Science Fiction - Part 1

This excerpt was written by Grace Bridges. If she has a working title for the piece, I didn't see it. If I missed it, I apologize, Grace. I can put it with the second post. Just a reminder for what the colors mean. Red is something I think could be deleted. Blue is a comment or addition.

Part 1 – Monday-morning-itis

The clang of the work-bells forced its way into Mario’s consciousness. A sliver of light pushed through his eyelids, and he pried them open.

Dang. It’s morning again. Monday morning. The old joke was anything but funny. On Planet Monday, every day was the same. He threw back the thick rough-woven blanket and heaved himself upright with an effort. [To me, heaved already implies an effort.]

What was I up to last night? he wondered as he lurched into the plastic wet-cell that towered beside his bed. I sure don’t feel like I’ve been sleeping nineteen hours. He slid the pane across the entry opening, and the shock of the cold water made him flinch. After thirty seconds it switched off automatically and he stood still as the airdryers around the cell’s base kicked in. The air wasn’t really much warmer than the water, but it felt good.

Stepping dry out of the cell into the two-by-four floor space of his living quarters, he opened the long drawer built under the bed and pulled out a grey tracksuit, standard issue. Some things never change. He chased the thought across his consciousness. That’s significant. But why? To be honest, nothing ever changed. [This one’s just personal taste. I’d prefer it without “to be honest.”]

Unless… He peered out the tiny window above the bed. Square grey buildings met his gaze, and above hung the eternal grey clouds. Unless I’ve been mindwiped.

He groaned and let himself sink onto the brown bedcover. Not again! Looking up at the transport tube access in the ceiling just above head height, he examined its round rim. Just as I thought. No dust. That meant the tube had been used recently. Monday planet all but consisted of dust, and it gathered again within hours of cleaning. Slits around the edges of the floor kept it mainly dust-free by regular suction, but the transport tubes had no such devices and were usually quite bearded. That is, if they hadn’t been used in a few days.

He sat blinking and shivering as he stared unseeing at the vid-wall’s moving feed of Ocean region. Last night, I was sucked up that tube. And they wiped my memory again. Partially, at least. It was a technique used to remove extreme emotions among the workers – a technique no one remembered going through, funnily enough. But everyone knew it happened, since afterwards only facts remained – gone were feelings, memories of friends, dreams and aspirations. [You’re explaining what the mindwipes do, which the reader needs to know, eventually. But if all feelings and memories of friends are gone, at this point how does Mario know they’re gone? Could this explanation come from another character later?] Did I fall in love, or what? Mario scratched his head, put on his boots, then the second bell sounded. He rose and moved to the door as it swished open simultaneously with all the other doors up and down the hallway.

[Nice set-up of the world. Grey clothes, grey buildings, grey sky. How dreary!]

The 200 inhabitants of the third floor stepped out of their quarters as one. To be precise, the third floor of Wing B, Building 17, Area X9, Foodstuffs Region, Planet Monday. The doors swished closed again and the workers turned to march towards 17’s Central. Mario strode over the hallway’s threshold to the third-floor lobby and accepted a breakfast pack from the dispenser in the doorway. Biting off the cap, he began squeezing the warm coffee-flavoured sludge into his gullet and continued towards the mass transport tube. He joined the queue in front of Wing B’s accessway and guzzled the rest of his breakfast while he waited.

Monday-morning-itis. The clown who named this planet deserved to be assigned to Sewage region. Just because they discovered it on a Monday… since when do you have Mondays in space, anyhow?

He chucked the empty plastic foodsack in a waste unit to the left of the accessway, and stepped into the blackness. The familiar whooshing sound of the surrounding air calmed him somehow, which was a bonus for the emo-reader inside the chip implanted in his neck. If they don’t detect strong emotions, they won’t send me to be mindwiped. But I guess it’s too late for that. Again.

The chip in his neck beeped, warning him to prepare for landing. He bent his knees to take the impact, and shot out of the tube feet-first to land at the edge of a vast field of oats. Mario flexed his elbows and knees, noting new bruises on his wrist, shoulder and lower leg, as well as the usual ankle stress from landing. As far as he knew, the transport tubes had never killed anyone, although they sure did dole out a beating-up to those who used them. But he’d come off lightly today.

[You admit that these tubes are hard on people. Too hard, I’d think. I don’t believe the human body could hold up to it day after day.]

To his left and right, other morning-dazed workers slowly righted themselves and faced the day’s task. X9 was Monday’s oat capital. Their harvest was used mainly for the breakfast porridge served by dispensers in every part of the planet. [So that coffee-flavored sludge in a tube was oat-based?]

Nineteen hours, and counting. Yes, the days were long here, but then, so were the nights. [The length of their days is too long to allow me to suspend my disbelief. Could you cut it back to say a 30-hour day? You'd still have the dreary feel of a long day, but it would be something I can believe humans can endure. But working 19 hours every day of the week--you'd have short worker lifespans.] The line of workers moved forward, picking the oats and releasing the stalks to be sucked into the transport tubes that filled the grey sky with their spidery network. [Another good description—spidery network.] No longer set to suck human bodies, they now gently removed the harvest for processing in X9’s huge barns some miles away to the east. To the west, the first of the dormitories was barely visible on the horizon. Ahead, to the north, grew oats and oats and oats, fading into the skyline where they met the cold whiteness of the clouds.

Mario paused to pull up his jacket’s hood and tighten its edge around his face. Monday had no weather to speak of, just night and day, but it sure was cold. [This makes me wonder—if he was born here and knows nothing else, how does he know about other weather?] As he threw himself into the rhythm of the work, he pondered again.

What happened yesterday? What did I do to deserve this mindwipe? As he struggled to remember, he caught sight of dark-blonde dreadlocks peeking out under the hood of the worker to his right. A sudden shock of delight went through his heart, and his chip gave a single low beep. 10% of critical emo-level has been reached. Adrenaline pumped though him.

Ten percent wasn’t really dangerous, but it could get that way [Maybe “become so”? I don’t want to step on author voice, or character voice, but that sentence could use a little more sophistication.]. He worked a little faster so as to get ahead of his neighbour, then he quickly cast a glance back. The lumpy dreadlocks framed a pale and petite face, with brown eyes that gazed steadily back into his own. His heart began to hammer, and two beeps sounded. Twenty percent. Calm down, kid.

A girl! Maybe I really did fall in love! I want to remember!

Peeking at her again a few minutes later, he decided she didn’t look old enough to have been to Reproduction already.

At six thousand days of age, and again at seven, a woman would be transported to the somewhat notorious Repro region to do her duty keeping the planet’s population constant. Those whose offspring showed the best genes could even be called back a third time to balance out any losses.

As for the other part of the equation… Mario didn’t like to think about it much. Young men who worked exceptionally hard or fast were selected to spend “holidays” of varying lengths in Repro region [These sound like proper names, so both words should be capitalized: Ocean Region, Repro Region.], in exchange for doing their “duty”. The thought sent prickles down Mario’s back. There’s something wrong with that system. He didn’t know what. But as he had never been anything more than an average worker, he was not likely to be offered this “privilege”.

He had, however, participated in a work exchange that took him to Edu region for a week, where the offspring were cared for until they were old enough to work. Now that was fun. Amidst the laughter of the children, it was easier to imagine that maybe, just maybe, life didn’t have to be like this. Nineteen hours of daylight and work, followed by nineteen hours of darkness and rest.

He ignored the ten-percent beep provoked by the memory, and concentrated on his work, thinking about all the breakfasts these oats would soon provide.

Hours passed, and the transport tubes stopped sucking up oats long enough to deliver a mid-morning meal to each worker’s feet. Along the line, people sat in the dirt to consume wholemeal jam sandwiches, an apple, and the contents of a vitamin drink-pack. Mario stretched out his legs on the ground as he chewed. It sure is hard not to think about that girl. [I don’t care for that thought. I’d rather see him look around for the girl, then check himself.] But there was no other way to avoid the beeping emo-reader and preserve whatever was left of himself after so many mindwipes. He looked up at the opaque sky above the transport tubes.

There must be Something… Beyond.

***

You've created an interesting world. When you fix those couple of minor things, you'll have a world that works and is believable.

My only other complaints is too many italicized thoughts. The standard for books being published these days is to use italics only when absolutely necessary. A thought is italicized only for emphasis. The rest of a character’s thoughts should blend right in with the narrative. If you’re going to have a direct, italicized thought, it should be especially important.

Faith Awakened by Grace Bridges
- In virtual stasis to escape a deadly virus, an ex-slave finds more than just survival.

Paperback, soundtrack CD and free e-book available now at http://stores.lulu.com/grace1034

Be sure to come back Friday for part 2.