Chapter 1

" My passions from a common spring, From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone, And all I loved, I loved alone." -Edgar A. Poe, "Alone"

Orson felt the grass between his fingers. Soft, tentacles of grass pushing up from the earth’s surface. ABOVE the surface. The wind blew at a comfortable temperature, not too moisty or cold, or dry and hot. It was a natural feeling. A natural wind.
There were people all around him. They didn’t have names, or faces, but they were there. Suddenly, they started to splash in a nearby pool. A big body of clean, natural water.
‘What are they doing?’ Orson thought to himself.
The sky was black, and in all four directions large solid black walls were slowly closing in, blocking out the nonexistent yet radiant sun.
Orson looked disapprovingly at the people in the water. He couldn’t quite focus on them, he couldn’t look directly at them.
“Hey!” He called out to them. His heart was thudding. Why were they playing in the water?

We need that water.

 

Orson opened his eyes. Peacefully. There was no jolt or cold sweat. As though he had simply had his eyes closed for a long time and now just opened them, hardly an awakening.
His bed creaked as he repositioned his body to be sitting on the edge of the bed. The thin mattress only just separating his body from the springs. The bed was only about four feet off the ground, which made Orson, who was about 6 feet tall in height, make an awkward scene when getting up. His bare feet touched the cold tiles on the floor, and he shivered. He tossed the remainder of wadded up thin covers off of his lap. He rubbed his eyes for a second then stood up.
His room was, if you could call it a room really, it was more of a large closet. The color scheme was grey, and there were very few actual belongings in the room. There was the bed, of course, two sheets; One for under him and one for over him. A firm flat pillow, a chest under the bed for miscellaneous items, a full body mirror on the left side of the wall, as well as a dresser on the right side. Full of the same uniform.
Orson looked at his reflection.
His hair was brown, full, and wavy, and his eyes were green, with small speckles of light blue. He had the standard grey underwear on, and his relatively fit body was shadowed by small dark hairs. He ran his fingers through his hair, and received a certain amount of items from his wardrobe and his storage chest.
Belongings in hand, he opened his door, and stepped out into the hallway.
Still decorated with the same, bleak grey tiles. He walked to his left, past one door, past the bathroom, and then entered the next.
The gym was much larger than his room, but still small in comparison to a real gym. Although there was nothing to compare it to. It wasn’t a big gym, or a small gym, it was simply the gym. Several different workout stations, all for different purposes. He got to work, after all, there was no other way he was going to stay in shape.

The bathroom was large, and parallelogram in shape. It had four sinks, and 12 stalls. 8 had toilets, and 4 had shower heads with small plastic benches, and a drain on the floor.
He left all his belongings outside the stall, and went inside. He brought shampoo, and a well-used bar of soap.

 

The smell of freshly washed hair filled the bathroom as Orson finished tying his shoes. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and put on a thin necklace with only one decoration; a small, diamond shaped piece of black metal, and then he stepped out, returning all the other stuff to his room. He walked out of his room again, and, again, walked to the left. He entered the library. A long hallway. The sides being shelves full of books, the end of the hallway had a door that led to the laundry room, on the very end of the right wall held a door that led to the gardens, which Orson harvested from twice a week. The stasis of the room took care of everything else.
Orson flipped through the books and the books and the books, until he found the one he was looking for.
“The Interpretation of Dreams”
Orson had read many of these books before, mostly in the fiction and fantasy section. There were some comic books and space operas he had yet to finish, for one of two reasons. Either they were really bad and he just couldn’t continue with it, or it was so good that he couldn’t bear to finish it. Either way, it comforted him that there were stories he hadn’t finished.
He closed the door behind him, and made a right, deeper into the hallway, the hallway curved, until it was facing forward. He hugged the left wall until it opened up to where he was in a large circular room, with a large circle table in the middle, with a radio inserted into the table, and two semi-circle couches that could hold 16 people. He laid across the couch, resting his head on the arm rest. And began flipping through the content of the book, trying to interpret his sleeping world.

Almost an hour passed, and he got up to get something to eat. He walked into the kitchen, which was connected to the lounging area. He got a small bag of dried asparagus, and a small bottle of water. He sat in the kitchen, eating with his things sprawled across the table.
He was getting pretty into the book, distracted from the initial purpose of getting it out of the library, when suddenly the room next to him released a loud buzzer noise. Orson immediately dog-eared the page, and closed it, and sealed the bottle of water and food and put them up. He went back into the social area and placed the book aside, and pulled out a shelf from the desk, and grabbed a pen and a notebook. The shelf was full of them. He flipped to the last page he was on, and below yesterday’s entry, wrote: Entry Number 3487.

The radio in the center of the table suddenly came to life, making a swishing static noise for a few seconds, but eventually whirring into legible statements.

‘…Dear survivors, this has truly been a day for human victory! The Northwestern Mara tribes have retreated into the ocean, and our navy are scouting for their nest, so we can destroy it. I will now give you the pleasure of listening to the Central Dakota Symphony. This has been Joseph Li Marton, on ASG Broadcast. Have a good day, survivors, and I’ll see you in 2 hours for my next report’ The radio suddenly made a switching noise, and the background noise that accompanied Joseph Li Marton’s disembodied voice was suddenly replaced by a relatively large sounding orchestra playing the standard tune when humans scored a victory.
Orson looked at his notebook, he had written everything down, word to word. As the music played he began to sketch a small scale portrait of the Mara retreating into the ocean.
The Mara. He looked at previous drawings and entries. Described as large metallic beasts, with heat ray guns, and spiked knuckle fists. Large elastic tails that are strong enough to wrap around a man and crush his ribs. If that wasn’t scary enough, there are large tank like vehicles that walk on four bulky legs, with heat ray guns on top. One time, the show even described it doing something like the tank, poddish shape thing splitting in half like two sandwich buns and taking in a human solider trying to crawl into a large crack in a building, and closing quickly, crushing the soldier’s legs. Orson took the notebook and closed it, putting it back in the shelf with the pen. Then he got out the book and began reading where he left off again.
After a while, the music that cued that the show was about to begin again suddenly started playing, and Orson put up his book and got out the journal and pen again, and waited eagerly for the voice to return.
‘…Dear Survivors, I regret to inform that the naval ship that pursued the retreating Mara was sunk by what appeared to be a large scale heat blast from underwater…’
A lump formed in Orson’s throat, but he shook it off and continued to write.
‘…The military has yet to hear of any survivors, and regrettably cannot wait due to the Mara’s constant state of migration. I regret to inform any family that the military has decided to bomb the nest while we know it’s definite location. This has been Joseph Li Marton, on the ASG Broadcast. I think it best, we cancel the rest of today’s broadcast, I’ll see you all tomorrow morning, bright and early…’ The radio suddenly clicked off and was replaced by a somber tune played by two trumpets.
Orson listened for a few seconds, but eventually turned the radio off.
Orson tried to think of something to scribble down as a form of respect for the fallen soldiers, but couldn’t come up with anything.
He simply closed the book and returned it and the pen back to the drawer.
His entire daily routine would be thrown off.
Usually he would sit here and listen to one more report, write it down, and then he would go work out again, then come back and eat lunch while listening to another report, then he would read until the next report, which would be the last one of the day, then he would go to the garden where an advanced audio based AI would teach him basic American customs. 5 reports a day, which, today, has been shortened to two.
What was he going to do to fill in all those spots?
He looked at the book.
‘I guess this is all I can do from here.’
The rest of his day was pretty smooth, but different. Not often does Orson’s plans go awry, but it’s not like he doesn’t know how to deal with them. The Customizable Year-long Learning Device, or, CYL for short, teaches him that every respectable American citizen has a schedule they keep to, but it also teaches them to be flexible. And this was Orson being flexible.
Instead of waiting for the next ASG report, he studied the dream book intensively. And after another workout routine, a change of clothes, his lunch of dried tomatoes, a slice of wheat bread, and plums, he came to the basic conclusion that his dream was all about wanting to go outside, into the surface world. He came to terms with that. He’s always wanted to go out into the world, he’d never seen it after all. Only read about it in stories, and seen some pictures in books. He put the book back in its rightful place in the library. He was satisfied, he had learned a lot today.
He went into the garden. It was a good size, about the same as the gym, but more of a square shape. He walked down the tile path to the middle, where there was a small circle for him to sit. He sat down, pencil and journal, a different journal with a different purpose. He pressed the button on the tile in front of him, and up popped up a screen, which rose on a metal pole, until it was face-to-screen with Orson’s sitting body. The screen came to life, and a robotic male voice began to speak.
“Hello-Orson- how are you today?” Its speech was choppy, but it was incredibly advanced for it to be a standard NHA bunker AI.
“I’m good. I got a lot done today.” Orson responded, clearing his throat.
“Good. Today, we’re going to be learning about government. Are you prepared?”
Orson clicked his pen, and opened his book.
“Yes.”

Reviews

[Jgra]

This is overall pretty good. The one thing that stood out is you did a very good job of creating Orson, he doesn't fit in to any re-used archetypes, he interests me because he's a little weird, the way he goes about his day and everything. The story is in intruiging how his life is so calm but he is in the middle of an apocalypse- alien war type of situation

My pointers would be, you misused the word portrait, look up it's meaning, try to limit your use of the words "he" and the words "was" and "has" when describing the scene, it will make it flow better. The way you describe alot is similar to Charles Dickens I would read his work if I were you. I gave it a 67 which means pretty good not mind-blowing. This is solid work and has potential to get into the 80s and 90s if you make your description flow better and try to limit all word repetitons even outside of "he". I feel alot of reviewers on this site aren't honest, like I would view my work in the high 70s low 80s. Also I liked the maras, their tanks were a little confusing and i think over complicated, dont change the maras themselves (maybe re-visit their tanks) but in the future when creating an alien race build them up through natural selction, visualize what factors in their envirorment made them the way they are, make the envirorment as dangerous as possible, because that means they'd have to be total badasses to survive it. Your first chapter was good, concept wise I'd keep reading and will, just fix what I said earlier.

[JayG]

You're thinking in terms of telling the story to the reader, and visualizing story as a series of events. Neither works on the page.

you can't talk to the reader as you would an audience because they can't hear you. That might seem a quibble, because they read the words and hear them in their mind, but the difference is critical. When you tell the story in person it's more than just words. It's a performance, involving vocal and visual tricks that cannot be translated to the page. How you tell the story is every bit as important as what you say.

Take a simple phrase like "good morning." Spoken one way it's an invitation to make love. Spoken another and it acknowledges someone's presence. Spoken by a shop employee is says, "I'm ready to help you." It could also say, "You didn't expect to see me, but I'm here to kill you." The words are the same, but how they're spoken, and the facial expression, gesture, and body-language change the meaning.

But on the page all you can do is type, "Good morning." Simply put, you cannot TELL a story on the page because the medium doesn't support it.

A second point is that story isn't the events. That's plot. Story is what those events mean to the protagonist in the moment he or she calls "now," and what they motivates therm to do. You can't tell a story as a chronicle of events because it will read like as report.

The short version is that in our school days we learn only the writing skills needed by our future employers. The writing skills of fiction on the page are needed by professional writers, only, and so are not even mentioned. So though we never realize it, we leave school exactly as well prepared to write fiction as to remove a diseased appendix.

In this you, the writer, are mentioning things you visualize happening, but that he's ignoring. For example:

• Orson felt the grass between his fingers.

He also felt many things. He can probably feel his underpants against his balls. Why not mention that? After all, he reacts to neither one of them. And if they don't matter to him, why should a reader care?

Yes, I understand that you're trying to let the reader know that he's surprised to find himself outside. So instead of you, someone who is not on the scene or in the story talking, why not say something like, "The unexpected feel of grass between his fingers brought his eyes open," says the same thing, so far as informing the reader. But it's what matters to him in the moment he calls now that matters to the reader.

But take that further. The grass brought him alert, but if he notices it he has to react. Why not with:
- - - - - -
"What the hell?" Orson sat up. Around him was grass, real, growing grass, and that made no more sense than the people, who...
- - - - -
See the difference? Instead of someone we can neither see nor hear explaining what THEY see, we're within the protagonist's viewpoint, and noticing what matters to him. It is his story, after all, so fair is fair. Let him live it.

But unfortunately there's another issue, which is that you should never, never, never open a story with a dream. It is a guaranteed instant rejection. The reader has accepted it as real, and begun to build a world picture. and then you tell them, "Ha ha, fooled you."

Think about how you would feel were you to read ten pages of a well written story, and read, "And then he woke to find it had all been a dream." You just wasted all that time because it wasn't real, and could have been summed up with, "He woke, from the most real dream he's ever had." And that applies be it ten pages or a few paragraphs.

If the dream matters, he could explain the dream to someone else. Then, we begin reading it knowing it's a dream, and that it has significance to the story.

So here's the bottom line: You have the desire, the drive, and the perseverance. But you're missing the skill-set needed to write fiction for the page, and that's fixable. It's no harder to learn the tricks of writing fiction than the book report and essays skills you've already learned. But you'll have to do that on your own, because none of the skills needed will be taught in school, unless your teacher happens to be a successful fiction writer.

But on the other hand, you have at least part of the summer free. So instead of homework, do home-work, on the skills that will give wings to your writing.

Your local free library's fiction writing section can be a huge resource. And if you are meant to be a writer the learning will be fun.

Because it's a newer book, look for one of the books on writing by Jack Bickham. They're great for explaining the nuts-and-bolts issues of constructing a scene, and the structure of fiction. Better is Dwight Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer, though the library doesn't usually have that one.

You'll love the difference in your writing.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.