Inside - Techno Short Story

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

A few months ago, one of the assignments for my English class was to write a short story. Since my theme was the Internet, I naturally wrote an action story that strongly resembled TRON. Looking through it now, the plot is a bit clunky and rushed, and some of my phrasing is really weird (I even edited some of the worst offenders before posting here). Since this is my first fiction in a long time, and I don't intend it to be my last, I'd like to get some feedback on my style. Inside “Hey, you’ve gotta see this website.” said David, sitting down at his computer. Mark followed him. David opened his web browser and punched in an address. Mark blinked, trying to keep up with the movements onscreen. David was so fast on a computer. “It’s got sheet music for just about anything you’d ever want to play…” David said, his voice trailing off for a moment as he clicked on a link that caught his eye. “Check it out!” he offered, standing up and offering the chair to Mark. Mark sat down and looked at the website on the screen. It looked kind of ugly, but hey, if it has good sheet music, who cares what it looks like? Mark reached for the mouse and wiggled it a couple of times to locate the pointer. His eyes went to a search bar on the left column, and he clicked in it to search for something. Before he could type anything, an error message appeared on the screen. A yellow triangle with an exclamation point dominated the box, and it had three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, and “Cancel”. Mark froze. Why did computers always do this, throw a hopelessly technical message in your face and then break if you chose the wrong button? Finally Mark said, “Uh oh, what’d I do?” David looked up from his piano and laughed. “Just hit Cancel.” Mark followed his advice and the message disappeared. “Yeah, it does that sometimes. The site’s a bit buggy.” David explained. Mark carried on searching for the song. In a few moments, he had located it and looked over the notes. Suddenly a black square appeared on the screen with a small white pattern twisting and moving across it. Mark blinked. “Uh…” David was now engrossed in his piano, trying to play some theme from a video game. Another square appeared on the screen, and another. Before he could say anything, the entire screen was covered in twisting white lines on a black background. Then a black square appeared in mid-air. Mark opened his mouth in surprise. The black squares started popping up everywhere, forming a box around him, shutting him out from the world. The white lines grew until there was no more black visible, and then started to fade. When the lines were gone, Mark was somewhere else entirely. Everything was black and white. There wasn’t even any gray. A black building in front of him was slightly illuminated by its glowing white panels. The sky behind the building was a pitch black void with white stars twinkling harshly, as if somebody was turning them on and off rapidly. The ground Mark stood on was a flat, smooth black surface that felt like it should be shinier than it looked. Mark looked around, desperately trying to locate some landmark, anything that would hint at where he was, but there was nothing around him but oddly shaped buildings, glowing softly from their highlights. There was a scuffling sound behind Mark, and he jumped and turned around. A black-and-white creature had rounded a corner and was coming straight at him. Mark knew nothing about this strange place, but he could guess that this thing wasn’t friendly. He ran. As he ran, more creatures joined the pursuit. They seemed to be coming directly out of the buildings, though the buildings had no doors or windows or openings of any kind. One creature came out of building directly in front of him and Mark saw as it ran that, instead of taking strides, it actually grew a new set of legs, and the old legs shrunk to nothing behind it. Mark turned right, where another creature emerged. He was cornered. Mark turned around to face the way he came, where one of the creatures suddenly exploded into shreds of black; the creature’s glowing white marks instantly faded. Mark looked around in a panic, as another creature exploded in flash of light. This time he saw a glowing green… thing speeding towards it a moment before it died. The projectile made a sound that reminded Mark of the laser guns in just about every sci-fi movie. Three more green gunshots, three more explosions, and there was a gap in the ring of monsters. Mark quickly ran to what looked like safety, more explosions sounding behind him. “Hey! Over here!” came a voice. Mark turned towards the sound and saw a woman wielding a black-and-green object he guessed was the weapon that had destroyed the creatures. The woman ran through an alley, firing as she went. Mark followed. When he caught up, she threw something at him that looked like another gun. “Take this!” Mark failed to catch it and clumsily picked up it off the ground where it had fallen with a loud thud. As he stood up, he saw his rescuer for the first time from a reasonable distance. Despite the situation, Mark found himself thinking that she really didn’t look like the type to be wielding a laser gun. Then he wondered what he expected a woman wielding a laser gun to look like. A bizarre roar turned Mark’s attention back to the creatures chasing them. Mark raised the futuristic weapon and fumbled for the trigger. Finally when he found it, the end of the blaster exploded in a flash of green light and the creature next to the one he was aiming at exploded. Even though he missed his intended target, the explosion was oddly satisfying. “What are those things?” he shouted at the woman after taking out a few. “Viruses,” she said simply, apparently concentrating exclusively on firing. “What?” Mark said. That made no sense... unless… “Computer viruses, I mean. We’re in the system memory of a computer.” the woman elaborated matter-of-factly. Mark gaped at her, and then looked around, as if to disprove what he knew was impossible. But the more he looked, the more he realized that it was probably true. Everything was black and white… off and on. Zeroes and ones. The flashing lights he had taken for stars seemed to be arranged in a grid pattern. The large objects he had thought were buildings were, on closer inspection, constantly changing. Their light patterns moved on their own, and the objects themselves expanded and contracted, as if they were alive. “Then… what are…” Mark gasped, gesturing at the “buildings”. “Programs.” said the woman, continuing to shoot at viruses. So that was what a computer program really looked like. Mark lifted his blaster again and fired as quickly as he could to make up for the time lost quizzing his rescuer. Though the pair was killing (or deleting?) dozens of viruses, they continued to close in. “We can’t stay here!” the woman finally shouted. “Cover me; I’m going to open up a socket to our base server!” Mark didn’t have a clue what she said, but “cover me” he could understand, so he blasted any virus that looked like it was getting too close. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark saw the woman holding a glowing keyboard. What would she need a keyboard for when she was already inside a computer? Then he realized that being in a computer wouldn’t give even a hacker super-powers; she needed some way to deliver their commands to the world. After a moment, the woman swore. “The server’s gone! I can’t connect!” “What now?” Mark asked. The woman tightened her lips in concentration and looked around. “Follow me to that process!” With that, she took off running towards a program-building about 10 feet tall. Mark followed, wondering what she was planning. He looked back for a split second; the viruses were already following. He fired a few shots and looked forward to see the woman jump onto the side of the program and start climbing. Mark followed her lead. Despite how smooth the surface was, it was surprisingly easy to climb; it was almost sticky. The woman typed something into her keyboard, and the program flashed. “There!” she gasped. “Got a vaccine installed for this program.” That, at least, made some sense to Mark when he considered the virus analogy, especially when a virus attempted to scale the program, but flinched back as soon as it touched it, as if the program was white-hot. “So we’re safe here?” he asked. “Yeah.” said the woman, catching her breath. She smiled slightly. “Well, during that whole mess, I never caught your name.” “Mark.” “Neka. Welcome to the digital world.” she said. “So, uh, Neka… how do I get out of here?” he asked slowly. Neka laughed. “You don’t. Not yet, at least. With the virus spreading as fast as it is, you’d probably get sucked back in next time you used a computer, anyways.” Mark’s stomach sank. “We, I mean, the people trapped in cyberspace, have a plan to release a counter-worm that will destroy the virus. Our headquarters is on a military server. I meant to take you there, but it’s not responding to connections for some reason.” she continued. “How tough is it to release the counter-virus?” Mark asked. “Counter-worm; it self-replicates over the Internet, but it doesn’t infect programs like a virus.” Neka corrected. “It’s really easy, but you need an operator on the outside to help, and believe me, that part alone is much harder than it sounds. Even if we do manage to hack into a computer that’s currently being used… well, what you would think if your computer suddenly asked you to install a program?” Mark thought before replying. “Well, I’m not really a computer guy, but I guess I probably would ignore it. Maybe even shut it off before it blows up or something.” He paused. “Of course, I don’t even own a computer. This is my friend’s.” Neka looked around, observing the digital landscape, and then turned to Mark suddenly. “Your friend… is he around right now?” “Yeah. At least, he was right next to me when I got… well, here.” Neka’s eyes widened. “He saw you disappear?” “I guess, probably.” Neka seemed to struggle to control her excitement. “So… he’s an outside operator… and he’ll probably believe you!” She quickly typed something into her keyboard and pushed it at Mark. Mark took the keyboard-thing out of her hands; there was now a screen floating in mid air, as if it was a laptop, completely transparent except for the screen and keyboard. The screen showed a simple text editor. Mark looked at Neka, not sure what he was supposed to do. “Type a message for your friend! Explain what’s going on.” she said impatiently. Mark paused, and then typed: “hey david its mark” He pressed Enter to start a new line. “im trapped inside the computer. i know it sounds weird but im sitting on a giant program right now surrounded by viruses” Nothing happened for a moment, then a single letter A appeared and vanished after a second. Then a full message typed itself, letter by letter: “Hi, Mark. I was going to ask if this was a joke, but that makes sense, I guess… I wondered how you disappeared so quickly.” Neka spoke up. “Tell him to run the program that just appeared on his desktop with root privileges!” Mark relayed the message, though with less punctuation and capitalization. “Root privileges?” David typed. Mark looked at Neka. “Right click, run as administrator,” she said shortly, as if it should be obvious. Mark relayed the message. “Done” came the answer. Immediately, a program began to rise in an open expanse of memory. Mark couldn’t decide whether it was breaking out of the ground or actually growing up from it. Before it reached even six feet, though, it stopped rising. Mark looked at Neka, as if to ask if something more should be happening. Neka just smiled. Mark looked back at the new program, which suddenly sent dozens of glowing beams into the air. The beams arced and fell towards the ground, where they honed in on the nearest virus. When one flew right past them, it appeared to be a digital creature like the viruses. Each creature ran towards the nearest virus and absorbed it. Behind Mark, Neka shouted with triumph. “That’s it, then?” asked Mark. “The virus is gone?” Neka turned to face him. “No, the virus isn’t gone. The counter-worm is only designed to destroy the corrupt component; the part that somehow brings matter-based beings into virtual space.” Sure enough, the beams of light vanished, and the viruses emerged unharmed. Mark overcame his disappointment by shooting one. “Wait… something’s not right,” muttered Neka. “The processes should have stayed active… and the viruses should have changed their signature, at least slightly…” She murmured to herself for a few moments. “No. It didn’t work.” she finally said. “I’m going to have to modify the launcher script. Stay here, and tell your friend to run again when I’m ready.” “Wait!” said Mark. “Why not make it delete the virus? That seems a lot less error-prone.” Neka stopped. “I can’t.” “Why not?” Mark asked before he could stop himself. Instead of launching into a technical explanation, Neka sighed. “I could destroy the virus… but I can’t bring myself to do that. I… created it.” Mark’s mouth fell open. “It wasn’t meant to work like this!” Neka snapped defensively. “It was just supposed to be spyware. I included a self-modifying component, which would allow it to bypass security systems. I… never expected the virus to give itself additional abilities, let alone violate the known laws of physics!” “Then you have to destroy it!” shouted Mark. “It’s gone too far!” “My computer was destroyed in the initial infection, taking the source code with it. If I destroy this virus now, I may never be able to recreate the parts that worked.” “What do you even need a virus for?” “It’s not as simple as you think! I…” A loud noise distracted both of them from the argument. Mark looked down at the ground, where the viruses surrounding their program-tower were twisting themselves beyond recognition. One stopped moving, then tentatively touched the side of the program. It waited a full second before jerking away. Mark looked at Neka, panicked. The viruses before had been unable to touch the vaccinated program at all. Given what she had just said about a self-modifying component, he assumed the viruses would soon be able to ignore the vaccine, and their safe tower would be overrun. “We don’t have much time.” was all that Neka said before making an impossible leap to the counter-worm launcher. Mark reminded himself that they weren’t in the real world, and physics were definitely not the same. Mark watched as Neka produced another keyboard, seemingly from nowhere, and began studying the screen and typing furiously. Though he knew she was an expert, Mark couldn’t help but feel that Neka would waste too much trying to keep the virus functional. The counter-worm seemed to have a vaccine of its own, so Neka was safe for now, but there was a group of viruses around its base as well, morphing and mutating, trying to find a form that the protection would not recognize. A message appeared on Mark’s screen from David. “What’s going on? Did it work?” Mark looked at Neka, who appeared to be swearing loudly at the program, though at this distance he couldn’t hear what she was saying. “no.” wrote Mark back. “but i’m going to fix it.” Mark inhaled deeply, stepped back, and took a running leap towards Neka’s program. “What are you doing?” shouted Neka. “If you’re not going to destroy this virus, then I will.” Neka just laughed. “The program’s written in C. You really think you can do this faster than I can?” Mark was about to ask “C Minor or C Major?” but reminded himself that she was probably referring to some sort of programming language. He settled for a joke. “Well, I’ve written a piece in C Sharp.” Neka grunted. “Proprietary Microsoft piece of junk.” Mark was completely baffled, but remembered that he had no time to banter about programming languages and music. He turned towards the screen on the device he had taken with him and groaned in dismay. The screen was covered in strange symbols and shortened words, and it made absolutely no sense to him. He couldn’t even ask Neka what it meant, because she was betting that he wouldn’t be able to delete her virus. Mark blinked and forced himself to try to read the technical gibberish. He couldn’t even begin to guess what the first few lines (“import <stdio.h>” and stuff like that) meant, so he ignored them. A few rows down, Mark came to a line with nothing but a weird squiggly “{“. “What the” - Mark swore – “is that supposed to mean!?” Ignoring it and many other lines like it (“If I survive this,” he vowed about twenty lines down, “I’m going to learn C properly just to find out what these squiggly things mean!”), Mark came to something that sort of made sense: “delete(*x);”. An idea came to him, and he scrolled up a few lines to where he thought he had seen “*x” before. It seemed to be a huge block of code dedicated to finding the corrupted part of the virus. Mark looked around: if “*x” represented the corrupted part, then… “Ha!” Sure enough, “*v” seemed to represent the whole virus. Mark deleted the “*x” detection code, and changed the line below to read “delete(*v);”. Before he could do anything, though, a laser blast sounded from below. Mark and Neka tore their eyes from the screens to look; one of the viruses was now shooting at them with a makeshift laser cannon on its arm. The other viruses looked at it and shifted themselves to match its mutation. Mark crouched low to use his high ground as a shield. Neka was too slow and took a blast to the chest. Neka went flying backwards and landed hard against a huge neighboring program. She produced her own gun and tried to clear her way to the counter-worm, but now that the viruses could shoot too, it was clear that she couldn’t do it. “Mark!” she shouted desperately. “I finished the program! Press F6 on my virtual machine!” Mark seized the keyboard where she had dropped it and scanned it for something labeled F6. He spotted F9 and worked backwards until he found the key. He held his finger over it. “NOW!” shouted Neka, cornered by her creations. Mark threw Neka’s device to the ground, pressing F6 on his own keyboard. Nothing happened for second, then the beams of light soared out of the counter-worm once more. Once again, they arced in midair and soared downwards towards the viruses. This time, where they hit, there was a blinding flash of light. When they cleared, the virus was gone. Several of the beams turned towards the infected programs, cleansing them; the rest hunted down the remaining mobile viruses. When the viruses were gone, Mark jumped down and ran to Neka. “You deleted them,” she panted. It was impossible to tell her anger from her exhausted voice, but Mark could see it in her eyes. “I did what I had to do.” Mark said simply. “For everyone’s good.” She said nothing. “If I hadn’t deleted them, you would be dead now!” Mark said, raising his voice. “Would that really be worse than seeing my life’s work destroyed?” Neka snapped. Mark said nothing. How could she value something that was so destructive? “Hello!” came Neka’s voice, cheerfully calling from behind him. Mark turned, confused; Neka was still fuming in front of him. It was one of the counter-worms. Neka must have prerecorded a message for any survivors it found. “You have been trapped in the digital world by a rogue virus. Follow me. This may be your only chance to return to the physical world.” it continued in Neka’s voice. Mark stepped towards it, looking back at the real Neka. She sighed. “Go.” Mark paused. “How are you going to get back to the real world?” “There’s nothing left for me out there, now.” she said bitterly. “So I might as well stay here.” Mark found that he understood. Because she understood the systems so well, Neka would have incredible power to control her world. Whatever her past, it seemed that control over her world would be welcome. “Goodbye, then.” he smiled. “If I have to clean up another self-modifying virus, I’ll know who it’s from.” “No… I’m done with viruses.” Her mood finally seemed to lighten a bit. “But this self-modifying thing… I mean, think of what sort of programs you could make with that…” her voice trailed off and her eyes lost focus as she looked around, already lost in the possibilities. Mark turned back to the worm. “Take me back, then.” The world disappeared in a blinding flash of light, and he was back in David’s room. The scorch marks at his feet and the soot on David’s stunned face suggested that his return was not subtle. Mark looked around, his eyes adjusting back to the real world. “Well…” said David after a moment. “Are you gonna tell me what happened or not?” End Thanks for reading!

[Legolover-361]

The main critique I can give is that you seem to be telling some events rather than showing them. A few smidgens of prose here and there would be welcome. In addition, lengthier descriptions would have better painted the world you were trying to make.The plot itself seemed somewhat rushed to me, especially how Mark entered the virtual world, but otherwise it was sound. Some sort of explanation as to how the virus worked, however, as well as some backstory for Neka, could have been inserted without too much trouble.Otherwise, I like it.

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

The whole thing is definitely rushed, not only because I had about a week to write it, but because I came in way over the word limit for the assignment and had to delete several paragraphs to even come close :)Regarding your suggestions, though:I don't think I actually decided how the virus worked. I actually hate it when writers try to explain everything, so I normally try to leave one or two major things up to imagination in my stories. In addition, any technical explanation would go right over Mark's head... some of what he understands is already pushing it.As for Neka's backstory... that would be a good addition if I ever revisit this world. Basically, something bad happened in her past (maybe the death of a loved one?) and for whatever reason she couldn't make any money except by identity theft. Can you give an example of where I'm telling events rather than showing it, maybe with an example of a better way to write it? I'm not completely sure of what you mean but it sounds important.

[Legolover-361]

"Show, don't tell" is a baseline rule for writing. You don't just want to tell readers what's going on; you want to show it to them, paint a picture in their mind that matches the scene you're describing.I see this paragraph as one of the examples of "telling":

Neka just smiled. Mark looked back at the new program, which suddenly sent dozens of glowing beams into the air. The beams arced and fell towards the ground, where they honed in on the nearest virus. When one flew right past them, it appeared to be a digital creature like the viruses. Each creature ran towards the nearest virus and absorbed it.

If you were to "show" rather than "tell", the result might look something like this (note: this is edited using my style, so an attempt by you to "show" would most likely look different):

Neka just smiled. Mark looked back at the large, windowless building that represented a program -- which suddenly sent dozens of glowing beams into the air. The beams arced, flashing bright colors against the dull black of the background, and fell towards the ground, each honed in on the virus nearest it. One shot by Mark and Neka; though its form was blurred with motion, its outline was not unlike the viruses below: a digital creature. It flew down, around the program the two sat upon, and joined its companions in running towards the virus nearest it and absorbing it: no preliminaries, no flashes of light, just pure, simple absorption.

Notice how I've added information such as colors, differences in light, using "shot" as a (semi-)creative term to describe how the beam flew by Mark and Neka, and adding a dash to add to the surprise of that sentence. Do you see what I mean by the different between showing and telling?I definitely understand about the word limit, by the way; word limits have stunted practically all my entries into story contests.

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

Ah, thanks, that helps a lot.

[Nuile the Paracosmic Tulpa]

Nuile reporting to present an official SSCC Charity Review.I always like this sort of literal interpretation, whether as of electronics, as in this case, or as breaking down the fourth wall in books, movies, television, et cetera. Every one has a different way to interpret it, and I enjoyed yours.I liked the plot, too. My main complaint is that it was a little too big to squeeze into one short story. It didn't have the time it required to develop, it lacked elaboration. Given those drawbacks, you executed it as best as you could in so little time. Naturally if you're only going to pick a piece of a story, you want to pick the climax; and though there may be exceptions, this wasn't it.And despite your short format you still managed to fit in that attribute that is, in my opinion, among the most important to any story: peripeteia. I can't recall if I saw it coming that Neka created the virus; it seemed so natural and obvious afterward that, even if I hadn't expected it, I feel now as if it was there the whole time. And that's good! In a case like this, that's what you want. But there are cases when you don't. Take, for example, a mystery: you want the murder to be surprising, you want the revelation to be shocking; but the difference is that you want the murder to seem, even subsequently, unexpected, while the murderer should seem as if they were there the whole time, as if it was obvious, as if the reader came very close to identifying them--yet didn't. The latter form of peripeteia is what you used and what, I think, was best suited.I liked your characters. You didn't try to crowd in any more than were necessary; you kept it simple with those three. It wouldn't have felt quite right without David, but with a third friend it might have been too much. Neka was necessary, but not a whole army behind her. Now, in a short story, it's very difficult to give characters life and detail, I admit that. But I feel that personality is the easiest to give, and that Mark was just a little bit lacking. Neka was not, but she did lack detail, where Mark did not. Mark had detail--he was a musician and not at all tech savvy, and just those two points branch out to give him flesh. Neka had a sufficient personality, but she was just sort of there. She made the virus, it was her life's work--but, really, why did she? She had her function in the story, but she didn't have a character.I think the way you started out was excellent. You introduced us to David and Mark, showed us the basics of who they were, and carried us on into the digital world. From there you kept it fast-paced and exciting right until the very end. I'll pause here to say that Neka's end was just a little abrupt; it was a fine conclusion to her part in the story, but it was delivered too precipitately. But the ending itself was perfect--not too short, not too long, with the extra little flavor of David's parting words.Now let's you and me have a little talk about style.In a way I like your simplicity, giving what's necessary and nothing more. But sometimes you didn't give what was necessary. For example, when Mark met Neka, we were told of his impression, not shown it. Subconscious memory resurfacing here--didn't Legolover already say, "Show, don't tell"? That's the rule I was driving at. There were several times that you were lacking in detail. I think when he first entered the world and perceived his surroundings for the first time, you gave us just the right amount of detail, though I still think it was a little too dull. There again, show us these things, let us see them with Mark; don't tell us they were there.My last comment in the regard of style is the flow of your words. Sometimes they gushed a bit too much. Punctuation is a tricky thing to get the hang of, but they are the most powerful grammatical tools. They're the nuts and bolts that really hold writing together. You don't want to overuse commas and semicolons and what have you, and thus render your prose choppy, but you need to know when they are necessary.Just a few grammatical nitpicks:

“Hey, you’ve gotta see this website.” said David, sitting down at his computer.

That should be a comma. At the end of a quotation that flows on to become part of a greater sentence (as in this case), a comma should replace a period. As an example, this is correct:

“Check it out!” he offered, standing up and offering the chair to Mark.

Exclamation points, question marks and so on--these should not be replaced with commas. They're funny in that they can act as either a period or a comma.

They seemed to be coming directly out of the buildings, though the buildings had no doors or windows or openings of any kind. One creature came out of building directly in front of him and Mark saw as it ran that, instead of taking strides, it actually grew a new set of legs, and the old legs shrunk to nothing behind it.

You're missing an a there. And just a side note, I like the way the viruses run. Odd, almost gross, but clever.

Mark turned around to face the way he came, where one of the creatures suddenly exploded into shreds of black; the creature’s glowing white marks instantly faded. Mark looked around in a panic, as another creature exploded in flash of light.

Better had come.

“Cover me; I’m going to open up a socket to our base server!”

Wait, this isn't grammatical. And I'm not very tech savvy, so I may be wrong; but socket doesn't sound right to me.

Though the pair was killing (or deleting?) dozens of viruses, they continued to close in. “We can’t stay here!” the woman finally shouted. “Cover me; I’m going to open up a socket to our base server!”

Should still be were. Technically it's a singular noun, but it refers to two persons, and therefore should be regarded as plural. Think of it this way: "The couple was kissing under the tree." It sounds almost like they were kissing under the tree, not like they were kissing under the tree, doesn't it? And who wants to kiss a tree's roots? So better, "The couple were kissing under the tree." There the meaning is unequivocal.

Nothing happened for second, then the beams of light soared out of the counter-worm once more.

Another neglected a.So yes, there were errors here and there, and I am very nitpicky; but the more I have to say about a work always reflects how much I like it. Unless it was perfect, the more I tear it apart the better it was. When I see a good story that makes me believe in the writer's skill and potential, I goad them to improve themselves. Writing, I always say, is an endless journey to improve oneself.All is so much as to say: I enjoyed your story, I loved your characters, and you did a fine job. Never stop improving,

Never stop writing,

Sincerely, Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith

Edited September 26, 2012 by My Name is Nuile