Speed Written Short Stories

[55555]

Each of these was written in under twenty minutes as part of a game I've been playing recently with Velox, Kakaru and a bunch of other dudes.The Forest:Not just any forest, THE Forest. The definite article, it stands alone, separate and above all the other forests of the world both figuratively and literally. An immortal place in a mortal world. I could wax eloquent upon the noises or lack thereof, as well as the subtleties of the light or great trunks of the trees, but I have never been there, nor met anyone who has.Which is not to say no one has been there, many have.The Forest stands, as it will ever stand, upon a strangely shaped irregularity of the land, seemingly unreachable by ordinary means. This outcropping (though what it originally cropped out of I would never venture to guess) seems to slowly drift around the world, as a stranger drifts in an unfamiliar town; ill at ease, wandering, and not entirely welcome.In my studies of The Forest I have sought to chart this drift, to find some rhyme or reason, some pattern that I could understand. All the things one might think of (and one, I, did) such as wind, altitude, waterways, geological or environmental consistencies, led to naught. After many, many years however, I did find a pattern, once I had discarded all the probable options and focused my efforts on the improbable.Seven years after the forest was seen in each of these places, something of great importance occurred. Sometimes good things, sometimes bad things, but always events of great import and impact.It has just been seen once more, an unusually swift alteration in it position, near the very capital of our world. I must tell all that I know.The Code:31610 01 04383 92 66473 859 93027 75 032000000000...He sat up suddenly, sweaty and entirely wakeful. He lay back down, to try and go back to sleep, to return to the rarity of slumber.Three-One-Six-One-Zero, Zero-One, Zero-Four-Three...He turned on the light and swung his legs over the side of his bed. it revealed a room in a terrible state, clothing of every level of cleanliness mixed together with no semblance of a system. Papers had spilled from the desk next to his bed into the wastebasket, and from there onto the floor. The light was not harsh and yellow, he'd done away with that one long ago on another night much like this, a night not uncommon to him since he began attempting to crack the code. He opened the double windows wide, and the chill night air rushed in, refreshing him.Three-One-Six-One-Zero, Zero...His fist hit the desk unsatisfyingly, the sound muffled in the stacks of paper.What could it mean? There must be a meaning.He had covered all the possible character substitution patterns, then started testing random encryption keys, then more and more wild guesses.So many of these numbers may be meaningless... Merely to distract from the hidden message...Three-One-Six-One...The message might just be a number, meaningless without prior information...He was no rookie at cryptology, nor at long nights. He had worked for The Bureau since he was 16, having attracted their attention even at that age with his unique abilities.The white, bluish light shown on his face, his head drooped falling once more into sleep...Exchange:So many hours, so many days, so many months had led up to this moment, and yet all was not yet set in stone. it has never ceased to amaze me that despite years of preparation, all can be undone in mere moments. The weather, a disease, a misheard digit, or a careless gesture can bring down years of labor and planning.The night was nearly silent in this part of the city, flickering streetlights lit and my headlights revealed what would naturally have been concealed. Few lights shown in the dirty windows. A light snow was falling.I swung my SUV carefully to a stop parallel to the curb. This was the time, the place, the plan.I looked at the Merchandise stowed in the back seat of the car. I smiled. All would go well, what was I worrying about?The shots shattered everything. The first one or two must have bounced of the windshield, but there were many more than two. The car, the plan, my body were totaled from the merciless barrage.Somehow I retained consciousness, I could still see out of one eye. I knew what I had to do, the Merchandise could not be lost with no reward. In my ankle holster...The car doors had unlocked automatically when I came to a stop. A figure loomed through the shattered, bloodied windshield, silhouetted against the yellow streetlights.I sat up slightly, I knew I had not long to live, whether this figure furthered that cause or not. I clutched the automatic in my hand, thanking Glock mentally for the brilliance of the trigger safety. The door opened, the masked figure pulled me out onto the sidewalk, he put a foot on my chest and levelled his firearm at me.Then he pulled off his balaclava, it was my boss."You broke the plan", I said."This was the plan."I shot him in the face.Fire:It was an early, misty morning. I stood with legions of soldiers in ceremonial dress to greet the new species to our world. I was the Master Of Ceremony's, on dang was it a ceremony. the alien ship looked out of place in the green field they had selected as a landing place. No doubt in the future there would be some kind of statue, or monument here, for it was the dawn of a new era. Or perhaps the ship would stand in this field forever, a testament to this meeting.I kept my face rock solid, as was traditional, and yelled orders at my men, swiveling to the right to flank the ship's exit. This meeting would define our relationship with these extraterriestrials, I was not going to be sloppy. First impressions are important.The doors opened, and our Diplomat stepped forward, a good looking old man clad in his diplomatic regalia.He was the first to die.A swarm of the aliens spilled onto the landscape, and the civilians panicked, running randomly, falling, trampling. They killed as they advanced, running at full speed, one alien jumped each of the people as they reached them.My men stood at attention, motionless. I knew what they were waiting for.They waited on my order. there was more at stake here than one battle, or a few thousand men. This would be war, and not just a war, or a World War, of War of Worlds.Present arms!A thousand clicks of manipulated rifles sounded in unison.Fire!Flight:Spinning through the air. Spiraling through the firmament. The sun caught my eye between the clouds, and swung by.I had done this so long for mere fun that it was difficult to remember this was war.I can feel the air through the stick and the yaw of my craft. I ride the wind. Five feet to my left my wingman movements matched mine. We were in a vertical climb, attaining the altitude we needed for the mission ahead. We had been assigned to escort a flight of heavy bombers. Why only two of us? Too many bombers, too few fighters.Plus I suspect that the higher ups had come to realize the abilities of my friend and I. he'd been a farmer before the war, but he took to the air like a...TAT-TAT-TAT-TATSmall caliber fire ricocheted off my cockpit and fuselage. We kept in perfect formation."Green Beta engage bandits. Repeat, Green Beta engage bandits."This was it.I shoved the stick forward and climbed as my wingman rolled left. I had managed to keep an eye on the bandit. He had the white triangle emblem on both wings.A fellow High Ace. This would be a challenge.He dove into a cloud bank and I followed.Suddenly I remembered the old days, playing tag in the clouds with my dad, before the war...Stuck:The operation had been going well, I controlled all my bodies with my one will. I received the information from my thousand brains, the vision of a thousand eyes. My eyes could only see walls.It had all been a trap. They had lured me here, my army, to conquer and be conquered. A facade of defense, I thought it was unusually weak at the time, set up only to disguise what lay behind. It was a moonlit night, which admittedly was not one I would have chosen, had I that luxury. This operation was one of necessity, I could not wait on the weather, or so I thought. the skies were clear as I flew in my planes and lept simultaneously into the darkness.The fortress was of stone and steel, large and well equipped, but under manned. I assumed this was due to losses they had suffered previously from myself and my few friends. Such a compound is difficult to penetrate, but also difficult to escape from. How was I to know that this was all a setup? That there was no threat to me in this place, as long as I steered clear of it? How had my eyes, my spies, not found this, or my ears heard of this? The secrecy must have been absolute, the precautions many and well executed.I sat down cross-legged on the myriad floors. I knew my fate when I saw it. I had met my match in a thousand minds, my thousand bodies had been defeated.Who would have guess that doors lay underneath every opening? Perhaps "door" is the wrong word, since once closed they would never open.I would sit here until the end, thinking my thoughts.Time:I am Time. The call me Old Father, but I am ageless as death. I close all the coffins. I open all eyes. They have said I'm am relative, I am an illusion, I am like a river. I am like nothing but myself.People speak of not having enough time, or even of possessing too much. Some in prison find it weighs heavily upon them, some elsewhere find it goes all too quickly. Youth to age, age to death.Death is the key to my lock. After death I am no longer relevant, Time itself is past. The petty wastrels, and the mouldering prisoners find that Time is now as a level field. The ocean of Time is stilled.A light flickers and dies, a civilization rises to its zenith, and falls in instant. A match is lit, and lives forever. Languages evolve, stagnate, and re-emerge in a new form. A single molecule of water is immortal in its way, a memory lives on beyond death and love and Time. For memory, life, immortality, all in their way, defy Time. Wars rage across the earth, scars are left, but time accepts all, and obscures all.But for the nonce, my thrall, you are in my keeping and will abide by my laws.Tempus fugitis.Preparation:The future is to me an open secret. I can see and explore the wiles of fate, the results of actions, and trace them to their sources. I can prepare for events that are inevitable, and steer reality from those that are avoidable. I have worked for the cause of good many, many times. Sometimes only a subtle action is needed, sometimes great operations must be executed to avoid disaster. I have once or twice been forced to contact the governments of the world, warning them of a looming dilemma. Both times they failed to heed my tidings. The results were terrible, but the paths were too complex for them to realize I had been right.I could see what would happen, it's the power I have, I don't know why I have it.The many complexities of life are mostly of little import. I see them as a slightly jagged line that, in the end, moves little up or down, with few drastic deviations from the average.But then, on April 21st, 2012, there is a spike. As a level plain is broken by a mountain so is the graph of this world shattered by that day. But it is not the only path, through careful preparation, the world can be moved off this path.My power made clear to me the nature of this catastrophe. The fate of this world came down to one man, a seemingly unimportant soul who lived a quiet life in Alaska. If he were killed the world would spiral into chaos, and evil would triumph for the last time.I must train myself. I must warn him. I must watch him. I must gather aid from those who I can trust. I must disguise his nature and his identity from those he would destroy him. I must prepare.Beacon:"You couldn't have just come into port Sam, not in this fog. You should have looked in sooner," The freindly tavern keeper said as the sailor walked in. The hour was late, the oil lamps had been lit, and all but the most inebriated had long since departed.The sailor walked up to the counter, and sat down wearily., "That's just what we've done, the nearest thing I've ever seen.""I'll tell you the tale."---A mist lay over the shore, so heavily that it was impossible to see the stern of the ship from the mainmast. The seaman in the crows nest couldn't make out the deck two hundred feet below him. the officers were all down below, listening for the sound of breakers on the reefs and rocks, trying to avoid the sound of rending wood.There had once been a lighthouse on the point. For all they knew it had long since been abandoned or destroyed, but the Captain still ordered a look out aloft. He kept his watch well.He constantly scanned from left to right, and right to left, high and low alert to the faintest glimmer in the all encompassing mist.He looked to stern, to starboard, and then, there, in the darkness, was a bright gleam. He called down to the deck below. They knew where they were, they would live to see the dawn.---"So you see, if it hadn't been for that lighthouse, I'd be sleeping with the fishes by now."An odd look came across the landlord's visage."That lighthouse burned down six months ago." Power:I bend over the gasket again. I feel like I've already adjusted this one a dozen times tonight, but it needs tightening again. My wrench, named Orville, is so worn that my fingers are imprinted in the iron handle, but is still solid as ever. I run back to the main control panel, swinging levers to balance the pressure and mentally noting low pressure areas in the system. We need all the power we can get tonight.I reflect, as I slide down the ladders to tighten the gaskets in the lower levels, how strange it is that it should all come down to one night. All this toil could be undone so easily. We are lifting the Spire tonight.Originally we'd planned to raise the Spire in the daylight, but the wind today had been too strong, only dying out after sunset. It had been built on its side, and through the whole process everyone remembered that all could be undone by lifting it erect. The Power Machine is powerful, but unreliable. If the power fails, the Spire falls, and all our labor is undone.I check myself mid-slide down another ladder by locking Orville between the struts, then I frenziedly claw my way upward. An explosion is the last thing you want to hear down here.I get to a catwalk, I have a view of the entire Power Machine.A whole wing bad blown, only eight were left in operation. The steam was already clouding my vision. I would die if I couldn't stop the leak.I ran to one of the main gaskets, swinging Orville into motion, trying to check the flow if not stop it. The gasket was jammed. The thought of sabotage flashes through my panicking mind.It's going to be a bad night.- 55555(And no this wasn't posted on a dare)

Edited April 23, 2012 by 55555

[Nuile the Paracosmic Tulpa]

Nuile reporting with a Short Story Critics Club Charity Review. Or rather, reviews.I had a good time reading and critiquing all of these. It looks like you had a good time writing them, too. Let's begin:The ForestThe first thing that strikes me me is style. While it's a little tongue-in-cheek, it's a very elegant, not to mention eloquent, style and I enjoy reading it. That's a very important thing; you don't just need a good story, you need the words to tell it.Usually in a story of this length it's difficult for anything but style to strike one. Yet you had a tantalizing sample here of what could be a very good story. It's certainly an intriguing concept. That said, that's the problem here; it's not a story, but a concept. It's the synopsis on the back of the book, but it's not the book.One could argue that a truly good story can't be told in 500 words; I could argue that it can, and often is.The CodeSometimes I feel that if you're not going to tell a story, then don't bother writing it. Again you have a creative premise here, but you don't go anywhere with it. There's some "Bureau" and this guy's trying to crack a code for them. Well good for him, but you didn't give me a reason to care. He sounds like a character who could be worth reading about, but you're not giving me a chance to read about him.Where did the code come from? Why is he trying to crack it? Who is this Bureau? Where is this even set? These are the questions that would draw me into reading a novel, but leave me unsatisfied with a stand-alone short story.One typographical error I noticed:

He turned on the light and swung his legs over the side of his bed. it revealed a room in a terrible state . . .

The ExchangeWell at least this time there's a story being told. There's untold information out of sight, but this tale was also, in itself, worth telling. It was exciting and mysterious, but not so much the latter that it frustrated me. It was balanced nicely. Something actually happened and the story came to a conclusion, and all again in your artful language.Another error:

So many hours, so many days, so many months had led up to this moment, and yet all was not yet set in stone. it has never ceased to amaze me that despite years of preparation . . .

FireAgain, pointless. To be a story, there has to be a beginning and an end. There was neither. And the concept wasn't even creative or original this time.I can only be impressed by the compelling manner in which you write nothing. I'll commend that.Four errors this time:

I stood with legions of soldiers in ceremonial dress to greet the new species to our world. I was the Master Of Ceremony's, on dang was it a ceremony. the alien ship looked out of place in the green field they had selected as a landing place.

They waited on my order. there was more at stake here than one battle, or a few thousand men. This would be war, and not just a war, or a World War, of War of Worlds.

FlightThere are a few superfluous details that give the reader the feeling that you know something you're not telling them. As I've already said, this can serve the purpose of pique your reader's curiosity; but if you can't satisfy that curiosity, you're just piquing your readers. Never a wise practise.Yet this was not devoid of meaning. The characters were given a bit of vitality, which is a hard thing to give in a story this short. You didn't give much, but you gave a little with the brief backstories, very deftly applied. It wasn't disappointing because it was enough: these two ace pilots were protecting a fleet of bombers, they were attacked, and they engaged in battle. These characters are made people, so I can be interested in their doings. The untold details feel irrelevant. I think the only disappointment would have been if you had continued it or elaborated too much on what you're not telling, for then it would have detracted from the simplicity of this scene. And in its simplicity it was enough.There's the point: A story this short is meant to be simple. Here, you came closer to letting it be.Grammatical mistakes:

Plus I suspect that the higher ups had come to realize the abilities of my friend and I. he'd been a farmer before the war, but he took to the air like a...

The latter I would have ended with an em dash, personally.StuckIf he had two thousand brains, wouldn't he have had two thousand eyes, unless he had a thousand eye patches as well?In all seriousness . . . this was the most inane yet. It didn't even leave much to wonder about. That, or I'm getting numb. Maybe that's it; the narrator has a thousand bodies, which is certainly strange, but if you're not going to explain I no longer bother to concern myself. The end was dramatic, but without a story to conclude it was worthless.

This operation was one of necessity, I could not wait on the weather, or so I thought. the skies were clear as I flew in my planes and lept simultaneously into the darkness.

Who would have guess that doors lay underneath every opening?

TimeThis is easily your best work here. It's philosophical and deep. It really complements your style. The only problem is that it's a monologue rather than a story, but that's not at all against my personal taste.Oh, and I love your vocabulary. Nonce, thrall; meritorious!

The call me Old Father . . .

They have said I'm am relative, I am an illusion, I am like a river. I am like nothing but myself.

A light flickers and dies, a civilization rises to its zenith, and falls in instant.

I think a preposition such as however would have been apt there.PreparationNow that I am accustomed to your method of telling stories of this length, I actually enjoyed this one. It's dramatic and it presages a thrilling tale. Again it's just a concept, but in its vagueness it doesn't leave me begging for answers and thus becomes tolerable and, as I said, enjoyable.And no mistakes; felicitations!BeaconAnd this claims the title of the best story here. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end; very literally, which can be considered a good or a bad thing, dependent upon the instance or upon who you ask.Very truly this is a splendid exemplar of what a story of this length should be; what a story of any length should be! A beginning that draws the reader in; a middle that's exciting; and an ending that leaves the reader surprised and mystified but not confused or vexed.I have to admit, though, that you drooped a little bit in the middle. Yet with so little string, pulling it taut should be easy. It was a bit dull; you needed more action and suspense. I didn't feel the sailor's fear, my breath was not bated like theirs; you didn't even as much as tell me what they were feeling. You just told what was happening.

"You couldn't have just come into port Sam, not in this fog. You should have looked in sooner," The freindly tavern keeper said as the sailor walked in.

The sailor walked up to the counter, and sat down wearily.,

The seaman in the crows nest couldn't make out the deck two hundred feet below him. the officers were all down below, listening for the sound of breakers on the reefs and rocks, trying to avoid the sound of rending wood.

That first should be possessive.

For all they knew it had long since been abandoned or destroyed, but the Captain still ordered a look out aloft.

That's one word.PowerI've run out of comments. Structurally it has the same problem; no structure! Yet there are no enigmatic details that demand elucidation, and the final note is somewhat discordant but only by effective design, rendering it neither strident nor abrupt.Overall, I think it is a rule of writing to choose a form appropriate for the story you're trying to tell. Or to choose a story appropriate for the form you're trying to suit. Most of these did not follow that rule, but those that did were excellent, which shows what you can do when you try. Moreover I laud your style.I know these were written idly and without much purpose, pieces written merely for the pleasure of writing; and I know I'm being unfairly critical of them given that, but that's what the SSCC does: critique. And with the new charity reviews, there's nowhere you can hide. ;DBut why would you want to? For fifteen-minute shorts, these were great.

Keep writing,

Sincerely, Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith

Edited October 12, 2012 by My Name is Nuile