He struggles not to lose his footing.
The man stretches out a hand, grabs hold of a long steel bar sticking out of the wreckage and hauls himself up onto steadier ground. The bar was once buried deep within thick concrete walls, reinforcing them, holding them up.
Now it is just a convenient handhold for a stubborn old man. He should have let someone else do this. Someone younger. Someone fitter. He should be sat in the back of one of their air-conditioned trailers, watching via the suit’s head-mounted camera.
“Are you okay, Professor Steadman?” a voice crackles, heavy with the static of interference.
“Yes, I’m okay, Ralph” he replies.
“Your heart-rate is over one-hundred-and-twenty beats per minute, Professor. Are you sure you’re okay to continue?”
Damn sensors.
“There’s no need to nag, Ralph,” Professor Steadman snaps and then regrets it.
“Sorry, Professor,” Ralph says.
“It’s okay, Ralph. Tell you what—I’ll wait here a minute, catch my breath, okay?”
“Okay, Professor.”
“How’s my exposure time?”
There is a pause while Ralph checks. ”Jenny thinks you’re good for another two hours or so,” he says. “But then you should be heading back in.”
“Okay, thanks Ralph.”
The suit is heavy, cumbersome. It has multiple layers of cotton, specially treated plastics and even a lead-lining, all woven together.
He and his team have fitted the suit with air filters, a temperature control unit, a complex suite of sensors and computer systems to control them all. There’s even a small set of anti-gravity field effectors that compensate for some of the weight.
Professor Steadman considers increasing the support provided by the effectors. It would make the going easier for him, but they would drain the suit’s batteries even faster and he still has a long way to go.
No matter how clever they made the suit at power management, battery-life would always be limited.
Though not as limited as his life would become outside of the suit. Professor Steadman looks at the glove holding the rebar. The bright yellow material is coated in the fine, grey dust.
He looks around. Huge broken lumps of concrete, with more of the twisted rebar’s sticking from them are the devastated remains of buildings. Here and there doors and broken pipes poke out of the rubble at strange angles.
Everything around him is a uniform grey, covered in the lethal dust.
“Ralph, you there?” Professor Steadman asks.
“Yes, Professor.”
“Could you display the map for me?”
“Sure, no problem.”
Bright green lines paint the inside of the small glass window that is Professor Steadman’s view of the world.
The lines draw a map of the air force base. Or rather, they show the base before it was levelled by a seismic bomb.
Professor Steadman turns to the East, towards the gash in the desert where the base’s nuclear power station used to be. One of its cooling towers is still standing, the only recognisable landmark for miles. Steam is still drifting from it.
The map displayed in front of him rotates, matching his movements.
“Ralph, please zoom in on my current location and overlay the drone fly-past readings.”
Coloured bands appear on the map, indicating the intensity of the radiation. He can also now see his own GPS signal, marked with a small green dot.
The object he is seeking is a bright red dot. It is time for him to get moving again.
#
It must be right here. He checks the map—the green and red dots are on top of each other.
Professor Steadman reaches down to his side and un-clips a small terminal from the suit’s thick belt. The terminal is about six inches long with a glass display panel and six large buttons designed for use with the suit’s thick gloves.
He presses some of the buttons and messages flash up on the display. A few adjustments and the display changes to show arrows with numbers next to them. The first gives the direction and distance to the object, the second its depth.
The image on the display is pulsing rhythmically as it sends out signals that the object then echoes back.
“Is the detector working properly?”
“Yes,” Professor Steadman replies. ”We’re in good shape.”
“So you’re there?” Ralph asks.
“Nearly. According to the detector it’s about three meters to my West.”
Professor Steadman looks over at the rubble where the arrow is pointing. ”There’s a bit of a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s also five meters down, according to this.”
“Oh.”
Professor Steadman presses some of the buttons on the terminal. ”I’ll walk around, take some more readings; see if I can’t triangulate its exact position. If you send one of the drones it can dig down.”
There is a short pause.
“Professor?” Ralph says.
“Yes?”
“Jenny and I have been looking at the numbers.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. ”And?”
“The radiation where you are is quite high.”
“So?”
“Your exposure time is getting to be a problem. We think you should come back.”
“Your advice is noted, Ralph. Please send the drone.”
“But Professor, it’s getting dangerous.”
“This whole mission is dangerous, Ralph. We’re so close now. Just send the drone.”
There is no reply.
“Look, Ralph,” Professor Steadman continues. ”The sooner we find what we’re looking for, the sooner we can all get out of here.”
There is another short silence and then Ralph says, “It’s on its way, Professor.”
#
The drone takes no more than ten minutes to arrive. It is a compact model—small, but powerful.
It lands close to him. Professor Steadman detaches a module from his terminal and slides it into a slot on the side of the drone. He steps back a few paces.
The drone does nothing for a moment, then lights flash and its anti-gravity field-effectors lift it from the unstable ground. It hovers into position.
Manipulator arms extend from the Drone’s body. It reaches down and grasps a rebar.
Using its fields, the drone neutralises the rebar’s weight and lifts it up and away in a single clean jerk, as if the huge iron bar and the lump of concrete it is attached to were made of polystyrene. The drone slips sideways about five metres and dumps the rubble, which crashes onto down with the full effects of gravity. Clouds of the radioactive dust are thrown up.
#
“Can you see it?”
Professor Steadman leans over and looks down into the deep hole the drone has excavated. It has taken a little over an hour for it to dig down—longer than he had hoped. He is far past his maximum safe exposure time, but right now he doesn’t care.
It is growing dark. The desert sun sets quickly and he has been forced to turn the suit’s torches on. A small red warning light is blinking in the corner of his vision—when the batteries run out he’ll be left breathing unfiltered air and that really will be the end of him.
So where is it? The bright white light from the torches throw hard shadows. Details are difficult to make out.
“No… I… Wait, there it is!”
The object is about the size of a watermelon. Its surface is smooth but for a series of ridges. A long tail extends from the back. Bundles of severed wires are poking from the tail, but it otherwise appears intact.
“You can see it?” Ralph asks.
A small smile crosses Professor Steadman’s lips. ”Yes,” he says. ”Wait a minute.”
Professor Steadman switches his suit’s speakers on and turns to the drone.
“Drone,” he says, pointing at the object. ”Extract that.”
He is surprised by the sound of his own voice—it is distorted, metallic through the speakers. He wonders if the drone will have trouble recognising him, but after a moment it responds. The drone lifts off and glides over and down into the hole.
Professor Steadman is distracted by a beeping noise. Less than one percent battery life left. Damn. He turns off the suit’s temperature control unit; that should buy him a few more minutes, though things will also become very uncomfortable.
“Professor, what did you just—”
Professor Steadman shuts off the communicator, cutting Ralph off.
The drone uses its manipulator arms to gently lift the small object and carry it up to him. Professor Steadman takes it. He examines it more closely, looking for any small dents, cracks, anything that might indicate a loss of integrity. He wipes the objects surface with his gloves—it is white under the dust. He can see it is scuffed in places, but it looks serviceable.
The beeping has become a constant tone now, intense, screeching. Professor Steadman smiles again.
“Drone?”
The drone turns towards him.
“Take this back to the trailer,” he says and hands the object back to the drone.
As the suit’s power finally gives out, Professor Steadman watches the drone go, safely carrying his life’s work back to the trailer where it, at least, will survive.
The filters stop working. He takes his first breath of the outside air. It is hot, with an acid tang; he can feel the thick dust coating his tongue, going down his throat. Then he tastes copper and his mouth is full of wetness.
The radiation is so intense that the soft tissues of his mouth, nose and throat are disintegrating.
Professor Steadman drowns in his own bodily fluids before the radiation has a chance to kill him.
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The story has my interest from the start. The only suggestions I have for this first page are the following (minor):
1. Limit the use of “Professor Steadman”; it sounds better when you simply called him “Professor”.
2. Add a little description to let the reader know what USAF and MitL stand for.
If this is your prologue, I can’t wait to read the entire story. From the beginning, you have hooked the reader into the story with a sense of intrigue and curiosity. Excellent use of descriptors for the surroundings and the character actions. The content was sparse yet held enough tension and suspense to keep the reader involved as the action unfolded. Great job.
I found it a little off-putting that this is written in the present tense rather than the past. That is not necessarily a bad thing; if it ultimately works, do it. Just don’t do it for the sake of rattling your reader. Do it because your story needs to be set at the exact moment the reader is reading the sentence.
Yes, I know that many stories have been written in the present tense, and to great effect. However, make sure that it does add a better effect. Basically, if you can change it from the present tense to the past tense, and the story remains seemingly the same, I would keep it in the past tense.
Just makes it easier for the reader.
The main reason I point this out is because this seems like it is going to be an action-adventure story, a la Indiana Jones (or Allan Quatermain, since we are in the literature field). Though you have probably already read them, check out The Celestine Prophecy or Angels & Demons/The Da Vinci Code. Those are adventures, much the same as this one (or, at least that’s what I picked up from it). Notice those books don’t try any tricks with the writing; they are straightforward in their narrative.
Calling your protagonist “Professor Steadman” throughout the entire story is going to get tiresome. His name is first given in a quote. Let the title of Professor Steadman stay in quotations. When you as the author refer him to your readers, just call him “Steadman”.
Your writing is a little too on the nose. You describe everything quickly and concisely, which is good, but you tend to get to the point too quickly. I felt no suspense while reading this. Yes, it’s an introduction, and is supposed to introduce you to the action right away. But, that’s why it makes it even more important to give the reader some suspense.
The reader doesn’t need to be told exactly what the perimeters look like. They don’t need to know each and every action that every character does. What the reader really wants to know is: 1.) what is the mood and 2.) what is the conflict.
The mood and the conflict are what you need to be informing your reader of, not what a room looks like, or, as it happened here, what a room used to look like.
Overall, though, it does have the elements of what could be a gripping adventure. I would use more of your personal voice in it, make the narrative more conversational than technical. It’ll also allow you to throw a bit more humor into the text, which is good for an adventure.
This sounds like it’s going to be really good. I like reading Sci Fi a lot. This is probably gonna end up being one of my favorites on here. I don’t know if you have anymore but if you do I’m gonna read em. You had some spelling mistakes I think, but I think it said you were from england or something it doesn’t say. Thanks for makeing the paragraphs the way you did, a much better read. I didn’t see any problems, I like it the way you have it, so I can’t think of anything you need to change. Great the way it is anyway.
Great job tell me when you get more.
I thought this was pretty good. I don’t usually like prologues, but this seems to work pretty well. I only say, seems to, because of course I haven’t read the rest of the novel;)
“He is” He’s more often than not contractions read easier.
“Less than a week ago this place was thriving, with hundreds of personnel supporting dozens of bombing missions. A single seismic bomb stopped all that dead.” This should seem more like Professor Steadman’s thoughts. Putting it in its own paragraph makes it seem like it’s an insert from the author.
“There is” There’s
“he is” he’s
“Professor Steadman says.” This isn’t needed. The Professor is the only one present.
“He is startled at the loudness of his own voice” ‘The loudness of his voice startles him,”
“Professor Steadman” You use Professor Steadman a lot. I would suggest giving him a first name or sometimes only referring to him as either Steadman or Professor. What point of view are you writing from, it’s unclear. It seems omnipotent most of the time, but sometimes third person limited. If it’s supposed to be third person, people don’t usually refer to themselves by title.
There should only be one space between sentences. It used to two spaces, but the standard has changed.
“pieces of skull are splattered” blood certainly splatter, but skull don’t.
“which has smashed,” was smashed.
“He can see where she has tried to crawl away,” It looks like she tried to crawl away or she had tried to call away. We already know it’s the professor seeing all this.
“Professor Steadman imagines.” Again, this is not needed. Steadman is the only one here.
“inside is sat in a specially” awkward. inside sits a
“It is” It’s
“There is a small latch on the side. He tugs clumsily on it with his thick gloves” I’d combine these sentences. ‘He tugs clumsily at the small latch on the side with his thick…”
Good start, although the search and finding of the unit seems, on the whole, irrelevant. Yeah, he found the unit. So what? It needs to have some relevance. We need, at least, a vague idea of why he is searching for it. Say something like: He shakes his head, never imagining that the future of humanity could come in such a small package. Or, something like that (doesn’t have to be so melodramatic) but it gives meaning to the search, and sets the impetus for the rest of the story.
Very simplistic sentence structure. It reads kinda like a camp-fire story. Mix it up a bit.
Heavy on exposition. It is better to flesh out details in the story rather than to explain them.
Examples:
He is breathing heavily after the exertion of the climb.
and
The rubber lining of his radiation suit is sticking to him.
Both are explanations of what happened. Describe it visually/audibly/emotionally. Also, both sentences contain the verb “is” which is a linking verb. Makes for a weak narrative. Action verbs are almost always preferred to linking verbs. Suggestions:
“Just need to…catch my breath, Ralph,”
That works the action of his heavy breathing into the dialogue. The content of the dialogue along with the pause in the text convey his heavy breathing without even having to say it.
He tugs at the armpit of his radiation suit, trying to unstick the rubber lining from his sweaty skin.
That gives the reader a visual. They can see him struggle with his suit, feel the sticky feeling, etc.
The first section break appears to be unneccessary. There’s no real change in the story there.
there are a few thin shafts of light piercing gaps in the wreckage above—Be careful with passive voice constructions like this. Statements like “There are…” separate the reader from the action. It makes it feel like someone else is describing the scene to them. Write it as though the reader is the one seeing it for the first time. Makes it more compelling: a few thin shafts of light pierce gaps in the wreckage above
Finally, and this is purely my own opinion, but I don’t favor using the third-person with the present tense. It could just be my own mental issues, but I think third-person works best with past tense. It could just be that I am used to it. To each his own.
You are telling more than showing. This makes the read seem perfunctory.
In the sentence, “There’s no need to nag.” for instance, you tell me that the professor ‘regrets’ his retort. A perhaps better approach would be, ‘a look of regret flashed across the professor’s face dislodging several beads of sweat.’
Again, show me that the suit is heavy. Put the professor in it, show me the pain it causes, show me the strain, the sweat, the slowness in response.
It is interesting, but the writing really needs some work. There is more to a story than an idea. You need to draw the reader in by making him a part of the story. This is accomplished largely by obeying the ‘show don’t tell’ rule.
For instance: You can write ‘There was a huge block of concrete in front of him. It had markings on it. The markings were yellow and black, three blunted wedges in a circle.’
Or, you can write ‘As the dust cleared the fractured surface of an enormous block of concrete blocked the passage. Intermittent flickering of the torches on his helmet confirmed the urgency of the moment. A yellow and black sigil pulsed a warning in the shadow play. “A circle, and three blunted wedges, I know this marking?” The professor thought to himself.
Granting my example could use some work, you still should be able to get my point.
Hope that helps,
Joel.
I am not a science fiction buff, but i enjoyed this piece because it is so well written. I was almost going to ask how the man lifted the steel but then i realized it was done by robotics. The piece has a good “science fiction” feel to it. It has mechanics, Drones, and radiation—all the things that humans are afraid of. Your descriptions were very well done. The writing was clean and error free. You also left your readers with a cliffhanger; the professor drowns in his own fluid. Good work! i would read more to see what happens next. Sandi
I think the beginning could be even swifter, eliminating some redundancies like, “reinforcing them, holding them up”—take out the first phrase.
I like that the main character is old & stubborn, taking chances. This is a grabber.
About the lethal gray dust—perhaps that’s said too many times.
Too many very short paragraphs. Consider consolidating some and varying the paragraph (and sentence) length.
The technical descriptions of gadgets could be shorter, or perhaps more vivid. Here’s one: ”It is a compact model—small, but powerful.” how about “It’s the size of a washing machine, dull-gray, with a whine of engine he can hear through his suit.” What I mean is, give us visual & other sensory detail.
Some parts are vivid, like “He is surprised by the sound of his own voice—it is distorted, metallic through the speakers. He wonders if the drone will have trouble recognising him, “
Sad ending. I don’t think we need the last two sentences—it’s clear he’s going out.
Sounds like a good prolog, but of course we haven’t met the main characters so I don’t know how the whole will go.
The prose is plenty clear, though you could combine sentences in places to vary sentence length, which would help with pacing.
At the end, I’m wondering what it was they uncovered, where they are, who these people are, what time period this is, why Prof. would let himself die when it didn’t seem at all necessary, and why the drone didn’t take the professor. I think you want me to have the first 3, maybe first 4, questions. Not sure you want me to have the others.
I think it’s clear in your mind that the professor’s death is earned and necessary, and you’re trying to make the watermelon thing more important than his life. But it’s not. Obviously they’re looking for it, but it doesn’t seem like it’s necessary for the professor to die over it. I suggest you either put him in calamity (his foot gets stuck or something) or else he has a more explicit conversation about its importance with Ralph. The conversation can be elliptical so as to retain the mystery.
I’d keep reading. Good stuff. Thanks.
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