First 500 Words of a Sci Fi Short
Posted: December 30th, 2011, 2:22 pm
This is the opening to a short scifi story I'm working on. Would love feedback and critique. Currently I have no title... (Title suggestions welcomed.)
Thank you much (And of course I will return the favor)!
(Latest Edits in blue)
Steve
No one really knows how or when it began. That’s the way with this kind of thing. Can anyone really identify the root of anti-Semitism or neo-nepotism? Probably not. Take the nix-flautist movement… At some point enough people decided that a flute player was vulgar and in bad taste, and that was that. They passed the sentiment to their children, and they to theirs, and one day it was just the way it was: humanity was irrevocably offended by the flute. Go figure.
All that mattered then was that I was on the nix-list. I’d been cornered and confronted, quite publicly mind you, and I wasn’t going to do it, I wasn’t going to renounce my name. “Not now, not tomorrow, not if you pay me, not if you hunt me down.” I didn’t mean to challenge them.
Yet here I was, crawling on my belly through a North Carolina corn field, drones buzzing above me, while some fat cop stood at the field's edge talking on his ear piece to a more than likely fatter desk jockey pilot miles away, giving him the green light to torch the corn and burn me out. I needed a cigarette.
So I pulled out my tobacco pouch and my last little square of paper, pinched a small wad and rolled a smoke. Ever rolled one on your belly in the middle of a cornfield? It’s a damn muddy mess. And let me tell you clay is cold. That’s a good thing though, the drones’ heat imaging couldn’t pick me from the corn. And they say Steves are idiots.
Then I lit the cigarette. Like one of those old combines snatching up their harvest, the drones were on me. They had me bagged n’ tagged before I could take a drag. I was still puckering when the steel fibered net ripped me from the ground. The cop sauntered over, parting the corn stalks with ease on the way, reached his latexed index finger and thumb through the net, and plucked the cigarette out of my upside down mouth.
“I think you's the dumbest one yet.” He leaned in for emphasis, “Steeeeeeeev.”
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the name Steve really has any special meaning to me. It’s the principle of it. A man, or a woman for that matter, should be able to be a free Steve no matter what “statistics” say. So I’m 24% more likely to cause a traffic accident. 12% more likely to steal from a local mini-mart… 33% more likely to engage in offensive behavior. Are “probabilities regarding likely outcomes” enough to criminalize the name?
Evidently, I thought, hanging their upside down in the drone net. I could feel the blood rushing into my head and I was feeling a bit woozy. My face was starting to waffle. I struggled in vain to upright myself. The cop, still holding my cigarette, clearly enjoyed the sight of his catch flailing about. “Keep flopping fishy, I ain't seen a Steve do it yet. Net's too constrictive. In small words that means,” he spoke slowly, pointing with his free hand to his portly lips that emphasizedeach word, “too tight”.
What an ass, I thought in small words.
Thank you much (And of course I will return the favor)!
(Latest Edits in blue)
Steve
No one really knows how or when it began. That’s the way with this kind of thing. Can anyone really identify the root of anti-Semitism or neo-nepotism? Probably not. Take the nix-flautist movement… At some point enough people decided that a flute player was vulgar and in bad taste, and that was that. They passed the sentiment to their children, and they to theirs, and one day it was just the way it was: humanity was irrevocably offended by the flute. Go figure.
All that mattered then was that I was on the nix-list. I’d been cornered and confronted, quite publicly mind you, and I wasn’t going to do it, I wasn’t going to renounce my name. “Not now, not tomorrow, not if you pay me, not if you hunt me down.” I didn’t mean to challenge them.
Yet here I was, crawling on my belly through a North Carolina corn field, drones buzzing above me, while some fat cop stood at the field's edge talking on his ear piece to a more than likely fatter desk jockey pilot miles away, giving him the green light to torch the corn and burn me out. I needed a cigarette.
So I pulled out my tobacco pouch and my last little square of paper, pinched a small wad and rolled a smoke. Ever rolled one on your belly in the middle of a cornfield? It’s a damn muddy mess. And let me tell you clay is cold. That’s a good thing though, the drones’ heat imaging couldn’t pick me from the corn. And they say Steves are idiots.
Then I lit the cigarette. Like one of those old combines snatching up their harvest, the drones were on me. They had me bagged n’ tagged before I could take a drag. I was still puckering when the steel fibered net ripped me from the ground. The cop sauntered over, parting the corn stalks with ease on the way, reached his latexed index finger and thumb through the net, and plucked the cigarette out of my upside down mouth.
“I think you's the dumbest one yet.” He leaned in for emphasis, “Steeeeeeeev.”
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the name Steve really has any special meaning to me. It’s the principle of it. A man, or a woman for that matter, should be able to be a free Steve no matter what “statistics” say. So I’m 24% more likely to cause a traffic accident. 12% more likely to steal from a local mini-mart… 33% more likely to engage in offensive behavior. Are “probabilities regarding likely outcomes” enough to criminalize the name?
Evidently, I thought, hanging their upside down in the drone net. I could feel the blood rushing into my head and I was feeling a bit woozy. My face was starting to waffle. I struggled in vain to upright myself. The cop, still holding my cigarette, clearly enjoyed the sight of his catch flailing about. “Keep flopping fishy, I ain't seen a Steve do it yet. Net's too constrictive. In small words that means,” he spoke slowly, pointing with his free hand to his portly lips that emphasizedeach word, “too tight”.
What an ass, I thought in small words.