasant, indeed, excruciating before I would consider it hellish.

CG does have a point about how you haven't really made the world seem all that "hellish" in the character's eyes. An important point to note here is that these periods of real life provide his baseline for the most physical discomfort, lack of freedom, boredom, and sheer emotional distress at not having a reason to live. So even though you want to let us know that the conditions are not what we would consider unpleasent, you should probably concentrate on communicating just how intolerable they seem to your character. Right now it really doesn't seem that this is something even he regards as so bad.

I would tend to think that how long you could endure being in the virtual world would depend a lot on your overall state of cardiovascular health and stuff. So maybe he has to actually exercise while he's out. It's also odd that he would be required to spend time in the virtual world once it stopped being interesting and fun for him. I really don't get that part. I'm wondering how solid this concept really is.

I'm still struggling with the exact time frame of in VR and out of VR, it was a kooky dream after all. As to why he thinks of it in seconds as opposed to hours, the numbers seem weightier as seconds as opposed to hours. Also the story would be based in some sort of future and Generation Y seems fixated on the now. I figured as society speeds up and emphasis seems to be shifting more and more to the NOW NOW NOW syndrome, that seconds would be more effective.

The same sort of thought was behind the reality as "hell", to a 30 something who is more accustomed to a paced world this would seem nothing but dull or dreary, the idea was that younger sets would perceive dull and dreary as hell. I obviously :-) failed in this respect, but I'm not sure how to convey that in the first 13 lines and hope I can convey that over the course of the story.

It is definately a short piece, I do not think the material would warrant more than 15-20 pages. It's more of a Twilight Zone episode (where Serling reversed Beauty and Ugly, if you recall the episode) than a feature length piece.

I've torn it appart and and working on emphasizing the elements I commented on or at least clarifying them.

Thank you so much for the criticism, it is really helping me determine where to focus things.

I am not firm on the 3hr real time, 21 hour VR, but that is a hangover from the dream. I will try to come up with a better justification for it.

Underneath I was planning to make it a warped love story as he falls for another member of his group and slowly begins to reavaluate his determination of what beauty and pleasure are.

In VR, I used Fantasy simply because that is the most prevalent genre, he is the heroic protagonist, in reality he is the cog of the machine, I want to juxtapose these positions.

I toyed with the idea that he might be a criminal and this was a utopian version of prison in which you had a mandated period of real time. I think that could add an interesting twist, but making him a criminal loses some sympathy for the character.

Now I just have to work in the gradual change in attitude so that he begins to see mediocrity in the fantastic and beauty in the mundane. Kind of a grass is greener moral.

Of course if I can't execute it creatively it's gonna come across as flat and trite.