Hello, welcome, and enjoy your stay. We All Make Mistakes Chapter 1Punishment complicated, you are not going to understand a lot. Oh yeah, and have fun! "So you really want to hear it, Marcus?" "Yes, please proceed, time works against us, you have to understand!" "I do. If you really think that anything I could say could change anything, you are wrong. But as you wish." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's cold here. Too cold. There was a loud scream that woke me up and got me to open my eyes. "Wake up, you bastard!" I heard a coughing, then a different voice. "No, you can't do this. It will change nothing, please!" Why is it so cold? With my eyes wide open, I stared at pure white. Ordinary white. So bright. I began to notice movement. White particles where falling to the ground that I was laying on. As soon as my vision got less blurry, I noticed a lot of things. Things I don't want to remember. The ground was ice, snow was falling. A guy, some feet away from me, fell on the ground. "No, no please.", I heard him scream. He was now sitting on the ice, his arm lifted in front of him. As if that could give him protection. Against bullets. Suddenly I knew only too well why I was here. Someone pointed at the man with a gun. Before I got time to close my eyes, he already pulled the trigger. One moment later, noise flooded my ears, and the world was shaking. Blood covered the ground in front of me. The man with the gun made two steps towards me, lifted the gun, and said: "I have my commands. You better be what everybody thinks you are. If not, I'm just about to shoot our last hope..." Chapter 2Questions "This doesn't explain anything!" Marcus rammed his fist into the wall, and concrete crumbled down. He turned around, his short hair waved around and he was now starring at me with an expression of pure anger on his face. I had to keep him busy, time is running short. "Well, I told you I can't tell you anything of importance." "Do you know who I am?! I saved your goddamn life out there, just to get answers, and you don't want to cooperate. "And what are you going to do about that?" "Ok, look. We all have a hard day in front of us. Let's make a deal, ok? You will explain to me how the hell you got out of that prison on Corumet II, and I'll tell you why you where there. Alright?" There was no reason to listen to that idiot, I already knew why I was there. At least I know as much as he does. If I really want to discover the truth, I have to get out of here. The room I was in felt like a prison. The walls where made out of solid concrete, the roof and the floor out of metal. Think... There is one door, there is one guy, and only one solution. The chair I was sitting on was made out of metal too, as well as the rest of the interior, which consisted of another chair, a desk and two drawer like furniture pieces. "So, what do you think?" "Alright, tell me what the hell was going on, and I give you your information." "Fine. Corumet II is a prison-planet. It basically consist of a large prison, surrounded by an ice wasteland. On the planet, there are four EMP towers. Those towers prevent any vehicles from working on the planet, besides from the main shuttle that is used to transport prisoners. Only the most dangerous human beings will be escorted there. That means you, Thomas, probably did something very, very naughty." "And what would that be?" "Don't act like a fool, you know why you where there, you know why you should be executed. Any you know, why you are the only person that can save us." "No I don't." Marcus sat down again, opened the top left drawer of the desk, and pulled out a gun. Why does it always have to be a gun. I just escaped one, and now I have to go trough all that trouble again. I sat on the second chair, in a corner of the room, far away from anything that I could have used to escape, with my hand tied on the back of the chair. What a shame that I already opened it. Marcus came over to me and pointed the gun at my forehead. "I never thought I'd have to use this gun, but you seem far too stubborn to tell me anything without it." Kale is late, he should have arrived until now. I better give him some more time. "Ok, ok, fine.", I bend my neck and began to tell my story. Chapter 3Escape My vision was blurry. It was freezing cold, and I was about to get shot. "I have my commands. You better be what everybody thinks you are. If not, I'm just about to shoot our last hope..." "Wait, last hope? What are you talking about." "Shut up. You got your memories erased a bit ago, it would be pointless to answer your questions. Now sit still!" I can't really explain why, but my vision suddenly got better, and I could examine the well armored man in front of me. No chance I'd ever get out of here. We where just outside of a metal building. Back then, I had no idea what it was. But the door was open. The world around me turned red. At first I thought he pulled the trigger, but my face was blood covered, and I was not dead. One second later, the guard collapsed and fell on me. His armor was heavy. I felt pain and I wanted to give up. But there where questions. I swiped some of the blood from my eye, and as soon as I saw what was happening, I stopped moving. A troop of three people came over to me. I didn't move a single inch, in hope of staying undiscovered. The troop stopped a few feet away from the pile of, what it now looked like, three corpses. They started talking in a weird language, one I never heard before. I couldn't believe my eyes, when I saw that suddenly, the head of all three men now seemed to explode in a burst of green liquid. But it only seemed like that. Some seconds later, their faces where green and noseless, and they had some weird looking tentacles sticking out from the back of their head. Could this be? An alien race? Turns out what the human race was searching for a lifetime, now found them. The number of questions I had just hit the uncountable. One of the aliens examined the corpses again, before turning around, and leaving. The other two followed. I had no idea what I was getting into. There where moments in my life, where I thought that I should have just picked up the gun, and commit suicide. Turns out that everything went right... ...just the way I planned it one year ago. Chapter 4Just in time "Just like you planned it one year ago? What the hell are you talking about?!"I lifted my head and put on an evil smile."Have you met... Kale?"And as soon as I was finished forming the last word, the door exploded and trough the smoke you could see one clear shot that punched a hole in Marcus's head."Hey buddy!""Hey Kale, you're late."Kale came into the room, packed in armor and fully armed. His black helmet along with the armor fully covered his body."Had to manage some crucial things.""So it was more than 76 guards after all?""Slightly...""So where's my present?"Kale smiled and threw me over his plasma rifle, and took out his pistol."You're ready to go, Thomas?"I observed the rifle until I found the red button above the trigger."Red? Fine, I guess it's original.""I don't get paid for colour choices.""You don't get paid at all."I walked out of the room, and after seeing that the alarm went off, I asked:"What's the radius?""Standart."Walking along the corridor trough the prison, it seemed so quiet. That could be due to a lot of corpses lying arround in a straight line along the wall. I should have gotten a price for the escape from two prisons in the same month... We went up the stairs onto the roof. When we almost reached the distance the door leading to the stairs kicked open and a troup of 6 people in a nice formation came out."Surrender or die! You are surrounded!"We put our hands into the air. Kale made some steps towards them, he was now completely shielding me with his armor."No step further!"We lowered our arms and Kale aimed at a guard with his pistol. I could see the fear in their eyes.Kale shot into the air. It was more of a warning shot. Poor guys couldn't possibly understand what was going on. And soon as Kale had fired the shot, the air was filled with fire and lasers, but the only thing that hurt me was the terrible noise that the weapons of the guards made. It took some seconds before the situation calmed down and the guards wanted to examine the corpses. When the dust faded away, the guards where noticably surprised. Kale was standing in front of me, with his arms folded. One of the guards fired a single shot at Kale, and the laser bounced right of."That's my favourite part, you know. Seing how surprised they always are.""Man, I tell you, when you lost my armor, I'll burn you alive.""Don't worry, your's is stored nice and secure in our shutle.""You're ready?""Hell yes."The guards where just staring at us with open eyes, while we had a conversation. I did some steps backwards, until standing on the edge of the roof. Kale turned arround, and we jumped down the roof. I searched the button on my rifle, and after pushing it, the world went white. Chapter 5Friendship When I woke up next time, I found myself lying in my bed in our shutle. Kale was sitting on the chair next to his bed in front of the cumputer. I didn't look like he noticed me, but he suddenly began to speak."You know, you never told e what actually happend back then... I was curios, so I looked up all documented travels in the board computer. But it seems like a certain person was very careful in--" I tried to stand up and felt sudden pain in my leg. "Don't stand up. Have you forgot that you weren't wearing your armor this time? You've got a lot of time to recover. This was the last stop planned. I hope you have what you've been looking for... I can't... Look. Can you at least tell me something about the whole thing you got us into? We where friends since childhood, and tell me, did I ever do you any harm? No. You can trust me. Because I think that nothing can be so important that you have to keep it secret from everyone with no exception. It's just...""I know how hard it has to be but I'm not quite sure if you're ready for this. I told you my mission is important. Too important to be a failure. Well, uhm, do you remember how you told me some time ago that you think it's weird how I sometimes seem like I could predict the future. It's obviously not true, but " I smiled and Kale looked at me with a interessted expression on his face, "I prepared some papers.", I pointed into another room." It will explain you everything." Kale looked surprised, then he answered: "What kind of evil genius are you? It's like you're a whole different person. Oh whatever...", he stood up and went away into the other room to discover something that I should have never told him. Looking back at this time, I would have said that predicting the future would have been especially useful in this kind of situation. Chapter 6Secrets What Kale found in the room next to the one I was in, was a big collection of snippets with hand written text on it, and a collection of papers obviously stolen from somewhere. They where where arranged in a way that in succession to every single stolen paper, there was always one piece of hand written commentary to go with it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10th of January 2619 Is where it all starts. As you know, back then I was working as "intergalactic diplomat". The way of save and easy space travel with anti-gravity shuttles, wich was discovered in 2590, and just got in trend recently. So people dug out the topic of alien races again. Until 2615, nobody found any arguments that would cause us to discover teritory further than our galaxy. Here's something I found on the state of distribution of the universe in the time arround 2610. As decided from the council, our galaxy will be split into 3 sectors.Since the government has only strong influence in about 10% of our galaxy,wich would be the part surrounding earth.Sector Alpha will contain the small part of the system surrounding our earth,Sector Beta will contain the small circle surrounding the one of sector alpha,where we still have influence.Everything else will be sector gamma from now on. As a part of the government, I had a lot to do with this. The council decided too, that an energy shield, something that we heard of only in science fiction, should be developed and installed arround sector beta. Wich has actually happened, and now sector alpha and beta are completely seperated from gamma. In 2618, everything was finished and everyone moved into the shield. Some people, people that lived far away in sector gamma, had no idea what was going on. The government told us that everything that lives outside of sector beta would only be slaver scum and pirates. Of course they locked out a lot of people that were innocent. Of course, you already know that. We where both inside the shield, when the topic of other races came up. We had no need to expand. We had our golden cage, in form of a huge energy shield. Well, the council thought that discovering alien races would be good to establish colonies, trade, and whatever. They ordered to build a small convoi armed with the best weapons, and with the strongest generator. It would have been able to travel the distance of multiple galaxys with ease. From this point on, the history lesson is over. The 10th January. What officialy happened that day, is that the ship was finished. Officialy, it departed that day. Officialy, it is still on it's expedition. I'll tell you the truth. The ship dissapeared into a black hole, and some hours later, it returned. All crew members where missing. The truth is, we where all watched. We where since a long time. Chapter 7Incident After this day, the government fell into silence, and started destroying all information on the project. They decided to forget. Where things started to get weird, however, was about five days after the "incident". Another black hole appeared and all of the lost crew members poured out like liquid, after wich the black hole closed itself. After researching the state of the crew members, we found out that every single one of them, in exception of a guy called Will, where in a state of inconsciousness. They woke up a day after their return, and they seemed to remember absolutely nothing whatsoever. That guy, Will, was constantly whispering things we couldn't understand. I gave to order to make a blood test. Most people thought that it was unnecessary, but who would have thought that this poor guy got pumped full with drugs? I burned the outcomes of the blood test, and decided to hide my discovery from the government. I was sure that the other crew members had too been "silenced" with drugs. After waiting a couple more days, Will finaly began to speak more clearly. But something was wrong. We have modern medicine, we could have instantly gotten him out of his miserable state. I didn't know why no one did something, until I got the chance to... Let's just say I did some investigation on the other members of the government. Turns out they where frightened by what happened. Since I knew that whatever species did this, they used drugs to make it happen. I couldn't explain the black hole, nor other events, but what I know for sure is that the drugs where known to us. The day on wich we wanted to ask Will questions because we thought his mental state had cleared up, he was nowhere to be found. I asked the other members of the government. Most of them said the didn't know. Some of them said that something was going on, and the don't even want to know what it was. And a few of them told me, they let Will return to his family, because he had nothing important to say. I began to get curious. Very curious. Chapter 8Great Plans Time was passing by me, and from time to time, I spied on my fellow co-workers. That was, of course, until I stumbled uppon some documents, that where pointing out to older ones in the archive. I looked at the archives number that was written on the sheet of paper. It said "EB591". From that point on, I knew something was hiding in the bush. What you probably didn't know: The archive is, well... it was divided into 5 rooms, with 5 undercategories. The first letter from A to E tells you the room, and the second from A to E tells you the categorie. What the number sais should be obvious. The interesting part, however, was that room E became a top secret safe some years ago. People say precious materials and important, but old documents are stored in it. For sure is, it is highly secured and it would take great effort to get into it. And with great effort, I actually want to say that you'd have to kill to get in. Where these secrets important enough for me to kill human beings? For sure not. Well, it was not until we found Will's corpse. It was the day on wich members of the government spontaneosely decided to interrogte him. When they tried to get him back from whereever they brought him to, they found his dead, cold body, with a frase written into his chest with what seemed like laser carvings.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kale looked at the photo attached to it. Let's just say I wouldn't look at this while eating. It wasn't that bad, but the message was frightening non the less. "We are watching." Kale looked at the next document attached. The title said something about an explosion in the government's archive. Kale had so smile, as his question how I became a criminal was finally answered now. Chapter 9Criminal Mind I guess everyone makes mistakes, and so did I. I wanted to solve this misterium and uncover all the secrets regarding the recent events. The only possible solution being the destruction of the entrance to room E. So first thing first, I had to get a gun, and something to blow stuff up. I never thought I'd decend that far, but when I finally stood in front of little staircase on the side of a wall that goes down into the basement, I was actually surprised that I didn't even think about returning. It seemed obvious to me what to do next. I slowly walked down the stairs and stopped in front of the green painted wooden door. I knocked three times and stopped, listening for steps inside. Nothing. I was suddenly starving to death, but not because someone pointed a laser at me, but because I was nervous. Very nervous. Buying guns from illegal vendors is a crime that could get me knocked out of the government easily, but that doesn't make any difference, because after all of this is finished, I'll get run after by soldiers one way or the other. After some moments, I decided that there was probably nobody at home, and I turned arround to go. But suddenly, I heard steps, and the door opened. It was very dark inside, and the fact that it was night didn't help at all. All I saw was a gun, pointing out from the dark, and traces of a beard."What the hell do you want?", he asked. "I, uhm, I... I want to buy a gun.""Oh, little government boy wants a gun? Better get lost or I blast your face off!"I realized that I didn't take my government clothing off. Shit. Act cool. Be confident."So you don't want to earn a lot of money by selling weapons that'll help me to betray the government? No? Fine. I'll go then, but be sure that I'll return with some friends of mine.""And what stopps me from just shooting you right now?""Well, you probably haven't seen the sniper yet. If you shoot me, you'll be shot back."My blood was boiling, and I really hoped that he'd fall for the trick, and lucky me, he did.""Ok, ok, fine. Come inside." Chapter 10Never trust strangers The room looked smaller than it actually is. That was, of course, because the inside was all covered in weapon racks, reaching all arround the walls to, with only enough free space to fill in two doors. One of wich was obviously the entrance, and the other one probably leading to a storage or bedroom. The prize tags reached from 200 I.S. Dollars to about 5000. That was about as much as I earned per week. You would expect laser weaponry to be expensive back then, but it really wasn't. That could actually just be a cause of the huge ammount of money my job get's me, but non the less it made me realize how poor some people are."So are you just going to stare at the guns or do you actually want to buy some?" I didn't have a look as to what I was actually looking for."What's the most expensive gun you have?" He had to think that I was joking, but after he noticed the serious expression on my face, he started symolized me to follow him. We went trough the misterious door, into a tiny hallway with a door to the right, to the left and on straight up ahead. We entered the one on the right, and went down some stairs into a room with just one or two racks in it. The room was dark, and there was a table and some chairs. The weapons where inside black shining metal boxes. There where no prize tags on these ones."I see you are interested.", he almost whispered the words like in awe of the weapons. He began to open one of the 6 boxes one after another, revealing huge and massive weapons."They all cost about 40000 each. If you are unsure about your choice you can try them out at the shooting range next door." They all looked almost the same, long big and out of shining metal."Wich one would you recommend?" "You look like you need something fully atomatic. Try this one. He lifted the rifle out of the box and gave it to me. He took some ammo from the top of the table. I put the magazine filled with what looked like blue light emitting pills into the gun and proceeded into the gun range. I lifted the gun and took some shots on the round targets that where in the not too far distance. Missed every single one of them. When suddenly I felt a soft pressure on the back of the head, and heard a clicking noice. "Freeze! Did you really think I'd let go a rich guy like you without taking your money? You got to be stupid." He was pointing a gun at the back of my head.Oh well, guess you should never trust strangers... I'm putting a lot of effort into this. So please leave a like if you want to keep me motivated
I like this, it's good, but I'm gonna go correcting some mistakes... I mean no harm I'm just a little annoyed by them. I heard "coughing" not an "a" "too well", too good is... awkward. Anyway I really enjoy the story and want to know what happens next! I also kind of want to know what this mysterious shooter looks like!
Oh, ok. I'll try to be a bit more careful with the grammar, but I can't promise anything. I'll also try to give characters some more personality, even tough I haven't realy started the story yet.
Finished chapter 2. I feel like writing chapter 3-10 today too, I even got the ideas, but I don't want to push my imagination to far. Edit: Also, it seems a bit more like a story now. Enjoy
I did it! I wrote chapter 3! I planned ahead to like... chapter 6 already. This is going to be fun Expect next Chapter tomorrow. Edit: Oh yeah, cliff hangers included in episode 1-6
The story itself is really good, a story within a story. It's obvious you've put some planning into it. If you want a critical breakdown of the grammar / structure, I can give you one. With a little tweaking it would be much more readable. But it's enjoyable all the same. Especially good considering Italian is your first language though.
First of all, I think your story would benefit from upping your font size by one or two and/or changing your font type. Courier is not that readable on a black background in my opinion. Second, you're inconsistent with the time, What? It seems there is thought here, but it's not made clear from context. Third, your compulsive need to use a single line per sentence breaks the pacing a little, but that's your choice. Finally, the storyline is nice, though. It's not too clear but not too vague. I like that.
Yeah, grammar is not my strong side. I can't realy decide what time to use or how. I've never lerned to write a story that jumps back and forth in time, at least in english. And about that "one sentence" stuff. Well, as I told you: not speaking english too well, never told a story, and so on But thanks for the support Edit: Also, if I would break the line less frequently, it would look bad at my high resolution monitor... But I'm going to convert it... maybe...
Okay, critique on the major issues I see. Honestly, the formatting was the #1 I was going to bring up, so you've already worked on that. I'm going to go into detail with my critique because I can tell you've got a knack for the story and plot (I wouldn't bother normally, but I think you're a diamond in the rough here heh). So don't take this as overly critical, more that I want to see your full potential. I'll also say that your english is quite good for not being your native language. One suggestion would be to work on your dialogue tags; he said, she said, etc. A lot of people skimp on these thinking they hurt the flow of the story, but used correctly they are almost invisible. Anyone who reads a lot will find it second nature to read dialogue tags, almost like breathing. Of course you don't want to overdo it either (sometimes it's obvious who is speaking, and not needed). Also, in doing this, try not to get too fancy with the "whispers, shouts, yells, replies," unless they enhance what is said. The other thing you can do is break up sentences of dialogue using action. Think about how you converse with people, rarely are you just standing there talking. People tend to emote a lot while speaking, or speak while doing other things. If a character is in the middle of an action scene and you constantly use repeating lines of straight dialogue, with no actions, it becomes hard to imagine the scene in my head. It becomes a series of "talking heads" if you know what I mean. Easiest way to show the options is to quote some quick examples. Here are actions taking place before, during or after an appropriate line of dialogue (from Nababoo's story). Some also double as a technique for showing who is speaking, without even using "he said, she said" tags. Next I'll quote some examples from my story of different ways to use dialogue tags. This can be more of a style thing, writers use tags in many ways. Personally, I try to vary mine as much as possible. The basic technique, of course, is "_____," she said. But you can also insert it midway, so that the reader knows who is speaking, or at the beginning. And you can skip the tags all together by linking the action with the dialogue, like I said before. The last one uses the -- dash to show that he was interrupted. Great for action scenes or characters bickering. That pretty much covers it. The next one I don't use very often, and some writers probably don't use at all. Using the tag at the beginning of a sentence: I hope all that was helpful. I'm incapable of critiquing without turning it into an english lesson, obviously. And like I said, I'm only being critical because I think you're already on the right track. Keep it up.
You obviously put a lot of thought into this. I like it. Also I'm sorry there was no chapter yesterday oder (at least until now) for today. Life is getting busy, and I just gotta take my time. Maybe there is one today...
