(no subject)

[alexmegami]

I finished the story!

I'm not entirely happy with the ending, but I'll have time to work on it once I get further feedback in class, right? Assuming I even use this one for my final story...

Comments are not only welcome, they're appreciated and possibly even begged for. I am having a really hard time looking at it objectively, and I'm pretty sure it falls apart halfway through, but I don't know how to fix that.

Anyway, here we go:

Vicki's studio is dark, but she is so absorbed in the sculpture that she does not notice. It is a small statue, only two inches tall; she paints its hair, so detailed that each strand is separate. She sets it down to dry on a huge table, one tiny face among the many littered across the room. This is her millionth doll.

They have only taken her a few months to complete, a few months of shutting herself away from the world and its responsibilities. She is overwhelmed by how many there are, and chokes on bile and tears. Their tiny faces, drawn to be smiling, stare at her. Without understanding why, she flees into the muggy August night.

Aaron is waiting for her outside, the same way he has waited every night since the announcement was made. Sometimes, when she paints, she looks down out the window to see him, leaning against his Civic, waiting. If she doesn't come out by five in the morning, he leaves, but he's always there again at midnight, waiting.

She never asks where he goes. It doesn't matter, she knows; wherever he is, he is there because it fulfills some purpose. He smells of Old Spice and cooked rice, not entirely pleasant, but familiar. He wraps an arm around her neck and kisses her forehead.

"Oh, Vicki," he says. "You have to stop beating yourself up like this. It won't help."

She wants to shove him. His pragmatism is suffocating. Instead she sags against him, lets him hold her, thinks about her mother's smug smile and I-told-you-so attitude when Vicki showed her the engagement ring.

"I only have two thousand names," she says, hugging herself.

"I spoke to Ian and Melissa today. They're staying."

She nods. Only half of their university classmates are joining them; some of them think it's their duty to stay, some don't think it'll be as bad as Aaron predicts. Vicki wants to scream: Her fiancé has had people terraforming a planet in Alpha Centauri for the past three years for just this eventuality, this impending war. He has a spaceship nearing completion. This is not a venture they are undertaking lightly.

The car radio is talking about the Vicis revolutionaries again. Ever since they took over Madagascar, there has been nothing else in the news. America started up camps to contain them; China had them preemptively aborted, and threw out the ones that had already been born. Most countries stayed away from the subject entirely, the uneasy silence amplifying the sounds of race wars taking place in the streets.

Vicki stays inside most days, even when she isn't at the studio. Outside, she feels confronted, strangers' eyes following her, like they can see her for what she is. Street preachers shout that the Lord will open your eyes; the Lord will let you see the Vicis for what they truly are, with their hell-granted power. It takes effort to remain stoic, effort not to lunge at them. A year ago, she would have tried convincing them otherwise. But a year ago, she would have smiled at strangers, said hello, held doors for them. Now, she keeps her eyes to the sidewalk: contact makes her responsible for them. 'Are you one in a million?' She wonders. 'Am I?'

She spends two weeks compiling the list. Aaron helps, when he has an hour to spare. It starts with geneticists and engineers, scientists that Aaron thinks will be useful in the years ahead. When those contacts are exhausted, professors are whom they search for: the historians and librarians of the world. Doctors willing to leave are rather easy to find but farmers, Vicki discovers, have become a rarity. Boxes of takeout pile around them, uneaten as they cold-call. They argue over whether religious leaders are necessary or desirable, given the circumstances, and Vicki doesn't ask about the writers. She picks up the phone again and again, wondering if this next name will accuse her of being a druggie, a Scientologist, or a conspiracy theorist.

The final list is mostly comprised of their fellow Vicis.

She complains to Aaron on the last night that it isn't right. He shrugs. "People are allowed to make their choices, Vicki, even if they're wrong choices."

"But they're going to die."

"Petulance won't make them change their minds. It's no good thinking about it."

She gets up stiffly from her chair and kisses him goodnight. She wants to be ready for tomorrow.

They visit her mother the next evening. Aaron has set the day aside for Vicki; she appreciates the effort, but knows that he has probably worked overtime for weeks to allow for this. She meets with her mother alone.

"How was it?" Aaron asks when she returns.

"You know my mother," she says. "She disapproves."

"Why?"

There are so many reasons, and none of them are kind. She resents them for this: Aaron for asking, her mother for dredging up the memories, Natalie for sleeping with Aaron in the first place. "She thinks I'm settling," she says, finally. She doesn't tell him that her mother expected her to fail at this, too.

He places a hand on her thigh. "Have you changed your mind?"

She kisses his cheek for reassurance. "No. I didn't want her permission, anyway."

They hadn't had time to announce the banns, which Vicki would have preferred. Two of Aaron's friends meet them outside the large stone office. The ceremony inside is quiet and quick: five sentences, five signatures. Normally they couldn't have done this so quickly, Aaron tells her, but he knows someone who knows someone in the department. The honeymoon will have to wait.

Aaron is gone again that night. Vicki builds a raft out of Popsicle sticks, wedges six Life pieces into the slats and floats it in the tub. She wishes she'd paid more attention in first-year Ethics; maybe someone told her what the right choice was, and she just wasn't listening.

When Aaron comes home, Vicki is gone, but six plastic figurines rest below cold bathwater.

He finds her in her studio, kneeling among overturned tables and shattered pieces of ceramic. She looks like a wrung-out sponge, and the sea of destruction is what poured forth. Eyes stare up at him as he picks his way towards her; tiny hands reach out in despair.

"What?" He asks, crouching down next to her.

"I saved one," she repeats. "Is it the right one?"

He takes it from her, examining it in the fluorescent light. Like the others, it is only two inches tall; its face is sunny, and it holds a small pad of paper. "Yes," he says.

It is the first time they've spoken since Natalie.

He takes her to the dormitory before they leave. They want to say their final goodbyes to the ruins, and Vicki picks up a piece of the debris, "for memory". She realizes suddenly that she may never see this sight again, this historical monument to the breakdown of communication and she squeezes Aaron's hand, the stone between them smooth and warm.

"Ready?" He asks.



Especially towards the end, I feel like I've picked up a kind of frantic pace that I can't maintain. My images seem blotchy and ill-concieved, and I think I may have aspired too high. Serena suggested breaking up the exposition about the Vicis and scattering it throughout, to let the reader put together what's going on in the background. I'm not sure how that would work, and I'm not sure I shouldn't scrap the entire spaceship thing. I could probably dump it in favor of something a little more realistic.

Comments?

Comments

[she-prime.livejournal.com]

I like it!

What class is this?

[alexmegami]

Creative Writing I. :D I like having the class, period - I'm awful for writing when I don't have a deadline looming in front of me that I'm scared not to follow. The feedback isn't always great, but I usually have Meredith to help me out. :D

[achpsident.livejournal.com]

It's interesting. I think Serena's suggestion is a good one, I felt like I didn't have enough context to fully grasp what was going on, like who the Vicis were (I guessed that they were some sort of genetically improved human), why the conflict seems likely to destroy the Earth, etc. (Also, why Madagascar? Everyone knows that New Zealand will be the linchpin of natural born human pride.) I liked the characters, they seemed well-developed.

I'm not sure about the technology presented in the story, how much more advanced they are from us. I'm kind of torn, actually, I guess it comes down to how much you think the future will be different from us, whether we'll still be listening to car radios and eating boxes of takeout, or whether it'll be more transformed, with implanted radio receivers in our heads and kibble for breakfast, as cyberpunk would have us believe. Not a big issue for most readers, I don't think.

Anyways, I liked it. If you took those Aberrant transcripts and expanded them a bit, maybe changing things so as to link up with this story, you'd have the making of an epic tale of romance, suspense and Quantum burnination.

[alexmegami]

Yeah... Unfortunately, I'm kind of caught between a word limit and a desire to fulfill that motto of every English teacher everywhere: "Show, don't tell." It isn't natural, to me, to have Vicki think of herself as a species or a mutant or even as a 'Vicis' - Vicki is just Vicki.

Hmm. I envision it as the not-too-far-future, where long space travel is still unknown for humans and things are still pretty much recognizable to us today.

Oh god, if I tried to do all of Aberrant like this, I WOULD DIE.

[mysticjuicer.livejournal.com]

If I didn't know the universe had Novas in, I probably wouldn't know that it had novas in. I agree with Matt about the level of technology. If people are still driving cars and trying to cure cancer, the fact that he's terraforming a planet is that much more awesome. Without footnoting the current level of technology on Alt-Earth there isn't anything to contrast his accomplishment against.

I think Serena's suggestion is a good one. Running the story alongside chapters occuring in different parts of the world, about what's going on and what's causing all this, would probably make the story much stronger. It'd probably also help to explain the terms readers won't be familiar with (ie. Vicis).

The ceramic statues are good symbols, but I feel that their meaning gets tangled up in Natalie's effect on Aaron and Vicki's relationship.

If it strikes your fancy, I think that a comment on how empty the spaceship is since no humans would come. [/random]

[alexmegami]

First sentence: *mind breaks*
Okay. Fair enough. But I do... try and allude... to the fact that there are mutants in. I think that I fail. *g*

Oo... true enough. I guess I'm sort of assuming that people will assume a current level of technology, what with cars and radios and such.

The problem with inserting more about the world is that I've hit my word limit ;) There's only so much more I can do in the context of the assignment. --I did consider referring to them as homo sapiens vicis, but it wouldn't be natural for Vicki to think of herself that way, nor for the radio to do so after three years of them being around.

How do you feel the statues get tangled up in it?

You think that a comment on how empty the spaceship is would be what? ;)

[harukami]

Okay, a few small comments. :) If they're helpful!

it is a small statue, - probably go for 'statuette', since that's usually used for statues smaller than a foot. Also... I have trouble thinking that someone could get a million statuettes done in a few months -- if you assume three hours per statuette, even if she's skimping on food and, well, anything else... let's say she's getting four hours sleep, and working twenty hours each day, to make the math easy... In 3 months, that's just under 2000 statuettes. Unless it's meant to imply super powers to get actual statuettes done in, like, minutes?

However, once I get the suspension of disbelief off, I love the IMAGRY, what the statuettes represent -- I just think we need fewer of them...

He wraps an arm around her neck -- maybe shoulders? That gives a more violent image...

Is Aaron also in university, or is he older? The question's raised as to if he could manage a space ship. (Perhaps some setting details earlier on, if possible, to give a setting where a university student would have access to such a thing?)

I like how you're leaving the Vicis situation vague -- it works well, especially with Vicki's name, especially how it's spelled (though I think people will notice this when it's read aloud).

Doctors willing to leave are rather easy to find but farmers, Vicki discovers, have become a rarity. -- I LOVE THIS. It's so damn true!

I LOVE the detail with Vicky's mother. You REALLY get the feel of Vicki trying to wrap up loose ends.

He finds her in her studio, kneeling among overturned tables and shattered pieces of ceramic. She looks like a wrung-out sponge, and the sea of destruction is what poured forth. Eyes stare up at him as he picks his way towards her; tiny hands reach out in despair.
[...] It is the first time they've spoken since Natalie. -- this is a little jolting, because we KNOW she's talked to him since Natalie but because of placement and visual effects, and the fact that all the rest are chronological (and that it follows logically from 'Viki is missing' in the line above), i WANT to read it as him finding her after the bathtub bit. Any way to shift it about, or visually demarkate it without losing the effect?

I ADORE the symbolism of the dormitory and their relationship, and the last line is PERFECT. I think your disjointed images actually work well for Vicki's POV and what she's going through here, with the possible exception of the time-displaced bit -- I'd keep them. If you want to scrap the space ship thing, maybe they've got someplace underground that can only fit so many/so many supplies for the years of nuclear fallout or what have you? Or, again, you'd need to work in the timing of it for earlier, I'd think... But I LIKE it. Overall, I find this a *really* effective piece. :)

[alexmegami]

*weeps* You are a beautiful beautiful person. *gloms to you and NEVER LETS GO*

Er. Yes. *cough*

The statue thing - I know I never state it directly, but yes, Vicki's entire "thing" within this universe is supposed to be a superfast artist. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to amend this somehow, or make it more obvious - maybe talk about how quickly she paints, and leave it up to the reader to understand that this is beyond human levels of fast.

Aaron isn't supposed to be violent, exactly - more an uncomfortable fit to Vicki. Also, I like the neck because it continues the sort of choking feeling that Vicki experiences.

I'm thinking that the things you've mentioned thus far about Aaron and Vicki and their capabilities means I'm going to have to introduce something a little earlier that highlights that they *are* capable of things that even trained individuals aren't. I'm thinking maybe newspaper clippings/headlines, perhaps in a collage that Vicki's made.

Yup. We're running out of all sorts of manual laborers, and if the world ever ends, we are screwed ;)

Hooray! I wasn't sure that that scene worked, so I'm glad it did.

As for the speaking - I was trying for a more... not metaphorical... but they've been talking without really talking, sort of idea. The idea that Vicki's been holding in her thoughts, and Aaron's been too busy and distracted otherwise for them to have a real conversation, but that this has been happening for much longer than just the immediate situation.
I think I need to find a better way to phrase it.

Eeee, thank you so much.