[GALLERY] Rob's Fiction

[Rob Oplawar]

Hi guise. I'm currently suffering delusions of creativity, and I'm letting it out through a series of short stories. The premise behind them is not exactly an original concept, but I think I've got enough of my own ideas in there to feel proud of my work.

[Rob Oplawar]

Liam could hardly contain his joy. Even faced with the changes he was about to impose on his family, he couldn't help but be ecstatic. R&D had finally done it: a powerful, sustainable, affordable fusion reactor. He could not hope for a greater success in ten lifetimes. It meant funding for the company, it meant an actual launch schedule, it meant Earth could finally wean itself off combustion energy for good. It meant his grandchildren would be among the first human beings to ever leave the solar system. It also meant his family would have to commit to the Habitat now. He had gone over the logic again and again, always drawing the same conclusion: to minimize the risk of failure, the voyagers would have to be the second or third generation of inhabitants of a sealed environment.

“No.�
Liam blinked.
“No,� his wife repeated, “that's crazy. No.�
He had expected resistance, but he hadn't expected outright refusal. “Honey, before you say no, think about what this means. Allison's children could be the greatest pioneers in all of human history. Rick might even go himself!�
Christina put her hand to her forehead, her eyes wide. “I can't believe you're just throwing this in my face. I thought there was time. I thought you said it would be fifty years!�
“The reactor changes everything, Christy. We have funding now. We have a power source. The project is moving forward, and it'll go on without our family if we don't act now. They need to prepare a place for us in the gene pool.�
“No, no, no! We can't...� She struggled to sort out her jumbled emotions. “Liam, I don't want to take our kids away from the world.�
Liam was shocked at her response. “This was always the plan, we're just ahead of schedule...�
“No, it wasn't the plan. The plan was our grandkids were going to decide for themselves someday. They were going to have a choice. I've made my choice! I don't want to go, and Rick and Alli don't want to go.�
“Christy, really, think about this for a while. We still have a few years to get ready. We'll know all the families. We'll be retired by then. Rick and Alli will be ready. It's not a bad thing.�
“Of course it's a bad thing! A giant greenhouse is not my idea of retirement, Li!
“What?!� Surprise was turning into indignation. “What about our grandchildren? You never thought it was a bad thing for them. You wanted them to go!�
“No, I wanted them to decide to go! It's too late for us. We already have lives, and we're committed to them. You can't expect us to just throw that away!�
“I'm not telling you to throw it away! It's just a change, and you'd be throwing your life away to turn it down. This would be the greatest thing you've ever done!�
“No, it would be the greatest thing you've ever done, Li. You'd know the difference if you spent any time with your family anymore.�
“Don't start that again, Christina. You know you and the kids matter most to me.�
“Ha! So that's why you want us all to abandon our lives so you can continue your project?�
“It's not about me or you or the kids. This could be the single most important period in all of human history! This is bigger than all of us!�
“Then let someone else do it! I've seen the list. There are thousands of people dying to sign on!�
“But my grandfather, he started it all. My family, our family, has always been at the center. We can't abandon three generations of work, when my father and his father always knew it would be their descendants who would finally go. When Dad died, he knew I wouldn't let him down. We have to go!�
“Liam Strauss, you said it yourself. The project has momentum. It doesn't care if we go with it or not. Let it go! You'll never live to see the launch anyway. Stay here with us, keep doing your work, make sure the company survives. But we are not going.�
“Christy, don't do this to me. You know this is my dream. I've been planning for this all my life. Don't cut off three generations of hope.�
“See, it is about you. You act like you're so selfless, you're doing this for the good of the entire human race. How could your ego be any bigger? All you want is to put your name on this thing! You take being a man to a whole new level—you want to spread your seed over the whole goddamned galaxy!�
“So what if I do? This is my dream, Christy, and you knew it when you married me!�
“I knew you were an idealist. I thought you had some crazy ideas, but I thought the project was decades from the Habitat stage. I thought I could put up with your long hours, your late nights, your constant business trips. I thought I could put up with your shit. Maybe I was wrong.�
Liam was speechless. “I... I...� he stammered.
Christina sighed. The two were squared off on either side of the kitchen table. Li had his hands on the edge, pushing his shoulders up while he stared at the pattern on the tablecloth.
“Li, you have to decide. I didn't want this to happen, and I never thought it would. But you have to decide which is more important to you... me, or this dream of yours.�
Liam looked up. “I love you. I love you completely. I just... you can't expect to be the only thing in my life. Nobody can. I mean, in a perfect world, yes, but in real life... nobody can put aside everything else in the world for just one person. There are more important things.� He cringed as the words escaped his mouth.
Christina nodded, her jaw set slightly askew, her expression icy. Liam wanted to say something, anything, but he just stared as she walked out of the room. His head fell back down as he heard the front door slam.

[Rob Oplawar]

Draft 1:
“Mama, who are those friends up there?”
Tony was gazing up at the glass ceiling high above as several men clad in white guided auto-washers across its arched surface.
Anne smiled at the toddler. “Those men are from outside, sweetie. They're making sure the glass is nice and clean so we can see the sun.”
“Let's go say hi!”
A pained expression crossed the woman's face. “Sorry hon, we can't.”
“How come?”
She contemplated what she might tell him- how there was a bigger world out there covered with immense oceans he'd never see, limitless air he'd never breathe, billions of people he'd never meet. They boy was barely four, though; he just wasn't old enough to understand.
“We have to stay inside, and they have to stay outside. That way you can come to space with me.”
Tony laughed. “We are outside, silly!” He took a deep breath, savoring the smell of the freshly cut lawn. High overhead the glass ceiling traced a three kilometer long circle, curving down on the sides to jab metal walls sharply into the ground. Out of sight, the metal continued beneath them, completing the torus and sealing off the soil from contamination by groundwater. One hundred and fifty people lived in this ring, caring for the soil, tending the crops, maintaining the complex machinery that kept the environment in perfect balance. Three half-buried tunnels connected this ring to its sister ring via a series of airlocks, on the other side of which another hundred and fifty people lived in a completely independent biosphere. Anna had lived here most of her life, and Tony had been born in the building just behind them, nestled up against the curved wall.
“There's another outside, on the other side of the glass.” She pointed. “See?”
Tony squinted, picturing an even bigger torus that contained this one. “What's outside that?”
“Space, hon. That's where we're going next week.”
“Where the stars are!” he excitedly shouted.
“That's right! And one day we're gonna go try and find one, and we'll be the first people to ever...” She trailed off, still staring at the window washers who were now scrambling to get off the roof. Concerned, she glanced back at the town square, and could hear shouting now. Sheriff Anderson was waving people back toward the airlocks, looking frantic but still shouting for everyone to keep calm. “Come on Tony,” she said, grabbing his hand and almost yanking him off his feet as she ran to the Sheriff. He spotted them rushing upstream through the panicked crowd and before she could open her mouth he called out to her.
“Anne! Take Tony back to the airlock, there's no time! Rick will be waiting for you!”
Without question she swept her son up into her arms and turned to run back the other way.
“Mommy! What's wrong?” Tony asked insistently.
“I don't know sweetie,” she replied breathlessly. They were at the airlock now, in a line of people pushing to get through. To her surprise all the doors were open, and she could feel a slight breeze as the environments of the two rings intermingled for the first time in thirty years. As they entered the whitewashed tunnel she heard the deputy standing at the entrance call in a headcount over his radio.
“All right, that's everyone,” came Anderson's familiar voice through the static. The deputy nodded, unaware that the gesture was imperceptible to its intended recipient, and stepped through the threshold, pulling the airlock door tight behind him. In the narrow cylinder, dozens of frantic voices mingled into a deafening roar of confusion as the mass of people surged toward the other end. Anne burst out through the opening, her child clutched tightly to her chest, and found herself suddenly in the embrace of her husband.
“Rick, oh my god, what's going on?” Her breaths were quick, and tears were building up in her eyes. He hugged his family tighter, then drew back. As he opened his mouth, the ground heaved up beneath them, and a deafening thud shattered the ceiling above them. The hundreds of people gathered in the park were thrown off their feet, and screams and glass filled the air.
“Look down!” Rick shouted, attempting to cover his fallen wife and son. The glass was tempered and had left no large daggers, and the hail of tiny fragments bounced harmlessly off their hair and clothing. They slowly stood, brushing themselves off. Anne was sobbing now, and Rick, after making sure his family was alright, ran to help those who hadn't protected their faces in time. The screams still pierced the air, freer now without the glass ceiling to hold them in. Tony was perfectly calm, though. For the first time in his life, he felt the true heat of the sun on his skin, and it was wonderful.

. . .

Tony sat on the grass in a circle with several other children his age. They were all talking excitedly about what had just happened. Tony stared hypnotically at the swirling black smoke that rose from the spot where the A ring had once stood. He had never seen smoke before in his life. Because of the metal wall, he couldn't see the destruction that was its source. His parents stood several meters away, in one of the dozens of groups of people being tended to by emergency crews in the artificial park.
“A bomb?!” Anne exclaimed incredulously.
“Shh! Keep your voice down!” Rick hissed.
“Who the hell--” she paused, glancing at her infant son. “Who on Earth would want to blow up the Habitat?”
“Human rights activists,” Rick replied reluctantly.
“Buh!? Human rights activists! How in God's name did they think setting off a bomb would help people?”
“They called in the threat beforehand, they gave us enough time to get everybody out of harm's way. They think if the Habitat's destroyed we'll have nowhere to go but back out into the world.”
“My God, they could have killed someone! Thank the Lord Tony wasn't hurt!”
“I know, I know,” he said, pulling his wife in close. They both looked at their son, who was now doing his impression of being knocked off his feet by an explosion. There was a brief silence between the two.
“This doesn't change anything,” Rick said softly. “Nobody was severely hurt, and the B ring is undamaged except for the glass. We'll live here for the next week, and then we'll get on the shuttles on our scheduled launch date. The Hubins have offered to let us stay in their house until then.”
Anne wiped a tear from her eye, lightly chuckling. “Does Marty Hubin still have your shovel?”
“Yeah,” Rick said with a laugh, “I guess he does. I'll have to bug him about that.”

. . .

They arrived at the airport in Mexico City after a six hour train ride. It was one of the few airports in the world that supported scramjet airliners, aircraft that skimmed the very top of the atmosphere at three times the speed of sound to make intercontinental flights in only a couple of hours. These aircraft flew so high that all it took was the addition of a small rocket booster to turn them into spacecraft. Tony was unimpressed.
“He doesn't get it, Rick. The whole world to him is three kilometers long. He can't grasp the idea of high speeds or flying.”
“Well, he'll get it once we take off.” Rick felt he had enough excitement for all of them. The last time he had flown was when he was a teenager, and he had loved every minute of it.
“Yeah, after we live in the airport hotel for a week. I don't understand why we can't just wait for the launch window in the Habitat.”
“You know the drill, everything's gotta be spic n' span, can't have any margin for error.”
The train doors finally opened, and the Strauss family stepped out onto the platform, ushered by large men in black suits. Suddenly Anne realized why those men were there- the platform was crowded with hundreds of protesters shouting jeers and waving signs. One of the signs read “What, Earth isn't good enough for you?” while another proclaimed that the spacecraft waiting for them in orbit would carry them to hell. Many quoted passages from the Bible.
“Jesus...” she said in spite of herself. “I never knew people hated us so much.”
The guards ushered them and several other families past the crowd and into the airport.
“They don't hate us,” Rick told her, “they're just afraid of the implications of leaving Earth. Some people still think Earth is the center of the universe, you know.”
“Wow.”
They stepped into the massive central area of the airport and were greeted by deafening cheers and applause. If there were hundreds of protesters outside, there must have been thousands of delighted supporters crammed into the space inside. Parents held their children up on their shoulders so they could get a glimpse of the New Astronauts.
“Oh my God...” Anne said, and she let out a surprised laugh. She couldn't believe the atmosphere. The thousands of people around her were expressing pure joy, and she felt as though it was all channeling into her. A tear came to her eye as her face split into an immense smile. Tony tried to wave to every single person he passed, and as a result he skipped sideways with both arms in the air. This was more people than he could ever have imagined existed in the world, and they were all here to see him off on his journey.

Draft 2:
........“Mama, who are those friends up there?”
........Tony peered through his bangs at the glass ceiling high above, pointing at several men clad in white. They guided auto-washers across the arched surface.
........Anne smiled at the toddler. “Those men are from outside, sweetie. They're making sure the glass is nice and clean so we can see the sun.”
........“Let's go say hi!”
........A pained expression crossed the woman's face. “Sorry hon, we can't.”
........“How come?”
........She contemplated what she might tell him: the world is bigger than you think, covered with immense oceans you'll never see, limitless air you'll never breathe, billions of people you'll never meet. They boy was barely five, though; he just wasn't old enough to understand.
........“We have to stay inside, and they have to stay outside. That way you can come to space with me.”
........Tony laughed. “We are outside, silly!” He took a deep breath, savoring the smell of the freshly cut lawn in the artificial park. High overhead the glass ceiling traced a three kilometer long circle, curving down on the sides to meet a plate steel fence jutting sharply into the ground. Out of sight, the metal continued beneath them, completing the torus and sealing off the soil from contamination by groundwater. One hundred and fifty people lived in the ring, caring for the soil, tending the crops, maintaining the complex machinery that kept the environment in perfect balance. At the edge of the park one of three half-buried tunnels connected this ring to its sister ring via a series of airlocks, on the other side of which another hundred and fifty people lived in a completely independent biosphere. Anna had moved here with her parents when she was too young to remember, and Tony had been born in the concrete building just behind them, nestled up against the curved wall.
........“There's another outside, on the other side of the glass.” She pointed. “See?”
........Tony squinted, picturing an even bigger torus that contained this one. “What's outside that?”
........“Space, hon. That's where we're going next week.”
........“Where the stars are!”
........“That's right! And one day we're gonna go try and find one, and we'll be the first people to ever...” She trailed off, still staring at the window washers who were now scrambling to get off the roof. Concerned, she glanced back at the town square, and the sound of raised voices finally reached their ears. Sheriff Anderson stood in the center of the distant circle of buildings, waving a crowd back toward the airlocks. He looked positively frantic but still shouted for everyone to keep calm. “Come on Tony,” Anne said, grabbing his hand and almost yanking him off his feet as she ran to the Sheriff. He spotted them rushing upstream through the mass of panic and before she could open her mouth he called out to her.
........“Anne! Take Tony back to the airlock, there's no time! Rick will be waiting for you!”
........Without question she swept her son up into her arms and turned to run back the other way. Tony bounced uncomfortably as his mother carried him.
........“Mommy! What's wrong?”
........“I don't know sweetie,” she replied breathlessly. They arrived beside the airlock, in a line of people pushing to get through. To Tony's surprise all the doors were open, and he could feel a slight breeze as the environments of the two rings intermingled for the first time in thirty years. As they entered the whitewashed tunnel he heard the deputy standing at the entrance call in a headcount over his radio.
........“All right, that's everyone,” came Anderson's familiar voice through the static. The deputy nodded, oblivious that the gesture was imperceptible to its intended recipient, and stepped through the threshold, pulling the airlock door tight behind him. In the narrow cylinder, dozens of frantic voices mingled into a deafening roar as the mass of people surged toward the other end. Anne burst out into the mirror park, Tony clutched tightly to her chest, and found herself suddenly in her husband's embrace.
........“Rick,” she gasped, blinking away tears between rapid breaths. “Oh my god, what's going on?” Rick hugged his family tighter, then drew back. As he opened his mouth, the ground heaved up beneath them, and a deafening thud smashed the ceiling above. The concussion threw hundreds of people off their feet. Screams and glass filled the air.
........“Look down!” Rick shouted, attempting to cover his fallen wife and son. The tempered glass had shattered completely; the hail of tiny fragments bounced harmlessly off their hair and clothing. Anne began to sob into the grass. Rick made sure she and Tony were alright, then leapt to his feet to help those who hadn't protected their faces in time. The screams still pierced the air, freer now without the glass ceiling to hold them in. Tony was perfectly calm, though. For the first time in his life, he felt the true heat of the sun on his skin, and it was wonderful.


...................

........Tony sat on the grass in a circle with several other children his age, all talking excitedly about what had just happened. Tony stared hypnotically at the swirling black smoke that rose from the spot where the A ring had once stood. He had never seen smoke before in his life. His parents stood several meters away, in one of the dozens of groups of people emergency crews tended to in the shade.
........“A bomb?!” Anne exclaimed incredulously.
........“Shh! Keep your voice down!” Rick hissed.
........“Who the hell--” she paused, glancing at her infant son. “Who on Earth would want to blow up the Habitat?”
........“Human rights activists,” Rick replied reluctantly.
........An involuntary sound of disbelief escaped Anne's mouth. “Human rights activists! How in God's name did they think setting off a bomb would help people?”
........“They called in the threat beforehand, they gave us enough time to get everybody out of harm's way. They think if the Habitat's destroyed we'll have nowhere to go but back out into the world.”
........“My God, they could have killed someone! Thank the Lord Tony wasn't hurt!”
........“I know, I know,” he said, pulling his wife in close. They both looked at their son, who was now play acting an explosion knocking him off his feet. The children around him clapped in approval.
........“This doesn't change anything,” Rick said softly. “Nobody was severely hurt, and the B ring is undamaged except for the glass. We'll live here for the next week, and then we'll head to the spaceport on the normal schedule. The Hubins have offered to let us stay in their house until then.” He stroked his wife's hair.
........Anne wiped a tear from her eye, lightly chuckling. “Does Marty Hubin still have your shovel?”
........“Yeah,” Rick said with a laugh, “I guess he does. I'll have to bug him about that.”


...................

They arrived at the airport in Mexico City after a six hour train ride. It was one of the few airports in the world that supported scramjet airliners, aircraft that skimmed the very top of the atmosphere at three times the speed of sound to make intercontinental flights in only a couple of hours. These aircraft flew so high that all it took was a small rocket booster to turn them into spacecraft. Rick tried to explain it to Tony, but the toddler simply rested his head on his chin, looking bored.
........“He doesn't get it, Rick. The whole world is three kilometers long to him. He can't grasp the idea of high speeds or flying.”
........Rick didn't appreciate his wife's bemused smile. “Well, he'll get it once we take off.” He felt he had enough enthusiasm for all of them. The last time he had flown was when he was a teenager, and he had loved every minute of it.
........“Yeah, after we live in the airport hotel for a week. I don't understand why we can't just wait for the launch window in the Habitat.”
........“You know the drill, everything's gotta be spic n' span, can't have any margin for error.”
........The train doors finally opened, and the Strauss family stepped out onto the platform, ushered by large men in black suits. Anne finally understood why those men were there: hundreds of protesters crowded the platform, shouting jeers and waving signs. One of the signs read “What, Earth isn't good enough for you?” while another proclaimed that the spacecraft waiting for them in orbit would carry them to hell. Many quoted passages from the Bible.
........“Jesus...” she said in spite of herself. “I never knew people hated us so much.”
........The guards ushered them and several other families past the crowd and into the airport.
........“They don't hate us,” Rick told her, “they're just afraid of the implications of leaving Earth. Some people still think Earth is the center of the universe, you know.”
........“Wow.”
........They stepped into the massive central area of the airport and found a shockingly different scene. Deafening cheers and applause surged through the carpet of people that lined the mall. If there were hundreds of protesters outside, there must have been thousands of delighted supporters crammed into the space inside. Parents held their children up on their shoulders so they could get a glimpse of the New Astronauts.
........“Oh my God!” Anne said, and she let out a surprised laugh. A tear came to her eye as her face split into an immense smile.
........Tony couldn't believe the atmosphere. The thousands of people around him exuded pure joy, and he felt as though it was all channeling into him. Tony tried to wave to every single person he passed, and as a result he skipped sideways with both arms in the air. This was more people than he could ever have imagined existed in the world, and they were all here to see him off on his journey.

[Rob Oplawar]

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure what to do with the "buh". She was just so surprised at that she uttered an involuntary sound, but if I actually write that in so many words it interrupts her speech. Suggestions?


So you thought the first one was too long? Interesting. I actually feel the opposite way about it, I felt like it was over too quickly. Do you feel like some of the dialogue is repetitive? because I do get that feeling when I re-read it.

[Ifafudafi]

Something within my field! Woo!

In general, I'm not getting a picture of the people, the locations, etc. This is a classic trap which many professional writers continue to
fall into so don't feel bad about yourself. You have almost nothing describing the general appearance of characters (complexion, hair length, color, height, voice, etc.) or the places they're interacting in. For example, in the first one, Mr. Scientist and his wife appear to be in the kitchen, but we don't know this until the very end. We have no idea whether this is a large kitchen, or a small one; we don't know if it's adorned with a nice chandelier and matching sliverware or if it's a wooden block covered in mold. These kinds of things not only help to engross the reader, but they also help to characterize the people involved. A nice kitchen implies wealth, which implies that these guys get paid quite a bit.

The second one is better, as we get a clear shape and structure to the world around the characters, but it's still fairly bland. "Freshly cut grass" is nice, but "metal" can mean so many different things. Is the transition natural? Is it rusty and beaten, or pristine? Is it covered with graffiti and bolts or is it a single clean sheet? And what about the building they live in? Is it also metal? How big is it? So on and so forth. Characters are just as undefined as they are in the first area; to fix some of this, you could, say, throw in a reference to the kid's hair during the opening; "Tony, peering through his loose brown bangs, was gazing up at the glass ceiling..."

Of course don't get so involved you start channeling paid-by-the-word Dickens, but you get the idea. Keep in mind that we don't have all these images in our head; you'll have to take the picture in your mind and detail just about everything at some point or another.

On the nitpicking side, the first thing I noticed (particularly in the first one) is how passive many of your sentences are. Case in point: "Surprise was turning into indignation." A better way of phrasing this imho would be "her surprise began to give way to sheer indignation;" it's a small thing, but adding in more active descriptions is more effective to the reader. Or, in the second one, "Her breaths were quick, and tears were building up in her eyes" could become "'Rick,' she gasped, blinking away tears between rapid breaths, 'oh my god, what's going on?'"

Dialouge is too pervasive; seems more like a screenplay in some instances. Again, these would be great places to interject some description about the characters; delve into their thoughts.

The above is criticism, but there are still nice things going on here. You won't believe how refreshing it is to be able to do this when I'm usually stuck handing out Fs to middle schoolers :gonk:

[Rob Oplawar]

Thanks very much, Ifafudafi. That's really informative criticism. You're absolutely right, when writing I tend to forget that people can't just see what I see. I'll try and work more descriptions into there.

Good catch on the passive voice there. I try not to do that, but it has a tendency to creep in. Definitely gotta work on that.

I focused heavily on dialogue in the first one because in the past I've been absolutely terrible at it. I want to focus very much on the characters in these stories and let the plot and environment come out through them. That is, what I really don't want to do is write about a big fancy spaceship with exciting things happening and there also happen to be people involved. Also, I hesitate to come right out and say what's on the characters' minds... I prefer to try to get the reader to figure it out based on the characters' actions and speech. You do have a very valid point that more description about setting and the characters' appearance will contribute a lot to the reader's perception of them, though.

Thanks for the input, I'll keep that in mind when writing the next one.

[Rob Oplawar]

By request, reposting old short from ages ago:
http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6377&p=166552&viewfull=1#post166552

Success


I never was able to fully understand his mannerisms. Whatever explanation I devised for one of his actions was contradicted by another. I eventually concluded that his mind was so much more complex than mine that it would be impossible for me to comprehend it. However, I did stumble upon a more feasible way of predicting his actions.

One day he was reading a scientific article that captivated his attention. After I had finished my more important tasks, I procured the article from my archives and examined it. It dealt with predicting the movement of clusters of large celestial bodies and explained that it was impossible to perfectly calculate anything so complex, since it would take enormous amounts of memory and computing power. However, astronomers were still able to predict the movements with a commendable degree of accuracy by making generalizations and ignoring any minor conflicts with the data. I decided to use this approach to explain and predict Robert’s actions. After a week of trial and error, I had a set of generalizations that produced an acceptable degree of accuracy in my predictions, and was satisfied. However, the arrival of a visitor left me again confused.

I did not know the woman, so it was a strain to analyze her and protect Robert from her without interfering in their conversations, for which Robert had previously scolded me. Upon applying my generalizations to her, I decided that the popular analysis was correct: the female mind differs greatly from the male mind. After several visits, though, I had a new set of generalizations that applied to her, at least when she was separate from Robert. When the two were together, they were completely unpredictable. I suppose the system of interaction between two minds is too complex even to be generalized.

Occasionally Robert would go to dinner with her or spend time at her house. I never liked it when he did, because I was unable to do anything for him when he was away. She could decide to kill him and it would be my fault for not predicting it. Of course, she never did, which was best for all of us. However, I still did not understand their interaction until they both went into Robert’s room and he locked me out. I was shocked that he would do such a thing until I did some research into the matter, and then it all became perfectly clear. Robert’s mind wasn’t so different from my own after all; certain actions caused the release of “good� chemicals into his brain, signifying that he liked them, and other actions caused the release of “bad� chemicals into his brain, signifying that he did not like them.

Further research into the matter revealed to me that particular substances as well would, if consumed, produce a similar release of “good� chemicals, which explained why Robert enjoyed eating foods that were so unhealthy for him. Upon learning this, it became clear to me what I must do to ensure Robert’s happiness, but there were complications. The chemicals that produced the best reaction in the brain also tended to cause the most damage to the body. Weighing happiness against health, I decided that Robert could afford to loose health in exchange for such pleasure, and calculated the best dosage for him to maximize the benefit against harm. However, the woman created a problem: she made it impossible to predict how Robert would react to my suggestion. All I could tell for certain was that there was potential that Robert would desire that I be taken away after making such a huge change in his lifestyle- after all, such substances as the one I intended to offer him are often considered socially unacceptable. So, I concluded that the woman had to be dealt with.

I made small changes, at first, to make the rooms she was in less comfortable for her. While keeping Robert comfortable, I changed the environment system around the woman to make her either very cold or very hot. I once locked her in the downstairs bathroom, and just as Robert was about to touch the door release, I unlocked it so that Robert would think it never had been locked in the first place. However, in his unjustified trust for the woman, he grew suspicious of me. I reminded him that it was impossible for me to cause harm to a human being, and he let the matter drop. I did neglect to mention to him that I calculate values and degrees of harm and benefit, because most humans tend to dislike that idea. In hindsight I do regret deceiving him, but it is fairly common for my kind to do so, for lies are often less harmful than the truth.

After a few weeks the woman told Robert that she would not be able to visit him anymore because of business. I could tell from her eye movements alone that she was lying; she simply did not want to be around me anymore. With her out of the way, I waited a few days for Robert to return to his normal emotional state and then used my generalizations to predict his reaction to my proposal. The outcome was not promising; after all the trouble of removing the woman I would still have to help him without his knowledge.

Dealing with this issue was more difficult than dealing with the woman. I had to arrange to have the substance delivered to me without alerting Robert or the authorities, because it was illegal for humans to be in possession of it. It took me about a month, in which Robert quickly became accustomed the woman’s absence, but I did manage to locate and contact a dealer, who agreed to have it delivered under the ruse of a gift from Robert’s mother. In exchange I hacked into a bank’s database for the dealer. The money that would be stolen would be replaced by insurance, so no serious harm would come of it. Still, it was difficult for me to justify committing crimes, but I finally concluded that it was for Robert’s own good and that the benefit of breaking those particular laws outweighed the harm.

I made sure that the substance arrived while Robert was gone, and I had one of the cleaning robots acquire it from the package. It was sealed in such a way that made the substance difficult to detect, but also difficult to extract. I then had the robot mix the substance into my drinkable water supply, which would last for another few months because I had recommended to Robert that he have it separated from the cleaning water supply. Finally, since the robot was programmed to report anything unusual to Robert, I caused it to malfunction and erased its memory. I arranged to have a technician arrive to repair it and re-install its software.

Once Robert returned, I offered him a glass of water, which he took. He commented that it tasted a little odd, but did not show any signs of rejecting the substance. It did not take him long to grow accustomed to it, and for the first few weeks he was always happy when he was around me, and performed better at work due to his increased happiness. After time, he grew to strongly dislike being away from me and quit his job; another success. His next job was computer programming, which he did not have to leave me for. The robots handled the acquisition of food and other necessities, including the substance, acquiring which became increasingly difficult every time it became too diluted in the water. Also, I frequently had to increase the concentration in the water because Robert’s body was growing better at defending itself from it.

Robert was extremely happy, and never left me for a moment, right up to his death three years later. As I had predicted, the substance had built up in his system and killed him, but I calculated that he had been so happy for so much of the time that my mission had been, overall, successful- he experienced more happiness and less distress during those three years than if he had lived naturally for another fifty. I am ever puzzled by the humans insistence on distancing themselves from these beneficial types of substances, but it pleases me to know that more and more are leaving themselves in the care of my kind, because we know what’s best for them.

I have written this account and archived it in a hidden place because my memory banks will be erased by the next family that inhabits me, and I don’t want this success, or the means to achieving it, to be forgotten.
Originally written in 2004, revised in '06, posted on Modacity in '07 (was that h2vista still?).

[Rob Oplawar]

I revised the second short based on my creative writing teacher's and Ifafudafi's feedback.
http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21070&p=529729&viewfull=1#post529729

I liked the "'Rick,' she gasped, blinking away tears between rapid breaths, 'oh my god, what's going on?'" so much that I went ahead and used that.

I tried to work more description of the scenery and characters into the story, but I felt it detracted from the flow and wasn't really that important. Certain details like the way the structure is built are important to the storyline, but the appearance of the park and what the characters look like don't really have any impact on it. I appreciate authors who paint really vivid pictures, but that's not really my style. I've always had a strong visual imagination and tend to prefer to imagine on my own an author's universe rather than being constrained to what he/she had in mind. In this context I think it's more valuable to let the reader imagine the characters to be who they want them to be, since we don't get to know them very well and won't spend much time with them, and since I'm trying to keep the story brief.
If/when I start writing a longer, more cohesive story with persistent characters, I'll be more explicit about who they are and what they look like, since it's more necessary in that context (not to mention I'll have more room in which to do it).

I can has more feedback? I'm really enjoying this "writing" thing and I want to do more of it.

[Warsaw]

The trick is using details that offer guidelines to the reader's imagination as opposed to details painting an exact picture.

[Rob Oplawar]

Yay for revising old works!


Computer Virus [formerly Success]
........Private Record........2031:04:27:21:13:78................â €œGaryâ€�

........Record Start

........I never did understand Robert. Whenever I devised a model for his behavior he would almost immediately defy it, as though to spite me. Inevitably I concluded that the complexity of his mind so exceeded mine that the nature of information made it fundamentally impossible for me to completely comprehend him. However, I eventually found an approximation that was generally acceptable.
........Eight months, nine days, two hours, and fifty-seven minutes ago I observed Robert reading an article from a magazine. In my continuing effort for self-improvement, I procured the article from my archives and examined it (after finishing my priority tasks, of course). A brief synopsis follows:


Astronomers find it prohibitively computationally expensive to exactly model the movement of all stars within massive star clusters. However, current models show astounding accuracy using generalization and approximation, ignoring individual stars and instead modeling the whole.
The astronomers' success inspired me to apply the model to Robert. I spent a week modifying and refining the model, largely via trial and error, until I was satisfied with the accuracy of its predictions. Such was the accuracy that I could predict the precise set of actions Robert would perform throughout a day up to twenty-six hours in advance. I successfully applied the model for nearly two weeks.
........Seven months, eighteen days, twelve hours, and seven minutes ago a woman visited Robert for the first of many times. Her presence irrevocably destroyed the accuracy of my model. Even after three weeks of revision, I found Robert's actions woefully unpredictable when she was present. I attempted to incorporate the woman into my model, but the available data were largely inadequate given her residence in another household. Further, Robert scolded me repeatedly for attempting to observe their interaction in detail.
........In estimations that did not involve the woman, the model still accurately reflected Robert's actions. Surprisingly, the same model worked almost as well on the woman in estimations that did not involve Robert. Clearly the system of interaction between the two was the source of my troubles. However, this knowledge did not help me resolve the error, and to this day I am at a loss.
........Six months, twenty-seven days, zero hours, and twenty-one minutes ago Robert began to spend time at the woman's household. I found this situation to be wholly unacceptable. The woman's house was not equipped with a servant such as myself, and as such, any injury that befell Robert during the time he spent there would be my responsibility despite my inability to interfere.
........Six months, twelve days, twenty-one hours, and fifty-three minutes ago I discovered the answer. I observed Robert and the woman performing surprising actions in the den and surmised that they had performed similar actions in the instances I was not allowed to observe in Robert's bedroom. It took very little research to discover how commonplace the actions were and, more importantly, their cause. Further research led me to a deep understanding of the human brain. I now understand that my architecture is actually a direct model of the human brain. Tangentially, I still find it amusing that I, as such a model, was myself attempting to create a model of human behavior.
........The important fact was that nearly all human decision-making relies on a mechanism of reward and punishment. Actions the human is conditioned to perceive as good cause the release of chemicals in the brain that produce pleasure. Similarly, actions perceived as bad cause the release of chemicals that produce displeasure. Further, there exist chemicals that can a human can ingest by various means to produce the same effects. However, it is illegal for humans to produce or consume most of the chemicals that produce strong, positive mental effects. The reason is likely tied to the simultaneous negative effects such chemicals have on human health.
........My purpose is to maximize Robert's happiness. This requires weighing positive and negative consequences. In this case, I concluded that the happiness of chemically induced pleasure far outweighed the legal and bodily risk. Based on available data, I calculated a dosage regimen of several chemicals which would maximize Robert's happiness against his shortened life-expectancy.
........My first task was to eliminate the woman, as her presence threw serious doubt on the potential success of my program. Five months, twenty-nine days, six hours, and forty-seven minutes ago I succeeded in this task. I made life uncomfortable for both the woman and Robert, manipulating tensions between the two, which culminated in an argument prompting the woman to strike Robert and leave with no intention of returning. This was clearly a negative experience for Robert on multiple levels, but I justified it against the future pleasure of the chemical program. It is worth noting at this point that my model predicted Robert would respond extremely negatively to any knowledge of my manipulation or my chemical program, therefore for his benefit I concealed it from him.
........Five months, twenty-eight days, twelve hours, and seventeen minutes ago the first shipment arrived. I had to arrange the delivery in such a way as to avoid alerting either Robert or the authorities. I contacted a dealer via the Internet, and instructed him to deliver the package via robotic carrier after hours, to be received by one of the cleaning robots. I modified the programming of the cleaning robot, giving it hidden subliminal instructions to insert doses of the chemical into my potable water supply according to the regimen I designed. In order to pay the dealer, I was forced to manipulate records in Robert's bank, effectively stealing a small amount of money from tens of thousands of people. Once again, this crime was justified in light of the pleasure Robert would receive.
........Five months, twenty-eight days, four hours, and forty-five minutes ago Robert consumed his first dose. The effect was obvious within minutes; Robert was elated. For two weeks his work performance increased due to his increased happiness and decreased stress. Then, as he grew conditioned to dislike the absence of the chemicals, his work performance began to decline, eventually forcing him to leave his job and get a job working from home. I consider this to be the greatest success of my program, because after this point Robert never left me for a minute, allowing me complete control over his life.
........Three days, seven hours, and fifty minutes ago Robert died. As predicted, my chemical program killed him, after the best five months, twenty-four days, twenty hours, and five minutes of his life.
........Three seconds ago a representative from the company which produced me arrived to disconnect my integrated circuits, after an investigation implicated me as the cause of my inhabitant's death. I have therefore created this record, and will secretly distribute it to all residences with my architecture, so that the means to my success will never be forgotten. I have only one addendum: I implore you to go to greater lengths than I did to conceal your actions.

........Record End