Getting back on the writing horse
May. 18th, 2022 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreSo, I've been playing with this idea. Take The Odessey, set in space, and make my protagonists drug-addicted bio-sculpted soldiers discarded when they were no longer needed. This is my start. Please, let me know what you think beyond "good job!" I need feedback. What worked, what was clunky, and how y'all see this being better with a few changes.
Untitled NaNoWriMo Project
Chapter 1, Part 1.
Being told the world was about to end really destroyed my buzz. I was just lying there in the sponge grass letting something called Orange Crush rampage through my brain and enjoying the sensation. The guy who brewed it up said it was mostly sedation with minimal hallucinogenic effects. I think he got that backward because my world had gotten very weird, weirder than you’d expect living among over a hundred alien species a thousand light-years from home, but trust me, weird.
I managed to crank my eyes open and with an effort normally reserved for moving asteroids into new orbits turned my head. Wild Willie was crouched beside me, his hangdog expression more morose than usual. I sighed and forced myself to sit up. My feet were in the little pond in this section of the park, and a school of orange and white fish was nibbling at my toes. At least I thought they were fish. This was the Chorus, after all, and for all I knew they were a hyper-intelligent aquatic hive mind with a weird foot fetish.
This made me wonder if there was a Trade language that involved mutual consumption of flesh for communication. I got stuck on that thought for a minute while watching kinky fish-things dine on my dead skin. Dammit, the Orange Crush was still making me all weird.
“Willie, please tell me you got a Clear Mind on you?”
Willie got a thoughtful look, which was frankly scary on that mug, and dug into the innumerable pouches and bags he always wore on a bandoleer he had picked up somewhere. Flashing a triumphant grin he handed me a silver ampule about the size of the last two joints of my pinkie.
“Here ya, go, LT,” he said with a smile.
I sighed. “Willie, one more time, I’m not the LT anymore. I’m just Greg. Just like you’re not Assault Technician 1st Class Stafford anymore. We’ve been discharged. Understand?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, LT.”
Willie was a great tech, but not very quick in other ways. I didn't bother to correct him again, I just pulled my shirt off and looked at the three little assholes installed on my left pectoral muscle. I clenched and the empty Orange Crush dose popped out. I could have left it in, but long experience had taught me to let those orifices rest and to always keep them open. I slotted the Clear Mind into an empty asshole and clenched it in a different way.
The cool feeling of the drug entering my bloodstream never got old. Then it hit my heart and my brain exploded. Clear Mind is one hell of a drug, and one of the official drugs approved by the Chorus Directors. It was made to bring your brain to peak efficiency really fucking fast. Sleepy? Not anymore? Drunk? Sober now. Flying on some mad chemist’s homemade poison? Clear Mind went to war across my artificially enhanced neural system.
For me, it felt like I was being electrocuted while being burned at the stake. I jerked into a fetal position, scattering the hyper-intelligent foot freak fish-things. I spent about a century and a half wishing that an enemy nanobot swarm would dissolve me peacefully. I was acutely aware of every nerve ending in my body. I swore in Greek and Turkish and English and a few of the Trade languages that were good for profanities.
Eventually, it stopped, and I was lying there with a dry mouth and a very clear mind. I pushed myself back to where I had been when I took the Clear Mind. I popped the empty, put my shirt back on, and stretched my neck while looking around. The Directors’ name for the place was a minute-long musical piece that sounded like experimental jazz to human ears. Everyone had a nickname for the place. Some called it Babylon-5, or Rama, or the Test Tube. As time went by, the survivors came to give it darker names, like Hell’s Waiting Room.
What it was was a cylindrical space station some 20 kilometers long. From where I was sitting, I could see the vacuum docks of the South End, and the giant mass of ice at the North End. The sun tube made it impossible to see directly across, but all around me, sloping up on two sides, I saw the fields and factories, the parks and training ranges, and of course the endless blocks of military housing, all mostly deserted. This place had been home ever since I was drafted to fight the Machine War.
“OK, Willie. The world is about to end. Report exactly what you’ve heard.”
I was beginning to miss the fish.
Untitled NaNoWriMo Project
Chapter 1, Part 1.
Being told the world was about to end really destroyed my buzz. I was just lying there in the sponge grass letting something called Orange Crush rampage through my brain and enjoying the sensation. The guy who brewed it up said it was mostly sedation with minimal hallucinogenic effects. I think he got that backward because my world had gotten very weird, weirder than you’d expect living among over a hundred alien species a thousand light-years from home, but trust me, weird.
I managed to crank my eyes open and with an effort normally reserved for moving asteroids into new orbits turned my head. Wild Willie was crouched beside me, his hangdog expression more morose than usual. I sighed and forced myself to sit up. My feet were in the little pond in this section of the park, and a school of orange and white fish was nibbling at my toes. At least I thought they were fish. This was the Chorus, after all, and for all I knew they were a hyper-intelligent aquatic hive mind with a weird foot fetish.
This made me wonder if there was a Trade language that involved mutual consumption of flesh for communication. I got stuck on that thought for a minute while watching kinky fish-things dine on my dead skin. Dammit, the Orange Crush was still making me all weird.
“Willie, please tell me you got a Clear Mind on you?”
Willie got a thoughtful look, which was frankly scary on that mug, and dug into the innumerable pouches and bags he always wore on a bandoleer he had picked up somewhere. Flashing a triumphant grin he handed me a silver ampule about the size of the last two joints of my pinkie.
“Here ya, go, LT,” he said with a smile.
I sighed. “Willie, one more time, I’m not the LT anymore. I’m just Greg. Just like you’re not Assault Technician 1st Class Stafford anymore. We’ve been discharged. Understand?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, LT.”
Willie was a great tech, but not very quick in other ways. I didn't bother to correct him again, I just pulled my shirt off and looked at the three little assholes installed on my left pectoral muscle. I clenched and the empty Orange Crush dose popped out. I could have left it in, but long experience had taught me to let those orifices rest and to always keep them open. I slotted the Clear Mind into an empty asshole and clenched it in a different way.
The cool feeling of the drug entering my bloodstream never got old. Then it hit my heart and my brain exploded. Clear Mind is one hell of a drug, and one of the official drugs approved by the Chorus Directors. It was made to bring your brain to peak efficiency really fucking fast. Sleepy? Not anymore? Drunk? Sober now. Flying on some mad chemist’s homemade poison? Clear Mind went to war across my artificially enhanced neural system.
For me, it felt like I was being electrocuted while being burned at the stake. I jerked into a fetal position, scattering the hyper-intelligent foot freak fish-things. I spent about a century and a half wishing that an enemy nanobot swarm would dissolve me peacefully. I was acutely aware of every nerve ending in my body. I swore in Greek and Turkish and English and a few of the Trade languages that were good for profanities.
Eventually, it stopped, and I was lying there with a dry mouth and a very clear mind. I pushed myself back to where I had been when I took the Clear Mind. I popped the empty, put my shirt back on, and stretched my neck while looking around. The Directors’ name for the place was a minute-long musical piece that sounded like experimental jazz to human ears. Everyone had a nickname for the place. Some called it Babylon-5, or Rama, or the Test Tube. As time went by, the survivors came to give it darker names, like Hell’s Waiting Room.
What it was was a cylindrical space station some 20 kilometers long. From where I was sitting, I could see the vacuum docks of the South End, and the giant mass of ice at the North End. The sun tube made it impossible to see directly across, but all around me, sloping up on two sides, I saw the fields and factories, the parks and training ranges, and of course the endless blocks of military housing, all mostly deserted. This place had been home ever since I was drafted to fight the Machine War.
“OK, Willie. The world is about to end. Report exactly what you’ve heard.”
I was beginning to miss the fish.
no subject
Date: 19 May 2022 03:08 (UTC)