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family relationships, flash fiction, science fiction, short story
4th
Draft

Published on:

April 3, 12:23am

Word Count:

1423

Last Edited:

April 3, 4:03am

Work Description

A father confronts his cyborg son's troubling behavior.

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Russel Teder walks into his seventeen year old son’s room and unplugs his son’s work body. Four o clock Monday morning and Russel is set on talking with his son before he leaves for work. Placing the body on the floor, he grabs a rag and begins to wipe the dirt and liquid stains off the carbon fiber arms. He notices an open panel on the back of the body with loose wires hanging out. “It’s going to be one of those days,” he tells himself as he grabs some tools off a nearby desk. A message flashes on the Smartwall beside him.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP SO EARLY DAD?

“I just came in to make sure you were ready that’s all. Well Tommy, are you?”

GIVE ME A LITTLE WHILE LONGER I’M HERE WITH MOM SHE SAYS HI.

Russel lets out a disapproving Growl. His ex wife’s memories fill his head adding more unwanted emotions to the Monday morning.

“Yeah? You tell your mom how you’ve been fooling around with your work body?”

DAD, I’M TWEAKING IT THAT’S ALL. GIVING IT A LITTLE TASTE.

“Son I know you know how serious this responsibility is I don’t want to see you do anything to jeopardize it.”

I’M NOT. LOOK IM GONNA DOWNLOAD SOON I JUST GOTTA SAY BYE TO MOM. CAN YOU GIVE ME A MINUTE?

“All right but make it quick. I wanna talk to you before you go to work.”

 

Russel finishes closing everything up on his son’s body. He sits in a chair across from it, staring at the now lifeless thing waiting for the lights to come on and, for it to become his son. A sense of nostalgic warmth emerges in his brain every time he looks at the body. He had a work body similar to the one his son would soon posses before he retired, except back then you weren’t allowed to take it home. You uploaded from the Smartwall in your house to the body in the storage room at the mine. “Tweaking it” as his son calls it was illegal and never allowed back then. You weren’t even guaranteed you’d have the body you had the day before, much less the same model. Once, he uploaded into his house for his lunch break; when he downloaded back to the mine he found himself in a three-year-old fossil the guys called the mummy. Now with the new work laws in place the Willburks Mining Corporation is forced to allow them to be taken home. With the strict rule that they be back at their scheduled time no exception. That’s what Russel wants to talk to his son about; he’d been late to the mine yesterday. Russel’s old buddy ran the attendance department so he told Russel that because of his past outstanding contributions to the corp. they would overlook it this time. Next time, next time it would be the door.

 

The lights blast on, on Tommy’s work body as he downloads himself back into it. His dad is sitting on a chair opposite him looking like a prison guard watching over a troublesome inmate. He is in his original human-lion-wolf hybrid body, which generally means he has something serious to say. Tommy turns a 360° on his waist. Looks like pop finished putting me back together; Tommy thinks to himself. He runs a diagnostic just to be safe. Results come back 100%. His room’s smartwalls start to display a very vivid forest scene.

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Discussion

Russel Teder walks into his seventeen year old son’s room and unplugs his son’s work body.

As far as setting up this story, this sentences doesn't really work. The reader may of course be expecting a cyborg, but you have a rather unique way of how this culture lives. Guide your reader through it using description of the 17 year olds room, then show us what the body looks like, and continue on with the maintenance the father does.

Four o clock Monday morning and Russel is set on talking with his son before he leaves for work.

I think as far as an introductory sentence goes, this one is much stronger. It brings us into the motion of the dad going into the son's room.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP SO EARLY DAD?

Capitalization of words is not the best way to go about this, as with long sentences it get's a little troublesome to read. Try something subtler like italics.

“Son I know you know how serious this responsibility is I don’t want to see you do anything to jeopardize it.”

This is really vague, and because it is, it doesn't really move the plot forward. The dad doesn't seem like he's the wishy washy type the way you describe him, but maybe that is what your going for. However, for the sake of moving plot, I would have him say something like, "Your boss called me yesterday asking why you hadn't shown up for work." I would get rid of the "I am with mom" thing unless you plan on putting in a paragraph to explain how that sort of communication works. That could be explained later however.

He sits in a chair across from it, staring at the now lifeless thing waiting for the lights to come on and, for it to become his son.

Some of your sentences get a little long and sound a bit clunky at the end.  We know he is waiting for it to turn into his son, as it was explained to us that it was his body in the introduction. Try trimming these sentences down to the clearest idea.

He had a work body similar to the one his son would soon posses before he retired, except back then you weren’t allowed to take it home.

The phrase in her "to the one his son would oon possess before he retired" is confusing. It's hard to figure out. I would clarify by saying, "He once had a work body similar to his son's, except back then employees weren't allowed to take it home. (Also, try not to use you in your narrative.)

Now with the new work laws in place the Willburks Mining Corporation is forced to allow them to be taken home.

I really liked your background history on the law, and the contrast between the father's work day and the son's. Good job! This sentence however, is in passive voice and is hard to understand. But with a bit of tweaking is much stronger:

The new work lows forced Willburks Mining Corporation to allow employees to take their work bodies home. Try to avoid "them" in sentences unless absolutely needed.

The lights blast on, on Tommy’s work body as he downloads himself back into it.

Again, this sentence is a bit jumbled, "The lights on Tommy's work body blast on as he downloads himself back into it."

He is in his original human-lion-wolf hybrid body, which generally means he has something serious to say.

Since we don't have a good idea about this "culture" this would be good time to explain body changing: is it a fashion statement? Is there a difference between biological and mechanical "bodies"? What does this strange hybrid actually look like?

His room’s smartwalls start to display a very vivid forest scene.

I think that it's great you are putting in some new imagery, but I would explain the smart wall in the introductory paragraph better so that this doesn't seem so out of place.

All this display is on the smartwalls along the room, effectively giving off the illusion of not having walls.

This sentence is a little redundant. With the great imagery that came before it, we could already sense that it would feel like an illusion.

“When were you gonna tell me Thomas? Huh, after they fired you. You know how hard it is for a kid your age to get in with a corporation like this. Impossible; I put my name on the line so you don’t have to start out making minimum wage and you don’t even tell me you were late. What is going on?”

There are a few things with this bit of conversation. First, it would be nice if you broke up the dialogue and showed whether or not the father was angry or concerned. Second, there are some grammatical errors such as periods where there should be question marks. And if the father is angry, you'd think he'd get right to the point. I would shorten it to have just the needed stuff: "When were you going to tell me?" seems absurd, as the father basically found his son really early in the morning to have this conversation. Unless you say that this incident happened a couple of days ago earlier this really isn't needed. Instead, shortening it to, "I put my name on the line so you don't have to make minimum wage and you're getting yourself into trouble. What's going on? You want to be fired?" Or something like that.

“What is it son? What’s going on?”

With this line, I think the father loses a lot of character. Why would he be so light on his son about this? He may recognize that his son his tired, etc. But I think something like, "Go on" would be a bit better, after all, his son just hit a sore spot.

There was more that led to the sinking of that titanic than one iceberg.

This is a rather funny quote. But it doesn't really belong in a story about cyborgs -unless- you have previously established the world as futuristic earth. We need more background to accept that this quote really belongs in the story. I'd probably jut get rid of it, sayings and other cliche's don't usually add to stories.

His dad wraps his arms around him placing wolf and lion fur all over his body.

Would his dad really hug him? I mean, he knows his son is just a robot right now. Seems kind of like a silly action. I don't think the shedding of fur was really needed, either, as it got in the way of the narrative, kind of just appeared, "Hey, suddenly he's shedding!" Unless you previously have the son in his thinking of his father's body say what an annoyance it was that his father used the body, due to the shedding, I would leave it out.  It's all about using details to create a more realistic, believable world.

 

Overall in the story, I think you should look at why you use present verb tenses: most stories do not do that. It might be why some of your sentences sound so strange.

Also, there are some grammatical errors such as lowercased proper nouns, misused commas, etc. That I see in the piece, so I'd try to give it a read through to find those.

I love the dynamic you are setting up in the story, but for it to really draw the reader in you must bring in background knowledge of the culture that you are creating. I think you've thought out some really cool ideas, you just need to show the reader how you imagine them.

I hope this helps a bit in what to revise and the like! If you have any other questions, if I missed something entirely that you feel you'd benefit from tossing around ideas on, just hobble over to my page and message me.

 Hello, Richard Marcano Gonzalez. I have to say that this is indeed a very good work that you had done yesterday. Sorry that I was not there to comment on it, because I was on a comenting spree to keep my reputation points up to be a calligrapher. I believe this to be a great work of fiction that you did, but I believe that you should do a short story called, "You Are Never Only Human" about a cyborg  wanting to be human, because it believes that humans do not have as much weaknesses as a cyborgdoes, for example, when they come in contact with water, they malfunction. Here is an idea:

"Upon the complex looking gadgets that worked upon his body, CYBORG18234 had pondered upon what becoming human would do to him.

"What if I become human? What is it like to be a human? The only thing that they do not share with us is that they had emotions, since birth, and us cyborgs do not. They have flesh and blood runs through their bodies, our bodies are made from metal and we run on oil."

Upon the metallic comforts that made up his bed, CYBORG18234 had deeply thought about becoming a human..."

Tell me what you think about my idea of this story, okay? Also I want you to critique a work of mine on my profile today or sometime this weekend called Heart of Ice. In order to find it you can click my name, scroll down from my profile to recently published works, you will see Heart of Ice (Part 4. Though it says Part 4, the most of the story is on there) read, critique and maybe you can become a fan. And if you want, you can give me a gift for my suggestion on that story that I wanted you to write. Also just write on my scratchpad on my profile to tell me if you gav me a gift to say thanks about the idea of I gave you. Take care and I hope to read some of your works sometime! Bye bye now!

 *** I have to kind of agree with Brittany on some of what she commented on. I was a bit confused at first, but then I just assumed that it was an excerpt from a story already started. I like reading sci-fi and I respect anyone who can write it, so my hat's off to you... Usually when I write dialogue I put them in quotes and start another pargraph just to show that someone is speaking. It helps with the reading flow and makes it a bit easier on the eyes. You do write well and the visuals that you created with your style of description made them clear. I do hope that there will be more of the story...I look forward to more...write on!***

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