Three Sevens

The first chapter in an unfinished novel designed to take the reader through space at a molecular level.

He strode through the street. His long overcoat, buttoned in the middle and blew hastily in the midnight breeze.

His hair was single strands of silver and grey combed back from his brow. His eyes were weary, yet passionate and had a look of laughter about them.

The sky was black, all which could be seen was the orange end of his cigarette and an occasional spark which blew from it in the wind.

Litter adorned the cobbled streets, empty packets and loose leaves of paper flapped against the foot of the buildings. He stomped his cigarette onto the pavement and gave a visible sigh. Something shone in the corner of his eye, he leant over and picked it up. It looked like rose quartz he thought to himself as he studied the hardness with his fingernail and then dipped it into his pocket.

Barely a sound could be heard as he walked through town. Empty carriages would pass by. Occasionally, the sound of claxons could be heard as they made their way along the track to the rail yard.

He gazed beyond a fence raised hastily above the ground. A freshly raked crop field, it resembled a scence from a martian landscape as sandstone rock glowed under a pale moonlight. His face, now tired and expressionless glanced to his feet. He carried on walking, snatched a sandwich from his pocket and bit into it.

He was a tall man, slight of figure. One of the most odd things about his appearance were his long, slim hands and the way he would cower his head when he walked.

William Gartshore was a professor of quantum mechanics at the Trapsville university in Arizona. They had sent him to work on a project helping to seek out extra-terrestrial lifeforms. The university wanted the mission to be kept secret, so they hired him and a team of others to study molecular structure and biology.

He popped the cigarette box back into his pocket and fumbled inside for his keys.

As he entered, he wiped his feet on the mat.He lived in a dank two bedroom apartment above the town centre.

The walls were decorated with white gloss, but gradually became yellow as tar and condesation mixed, then ran down the walls in a dense liquid. The television had been left on all night as he hated the silence, but now the monotonous drone of a hoarse voice began to ring in his ears. Dr Derrick Matthews and a group of other doctors giving advice on the best cure for anxiety and depression.

"Take a nap, have candle light baths, excersize regular, but most important... remember to think positive." He caught the final thought just in time before he flicked it over to catch the football results.

He stood up straight and focused his eyes on the television. "There's never anything decent on the box these days." He thought out loud to himself.

Yesterdays clothes had been left in a pile on the floor. He began to sift through his dirty pile, seeking out the cleanest and put them to one side. His chest wheezed like a party whistle. He clutched tightly to his clavical as involuntry actions pulled at the muscle throughout his body. He began to utter blasphemies to himself, his lips barely moved as he went on through gritted teeth.

Pieces of circuit lay across the room, his only ornamental features were a Jupiter globe and several planetarium models.

He had a fascination for taking things apart, old tellies and radios. He would sit for hours, even days sometimes working on a single project.

The noise of sirens could be heard from police cars as they chased after a spillout from the local bar. He scrambled into bed and pulled the sheet covers so they almost reached his face.

Their first experiment was to determine which temperature and speed certain properties became excitable. They created several mini biospheres to test out their theory. These experiments, they hoped, would allow them to predict which planets were likely to store life, either at present or some time in the future.

He sensed an aroma in the distance, but couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

In the cabinet were some photographs of his mother and father on their wedding day. His father was a captain in the navy. He died before Williams seventh birthday having never recovered from injuries sustained during the war. The thing he recalled most about his father was, he was a strict man, who liked things in the correct order... always. For the first time in his life he understood why. When he compared his own lifestyle, ashtray full to the brim, clothes strewn about the apartment. In many ways, William wished he could have been more like him. He paused for a moment to glance, the photograph had lines through the centre were he'd once tried to fit it into his pocket. He wore a white shirt, black cardigan and grey shorts, sat with legs crossed as he reached his hand up to his mother and offered her a toy aeroplane. He remembered the day almost in colour.

- Mummy

- Yes darling. She answered with a smile.

- I want to play aeroplanes he replied as a Boeing 247 made it's way across the sky.

His smile grew wide and his eyes sparkled as memories flooded back.

There had been an argument in the lab between him and one of his colleagues. Will could hardly believe his ears when they told him they would be working
together as a team.

James Adams was a meteorologist. He'd had a fascination with the weather even as a child. He and William had grown up on the same estate, even attended the same university for a while before it shut down in 19.. due to lack of funding.

James was against the research. He felt it was a waste of time, especially if they were going with the sole intention of finding life out there. William saw his point and was sympathetic to it. Equally, he felt James had over reacted. Especially by going to the press behind the teams back.

It was the next day and they were back at the lab. They had just added a few missing pieces to the theoretical structure before injecting bacteria into Biosphere Seven. All three were running when suddenly, the graph from Biosphere Jane started to osscilate wildly. They had never seen anything like it the whole of their career. It should have all added up to the same thing... but it didn't. They had to stand back and reassess the theory. They noticed, as they increased the volume of the biospheres, the temperatures decreased, but the figures differentiated with variant in properties used. This was the part where classical mechanics came to an abrupt halt... the odds of a coin landing on it's side, the ebb and flow of the ocean or the structure of clouds spilling across the sky. These were all examples of chaos and order, and it was difficult to find stability in something which appeared to have no discipline whatsoever. They did the same test several times, until after a number of experimental observations, they noticed a trend begin to emerge.

Reviews

[jakelsen]

Juliet,

Here are my thoughts on this piece. I don't get a strong sense of character from this, and I think you need to work on your point of view. Is William Gartshore the man you describe at the beginning? Is he your main character, or the point of view this scene is being told from? If so, you need to make that clearer right from the start. As it is written now, it seems to be told from an omnipotent point of view, and not from any particular character's. By this I mean that the writer is telling the reader what is happening, instead of the reader experiencing it from the character's POV. Let me give you an example. You say:

"He strode through the street. His long overcoat, buttoned in the middle and blew hastily in the midnight breeze. His hair was single strands of silver and grey combed back from his brow. His eyes were weary, yet passionate and had a look of laughter about them. The sky was black, all which could be seen was the orange end of his cigarette and an occasional spark which blew from it in the wind. Litter adorned the cobbled streets, empty packets and loose leaves of paper flapped against the foot of the buildings. He stomped his cigarette onto the pavement and gave a visible sigh. Something shone in the corner of his eye, he leant over and picked it up. It looked like rose quartz he thought to himself as he studied the hardness with his fingernail and then dipped it into his pocket."

You are telling the reader what is happening, instead of showing. There is too much detached description in the beginning. If this story is from William's POV, who is seeing his hair and eyes and the expression on his face to describe them for the reader? Let's try this again telling the story from William's POV.

William Gartshore strode through the darkened street, his overcoat blowing in the midnight breeze. He lifted his hand to brush the hair from his brow. A drag from his cigarette sent orange sparks dancing on the wind. The cobbled street he walked along was littered with empty packets and loose leaves of paper. He ground his cigarette under his shoe with a weary sigh. He saw something shiny out of the corner of his eye, and bent to pick it up. Rose quartz, he thought to himself, testing the nugget with his fingernail.

Anyway, that's my two cent's worth and it's worth just about that. As far as the science of the piece goes, I don't know zippety doo dah about quantum mechanics, but it sounds good to me. I wish you the best of luck with your writing.