Sorry I disappeared for a while. Life and work snuck up on me and did me in. I'll be around, most likely not daily like before though.

More chapters are forthcoming. I'm going to finish this rewrite and chapters are already being completed. So don't worry. If you decide to help me with this one, you won't be left hanging with a story left incomplete.

Thanks for taking a look.

-John

Chapter 1

Is Aidan a malicious artificial intelligence? Is he a hacker looking through VR glasses?

We get the point that he's doing something the administrator doesn't like and they have detected him. His smile, then turns to smugness.

This isn't crystal clear enough for me. Is he someone we have to keep track of? Or is he a throwaway character that some super-tech is going to take care of or develop a antagonist/protagonist relationship.

Too many questions for the reader to figure out for an opening, in my opinion.

I'd figure out a way to show what Aidan is in the opening. Right now I'm in the middle of TRON without an anchor. I do think you have enough words to play with to make that happen.

It's a worthy start, but just needs more definition.

I hope that helps.

-John

Chapter 1

Aidan's smile was perfectly replicated through the neural feed to his avatar’s face in cyberspace. He knew the administrator finally realized something was wrong within his network. The alert spread throughout the system Aidan had been hired to hack, the virtual sky snapped to yellow over the neon city. Yellow meant the administrator was still uncertain if it really was an attack. The city represented the various network resources, their computers, printers, servers, routers, and switches.
Damage control. That was all an administrator could do if he was unable to locate Aidan’s session in time and terminate his connection. It was a matter of fact; there was no time for ego during a proper a hack. Emotions got in the way of the decision making process and could leave Aidan flopping in his chair

[This message has been edited by JohnMac (edited July 10, 2009).]

I'm trying to be as specific as possible on setting, character, and conflict right off the top.

Chapter 1

Elements that hook might be speculative science that intrigues, an engaging character, or a threatening setting that causes tension in or between characters. The start needs to get close to one of those and two are better if they are clear. The attempt to pack in three usually backfires because the plot, relationships and science are so much more complex in a novel than in a short story.

Here I see a gloating hired hacker engaging his target, and the admin has just gone to yellow alert.

Much of the way it is described is, to me, I'm afraid, off-putting because it is arcane and the terms are used without being defined. I'm a recently retired systems engineer in wireless networking. I know what routers and switches do. That doesn't mean I have the experience or use the jargon of an admin or hacker.

"Avatar", "avatar's face" and "avatar's face in cyberspace" appear to be a compound build-up of images that don't come through. The term avatar, in particular, is used differently in a lot of writing. What is meant this time? In a novel, such an image may be worth a page of development if it's important to characterization or later plot. Here, it's just too soon. This one disruption wouldn't be enough to stop me, but it would need to be explained within a few pages to keep be from being frustrated.

On your marks -- seems out of the blue and unrelated. I was looking for "get set" and "go" embedded similarly. Perhaps they are later or perhaps it means something else entirely. Consider whether this is the place for such cleverness. You can decide it is. Readers will then expect some payoff for tolerating the disruption and carrying the anticipation. There will also be more flack in critiques limited to the first 13 lines.

The query spread -- There has been Meat the admin and a smile, but there has been no query. As a reader, I wonder what I have missed. If I feel I am missing very much, I won't expect much enjoyment from reading something so far beyond my own experience.

I think I get the yellow sky. It's defined in the narrative as is the symbolic city.

Egotistical bitrazers is such an arcane term that using the phrase 'matter of fact' about it throws me out of the story. Again, I'm missing something because I'm not an expert in the same things as the author.

Ditto with 'thousand-watt flop' I know what a kilowatt is, but I don't know what the author means by 'flop' this time.

The suggestion then is to include some elements that interest the reader; perhaps Aiden as hacker, administrator by any name that is defined and the tension between them leading to the yellow alert -- that is, just characters and conflict. Show those clearly and save the arcane terms and images until they can be developed well enough that a reader with a user's background in networks understands them.