/lit/ - Literature

About a rifle being silenced: this scifi has interstellar travel and atmospheric towers. You can imagine a localized vacuum compartment as a silencer, a railgun, or some other means of accelerating a projectile that is quieter than modern guns.

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Chapter 1

The twelfth most distant planet from a star was Amoi,

barren and inhospitable. The recently colonized planet only

hosted three cities that neighbored each other— the capital

Tanagura, its urban satellite Midas, and the autonomous sector

Ceres. On the nightside from orbit, they glowed like a small

clustered splotches of light on a dark sphere. Midas shined the

brightest and fullest of them all, while Ceres only had few and

far between specks.

A dark haired young man wearing casual black clothing

perched on the rooftops with a sniper rifle. He was contracted

to assassinate a foreign diplomat and mere opportunity, not

only payment, was more than generous. He was from the

slums of Ceres, a destitute autonomous section off shot from

the city of Midas, and this was the chance he’d take to go

anywhere else.

In the distance where the scope was pointed at, the foreign

diplomat conversed with a blond man. The scope aligned with

the target, and shifted upward and to the side to compensate

for the wind and drop.

Latest Chapter. Getting Flood Detected - Post Discarded.

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Chapter 23

There were towers of Tanagura that pierced the skies, like the one I was in. The atmospheric platform at the aerospace port was where spaceships and aeroshuttles launched and landed.

The elevator rides were a spectacle. Going up to see the ground grow distant, and knowing that above and beyond was the exosphere— the sight of diffused starlight from the planet, darkness of immense heaven, and the world’s halo as the border between two realms.

The indoors had colorful crowds of tourists from various cultures. Similarly, confection stands and restaurants apt to sate both hunger and impulse had the same vibrance. However, I wasn’t so lucky to be free from the pull of the planet. I walked towards the elevator. All crowds afforded a wide berth for the squad of security androids that accompanied my every move. As usual, I pressed a button for the top sector. The same response as always was “access denied”. It, like all systems, recognized my biometrics, and the compromise was the second highest set of floors from where spaceships could still be seen launching.

Upon my return home, as a result there would be a usual

routine. There’d be Raoul as the voice of concern.

“Icarus, what were you doing at the space port?”

“I wanted to see the shuttles launch.”

Say any more and there would’ve been an unwanted debate.

Virtually absent during my childhood, he appeared more frequently on the ending years of adolescence. There was another day in Eos, he beckoned.

“Icarus, are you well?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not convinced. Your average heart rate has elevated

lately.”

“Is that so? You figure that one out,” I said as I walked away.

The first two chapters got published in a mini magazine by /v/ w/ extra editing and polish. It comes with fancy cover.

Heartbeat bump or just using this thread as a less scattered compilation of related works that I posted over time in the writefag thread.

I posted this short story.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23558467 (801 words)

Here's a draft version of chapter 2.

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Mainframe

———

He ducked his head before a retinal scanner and a faint line aimed at his pupil. The lock glowed green with confirmation and the physical latches clicked as the door unlocked.

"Welcome, Doctor," a computerized voice greeted. "Raoul Am."

After he stepped through, the same computerized voice informed, "Access authorized for biosafety level 3 subfacilities."

In the sector dedicated to biosciences, the lobby's digital panel gave a three-dimensional overview of the research institute's floor plan. The sector wasn't quite a floor level, but a multi-floored quadrant offset from the main elevators. The most hazardous of experiments were behind layers of controlled areas and far isolated from elevator routes. The entire building as a whole was the current largest building on the planet.

Isolated from main galactic space, Amoi hadn't the burdens of foreign rivalries and tangling alliances. Funds that otherwise would be invested into military and defense instead went to science and education. No empire paid mind to the star system that bordered the intergalactic abyss.

Ideally, things would stay that way, but Raoul didn't suspend all of his disbelief.

*Why my dissertation?*

It landed him in a paradise he hadn't to ask for.

With the choice between a window to the star-lit world and a microscope, his sights were on the petri dish of cell culture, violently polluted by black viral specks. The chemistry lab was his sandbox and the mainframe seated at the base of the facility was beyond the computational resources he'd dare to request in main galactic space.

Day by day, colleagues from different departments gleefully spoke of it in the break rooms as he caught their passing conversations.

"Lambda 3000."

He already knew the name by the terminal's log-in, but it kept reiterating in arbitrary conversation. Too many contexts for a catalyst for data analysis, Raoul eventually asked a colleague why.

"Ah, Raoul, such a recluse," he chuckled. "You've been shut-in at your workstation too long not to hear about it. The computer engineers constantly talk about it and its rubbed onto the bioinformaticists. And well," in the biosciences subfacility, "here we are."

Another colleague, with a stethoscope hung slack around her neck, nudged Raoul's arm, "Live a little. We didn't expect you to be so reserved. That fiery dissertation defense considering."

"I…" Raoul sighed. The recorded session, hardline committee, and those with too much money and influence who didn't belong there— he remembered his apprehension melted before his passion as he raised his voice in the defense of his work. "… really got into it."

"I'm surprised you were this out of the loop about Lambda," another colleague drank from his cup.

"I have my specializations," Raoul briefly shrugged, "if I had more years than a lifetime, then I could consider expanding."

"I don't mean it in that sense. As the computer guys put it: most computers are abstractly meant to have the same output for the same input or 'deterministic'. They're setting Lambda out to be 'self-deterministic'.

"Some of the others mentioned the higher-ups in the other department discussing your work."

Intially, Raoul was skeptical. Where the mainframe was and where the computer scientists, system administrators, and so forth worked was an entirely different department that Raoul never stepped into. But eventually, the offer came from a senior directing scientist.

"Your work was very underappreciated within main galactic space," the well-spoken man reviewed Raoul's dissertation.

The ornate office was not ostentacious but sublime. The hard polished floor and high ceilings could make a tap of the foot echo. The elite accomodations were as though noble pursuit for knowledge rightfully met noble status.

"The formation of memories and the physical model of cognition," he continued. "We would like to integrate your work into Lambda 3000."

"I would be honored."

When Raoul said the words, he hadn't the slightest doubts that he'd regret them.

It looks interesting but the English is plain. You could easily expand what you have. I do like your to-the-point first sentence though, it is a bit grabbing. Maybe what you have written works out better than going large, but I wrote an example below on something like the way I would write it to show you ways you can expand the descriptions. Some people may yell at me and say “some descriptions aren’t important” so maybe I’m just being autistic by wanting to know the geology of Amoi. I’m not even from /lit/ and I have only read a few fiction stories in my life so don’t take my opinion seriously.

Barren and inhospitable was the nature of this planet, which was more distant away from its parent star compared to its sibling worlds, as this was the twelfth planet away from its host. But even here on this inhospitable planet, humans would come to defy its rules and make it hospitable by claiming it as their home, and this planet would be called Amoi. Looking down on Amoi during its nighttime, you would see a small cluster of glowing lights, spread out like a creeping fluorescent fungus on the underside of a stone. There are only three cities on Amoi as this planet was only recently colonized, all of which neighbor each other. One city was the planet’s capital, named Tanagura. Tugging on the side of Tanagura like a satellite’s relentless gravitational pull was an urban city named Midas, and Midas shined most brightly at night compared to the other two cities. The third city was named Ceres, an autonomous sector, and its nightly glow appeared in the form of mere specks, far and few between.

In the dim city of Ceres, there were slums that hid in the shadow of Midas city. This crevice between two cities, on a planet far off from the rest of humanity, would be where one of many men and women would be raised in. This young man appeared like his natural environment, with dark hair and black clothing. His dark clothing was casual as well and didn’t stand out, but in this case, that’s exactly what he wanted. Perched on the top of building’s rooftop, he blended in with his surroundings like the way a gargoyle becomes one with a cathedral, and he looked outward with a fixed gaze. The only thing between his eyes and the city below were the crosshairs of his sniper rifle. He was contracted to assassinate a foreign diplomat, and just the mere opportunity to do this job was generous enough, almost better than the payment itself. This was the chance for him to go somewhere else in life, to get out of the slums that hid him from existence. He was now outside of the cave and on top of the mountain, finding some freedom on the city rooftop.

Through the scope of his sniper rifle, he saw in the far distance where the foreign diplomat was holding a conversation with a blond-haired man. It was windy on this night, and his bullets were heavy, so he had to calculate in his head how to compensate for the gravity and wind, but also the high angle he was at in relation to the foreign diplomat. His crosshairs moved carefully upward and to the side with high precision away from the diplomat where they were centered upon.

>>16769

One of the early advices I took when writing was mentioning a character as soon as possible. So the first paragraph doesn't go into detail about the geology (almost all scenarios takes place in the cluster of civilization). Partly to represent that going innawoods is a viable option (there is no woods).

If you want a rough timeline of the planet, a colony ship descended on it a few hundred years ago, which is an extremely short amount of time to properly terraform albedo, atmospheric conditions, to support basic life.

As for Ceres, the gender ratio is extremely skewed (as revealed in Chapter 2), and the general populace on the planet is extremely tampered by genetic engineering and cyborg engineering.

>>16770

>innawoods is a viable option

isn't*

>>16770

I never write stories but I have had some short fiction writings as university assignments. One thing that began to grow in my mind was questioning how descriptive I should be. I know that the reader doesn't know what I think, so I always tried to be as descriptive as possible, but I sometimes wonder it becomes overwhelming and takes away from the plot.

>>16773

I took shot at writing for the hell of it a while ago. So

(1) how much detail I put in a scene is generally indicative of how much description I think is enough. I generally lose interest in a block of text and when nothing is really happening.

(2) more words adds on to more chances of errors, then more effort when it coems to proofreading and editing.

(3) one of the feedback I got from initial drafts was that I put too much visual detail

It doesn't mean I go scant, but I'd like to do the best possible with concise wording.

Fundamentally, every medium of art has its weaknesses and strengths. Visual and aural detail is what writing is extremely weak at conveying (vs a picture, audio), so I don't think heavy description helps. Vivid description may have been awesome before motion picture was a thing, but now we have YouTube and the internet.

>>16769

>humans would come to defy its rules

Not really the right prose for the setting since humans are generally the subjugated demographic on the planet. The government is run by an AI, cyborgs and androids.