CotM v5

[QSR Joshua]

This is a much better stab at this, and truly shows that editing is what makes a writer. (At least that is what the editors tell me.)

BTW, I am not readin others critiques because it often makes me miss things when I do. I am just going to go through and point out some of what I see.

Tom sat down on a rusted bench in Hyde Park to catch a breath, and warm himself in the afternoon sun. The Bayswater Road this should either drop the article the or have road without a capital letter, preferably both. had become impossible to traverse at front of the not needed Lancaster Gate Station, where the Lancaster hotel had fallen on top of the wrecks.This doesn't work. Wrecks of what? It would have taken too long for him to try to find a way through the rubble, or even around it. The park was much delete more accessible. It was almost empty of wreckage. A couple of rusted planes and helicopters lay about like fossils in the high grass, fossils are buried, I would just say skeletons or carcasses or hide buried under the bushes that had sprouted everywhere.

I decided to quit here because editing is an intensive occupation and I do not want to discourage you. Also, it is way to early for me to think this hard.

Having been through some hellish workshops and courses I have learned to see flaws when editing that I do not see when reading. I am actually glad that I can separate the processes to a degree because I know some editors who always have a blue pencil in their hand, even when reading for fun.

This attempt is much better than the first one you posted. Keep working at it and you will have a good story that is well constructed and very readable.

[HareBrain]

Originally Posted by QSR Joshua

The Bayswater Road this should either drop the article the or have road without a capital letter, preferably both.

Have to disagree Joshua. "Preferably both" would be definitely wrong, but it any case it's common usage to say "the Bayswater Road", "the Fulham Road" etc with a capital "R" - maybe it's a London thing.

[QSR Joshua]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

Have to disagree Joshua. "Preferably both" would be definitely wrong, but it any case it's common usage to say "the Bayswater Road", "the Fulham Road" etc with a capital "R" - maybe it's a London thing.

Quite possible, on of the things that makes English such a slippery language. It just doesn;t work for me as a Yank though.

[ctg]

I have a problem with this viewpoint character. Does she narrate too much?

Paige knocked on the door of the glasshouse laboratory, she had heard enough of Barrett’s story and wanted to see with her own eyes the time traveller. As far as she knew, the time travelling business wasn’t possible. Of all the scientists she had met on her lifetime, not a single one had been able to crack the case. Yet Tom was supposed to be a living proof that it was possible. That the man was able to break the boundaries of the reality and travel in time and space.

A few moments later Katie opened the door, looking surprised behind her blue paper mask that looked as silly as the white oversized lab coat over her polychromatic Weezer urban-teen clothes.

“Paige, what are you doing here?”

Paige looked Katie’s brown eyes and said, “I’m here to help. Let me in…”

“That’s great,” Katie turned around and pulled off her lab coat. “Pap’s Paige is here to help you. I’m going to have a chat with Es and Barrett.”

“Alright,” the old man grunted as Paige closed to the door behind her, pulled a pair of surgical cloves from a box on the wall and moved next to the table to look the naked man on it. Tom wasn’t a vat-grown transhuman or transgenic mutant or a cyborg. There was nothing on him that the people in twenty second century were custom with, not even a barcode on his arm to identify him being one of the colonist. It could mean a couple of things, either Tom had come from the outer space or then he was one of those born-and-bread vault dwellers, who had lived under the ground ever since the bombs had felled on the earth. But he wasn’t thin and long limbed, nor his skin were white as a sheet of paper.

Is he really a time traveller as Barrett says he is, Paige thought as she felt a poke on her ribs and heard the old man saying, “If you’ve quite finished checking him out, then could you please give me a hand?”


“Of course,” Paige said and went to head end to help the old man. Like a good nurse, she offered right instruments at the right time, while the old man cleaned and stitched the wounds on Tom’s body. The hardest one was the bite marks on his hand, where the Devil Rat’s fangs had torn off a great bit of flesh. Bionats had done enough to stop the bleeding, but they were not a magical bullet to fix everything. Unlike with the facilities in the Super Domes, they didn’t had ability to replicate the tissue and stitch it over the damage bit. Instead, they removed the infected flesh as much as they could, applied antibiotics and cauterized the wound. All what they could do was to hope that Tom’s weakened immune system would cope dealing the diseases Devil Rat’s carried in their saliva.

To help his recovery, they first applied an overdose of anti-radiation agent to flush out the radioactive particles from Tom’s body. Then Paige took an blood sample for the old man so that he could modify and personalise the main anti-radiation medicine. It was a risky business as the modification had to match with the DNA so that it could halt and prevent the mutations occurring in the cell level. The problem was that not every time it worked, hence most people stayed inside the colonies or their well protected space vessels never taking a risk of becoming paralyzed or even dying.

“Look at that,” Abramoff gestured Paige to take a look on the microscope oculars to the plate containing Tom’s sample. At first, it looked as if everything was normal. The red and white cells floated with the plasmids. There was nothing wrong with them.

“What am I looking at?” Paige lifted her head and looked questionably the old man smirk on his face.

Abramoff flicked his finger and said. “Switch to better magnification.”

Paige did as she was told. She peered down and adjusted the objective lenses. With few clicks, she could see the red cell disks as if they were big as the tennis balls. In between the cells, in the fluid was something that sparkled, changed patterns in chaotic way. At first, it looked like dust but longer Paige kept staring at them, she started to see details. In the fluid were small spherical cells covered with tadpoles. As the spherical contacted another, it sparked in way Paige had seen the electricity conducting

“Wow,” escaped from Paige lips as she raised her gaze.

“Indeed, wow.” Abramoff concluded. “That’s something I have not seen in any other living being. He’s the first one and the only one with those things in him.”

“What do you think they are?” Paige peered again in the sample plate to make sure she had not been hallucinating. After all, it had been a long day and it didn’t look as it was ending at anytime soon. In one part she wanted to be in her bed while her other wanted to continued revealing the mystery behind the blood sample of allegated time traveller.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t have a faintest clue if those spherical’s are harmful or good for him,” the old man answered.

“Barrett said that he somewhat convinced that he’s a time traveller. Do you think those teeny weenie things are somehow connected to his time machine?”

Abramoff scratched back of his head and looked mind numbing. Then finally he said, “It’s a possibility, but we don’t have his time machine. If we would-”

Paige raised her finger and pointed the pile of clothes and black backpack that peaked under them. “But you’re wrong. We have his time machine.”

“We do?” The old man looked her curiously. “What are you waiting for, get it out!” Paige again followed instructions of her elder. She fetched the backpack and emptied its contents at the metallic side table they had used to store medical instruments. In a couple of minutes at front him was a pile of crude looking tools, stacks of old world money, jewellery and a curious looking bracelet.

It was like no item she had seen before, and she had seen a many things among her wanders around the solar system as a freelance rigger. Then again, many of those things had been much, much bigger in scale and more oriented on the systems that made the vehicles go. But she had also had been shopping not in commercial markets but also in the black-markets as well, not talking about those things that Barrett had dragged out from ruins of the old world. Nothing could compare to the miniature details on the device she was studying under the bright surgical lights.

Among the components were ones that she’d seen in modern things and old world machine, but also the ones she knew nothing about. Not even could name them, but she wasn’t in that much in to the electronics as Es and his Uncle were.

Maybe they can tell us what this thing is, Paige thought as she handed the bracelet to anxiously waiting old man who took his turn to study the bracelet. If not then I could always contact Jones and ask him … no I cannot ask him. Not now. It wouldn’t work, would it?

“There’s some writing,” the old man said as he took out his eyeglasses. “Could you take down somewhere?”

[WafflesToo]

Additions or Alterations in red
Things I think should be deleted in magenta
Notes in blue

“Pap’s, Paige is here to help you. I’m going to have a chat with Es and Barrett.”

“Alright,” the old man grunted as Paige closed to the door behind her, pulled a pair of surgical gloves from a box on the wall and moved next to the table to look the naked man on it. Tom wasn’t a vat-grown transhuman or transgenic mutant or a cyborg. There was nothing on him that the people in twenty second century were custom with, not even a barcode on his arm to identify him being one of the colonist. It could mean a couple of things; either Tom had come from the outer space, or that he was one of those born-and-bread vault dwellers, who had lived under the ground ever since the bombs had felled on the earth. But he wasn’t thin and long limbed, nor his skin were white as a sheet of paper.

Is he really a time traveller as Barrett says he is, Paige thought. as she felt a poke in her ribs as heard the old man said, “If you’re quite finished checking him out, then could you please give me a hand?”

I'm not sure if it should be 'could' or 'would' so I left it alone.

All what they could do was to hope that Tom’s weakened immune system would cope dealing the diseases Devil Rats carried in their saliva.

To help his recovery, they first applied an overdose of anti-radiation agent to flush out the radioactive particles from Tom’s body. Then Paige took an blood sample for the old man so that he could modify and personalise the main anti-radiation medicine. It was a risky business as the modification had to match with the DNA of the patient so that it could halt and prevent [pick one term or the other, using both is redundant] the mutations ['damage' or 'destruction' is probably more accurate. Radiation does not cause cells to mutate, it usually just kills them or wrecks thier ability to divide properly resulting in cancers.] occurring in the cell level. The problem was that it did not work every time, hence most people stayed inside the colonies or their well protected space vessels never taking a risk of becoming paralyzed or even dying.

In the fluid [seeing how she's a nurse, you could use the proper term of 'plasma' for the blood's suspension fluid here if you wanted to] were small spherical cells covered with tadpoles [a tadpole is an immature frog, is that what you meant?]. As the sphere contacted another one, it sparked in way Paige had seen the electricity conducting. [This reads, weird. If the mental image I'm getting is what you are trying to convey then a better term would be 'arced' instead of 'sparked' and drop the rest of the description. As the sphere contacted another one it arced. Or better yet; They arced as the spheres contacted one another.]

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t have a faintest clue if those spherical’s ['things' would probably be better here] are helpful or harmful or good for him,” the old man answered.

[small niggling point... how would she know that the bracelet is the time machine? Did she take a corrispondance course on them? LOL, just kidding of course. But unless there's something not posted here on how she'd know that it seems to be a bit of a stretch.]

It was like no item she had seen before, and she had seen a many things among her wanders around the solar system as a freelance rigger. Then again, many of those things had been much, much bigger in scale and more oriented on the systems that made the vehicles go [I follow what you're saying here, but the wording feels clunky. Try something like much bigger in scale and more oriented towards vehicle motive systems]. But she had also had been shopping not just in commercial markets, but also in the black-markets as well; not talking about those things that Barrett had dragged out from ruins of the old world [I'm completely lost on the entire statement after the semi-colon. Should it have read, not to mention those things that Barrett had dragged out from ruins of the old world?]. Nothing could compare to the miniature details on the device she was studying under the bright surgical lights.

“There’s some writing,” the old man said as he took out his eyeglasses. “Could you take it down somewhere?”

Reads fine really, I don't find it too 'narrative heavy' at all.

[ctg]

Thanks Waffles, there's enough of hint for you to the observation you made on the reality of the bracelet. I didn't want to add there a conversation between her, Es and Barrett, just dive in the scene and go from there.

Paige knocked on the door of the glasshouse laboratory, she had heard enough of Barrett’s story and wanted to see with her own eyes the time traveller. As far as she knew, the time travelling business wasn’t possible. Of all the scientists she had met on her lifetime, not a single one had been able to crack the case. Yet Tom was supposed to be a living proof that it was possible. That the man was able to break the boundaries of the reality and travel in time and space.

A few moments later Katie opened the door, looking surprised behind her blue paper mask that looked as silly as the white oversized lab coat over her polychromatic Weezer urban-teen clothes.

“Paige, what are you doing here?”

Paige looked Katie’s brown eyes and said, “I’m here to help. Let me in…”

“That’s great,” Katie turned around and pulled off her lab coat. “Pap’s Paige is here to help you. I’m going to have a chat with Es and Barrett.”

“Alright,” the old man grunted as Paige closed to the door behind her, pulled a pair of surgical gloves from a box on the wall and moved next to the table to look the naked man on it. Tom wasn’t a vat-grown transhuman or transgenic mutant or a cyborg. There was nothing on him that the people in twenty second century were custom with, not even a barcode on his arm to identify him being one of the colonist. It could mean a couple of things, either Tom had come from the outer space, or that he was one of those born-and-bread vault dwellers, who had lived under the ground ever since the bombs had felled on the earth. But he wasn’t thin and long limbed, nor his skin were white as paper.

Is he really a time traveller as Barrett says he is, Paige thought as she felt a poke in her ribs as she heard the old man saying, “If you’re quite finished checking him out, could you please give me a hand?”

“Of course,” Paige said and went to head end to help the old man. Like a good nurse, she offered right instruments at the right time, while the old man cleaned and stitched the wounds on Tom’s body. The hardest one was the bite marks on his hand, where the Devil Rat’s fangs had torn off a great bit of flesh. Bionats had done enough to stop the bleeding, but they were not a magical bullet to fix everything. Unlike with the facilities in the Super Domes, they didn’t had ability to replicate the tissue and stitch it over the damage bit. Instead, they removed the infected flesh as much as they could, applied antibiotics and cauterized the wound. All what they could do was to hope that Tom’s weakened immune system would cope dealing the diseases Devil Rats carried in their saliva.

To help his recovery, they first applied an overdose of anti-radiation agent to flush the radioactive particles from Tom’s body. Paige took a blood sample for the old man so that he could modify and personalise the main anti-radiation medicine. It was a risky business as the modification had to match with the DNA of the patient, so that it could prevent the mutations or destruction occurring in the cell level. The problem was that it did not work every time, hence most people stayed inside the colonies or their well protected space vessels never taking a risk of becoming paralyzed or even dying.

“Look at that,” Abramoff gestured Paige to take a look on the microscope oculars to the plate containing Tom’s sample. At first, it looked as if everything was normal. The red and white cells floated with the plasmids. There was nothing wrong with them.

“What am I looking at?” Paige lifted her head and looked questionably the old man smirk on his face.

Abramoff flicked his finger and said. “Switch to better magnification.”

Paige did as she was told. She peered down and adjusted the objective lenses. With few clicks, she could see the red cell disks as if they were big as the tennis balls. In between the cells, the plasma sparkled and something in it changed patterns in a chaotic way. At first, it looked like dust but longer Paige kept staring at them, she started to see details. In the plasma were small spherical cells covered with poles. As the spherical contacted another, it sparked in way Paige had seen the electricity conducting

“Wow,” escaped from Paige lips as she raised her gaze.

“Indeed, wow.” Abramoff concluded. “That’s something I have not seen in any other living being. He’s the first one and the only one with those things in him.”

“What do you think they are?” Paige peered again in the sample plate to make sure she had not been hallucinating. After all, it had been a long day and it didn’t look as it was ending at anytime soon. In one part she wanted to be in her bed while her other wanted to continued revealing the mystery behind the blood sample of allegated time traveller.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t have a faintest clue if those things are helpful or harmful to him,” the old man answered.

“Barrett said that he somewhat convinced that he’s a time traveller. Do you think those teeny weenie things are somehow connected to his time machine?”

Abramoff scratched back of his head and looked mind numbing. Then finally he said, “It’s a possibility, but we don’t have his time machine. If we would-”

Paige raised her finger and pointed the pile of clothes and black backpack that peaked under them. “But you’re wrong. We have his time machine.”

“We do?” The old man looked her curiously. “What are you waiting for, get it out!” Paige again followed instructions of her elder. She fetched the backpack and emptied its contents at the metallic side table they had used to store medical instruments. In a couple of minutes at front him was a pile of crude looking tools, stacks of old world money, jewellery and a curious looking bracelet.

It was like no item she had seen before, and she had seen a many things among her wanders around the solar system as a freelance rigger. Then again, many of those things had been much, much bigger in scale and more oriented towards vehicles motivational system. But she also had been shopping not just in commercial markets but also in the black-markets as well. Nothing could compare to the miniature details of the device she studied under the bright surgical lights.

Among the components were ones that she’d seen in modern things and old world machine, but also the ones she knew nothing about. Not even could name them, but she wasn’t in that much in to the electronics as Es and his Uncle were.

Maybe they can tell us what this thing is, Paige thought as she handed the bracelet to anxiously waiting old man who took his turn to study the bracelet. If not then I could always contact Jones and ask him … no I cannot ask him. Not now. It wouldn’t work, would it?

“There’s some writing,” the old man said as he took out his eyeglasses.

“Could you take it down somewhere?”

[ctg]

I'm not sure about the pacing here. Is it moving too fast? Should there be more description of the compound they are in (the communications room description has been given earlier in another POV)?

Tom climbed the last steps in the ladder room and fell on the floor breathing heavily. The trickle on the Geiger counter embedded on sleeve of his ‘hunter-suit’ as Barrett called it, had calmed down. Finally, he was in safety. The underground had turned to be nastier then he’d initially thought. The not only it was dark and inhospitable, but the tick, tick, tick in his ear really drew the lesson home.

I have to keep away from the radiation if I want to stay alive, Tom thought as he held his pain throbbing hands against his chest, and I need to get a gun.

After a couple of minutes rest, he got up and walked through the half a meter thick concrete walls to the armoury. The amount of the guns dazzled him. But then again if he’d learned anything from his newly acquired friends, they lived by the gun, almost not sparing no other thought then how they were going to survive to live on another day. Tom ran his finger against the black matt surface of the assault rifle thinking, could I kill a man?

“Dee what are you standing there?” Barrett hollered him from other side of the big table that was sitting in the middle of the room full of computers, radios, screens and maps stabled on walls. “Come here and sit with us.”

“Here you go,” Paige pulled him an old bar stool.

“Thanks,” Tom said as he sat and watched the glassy surface of the table and saw a black and white satellite image taken from the Marylebone area. In the middle of it, he noticed bright white objectivities. At first he couldn’t make out what they were, but longer he kept staring them, it became obvious that he was looking human beings and their machines, scourging all over the place where they had been. But they were not alone, as more of them seemed to arrive from the Super-Node.

“I cannot take this anymore,” the old man whispered. He hanged his head low and crossed his hands at front him. “Everything what I’ve done in my life is now wasted. How am I going to get this fixed?“

Tom felt guilty, as he understood that he was the reason the old man had lost his home. Maybe it was because he was in same situation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do get it back, I’ll do it.”

“What can you do?” The old man said bitterly, “nothing.”

“Don’t say that,” Es said. “If anyone can turn the clock backwards, he’s the man. You have to trust him. That’s what I’m doing. An hour ago, I couldn’t believe it either, but then I met Tree in the Matrix. Although he didn’t say anything about your house, he pointed out that our man here has a mission.”

“To save the children,” Tom muttered.

“What did you say?” Barrett frowned.

Everyone turned to watch Tom as he looked Barrett in the eyes and said. “I said I have to save the children. I saw them in the dream, like I saw them two what you call them, cyborgs in that indoor garden.”

“That’s right,” Es nodded. “That’s what the Tree said. He has to rescue some children in order to save us.”

“Save us from what?” Paige asked.

“From slavery,” Es answered. “Tree showed me show pretty nasty pictures from future where we all … well not all … are living under space aliens rule.”

Tom shook his head, while others laughed. He couldn’t believe what Es was saying. For all his life, he had not believed in supernatural beings. Not talking about the space aliens. They couldn’t be real. There simply was no evidence to backup such a ridiculous claim. The humanity was alone in the universe.

“Stop laughing,” Es demanded. “This is not funny.”

“Well, it is.” Paige said. “You know very well that there’s no chance of that happening. Like everyone else, you’ve seen the evidence. Those other civilisations are in same rut as we are. It will take ages to cross the space.”

“But…”

“There’s no but Es,” Barrett said. “That’s the way it is.”

“But I saw what I saw,” Es defended himself. “Tree showed me the future. I saw ships that could not possible being made by us. The people in Mars were slaved to dig the dirt for a man that definitely didn’t look like any transhuman I’ve seen before.”

“Don’t you think that this A.I. could have manipulated what you saw?” Paige asked. “After all they more then capable of doing those sort things then us.”

“Boko,” Es sweared in Japanese and looked furious. He pulled his console from his cotton bag and started to connect the cables to his jacks while Barrett leaned over the table to touch an icon at Tom’s side. “I’m going to show you that I’m right.”

“While you’re doing that, would start monitoring the channels and try to find out who assaulted Abramoff’s compound?” Barrett asked as the image on the screen expanded to show larger area of London. The LSN in middle of it looked massive. It occupied more land then anything Tom had seen before. Its centre was somewhere where the London Eye had been, while its closest point to them was where the Centre Point had stood.

“The Metropolitan Police is sending more troops there,” Barrett said after a short while, then he hit with his finger a couple of times where the most of the activity where and the table responded by zooming in.

“I need to sit,” the old man said from the window, where he had been looking out from between the shades.”

“Why don’t you and Katie go to rest for a while,” Paige said as she moved to help the old man. “Let me show you to our guestrooms.”

“Dee why don’t you go with them as well,” Barrett hit one of the white objectives in the screen and changed its presentation to a tactical icon. “We can talk more what we’re going to do at the morning.”

“Ok,” Tom said. He followed Paige through the doorway to a living room that had been furnished with colourful selection of sofa’s and armchairs that obviously had been salvaged from the tower block they were. Everywhere they went he could see framed photos on the wall, showing not only the past also locations that he’d never seen before. While few looked like they’d been taken from underground places, many others showed different planets. Domed cities, weird machines, and even stranger looking people doing things that he’d only seen in the movies. Nevertheless, the one thing was sure and it wasn’t because of what he’d seen or heard. The people had moved out there, in space and started to colonise the solar system. The humanity had progressed more then he’d been able to imagine.

[mygoditsraining]

“Boko,” Es sweared in Japanese and looked furious

Swore, and do you mean baka? Even so, baka isn't a particularly forceful swearword - baka yaro would be more suited to a furious retort.

The following isn't a comprehensive resource on the use of abusive phrases in Japanese, but the translations should be more than enough to give you the idea.

koukeisha.net/nihongo-bin/ - click on the left menu for various insults and nastiness rendered in romaji. Please note that the text is not suitable for anyone easily offended or at work. Or both.

Sorry I don't have more time to go through the piece for a more thorough critique but in general what I would say is that a redraft to thin out some of the bloat that's creeping in in places, for example:

The not only it was dark and inhospitable, but the tick, tick, tick in his ear really drew the lesson home.

I have to keep away from the radiation if I want to stay alive, Tom thought as he held his pain throbbing hands against his chest, and I need to get a gun.

After a couple of minutes rest, he got up and walked through the half a meter thick concrete walls to the armoury.

Obviously you need to cut the additional "The" at the start of the sentence (I'm guessing you added in the "not only...inhospitable" section in later) but the real issue is that the lesson is drawn home, then spelled out in the next line. Most readers will understand that radiation = bad, so Tom's inner voice feels a little unnecessary. Maybe contrasting his need versus the risk would be more appropriate as a dramatic device?

The underground tunnel was dark and inhospitable; in spite of the persistent tick, tick, tick in his ear, he pressed onwards.

I need to get a gun, Tom thought.

Or something like that. The first sentence is a little clunky but you get the idea.

On the final sentence...can he really walk through half metre thick concrete walls?

There's some nice conflict between the characters -- it makes the scene interesting. However, if anything I feel the pacing doesn't suffer from being too fast, but rather too staccato. A lot of the "he said, sat facing the wall with his left ankle looped over his right while guilt and anger washed through him before continuing," breaks in the middle of speech could be pared down or cut entirely.

[HareBrain]

Personally, I thought the pacing was about right; I found the discussion interesting and like MGIR said, there was some effective conflict between the characters. I don't think more description is needed, but nor do I think that the speech is too staccato. Though I hesitate to disagree with anyone godlike enough to have a save-point above his head, I can't actually see any of the "he said, sat facing the wall with his left ankle looped over his right while guilt and anger washed through him before continuing,"-style breaks MGIR was talking about. At least, they didn't jar with me like they seem to have done with him, and I don't think they contained any irrelevant information.

[mygoditsraining]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

Though I hesitate to disagree with anyone godlike enough to have a save-point above his head

Oh, that's just a Sims character, feeling the consequences of a "Start Fires" command that the game sorely lacks. What use is a life simulator if you can't go postal?

To maybe flesh out what I mean a little further, let me pick out a couple of examples. It's not so much that the information is irrelevant, it's just that relevant points are sometimes sledgehammered home as opposed to being driven in with precision.

“Thanks,” Tom said as he sat and watched the glassy surface of the table and saw a black and white satellite image taken from the Marylebone area.

In that one sentence, he manages to speak, sit, watch, and see - and to me it feels a little cumbersome to heap it all onto Tom's shoulders. To me, an edit along the lines of:

"Thanks," said Tom, taking a seat. The glassy surface of the table showed a black and white satellite image taken of the Marylebone area.

(the image being taken of the area, rather than launching satellites into Marylebone)

At first he couldn’t make out what they were, but longer he kept staring them, it became obvious that he was looking human beings and their machines, scourging all over the place where they had been

At first he can't make it out, then he stares longer, then it becomes obvious - this could be pared down however you like, but the issue is that we're being told 3 times that it takes him a while to identify the white specks.

Also - scouring. A scourge is a whip.

“Boko,” Es sweared in Japanese and looked furious. He pulled his console from his cotton bag and started to connect the cables to his jacks while Barrett leaned over the table to touch an icon at Tom’s side. “I’m going to show you that I’m right.”

"Baka," Es swore, looking furious. He pulled out his console and started connecting cables to jacks. "I'm going to show you I'm right."

Barrett leaned over the table to touch an icon at Tom's side.

I take issue with the additional "that" in the speech as it doesn't sound natural to me. Grammar in dialogue is all swings and roundabouts, though - you might have intended the slightly stilted air it lends the line.

“The Metropolitan Police is sending more troops there,” Barrett said after a short while, then he hit with his finger a couple of times where the most of the activity where and the table responded by zooming in.

How long is a short while? Barrett could either just say it, or you could have them scrutinise the image for a moment before he speaks. It's an incongruous way of making the time pass, is all that I'm getting at.

Anyway, I'm now getting fierce looks for typing when I'm meant to be doing other things, like make some more Goddamned tea so hopefully that will get across what I mean when I say that I do like the story, but in my humble opinion the prose could be a great deal more crisp, and that I fully believe from reading ctg's critiques of other work that he is more than capable of crisping it up very firmly indeed.

[ctg]

MGIR, thank you, but you do understand that even though I'm able to give criticism, I have trouble on my own work. I simply cannot watch my own prose with those same critical eyes as I do watch other people's work. I try my best, but sometimes I just need other people's opinions on what's right and what's wrong. After all, even some people say otherwise, I'm a human not a machine.

[ctg]

Ok, here's revised edition.

Tom climbed the last steps in the ladder room and fell on the floor breathing heavily. The trickle on the Geiger counter embedded on sleeve of his ‘hunter-suit’ as Barrett called it, had calmed down. Finally, he was in safety. The underground had turned to be nastier then he’d initially thought. Not only it was dark and inhospitable, but the tick, tick, tick in his ear had really driven the lesson home.

I really need to learn how to stay alive in here, Tom thought as he held his pain throbbing hands against his chest, and I need to get a gun.

After a couple of minutes rest, he got up and walked through the half a meter thick concrete walls to the armoury. The amount of the guns dazzled him. But then again if he’d learned anything from his newly acquired friends, they lived by the gun, almost not sparing no other thought then how they were going to survive to live on another day. Tom ran his finger against the black matt surface of the assault rifle thinking, could I kill a man?

“Dee what are you standing there?” Barrett hollered him from other side of the big table that was sitting in the middle of the room full of computers, radios, screens and maps stabled on walls. “Come here and sit with us.”

“Here you go,” Paige pulled him an old bar stool.

“Thanks,” Tom said, taking a seat. The glassy surface of table showed a black and white satellite image taken of the Marylebone area. In the middle of it were the bright white objectivities. At first Tom couldn’t make out what they were, but longer he kept staring them, it became obvious that he was looking human beings and their machines, scouring all over the place.

“I cannot take this anymore,” the old man whispered. He hanged his head low and crossed his hands at front him. “Everything what I’ve done in my life is now wasted. How am I going to get this fixed?“

Tom felt guilty, as he understood that he was the reason the old man had lost his home. Maybe it was because he was in same situation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do get it back, I’ll do it.”

“What can you do?” The old man said bitterly, “nothing.”

“Don’t say that,” Es said. “If anyone can turn the clock backwards, he’s the man. You have to trust him. That’s what I’m doing. An hour ago, I couldn’t believe it either, but then I met Tree in the Matrix. Although he didn’t say anything about your house, he pointed out that our man here has a mission.”

“To save the children,” Tom muttered.

“What did you say?” Barrett frowned.

Everyone turned to watch Tom as he looked Barrett in the eyes and said. “I said I have to save the children. I saw them in the dream, like I saw them two what you call them, cyborgs in that indoor garden.”

“That’s right,” Es nodded. “That’s what the Tree said. He has to rescue some children in order to save us.”

“Save us from what?” Paige asked.

“From slavery,” Es answered. “Tree showed me show pretty nasty pictures from future where we all … well not all … are living under space aliens rule.”

Tom shook his head, while others laughed. He couldn’t believe what Es was saying. For all his life, he had not believed in supernatural beings. Not talking about the space aliens. They couldn’t be real. There simply was no evidence to backup such a ridiculous claim. The humanity was alone in the universe.

“Stop laughing,” Es demanded. “This is not funny.”

“Well, it is.” Paige said. “You know very well that there’s no chance of that happening. Like everyone else, you’ve seen the evidence. Those other civilisations are in same rut as we are. It will take ages to cross the space.”

“But…”

“There’s no but Es,” Barrett said. “That’s the way it is.”

“But I saw what I saw,” Es defended himself. “Tree showed me the future. I saw ships that could not possible being made by us. The people in Mars were slaved to dig the dirt for a man that definitely didn’t look like any transhumans I’ve seen before.”

“Don’t you think that this A.I. could have manipulated what you saw?” Paige asked. “After all they’re more then capable of doing those sort things then us.”

“Baka,” Es looked furious. He pulled his console and started to connect the cables to his jacks. “I’m going to show you I’m right.”

“While you’re doing that, would start monitoring the channels and try to find out who assaulted Abramoff’s compound?” Barrett asked as the image on the screen expanded to show larger area of London. The LSN in middle of it looked massive. It occupied more land then anything Tom had seen before. Its centre was somewhere where the London Eye had been, while its closest point to them was where the Centre Point had stood.

“The Metropolitan Police is sending more troops there,” Barrett said after a few seconds, then he hit with his finger a couple of times where the most of the activity where and the table responded by zooming in.

“I need to sit,” the old man said from the window, where he had been looking out from between the shades.

“Why don’t you and Katie go to rest for a while,” Paige said as she moved to help the old man. “Let me show you to our guestrooms.”

“Dee why don’t you go with them as well,” Barrett hit one of the white objectives in the screen and changed its presentation to a tactical icon. “We can talk more what we’re going to do at the morning.”

“Ok,” Tom said. He followed Paige through the doorway to a living room that had been furnished with colourful selection of sofa’s and armchairs that obviously had been salvaged from the tower block they were. Everywhere they went, he could see framed sphotos on the wall, showing not only the past but also the locations that he’d never seen before. While few looked like they’d been taken from underground places, many others showed different planets. Domed cities, weird machines, and even stranger looking people doing things that he’d only seen in the movies. Nevertheless, the one thing was sure and it wasn’t because of what he’d seen or heard. The people had moved out there, in space and started to colonise the solar system. The humanity - even though they had tried to destroy themselves - had progressed more then he’d been able to imagine.

[mygoditsraining]

Originally Posted by ctg

I have trouble on my own work. I simply cannot watch my own prose with those same critical eyes as I do watch other people's work. I try my best, but sometimes I just need other people's opinions on what's right and what's wrong.

I know what you mean and, although it will become a moot point when we're all incredibly famous, prolific authors each with our own skilled editors to look after us, I struggle with the same issue. For the moment, being able to apply personal judgement is the only real way we can develop the things we write.

Recently, I've been writing pieces for competition use; in the past two weeks I've written three stories, and in each case I've had to use my own judgement in the initial redraft and polish phases. The thing is, I simply don't know anyone close to me who I can give the piece to for a "proper" edit, and so what I'm left with is passing it round 3 or 4 of my friends (including my unenthusiastic sibling) and filtering their reflections through the mirror of my own experience of them. For example, I know the horror story will go down an absolute storm with my goth friend, but she'll pick the reflective essay to pieces with dispassionate ease - it's not that one is better than the other, it's just she's engaged by the former and not by the latter. That said, if the former fails to engage her, I know it sucks, and if she enthuses about the latter, I know I'm on the right track.

I remember reading a comment from David Eddings on the subject - he said, roughly paraphrasing, that we should all be our own worst critics. Mind you, he also said you should write a million words, burn it, and then write a novel. I disagree. If you do write a million words before you get round to your novels you should keep hold of them, wait until you're absurdly famous, then publish them as an anthology of unreleased works on the strength of your name alone and leave people arguing for generations to come over whether you're a genius, or a hack.