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The boat-house lay on the side of the river. Tree branches hung down and across the roof of the boat-house, shading it from the hot tropical sun.
Inside the boat-house was a prototype boat. The latter lay on twin launch rails pointed at the river. It was sleek, low, shaped like a blunt-nosed arrow, and about fifteen feet long. More like a race car than a boat. Tucked into the roof was a hang glider. A helmet was sitting on the boat's passenger seat.
I stood next to the boat's designer and builder, a young man about half my age. He looked young but he'd already graduated from college with honors. Unlike my short dark-brown-and-silver hair, his was dark blond and shoulder-length. We were both dressed in t-shirts, shorts, and waterproof shoes. He said he only needed glasses to read by.
To prove it, he took them off and walked around the boat. I could see the excitement in his eyes and body language. He kept smiling, both at the boat and at me.
“You sure it's safe, Ben?” I asked. “There's only one shot, and if it goes south, I go south with it.”
“You'll be fine, Emma,” he replied. “I've tested it up and down this river already. No noticeable problems.”
“But I'll be much closer to the rapids than you've probably gone,” I said.
“True,” Ben said. “But irrelevant.” He affectionately slapped the near side of the boat. “I'll miss you, old girl. Be good to her, okay?” He turned to me. “Ready to board?”
I sighed. “As ready as I'll ever be.”
“After this, a water slide at a water park will seem like nothing to you,” he said.
“Imagine my relief,” I said and climbed aboard the boat. “Does it have a name?”
“Boats aren't neuter,” he corrected me. “Like ships, a boat is 'her' and 'she'.”
“Fine,” I said. “Does she have a name?”
“The Phoenix,” he said.
“Let's just hope she doesn't burn up like her namesake sometimes does,” I said, turning on the engine. It roared into life, then settled into a steady rumble.
“There's a thunderstorm headed this way,” Ben said. “Make sure you're at the rapids before it arrives.”
“Or what?” I asked.
“You'll get wet,” he said. “You don't mind getting wet, do you?”
“It depends on what is getting me wet,” I said. “Acid rain, maybe?”
“Just normal wet precipitation,” Ben said. “In case of emergency, the hang glider has a homing beacon so that we can find you.”
“And the boat?” I asked.
“I can always build another one,” he said. “Get going, Emma. Time's a-wasting.”
I pulled the thrust lever into its “full power” position. The boat almost leapt from the boat-house and zipped across the river. I spun the steering wheel to port just in time to see Ben wave to me. I waved back, then aimed the boat downstream.
At a constant speed of about 35 knots, Phoenix bounced more than a little bit as she headed downriver. But it was simple enough to avoid the rocks in the river, no matter how big they sometimes were. I just had to make sure not to let the current take control of the boat prematurely.
I felt like James Bond in “Moonraker”, only I knew that there wouldn't be any human pursuers in powerboats.
Was that what Ben was trying to recreate? The river chase down to Iguazu Falls? I wondered if that was why the local government wasn't too happy when we'd told them what our plans were.
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“You are doing what?” one official asked, trying not to stare at us or the printout of our plans.
“Testing a prototype boat/hang glider,” Ben explained as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“If you want to go hang gliding, why do you choose a river instead of a hill or a mountain?” the official asked.
Ben pointed downriver to the waterfall. “Because that should be high enough to allow for hang gliding.”
“From the middle of the river?” the official asked.
Ben shook his head. “From the prototype boat. With any luck, I'll be able to retrieve the boat via remote control and send it back to my boat-house.”
“And if you cannot?” the official asked.
“I'm short one prototype boat,” Ben said.
“And its pilot?” the official asked.
“Should be just fine beneath the hang glider,” Ben said.
“Will the pilot be yourself?” the official asked.
“You may think I'm crazy, Señor, but I'm not that crazy,” Ben said and clapped me on the shoulder. “My friend Emma will be the pilot of both the prototype boat and the hang glider.”
I stared at Ben. “I'm going to be what?” I asked.
“Relax,” Ben told me. “You'll be fine.”
“Famous last words,” I said.
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Roughly half a mile above the falls, the river was flowing faster and was much choppier. The scattering of rocks that I'd encountered upriver had by now become tight clusters. Avoiding these wasn't easy. Sometimes, if I got too close to large, flat rocks, the boat seemed to climb up onto and slide across the top, before dropping back down into the river again on the rock's far side.
That was the least of my worries because sometimes the boat tilted so much to either side that I almost thought it was going to capsize. Ben had assured me it was incapable of capsizing. Support struts, like hydrofoils used, would automatically spread out from the hull, to keep the boat from capsizing. Had they been tested yet? Of course not.
Emma the human guinea pig, that's me, I thought with a sigh.
Up ahead, I thought I could hear the approaching roar of the falls. I tried to slow Phoenix down, but she still increased in speed. She was now traveling at about 40 knots, brushing against 45 knots every so often. In a larger boat or ship, there wouldn't be much change in how it felt to the passengers and crew. But in this small prototype boat, I could feel each and every bump, and the spray was threatening to soak me to the skin.
I wished I'd been able to wear a wet suit. But, yet again, Ben was certain I wouldn't need one.
Another fifteen hundred feet downriver and it was time for the next step:
On the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel was a button marked “hang glider release”. Before I pressed it, I put on the helmet first, making sure it was in place, including the chin strap. I pressed the button and the tucked-away hang glider above my head rose a foot, its colorful wing spreading outward like a huge Mayan quetzalcoatl getting ready for flight. The wing rustled in the winds blowing upriver from the falls.
The next three hundred feet disappeared behind the boat in what felt like seconds.
I lifted the hang glider's control bar less than a minute before Phoenix's bow tipped downward. The hang glider rose higher into the air, circling slowly above the falls.
Passing above the falls, I looked downward. The boat was already lost from view. Would it survive the descent or be smashed to pieces on the rocks below? I could only hope for the former, but the latter seemed much more likely.
I felt sorry for the boat. She had served me well and I had to abandon her without any way for Ben to retrieve her and send her back to his boat-house.
Where next, though? As long as the updrafts lasted, I could glide as far as I wanted.
Beyond the trees along the river banks were vegetation-covered cliffs. The hang glider rose above them and soared further from the river.
Somewhere to my left, several miles upriver, was Ben and his boat-house. He would likely be watching the two homing beacons (the one hidden in the hang glider and the other hidden in the boat). Once the boat's beacon disappeared, he would know that Phoenix wouldn't be returning home. But the other beacon, if all went well, would remain active for a while yet.
I tried to remember what lay in this part of the rain forest.
So much had been lost due to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture over the last thirty years that I was surprised that even a little bit had survived. It would take centuries for those parts of the rain forest to recover.
Deep in the remnants of the rain forest, there were probably primitive tribes similar to the Yanomamo that had never had any contact with modern humans. They were determined to stay as far away from us as possible. With good reason. Contact between primitive humans and modern humans had rarely been pleasant and beneficial for the former.
I thought I saw a road dividing two sections of the rain forest. Probably a logging road. Not just probably. I saw several parked log-transporting tractor-trailers parked along the road. They were already loaded, ready to head to where they would be transported further onward, eventually reaching the sawmills. Since a hang glider is silent, the men on the ground didn't even seem to notice my passage above them.
But as I left them further and further behind, I noticed that my altitude was dropping. I needed to find somewhere to land as safely as possible. An airstrip wouldn't be necessary, provided there was an area big enough for my hang glider.
What felt like many miles later, the hang glider couldn't stay aloft any longer. We came crashing down through the rain forest canopy and landed – not exactly softly – on the ground. The hang glider, like Phoenix, would never return to Ben. Not in its currently partially damaged condition, anyway.
Lying there, I looked up at the branches, leaves, and aerial plants above me. I felt like I was in a dream. The modern world might as well have been on another planet. If only I didn't have to return to it. If only I could stay here for the rest of my life.
I freed myself from the hang glider, took off the helmet, and carefully got to my feet. There wasn't anyone or any animals in view. The sun was somewhere high above the canopy I'd crashed through. It felt good to be shaded from it for the time being. I would have to wait until nightfall to see where the North Star was and try to find my way back.
Ben would be waiting, of course. Unless he'd already sent out search parties to try to find me. If they came this far into the rain forest, they'd find the damaged hang glider. But there would be no sign of its pilot. Why? Because she had no intention of waiting to be rescued. Damsel-in-distress indeed!
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I checked each of the several beaten paths that led away from my landing area. All but one were dirt paths. The exception looked suspiciously as if had been paved with either flat stones or maybe even some equivalent of concrete or asphalt. Not so primitive, after all.
The paved path led back toward the river at first and then swung away on a narrow path between high cliffs covered with trees and bushes. It might not have been safest to follow the path, but it was either that or go climbing up one of the cliffs and through the thick vegetation. I didn't have any climbing gear. Hadn't thought I'd need any. So I stuck to the path.
Maybe a quarter-mile later, I thought I heard rustling noises in the trees nearby. Monkeys? Jaguars? Birds?
I stopped and listened. A pause that lasted a moment too long.
A net suddenly lifted around me, catching me inside it. It rose until it was about ten feet above the path.
Lying at the bottom of the net, I looked down to see several people drop from the nearby trees and approach me. They were barefoot and dressed like the ancient Inca I'd seen in books about the Inca Empire in college. Except these weren't painted illustrations; these were the real thing. They were armed with handmade spears with an arrowhead on the business end of each spear. They seemed puzzled to see what their catch was. They pointed at me as they spoke to each other.
“Buenos dias?” I asked.
No answer.
“Que pasa?” I asked. “Donde es la ciudad?”
Still no answer.
Confirmation: either they didn't hear me or they didn't understand Spanish.
One of the group came over and stood under the net. He jabbed upwards with the end of the spear that didn't have an arrowhead attached to it. Almost like a modern-day cook checking to see if a grilled steak was completely cooked or not.
“Hey!” I protested. “Stop that! That hurt!”
He looked at me, then turned to his comrades and said something. They lifted their hands above their heads and quickly lowered their hands. He nodded and cut the strands of the net with the arrowhead-end of his spear. I fell right into his arms.
“You can put me down now,” I said. “I mean, we haven't even been introduced to each other.”
His companions joined him, and all of them stared at me. They touched my skin, they touched my hair, and they touched my clothes. Almost as if they'd never seen anyone like me before in their entire life. Maybe they hadn't. I knew immediately what it felt like to be an animal cooped up in a cage and sympathized with all the caged pets I'd had while growing up.
Apparently finished with their inspection of me, they headed away from the path and into the rain forest, taking me with them.
---------
It couldn't have taken more than an hour before we arrived at their village. Several longhouses stood with one narrow end facing what would've been a central square in a modern-day village. There seemed to be a bonfire ring at the square's center.
The women were bare-chested, doing chores, nursing babies, keeping children out of trouble, and the like. They looked at me with as much puzzlement as the men who'd captured me had. The men spoke with the women. Seemingly satisfied, most of the women went back to what they'd been doing.
One of the women, though, came over to me. Her skin wasn't brown like the rest of the tribe. It was almost as pale as mine was. Her eyes weren't dark brown like theirs were; her eyes were blue. And her hair was dirty blond instead of dark brown. Otherwise, she was dressed much as they were.
“Why do you look so different?” I asked her, but immediately wished I hadn't bothered. Of course, like them, she wouldn't understand Spanish or English.
“Because I wasn't born here,” she replied. Unlike me, her accent wasn't American. I couldn't be sure if it was British, South African, Australian, or maybe New Zealand.
I stared at her. “You speak English.”
“Of course I do,” she said as if that should've been blatantly obvious. “They've assigned me to be your interpreter until you learn enough of their language.”
“How did you end up at this village?” I asked.
“Pretty much how you did,” she said. “Except my survey plane crashed and I was the only survivor. I tried to find my way out of the rain forest, only to be captured a few days later.”
“Why are they letting us live with them?” I asked.
She looked amused. “You'd hardly expect them to be cannibals. They prefer meat from four-legged sources, not from bipedal sources.” She held out a hand in a gesture I didn't think I'd ever see in any rain forest. “I'm Nicola. I'm from Poland.”
I shook her hand. “I'm Emma. I'm from America.”
“Let me show you around,” she said. “There isn't much to see, but at least you'll get familiar with it sooner rather than later.”
“Haven't you ever wanted to escape?” I asked.
Nicola gave me a puzzled look. “Why? So that I can return to the modern world? No thanks. I've been much happier here than I ever was there.”
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After giving me the equivalent of a guided tour, Nicola and I joined the women preparing the evening meal. Much to my surprise, I was accepted and none of the women asked why I was even paler than Nicola was. They did wonder about my shirt, though.
“Are they expecting me to go around shirtless too?” I asked.
“Only if you want to,” she said. “I didn't at first, but I eventually found that it's just easier without a shirt. No doubt you've noticed: we're all bare-chested. You're the only exception for the time being.”
“You don't mind?” I asked. “Being shirtless, I mean?”
“Emma,” she said. “Back in the modern cities they would arrest you for being shirtless. Here, they could care less. They don't stare at your chest; you don't stare at theirs. It's just common courtesy. Besides, when it comes to nursing babies, being shirtless has its advantages.”
I looked at her. “You're a mother?”
Nicola nodded. “The light-brown-skinned children. Two boys, one girl. Their father is over there, near the fire pit, next to the other men.”
“You love him?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “He's been a wonderful father to our children, a great provider, and a gentle, tender lover. What more could I ask for?”
I nodded in agreement.
Did the modern world really offer anything that was better than what was in this village? No.
I removed my shirt and laid it aside.
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Awesome
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Glad you liked it. If you've seen the James Bond movie, "Moonraker", you've probably already noticed similarities between the scene which starts with Bond floating down South American river in his boat. The only big difference is that he's trying to find Drax's secret base and my character is testing the boat for a friend. I'm still uncertain about what will happen next. I have the feeling that she'll get bored eventually and/or her friend will track her down at the village in the jungle.
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I almost didn’t read it because it didn’t sound like something I’d find interesting, but I’m glad I did. I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling tired this week. I was going to suggest some grammatical changes, but after reading all of these comments figured you didn’t need anymore. Ha! I’m no grammar authority anyway, I get my wife to read any of my stories that I can because she’s brilliant at finding all of the mistakes. Thanks for sharing your art with us.
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Feel free to suggest any and all grammar fixes (in case no one else has mentioned them yet). And if your wife finds some, you're welcome to pass them on to me.
You're welcome. I've wanted to be a writer since at least age 15 (1982). But I didn't think I was good enough until I was about 21 or 22 (1988 or 1989). Back when BBSes still existed, there were some that asked for creative writing from their users. I would be a liar if I said what I wrote back then was as good as what I'm writing today. One learns from practice and honing one's craft. Not all attempts are good ones, but I believe that they are all beneficial because they show where mistakes were made and taught the writer how to spot them and fix them. As the fictional Ms. Frizzle said in "The Magic School Bus" animated series: "Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. It's the best way to learn." I'm not sure if mistakes are the best way to learn, but if one is unafraid of potential errors, then one is willing to make the effort, to take chances, to see what might turn out well or turn out poorly. It's when I'm too cautious, too uncertain, that I think I write more poorly. It's when I take chances that surprises can happen. As an example of this, I use my short story, "Breaking with Tradition". It was an experiment, an attempt to step outside the parameters of what other writers were submitting on this website. I was afraid at first that I'd stepped *too* far from the mainstream ... only to discover that there were readers who had followed me and wanted to know what happened next. With such support and encouragement, wonderful things can happen.
Don't be afraid of failure. Take risks in your writing. Try new things. Try unusual things. Who knows? You might also have readers willing to go where you go (and I might even be one of them).
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The story is interesting to a point, but then it seems like she just accepted things at face value and gave up. Sort of a Can't beat them, join them kind of thing.
Otherwise it was interesting. But I have to ask, was her friend delivering her to the tribe?
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That's why I wish I had more than 3000 words to work with. The story did go beyond where it now ends in the draft version. But I had to cut it back when it went over 3000 without hurting the overall story too much. I get the feeling that the chop-off point might not have been the best place to end the story. I think I needed to rewrite and see if I could get the story to a better ending place, but I've been more tired and in pain lately than usual and it's hard to motivate myself at times like those.
I think Emma was tired of being used as a human guinea pig by Ben. I also think that she was looking for somewhere that she felt she belonged, people that accepted her as is. Being captured by hunters, however, might not exactly be a great way to leave one "world" behind and join another "world". Still, it shows that the hunters weren't doing it out of unkindness. Their ancestors probably used clubs to get females' attention (if you've read the comic strip, "B.C.", you'll know what I'm referring to). A net isn't as violent and doesn't usually hurt the captive. Besides, Emma isn't trapped in the village. She's being shown a different way of life. She might still decide someday, "This really isn't for me after all. I'm leaving." But where could she go that's any better? If she isn't happy in the modern world, what's left that she could become part of? It's possible she's just biding her time until she can reconnect with Ben. I wish I knew.
Also, I haven't sketched out *anything* of Emma's past (before the story begins). If I'd done that, maybe she would've made a different decision at the end of the story. She might have had different motivations for what she did. I wonder sometimes if Ben is actually using drones and hang gliders as aerial reconnaissance. In which case, what is he searching for? Illegal logging? How much of the rain forest is being destroyed each day? Or maybe there's a lost city in the rain forest (not necessarily a city of gold like El Dorado) that he's been searching for and didn't think to tell Emma about. If he *does* find the village she's in and tells her what the *real* reason for these tests is, would she be willing to help him again or tell him, "Forget it. I've had it with being your test pilot. Do it yourself." Or maybe she'd say, "Oh! That's why you're going to all this trouble. Why didn't you say so before? Of course, I'll help you again."
I think the tribe intuitively/instinctively understands that the smaller the tribal population, the weaker the gene pool. They have to find *some* way to introduce new people to their tribe, even if it doesn't seem like the nicest way to do it. They're not exactly going to hang out "Welcome" signs to visitors, since they want to keep their village hidden for as long as possible. So how do they find new people to add to their tribe without exposing their village to poachers, loggers, oil explorers, etc.? How do they keep their tribe alive and kicking if they can't keep the tribe's population from shrinking? Because it isn't just the tribe that'll disappear if it shrinks too much; their language, culture, and customs will also disappear.
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I see
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Kind of like trying to shrink an entire encyclopedia volume down to just one chapter. Things get a little rough and choppy sometimes.
I imagine that there are probably *huge* amounts of information that sit in the background of your Theta stories. Maybe you could put together an appendix one day, to let readers see what never got into the stories. I won't be surprised if the appendix is at least half the length of a novel (about 50,000 words or so instead of 100,000 words).
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Maybe
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1. I've always liked strong female characters, but I just don't like how some of them are always way over-powered or have just always started out so strong, just stuff like that with the characters always bothers me.
2. Maybe at some point in the future, him being around both Axel and Cora along with the little "Haywire" thing, he'd start acting like that a lot more. Though I think he would still talk and act in his regular way most of the time, he'd start acting or talking like that way more, and maybe he'd even like it a little better.
3. Doesn't Hera also hate any of the other children of Zeus? At least the ones that he didn't have with her, I haven't really read a lot of Hera stuff tbh.
4. Alright, that sounds good. Though I did get an idea a bit ago about Cora herself with the whole half-breed thing, could I tell you?
5. I think I've heard about "Spirited Away" only once, and it was a few years ago. What is it about?
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Whew. Some days I feel like I write more response messages than poems and stories.
1. Try reading C.J. Cherryh's novels. You'll find her female characters don't tend to be overpowered (maybe Ariane Emory in "Cyteen" is an exception). They're complicated, imperfect, intelligent, resourceful, etc.
2. Maybe Reboot at first tried to fix the errors (glitches, mutations, etc.) in his programming, but Cora and Axel persuade him that maybe keeping some of the errors might be beneficial. It might make Reboot a bit unpredictable sometimes. Kind of like a flesh-and-blood person sometimes is. Maybe the rough edges of the errors/mutations get smoothed out as they become part of Reboot's overall programming and he becomes more familiar with their benefits and liabilities.
3. I don't know. I only remember Hera wanting to get rid of Hercules. In Europa's case, Hera turned Europa into a cow to try to keep Zeus' hands off of her (she also installed a being with thousands of eyes all over his body to guard Europa; I think Zeus asked Hermes to put the being's eyes to sleep so that Zeus could be with Europa). I don't remember what happened to Io. Aren't Artemis and Apollo also Zeus' children? I don't recall that Hera tried to get rid of them.
4. Sure!
5. Miyamoto's animated movies are a little hard to summarize, but I'll try: "Spirited Away" is about a little girl who is in a car with her parents. They're traveling through a forest. I think they go through a man-made gateway and end up in a village. The parents start eating all the food they can get their hands on and get changed into pigs in the process. The girl flees from them, eventually reaching the Bathhouse where gods, goddesses, and other supernatural beings go to get cleaned up. The girl gets a job at the Bathhouse and meets up with a wizard (who sometimes is in the form of a wingless white dragon). More than that I'd rather not say.
I think "Howl's Moving Castle" is more interesting than "Spirited Away". It's a little different from the book it's adapted from (originally written by the late Diana Wynne Jones; she also wrote "Castle in the Sky", which was also adapted by Hiyao Miyazaki). It's about a castle that has mechanical legs and can walk across the landscape. Inside the castle are a fire demon, Howl himself, and a boy. Another character joins them at one point. If you can rent it from the library or find an affordable DVD of it, I recommend it. I also recommend Miyazaki's other animated movie, "Kiki's Delivery Service", which is about a young witch, her black cat, and a boy they meet in the town that Kiki travels to (where she sets up her delivery service). There are other animated movies created and released by Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli (which is located in Japan), like "Princess Mononoke", "The Cat Returns", "Porco Rosso", and others.
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1. What's "Cyteen" about? Only from the name, I'm guessing that it's about a teenage Cyborg, or like a full robot character. I've just always hated in movies/books/shows when there's a strong female character that's always overpowered, and that they never really learn anything. They are just that strong from the start, so I'll probably check out those novels soon.
2. I feel like one of the only ways that he'd somehow stop acting like that, and maybe even his regular self, is if he sort of went into a default setting in a way. I like the idea of that tbh, where something happens and he goes into a default setting and he's even stranger that way. Like, example, if he saw Cora, maybe he'd just scan her and say something like: "Cora. Half-Breed." etc, and then walk away.
3. I'm actually not sure if they are, but if that's correct, then maybe she tried a few times and eventually gave up on trying to do so. Or maybe they are Children of Zeus, and she somehow doesn't know this.
4. I'm not sure if I should fully add this , but I have the idea that as Cora ages (it would probably start to happen soon) she starts to change and look a bit more alien-like. Like what her mother was. She wouldn't completely look like one, but for example, if her mother had antennas, maybe Cora would start to grow them. If her skin was a different color, maybe some other purple, that would start to happen to her. Maybe it *does* start to happen to her in a little scene, and it confuses both her and Axel, and maybe frightens her a little bit aswell.
5. Hm, I'll probably consider checking some of those out. I've still never really heard of any of those before, but they seem interesting.
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1. A summary of "Cyteen"? Yikes. It basically revolves around two characters: Ariane Emory and Justin Warrick. Cyteen is the planet that they live and work on. Ariane Emory is the director of Reseune, a kind of town/laboratory/office building. Justin Warrick is a parental replicate (aka clone) of his father, Jordan Warrick. It deals with psychology, manipulation, cloning, politics, and relationships. It's not always cheerful and the ending is (in my opinion) a bit weak. But everything leading up to the ending is really well written. It's about 680 pages long. If you can find a copy of it in one-volume form, either buy it or check it out from a library (the paperback edition originally was published in three books, but later was re-published as one book). I've had a hardback copy of it since about 1990. Hard to believe it was published in 1988 because it could've just as easily been published in 2021.
2. I wonder if Reboot might actually have some severe thinking/behavioral problems due to the errors/glitches in his programming. It might be difficult to find a balance between fixing the errors/glitches and letting them evolve/adapt as time goes on.
3. Thanks to Zeus' womanizing, Hera is practically jealousy personified. Someone once wrote that gods and goddesses tend to sound more like children than adults. With some exceptions, I would agree.
4. That's interesting. From birth to roughly middle-age, she looks human, but from middle-age onward, she looks more and more alien. I wonder what would change along the way. Eye color and shape? Skin color and texture? Would her arms, hands, legs, and feet stay human or would they also change (and if so, what would they look like)? Would her personality change (and if so, how much)? Would her emotions be affected (and if so, how much)? Is there some way to help her adjust to the changes from human to alien?
5. Along with Miyazaki's animated movies, I would also recommend just about anything by the late Diana Wynne Jones (not just the books that were adapted by Miyazaki). I've read "Howl's Moving Castle", "Castle in the Sky", and "The House of Many Doors" ("House" is the sequel to "Howl's"). I wish I had read more of her books. *sigh* Maybe someday I'll be able to afford to purchase them. I used to have some of them but had to donate them when my book collection got way too big for a one-bedroom apartment.
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1. Hm, that still seems pretty interesting, but I've just never heard of it before until now. Is there only one book, or is there like a second one and stuff
2. I feel like they'd try to fix some of it at some point, but then later decide to just see if it'll all adapt/evolve, something like that. Or maybe Reboot decides by himself that he wants to let the stuff adapt/evolve, or just see if they will.
3. I feel like Aphrodite would be like one of the main ones that acts like a child, since she hates when someone is more *beautiful* than her and has tried to get rid of some of them because of it.
4. I don't think her personality would change, I feel like her body would just start changing. I feel like it would have started trying to do it when she was about 11, but nothing happened and now, in the present (with her being 18) it would finally start to happen. I don't think any of it would hurt either, she would either just not feel anything until she notices a change, or she'd start feeling a bit strange. If her eyes changed then she'd probably find out after looking in a mirror or someone points it out, the same with the skin color and everything else. I feel like Axel would try to help her a little bit though.
5. When did "Howls moving castle" and "The House of Many Doors" even come out?
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(sarcasm) For shame! You didn't know about "Cyteen" already? Tsk tsk!
1. It's technically one novel (680 pages), but it's been in three different formats: One-volume hardback novel; three-volume paperback novels (like "Lord of the Rings" was before it was published as a one-volume novel); and then one-volume paperback.
2. Whichever idea seems to work better is okay with me.
3. I'm not sure who Aphrodite's parents were. She was born out of the sea, I think. I also wonder who Athena's mother was since she was born full-grown out of Zeus' head.
4. I think if the body changes, there are usually other changes as well. Maybe not blatant changes. Maybe only covert changes (that Cora is aware of, but that can't be seen by anyone else ... unless she were scanned by medical equipment, that is).
5. I think "Howl's Moving Castle" came out in 1990 (the book, I mean). "The House of Many Doors" was one of Diana Wynne Jones' last novels; I think it was published in 2012? I used to have it in hardback. The house is sometimes even more interesting than Howl's castle is. But I would read "Howl" first, then "House".
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Hi Philip!
Amazing story, as usual!
I thought that this was a really unique take on the prompt and I really enjoyed Ben and Emma's relationship :) They felt really real and relatable as characters and I throughoutly enjoyed Emma. She was amazing.
The plot of this flowed very nicely. I think that you did a good job of not making everything clump up at the beginning, instead spreading it out throughout the story in order to keep the reader engaged! It worked well with the overall story, and I honestly love this!
I caught a few errors in spelling and grammar: (which you don't HAVE to correct, I just wanted to give you some ideas!)
1) "shaped like an blunt-nosed arrow" (doesn't need to be an. No vowel. Just a)
2) "The boat almost leapt from the boat-house" (By using leapt, you're using British English..which isn't bad, it's just that for consistency you would use leaped.)
3) "I wished I'd been able to wear a wet-suit" (There doesn't NEED to be a hyphen in between the two words.
4) "above my head rose up a foot," (You can remove up, it is redundant with the word rose. we (the reader) can understand that rising is going UP not DOWN :)
5) "Mayan quetzalcoatl" (capitalize Q)
6) "“Boats aren't neuter,” (NEUTERED? Haha I'm sorry XD. You forgot the 'L')
7) "I thought I saw a road dividing two sections of rain forest." (I would add a determiner before rain...like a or the)
8) "log-transporting tractor trailers" (A hyphen between tractor trailers)
9) "They were already loaded-up," (loaded up doesn't need a hyphen in this context)
10) "The paved path led back toward the river at first, and then swung away on a narrow path between high cliffs covered with trees and bushes." (The compound predicate doesn't need a comma after first)
11) "Her skin wasn't brown like the rest of the tribe. In fact, it was almost as pale as mine was." (In fact doesn't NEED to be there. The reader is understanding it was almost as pale as Emma's was without the unnecessary telling of it.)
12) "“Of course I do,” she said, as if that should've been blatantly obvious." (said doesn't need a comma after it.)
13) "Much to my surprise, I was accepted and none of the women asked why I was even more pale than Nicola was." (Instead of the compound adjective more pale, try the comparative form paler. It flows better!)
14) "Did the modern world really offer anything that was better than what was in this village? Not really. I removed my shirt and laid it aside." (In this case, I would remove REALLY [after world] and THAT WAS [after anything] to remove redundancy!)
Sorry about that being a long fix...you don't have to take all my advice :) Do what you think and what fits your style! But I really enjoyed this story and loved the rainforest aspect of it.
Can't wait for more!
N
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Glad you liked it, Nainika. Thank you for your editing comments.
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Apparently, I can't respond to your message and fix the online version of the story in tandem. *sigh* I guess I'll fix the offline version and then copy/paste it online (overwriting the current online version).
Thank you for catching the "an blunt-nosed" error. I've fixed it both online and offline. I'm surprised I didn't see that before submitting the story. I should've proofread more thoroughly than I did. I think I was too tired at the time.
My English is mostly American English, but with some British English mixed in. So I say "leapt" instead of "leaped" and "slept" instead of "sleeped". But then I turn around and say "aluminum" instead of "aluminium" and "truck" instead of "lorry". It comes from growing up in both American English and British English (I was born overseas and didn't move to America until I was 5 years old; my earliest books were published in England, not in America; I've also watched a lot of British TV shows like "Monty Python", "Benny Hill", "The Body in Question", and "All Creatures Great and Small", and enjoyed watching "I, Claudius" and Shakespeare's plays). I guess you'd call my version of English "idiosyncratic". It probably would've driven my grade school English teachers straight up the wall.
Just found a mistake myself: "Be good to him." I think Ben meant, "Be good to her." (as in Emma; I'm not sure why I said "him" instead)
Oh. I thought "wet suit" was hyphenated. Oops. Okay. Fixing that offline now.
Good point. You don't rise downward ... unless you're upside-down, of course. Fixing that now.
I think if it's the bird instead of the god, it's "quetzalcoatl". If it's the god instead of the bird, it's "Quetzalcoatl" (aka Kulkulkan).
Ben was trying to teach Emma about what to call a boat. If you've studied languages like German, they have masculine, feminine, *and* neuter forms. With exceptions, English tends to say "it" when it isn't a person. For instance, in German, "car" is masculine, but "auto" is neuter. Also, "woman" in German is feminine, but "girl" is neuter. I don't know why; it's just how it is.
"the rain forest" makes more sense to me than "a rain forest". Fixing that now.
"tractor trailer" ... you're right ... hyphen needed. Fixing that now.
Maybe just say "loaded" instead of "loaded up" (I don't think anyone would think a tractor-trailer could get drunk, so no confusion about "loaded".) Fixing that now.
Another good point. Boy, and I thought that *I* was overly fussy sometimes about punctuation. Okay. Deleting the comma between "first" and "and" now.
I also just caught another instance of "Jane Grey" that should've been switched to "Phoenix". Fixing that now. (The boat was originally named "Jane Grey", but I thought that "Phoenix" worked better.)
Good point. Deleted "In fact," and started the sentence with "It" instead.
#12: All right. I just reread that sentence aloud and I agree. The comma goes. Deleting it now.
#13: I still think "even more pale" worked better. "paler" just sounds weak to me. Similar examples I'm making up right now: "I was more pale than she was." vs. "I was paler than she was." Grammercy apparently didn't like "more pale" either. Okay. "paler" it is.
#14: Maybe I should've changed "Not really." to "No." I just made that change. I wanted to say "I shook my head." instead, but I decided that "No." worked better.
I tried my best to avoid any explicit description of female anatomy. (After all, the reader can imagine it if they want to.) Not to make the story family-friendly, but because it just didn't fit the way the story was written. Sometimes a bare chest is just a bare chest, just like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I don't think bare bodies in primitive societies were usually covered up until the missionaries came and taught them to be ashamed of their bodies. If you've read "Mutiny on the Bounty" (which takes place in 1798, I think), the Tahitian women and girls were all bare-chested (including in one of the book's illustrations).
I would say that I agreed with almost all of your comments. And while going through them, I also reread the story (while finding where the errors were) and found more errors to fix. I think I need to reread my stories at least twice while editing them before submitting them to this website. I don't think I'm getting lazy; I think I'm just more tired lately than I usually am. Which is when I usually make poor decisions (such as not proofreading thoroughly enough).
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I'm not sure if there will be a sequel to this story. Right now, it seems a bit too much like a mix of the movies "Moonraker" and "Medicine Man", as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels about primitive "worlds" (one in Antarctica in the "Land That Time Forgot" trilogy; the other inside the Earth in the "Pellucidar" series). But, then again, I've never read a Burroughs story that mentioned a hang glider, so at least that's different. Maybe hang gliders didn't exist in the first half of the 20th Century. Because if they had, I bet that Burroughs would've mentioned them in one of his novels.
Brainstorming thoughts about a possible sequel: Maybe someone (Ben himself?) tries to track Emma down and finds the remote village she's living in? But if she doesn't want to leave the village, would someone from "civilization" try to force her to leave it? Hopefully not. Besides, I think that the villagers want to keep their village as hidden from the modern world as possible. They've probably already heard unpleasant reports about what happened to villages that didn't stay hidden. Maybe someone like Ben would be able to help hide the village even better (even if he can't block thermal scanning done by drones or helicopters or aircraft).
One more thing: I realized that Emma hadn't taken off her helmet after the hang glider landed. The revised sentence reads:
I freed myself from the hang glider, took off the helmet, and carefully got to my feet.
(I've already made the change in both the online and offline versions.)
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Of course! No problem.
Wow, long comment - and I thought mine was long :)
And no problem, they were some that I just caught right there...I don't mind! And I'm glad you took some of them and changed them to fit your own style. I think that was amazing!
A sequel would be awesome :)
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You should've seen my response to Amy's newest Theta story on this website. I think my response was at least as long as her story. Thankfully, she didn't mind.
I need to get back into the habit of doing thorough proofreading/editing before submitting stories to this website. But sometimes I just get tired and don't want to bother. Besides, sometimes I also proofread/edit *too* much (as in, at least once a day until the end of a weekly contest). I remember one story that took 5 hours to type and I was still going back to proofread and edit it five days later.
I haven't found anything inspiring enough for a sequel. If I do write one, it will likely be from another character's point-of-view. Maybe Ben's point-of-view. Maybe starting with something like this:
"Sir? We found the wreckage of the prototype boat at the bottom of Angel Falls."
"Anything else?" Ben asked.
"We also found the hang glider. It landed in the rain forest well away from the river. There was a helmet near it."
"Then she's probably still alive," Ben said. Unless some leopard or jaguar decided that an unconscious human was food, of course, he thought.
"That's my guess. But where would she have gone? In which direction? Even with all the logging and slash-and-burn going on, there's still plenty of rain forest to search."
"If she'd wanted to be found, I think she would've started headed upriver if she could," Ben said.
"And if she doesn't want to be found, sir? Would she go to a lot of trouble to stay hidden?"
"She might," Ben said. "She wasn't exactly that willing to take part in my experiment. Maybe this is her way of saying, 'Wherever I am, I want to stay here.' "
"Abandon the search, then?"
"For now, yes," Ben said. "If you can't transport either the wrecked boat or the hang glider or both, please take photos of them. I'll pass those on to her family and relatives in America. That way they'll know she's probably still alive."
"Yes, sir. Sir? Do you think they'll come down here and search for her?"
"That's entirely up to them," Ben said. "If I were them, I'd wait and see if anyone spots her. A hang glider is easy to see, after all, but it wouldn't make much noise as it passes overhead. Maybe we should ask someone at the local timber company. Someone might've seen something big and colorful flying overhead."
"I'll do that, sir. We should be back there in about an hour or so."
"Drive safe and watch out for poachers and rebels."
"Yes, sir. Over and out."
(Etc.)
(I'm saving the above material for the possible sequel.)
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:) No problem whatsoever!
And oh wow! I'd really love to see a sequel - it looks like you're already in that mindset! :)
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Sometimes I just "wing it". You should see what I've been improvising for one of B.W.'s stories. When I'm in the right mood for creative writing, I can give her at least a page or two of text off the top of my head. But when I'm not in the mood, nothing comes through (or very little; and what little that does come through isn't usually that good).
What you read was me "winging it". Whether it'll be anything usable, I don't know. But I've learned to save the improvised text that I type on this website because it could be the inspiration to get the next story or "chapter" off the ground (figuratively or, in the case of a hang glider, literally). Or it may turn out to be a dead-end street and I have to find some other way to a story.
I'm just a little hesitant to add a sequel to "A New Life" because it seems to be okay as is. There would have to be something fairly substantial, inspiration-wise, for me to say, "Okay. *Now* I have a good reason to write a sequel." Kind of like the late Arthur C. Clarke telling people for 13 years that a sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey" was impossible ... until a fan in Brazil gave him the inspiration to start writing "2010: Odyssey Two". You never know when or where or how inspiration will come to you. It may even come from someone in another country (in that case, Clarke was in Sri Lanka, his fan was in Brazil). One day (hopefully not afte 13 years) I'll probably tell you, "Okay. I think I have something worth writing about and submitting." When? I wish I knew. *rolls the goat bones* "Come on, 7!" *rolls box cars* Drat. Better luck next time, I guess.
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