Horror/Dark Fantasy

4,600 words

It wasn’t twelve seconds after the silver-tongued alien supervisor left that the transfer orders appeared on my work monitor.
District 23-C! How in the hell am I going to explain this to Kendra?
My, how powerful language can be. A single phrase is charged hypnotic persuasion even from just the human standpoint. We as humans want to agree with what we are told. We want to see truth and trust. And yet everyday we are against even more forceful odds. The Aprillians have keened in on this subtle power. I suppose it is why they have taken us over. Of course we work for them, day in and day out hauling data spools which employ data that our race cannot even begin to fathom. Each

[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited October 05, 2009).]

Well fellas, looks like we only have two.

Rust stop:6

While there's nothing that really throws me out of the narrative, there wasn't anything that really drew me in either. I didn't have much of a connection to Mike or have much sense of his character.If I had time and a small slush pile, I'd probably give it a chance. If I was pressed for time and a lot of stories, I'd probably move on.

Were in Not For Our Women: 5

I'm not sure this works for me as an opening, but there's something in here that makes me think there could be a story I wanted to read. I found the first line convoluted (how about "Twelve seconds after my alien supervisor left, the transfer orders appeared...") and given this is speculative, I wasn't sure whether the "silver-tongued" was literal or metaphoric.

The remaining lines need a bit of reworking (e.g. two very close uses of the word "data", need a few commas to change the rhythm) and a lot of the opening is essentially an info-dump.

Despite all this, there's an idea here that I want to learn about.

regards,