Repair Console
https://www.weasyl.com/submission/769407
Keith Montrose, an otter, is an antique store clerk being groomed to run the shop one day by its elderly owner, a kind old wolf named Chaz. The world they live in is a bleak near-future world where the air is near-toxic, superbugs spawned in ERs have killed 2/3 of the city, an eartquake has left the place a gigantic ruin, and a police state has made their Cathar Revivalist beliefs illegal.
Then, a 75-year-old NES console unaffected by the badly-polluted air comes through their door...
There were several things I wanted to achieve with this.
Objective 1: provide a short work as an example of what I'm currently capable of. Failed. I don't believe this comes close to "The Vimana Incident" and I'm a bit worried that I can't repeat that brilliance in a shorter format. In particular, the plot doesn't feel very original to me and I know I can do better than this crap.
Objective 2: Break a cardinal rule of marketable fiction and still produce something worth reading. I may have succeeded here at least. I won't give away which cardinal rule I break but I think I found a way to break it while giving the scenario a realistic sort of awkwardness.
Objective 3: Explore Philip K. Dick's idea of God rising from the trash layer as a metaphysical construct: accomplished, technically, though not as smoothly as I might have hoped. It feels tacked on.
Anyway, those are my gripes with this work, but I really don't want to spend much more time on it because I need to save my energy for the next project.
Keith Montrose, an otter, is an antique store clerk being groomed to run the shop one day by its elderly owner, a kind old wolf named Chaz. The world they live in is a bleak near-future world where the air is near-toxic, superbugs spawned in ERs have killed 2/3 of the city, an eartquake has left the place a gigantic ruin, and a police state has made their Cathar Revivalist beliefs illegal.
Then, a 75-year-old NES console unaffected by the badly-polluted air comes through their door...
There were several things I wanted to achieve with this.
Objective 1: provide a short work as an example of what I'm currently capable of. Failed. I don't believe this comes close to "The Vimana Incident" and I'm a bit worried that I can't repeat that brilliance in a shorter format. In particular, the plot doesn't feel very original to me and I know I can do better than this crap.
Objective 2: Break a cardinal rule of marketable fiction and still produce something worth reading. I may have succeeded here at least. I won't give away which cardinal rule I break but I think I found a way to break it while giving the scenario a realistic sort of awkwardness.
Objective 3: Explore Philip K. Dick's idea of God rising from the trash layer as a metaphysical construct: accomplished, technically, though not as smoothly as I might have hoped. It feels tacked on.
Anyway, those are my gripes with this work, but I really don't want to spend much more time on it because I need to save my energy for the next project.