posted
Intro to an unfinished short story. Comments, questions, advice, insults, and death threats welcome.
***
There was no doubt about it: Lewis was staring at a typical poison gas trap. He was experienced enough to know that the tangle of tiny colored wires led to a small grey canister filled with compressed gas. Exactly which one of the many deadly gasses would be triggered Lewis didn’t know, but he didn’t doubt that it could kill him, and everyone else in the small, dark room, buried a thousand feet somewhere under the state of California. On the other hand, if he were successful in disarming the trap, then the twenty people in the twenty cryogenic freezing pods in the same room would lose their lives as the life support in the cryo-pods fizzled out. The latter, of course, was his job. The Sleepers in the cryo-pods had built their gas traps, electric fields, automated turrets, and a myriad of other security devices for defense of their time-locked bodies, while Lewis and the rest of his colleagues were being paid to shut them down. In his view, it was a fair tradeoff in risks. The Sleepers risked that the traps would deter anyone from interfering with their quest to travel into the future, and Lewis risked that he wouldn’t get his face blown off by some hidden explosive, and have to live the rest of his life in some government-run shelter getting laughed at by children on the street for his horrible disfigurations. He had seen it happen before.
posted
It's intriguing and leaves me asking all the right sorts of questions. There might be a couple of things you could smooth if you wanted.
"There was no doubt about it..." seems to indicate that there might have been reason for doubt or surprise, but the rest of the fragment makes it seem like this sort of thing is fairly common. I like the fact that he's used to this, so I wonder if you might consider cutting the very first bit.
quote:He was experienced enough to know that the tangle of tiny colored wires led to a small grey canister filled with compressed gas.
Strangely, the word "grey" tripped me up here. I think because it made me wonder if he couldn't see the canister but experience let him know that all canisters were grey, or if he could, in fact, see the canister and experience let him know what it contained.
"...somewhere under the state of California." There is some much specific detail in this fragment that it seems odd for Lewis not to know where he is.
posted
opening sentence is definitely a hook, no doubt of that. I like it. Presents a protagonist who has a dilemma, though one thing that bothered me was tha the first option of the dilemma had him and everyone else in the room dying. Aren't the Sleepers the other people in the room? Did they set up a bomb that would kill them as well? That part is confusing. But the story as a whole looks good. Makes me ask questions, which is what it's supposed to do.
Posts: 331 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I found it hard to read, because it was all one big block of text - I am deeply fond of paragraph breaks and white space and breaking up narrative with dialog and all those other little things.
It seems a little info dumpy to me - you're doing more explaining here than anything.
I agree with what the others have said, too.
But despite that it's interesting. I'd read more (if I have time when you finish, that is).
posted
It's an interesting premise. So is Lewis some kind of cop or is he a robber? Don't feel pressed to answer that if the story covers it. The way I see it, he's almost certainly a government sanctioned robber.
I do think that it is a little obtuse to put the cryopods in the same room as the traps. That just doesn't make a lot of tactical sense, besides the confusion it creates in your story.
By the way, if Lewis is not a robber, that is, if he isn't going to recover the materials of the Sleepers' little hideaway, then what is the motive for taking any risk at all? Why not just drill a hole down to the cryochamber and drop in a bomb big enough to destroy the cooling system or something like that? Why even bother the Sleepers at all?
As for the Sleepers, if they know that people are going to be that big on digging them out and killing them, then why try it? Not that I can't think of reasons to all of these questions, but have you?
posted
personally i think that it's perfectly acceptable to have each sleeper with their own individual booby-traps, because it seems they must have been rich; thus, it almost follows that they want the same thing (live well into the future), they might also be at cross-purposes and so wish their lives to be independent of one another.
i also agree that this paragraph seems like a bit of an info-dump. i think you could bring this background out interspersed through the story a little more. not trying to tell you that you need more action right here, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
i'd like to read what you have, if you're willing.
posted
Sure, sure. But in the same room with you? Anyone else have a problem with that from a tactical perspective? It's flat out stupid on the part of the Sleepers. Once you're in the same room with a cryopod, it is frighteningly easy to kill the occupant without setting off any kind of alarm.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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