Does this pique your interest? (260 words)

[Glitch]

I've tried to take onboard everyone advice. It's still omniscient, but I feel it's a little closer.

Longer than before at 655 words.

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"Subject acquired," said the patchwork voice from the loudspeaker.

James smirked. The voice summed up everything about this place; too cheap to even install a proper synthesised voice.

He put his coffee down and picked up his gear. The headpiece was held together with sticky tape and the bureaus logo had fallen off the gloves revealing their previous use.

"Full immersion gaming."

The technology was old, but sufficient for his job. He was only to observe the dreams and identify the dreamer; basic navigation was all that was required.

He put the kit on and got comfortable in the chair. Taking a deep breath he activated the computer. It had been a long night, and with any luck this would be his last job before clocking off.

The beeps in his earpiece got quicker until they reached a crescendo and everything went quiet.

"Deep breath, deep breath." He kept repeating it as he tried to adjust to the environment.

James could feel his stomach churning and quickly looked for something to pull him through before his sandwich made a reappearance. There was a flashing light coming from his left. As per his training he focused on the source to help clear his vision.

"A fireplace, how quaint".

He’d only seen fireplaces in older people’s dreams. Not a common occurrence these days; fuel was too expensive to burn in such a way.

James called up the augmented display and laughed when it registered a temperature for the fireplace. The computer was showing idle and he knew his supervisor would be on his back if he took too long. As the room became clearer he saw a picture hanging above the mantle. The man in the portrait looked important; if he wasn’t the dreamer, he was probably a relative. James marked it as an item of interest letting the computer pick out the features to begin a facial recognition search. He knew it would keep it busy for a while, allowing him to enjoy this rather tranquil setting.

A young woman in a Victorian styled maid’s outfit entered the room and proceeded to draw the curtains unaware of his presence. As long as he didn’t make any sudden moves he would remain invisible. He didn’t want to freak out the dreamer, well at least until he knew if it was someone important or not. The computer added her face to the queue while it continued its image search for the man in the painting.

James followed the maid, crossing the entrance hall to an adjacent room. There were two dozen or so people, all seemed to be upper-class based on their attire. Two older gentlemen were sitting on a large sofa occupying the centre of the room whilst everyone else was standing in small groups. There were a few maids standing against the walls; their faces were expressionless, almost robotic. Walking slowly around the room James tried to get a clearer view of each face, adding them to the search queue as he went.

He noticed a woman in a long red dress with striking blond curly hair whose face eluded him. James stroked his chin, forgetting for a moment where he was. Even from behind James knew she was beautiful. She moved around the room on the same path as him, always a few steps ahead and facing away from him. She was engaging naturally with the other people; obviously the host. But he couldn’t get a clear view of her face. He stayed in the same spot, as if his feet had taken root into the carpet.

His heart raced as the woman moved towards the door; she was about to escape and there was nothing he could do about it. As the door opened she turned slightly allowing him a partial glimpse of her face, enough to see she was looking straight at him. The door closed behind her, snapping him back to reality.

 

[ctg]

I liked the previous version better. It was more serious and much more intriguing to imagine inception type of world than something out from the Heavy Metal magazine. There is nothing wrong in the dream worlds or using technology that takes to the world, "...where the physics and the matter are bend by <insert whatever>". And what I imagined from the first excerpt was a world, where some sort of system were scanning a painting and transferring that to a Inception kind of alternative reality. Hence, I would had been very happy to read on that then get into a some sort of game-world, as that is to me so yesterday.

However, don't read that the Inception wasn't about a game because that's what the con was all about. Also don't read that you don't know how to plot, because I can see you can plot, but at the moment, you're having a trouble to really decide what you're going to write out. So, please, see if you can make up your mind by writing five to ten thousand words.

 

[littlebird]

“Subject acquired,” said a metallic voice from the loudspeaker.

James Kersey put his head gear on and laid back in the chair. Taking a deep breath he activated the computer. The beeps quickened in his ear piece. It had been a long night, and with any luck this would be his last job. The last sentence could be made into a separate paragraph, as it does not flow with the action orientated paragraph. Here, you could probably expand more on his thoughts/feelings.

Everything went quiet and it took him a moment to adjust. He focused on the flashing light to his left; it was a fireplace. He looked up at the picture hanging above the mantle. The computer picked out the facial features and started an image search. A bit more description here would make it more interesting.

A young woman in a Victorian styled maids outfit entered theroom and proceeded to draw the curtains. She was unaware of his presence, as was intended. The computer added her face to the queue while it continued to search for the man in the painting.

James followed the maid as she crossed the entrance hall into another room. There were a dozen or so people in the room, all seemed to be of nobility. He walked around the room to get clearer images of their faces, which were then added to the search queue.Who's James?

There was a woman in a long red dress whose face eluded him. She was moving about the room in the opposite direction to him. She was engaging with the other people; but no matter where he went she always seemed to be looking the other way.

As she opened the door she turned slightly and looked straight at him. She closed the door and his connection was lost.

Overall, this does pique my interest, but you need to work on the flow - the paragraphs are disjointed and go from one idea to another without much connection. You could try working on the sentence structure, trying shorter sentences and starting the sentences without using pronouns.

 

[Jammill Khursheed]

I liked the earlier versions better because the dream thing was made too obvious in the final re-write (although given the title it would be obvious in the finished piece even if the one of the earlier versions was used), thus cutting some of the intrigue.

The story and the acutal mechanics of the prose work in all three versions, but now that it is definitely in a dream (it COULD have been some sort of time-travelling projection in the previous versions) there are a few points that seem to stand out:

1) If the target leaving the room cuts him off from the dream, how did he get into it in a different room, across a hallway, without even knowing she was the target?

2) Would taking images from a second person's dream be enough to identify anyone technologically? (i.e. the image wouldn't be of that person, but of the target's memory of that person, which wouldn't match exactly with a database of facial scans or actual photographic images for the computer to compare it to.)

And that's just the actual people, not the painting above the fire place, which would be even harder. And that's assuming the people within the dream even exist to begin with.

IF he's JUST adding the face in the picture to make it look like he's busy on the computer while he's actually just skiving, I like that idea. If it's because he's hoping to get some usable data out of it he's probably barking up the wrong tree.

Apart from those two points though it works really well.


Jammill

 

[Bowler1]

Sorry mate I perferred the first one as well. Too much showing and loss of suspence. The picture of what was occuring developed slowly in the first draft and by then I had been drawn in. Give me a character I like, I'll stick with you for 000's of words. The suspence you had first time had been keeping me close in and giving you time to layer up your storyline/character, then reel me in.

 

[Glitch]

As ctg said I need to write it out a bit more to see where it's going. At the moment all it's trying to do is introduce two main characters and to get one fixated with the other.

I'm thinking at the moment whether I should introduce the male character before jumping into the dream. As it stands I'm trying to get the reader to understand several critical parts of the world in the first few paragraphs. I suppose I could start him looking through another dream and actually do his job properly before the important dream.

Who's James?

James is the main character referenced in the second line. I agree I need to connect the sentences better.

1) If the target leaving the room cuts him off from the dream, how did he get into it in a different room, across a hallway, without even knowing she was the target?

2) Would taking images from a second person's dream be enough to identify anyone technologically? (i.e. the image wouldn't be of that person, but of the target's memory of that person, which wouldn't match exactly with a database of facial scans or actual photographic images for the computer to compare it to.)

1) That's part of the story
2) Correct. It would be hard to identify someone this way. But in the story this is the only means available to them, and hence the need for a human operator to prioritise which items to look for.

He is also skiving as well. Adding items of interest and letting the computer slog over searching.

 

[Jammill Khursheed]

Glitch

I like the idea of having James in another dream first, maybe not having it go well and making him a bit peeved would sit better with his frame of mind in his next job than it going crackingly...

Also really like that he is purposefully feeding the computer rubbish to preoccupy it so he can skive, but as its obviously not a neural link (the way the computer talks to him) you could make that clearer to the reader in his internal monologue to get it across... Some people might read it and just think its a daft idea to scan paintings of people that might not even exist... I had higher expectations of ya though so it stood out to me...


Jammill

 

[Brian G Turner]

As ctg said I need to write it out a bit more to see where it's going. At the moment all it's trying to do is introduce two main characters and to get one fixated with the other.

Then tell us what he's thinking!

Every man knows that just because a woman looks great from behind, it doesn't mean to say they'll feel the same looking at her from the front!

Seeing a woman from behind isn't convincing enough for attraction - he has to see her, believe in her, relate to her, feel compelled by her. And we need to see that through his thoughts.

Even still, you need to be wary of the "love at first sight" trope because they may require too much suspension of disbelief. Attraction is fine, but unless he's worshipping her backside, it's her face, her eyes, her smile, her mannersisms, that will truly captivate.

And if it's not attraction you want to push - tell us through his thoughts.

At the moment you are still too close to writing a series of visual images and you write these very well - but it's the character thoughts that drive good written stories.