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Beginnings of a Novellette: Disease Control
robotbebop
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
EDIT: Please read the updated manuscripts below, I'm leaving the rest of this post intact to give context to the actual discussion here. But for people simply looking for something to read I'll post the manuscript links
Chapter #1
Chapter #2
And now with the regular thread:
The following is the backstory and the first chapter of a short-story/novellette that I'm writing that is currently titled "Disease Control"
I strongly encourage readers to view the Manuscript PDF rather than the forum post.
Chapter #1
Chapter #2
And now with the regular thread:
The following is the backstory and the first chapter of a short-story/novellette that I'm writing that is currently titled "Disease Control"
I strongly encourage readers to view the Manuscript PDF rather than the forum post.
Environment
~~~~~~~~~~~
- Large cities in North America have expanded into giant city-states.
- Disease control was fought with over-medication. Anti-biotics do not work and vaccines exist for few viral strains. People who are sick are instantly quarantined until their inevitable death. Outbreaks are countered with riot police. Police forces excerise lethal force in cases of quarantine violations.
PAST
~~~~
As the North American population exploded in the middle of the 21st century disease control became an issue. A major pandemic of Influenza spread through North America with more rapdity than previous pandemics.
Once vast quarantines could be established a continent-wide vaccination program was put in place by the World Health Organization and the Canadian/US governments. The vaccine was provided by a major pharmaceudical corporations.
In the decades following the pandemic a reactionary culture of hypochondria started to evolve. Perpetuated by constant fear-mongering of the media people unwittingly demanded improved disease control and prevention. People began demanding anti-biotics for relatively benign diseases and infections fearing that the next great "Super Bug" was on the horizon. The issue became an election point in both the US and Canada.
The US and Canadian governments collaborated and enacted equalivalent Immunization acts; Known across North America as the North American Immunization Agreement.
Funded by tax dollars the US and Canada contracted various pharmaceudical corporations and began massive wide-spread immunization programs. The programs were met with immediate success in major population centers. Decades followed and the populations grew massive in the major population centers; However, certain viral and bacterial strains evolved as a process of genetic mutations in bacteria and co-evolution in some viruses rendering anti-biotics and vaccination mostly useless. Certain strains of diseases that were once thought almost entirely suppressed mutated outside the protection of what were now sprawling city-states. It was only a matter of time before those diseases found their ways into the city-states of North America.
Outbreaks ran rampant. The US and Canadian governments struggled under the pressure of what was then called the North American Outbreak. Even larger quarantines were put in place; The diseases were aggressive inside the quarantine. Bacterial diseases mutated further while emergency anti-biotic ration distribution was poorly organized.
Quarantine and treatment centers were erected in all major city-states; Those living between or outside city-states either died or were transported to a quarantine area closest to those who could afford it.
Quarantine and Treatment Centers were largely unsuccessful and no lasting treatments were ever produced. Some accused the Administration of such centers of performing cruel and painful experiments on dying patients. Survival rates were all but non-existant.
Years later the establishment of Quarantine and Treatment Centers (QTCs) simply became death camps where the sick were brought to die. A combination of insufficient resources, staffing and funding had led to this. People who refused to willingly submit transfers to QTCs simply disappeared. QTCs were not the only areas of administration to suffer the same fate. Soon, the US and Canadian government's power became diluted by the increasing social isolation from the city-states; The US and Canadian governments had little choice but to give more power to their respective city-states.
The greatest city-states constructed giant shield walls and networks of permaglass over their buildings. Giant air-filtration systems were eventually constructed and before long each city-state had a department of homeostasis ensuring that no bacterial or viral agents "infected" the contained environment of the city-state.
Every living area was built with devices that tested an occupant's breath, skin and blood for infections: the occupant is not allowed to leave until they are confirmed as "Healthy"
PRESENT
~~~~~~~
People who fall ill are detected and quarantined to their homes. QTCs have all been dismantled or re-purposed. City-states are operated by governments operating under a police-state system. Entire economies are contained inside the city-states and commerce between city-states is harshly regulated and smuggling goods between cities is a major offense, often resulting in life imprisonment.
Each city-state is struggling with growing underground resistance groups.
City-states have incorporated a conscription based research system where people with degrees in medical and biological sciences are "drafted" into completely isolated research centers. These research centers are defended and lethal force is used to prevent unauthorized access.
I wrote:Chapter One
Erik Lloyd and a young woman were in the climax of an impromptu sexual encounter in the supply room of the office building where they were worked together.
Laura was her name. They had been having a secret affair for a time of three weeks. They kept their relationship private due to the office policy regarding relationships between co-workers. Erik was a clerk for the sales company that owned the office. Laura was a secretary for the office's floor manager.
Presently, their abrupt meeting ended. Laura and Erik quickly fumbled about their clothes; Laura's hair was tossed and her face flush. Erik recovered himself with ease while Laura had difficulty with the slip under her skirt. Erik gazed at the oval features of her face and how her dark brown hair appeared to flow through her fingers as if it required no conscious effort of her own. She had a small nose that separated her round blue eyes. Erik continued his gaze down across her chest and over her sloping curves and then her hips.
He quickly brushed wrinkles out of his shirt and took a quick glance around to spot any possible spies. "So, tonight then?"
"Yeah, call me around nine." Laura smiled warmly and left the supply room.
Erik watched her walk out of the supply room and out the door as she walked with an enticing and almost teasing step. Taking a box of pencils on a shelf to his left, he exited the supply room.
Erik knew that some of his co-workers were aware--or at least suspicious--of Laura and his' affair but he said nothing regardless. He was a quiet man who seldom engaged in the self-contained social life of an office work place. Best to keep work and life as separate as possible, after all. As possible, he thought.
He walked down the hallway to the right of the supply room back to his desk. His was in an open room where there were twelve desks in two columns, paired and facing each other. Two large windows were placed on the left wall offering a view of the Bel-Air prefecture in the city-state of California. His desk faced his co-worker's and was in the left column farthest from the hallway where he had entered. He slumped into his seat and tossed the box of pencils on the top of his desk while his co-worker, Osborn, was still seated and working on a payroll report.
Osborn raised his head and leaned back into his seat. He gave Erik a sly look and asked "You have a hard time finding them pencils?" Osborn, an older man with an abrasive voice and an annoying accent that agitated Erik--largely because the accent was fake. Osborn loved to hear his own voice and his accent became thicker in his amusement.
Erik tried not to cringe and answered, "Ahh, yeah. I think we're ahh.. short."
Osborn answered with a mocking sneer, "I just saw that Laura prance by-- wow! Is she ever a cutie!" His accent had grown thicker.
Erik suppressed a mocking smile of his own and started on his work. You can play this game with me all you want--you bored old geezer.
* * * * *
Erik stood outside a quiet Italian restaurant and tried to call Laura from his cell phone. He had been calling for fifteen minutes and hadn't received an answer. After a number of further attempts failed he gave up and hailed a taxi.
The taxi dropped him off in front of his apartment complex and he swiped his keycard to allow himself inside. The entrance led to an open lobby where two longer hallways met. Directly at the end of the lobby there was an elevator that Erik called. The doors opened revealing three Officers from the Department of Homeostasis; one officer appeared to be supervising while the others carried an opaque white capsule with red-crosses on either side.
The Officers were wearing protective gear: Shiny black plastic under the dull matte of their flak jackets; Their faces covered by sealed masks. The third Officer pushed Erik to the side of the elevator's entrance and asked him if he had known the capsule's occupant and if he had been in close and physical contact with the occupant. Erik answered honestly and the officers were on their way.
Riding the elevator to his apartment's floor, Erik tried to forget the shock of what he had witnessed. He knew that people who fallen ill were quarantined to their apartments while Homeostasis Officers (often called "Anti-Bodies") waited out the inevitable death of the quarantined person. However, illness was rare and he had never seen such an event before. He had always understood the policy as neccesary to the "greater good" of society: But now witnessing the procedure had left him uneasy. The elevator arrived at his floor.
Erik's apartment was a small area. Directly in front and to his left was his bed with a number of small drawers contained underneath. Beside the bed was a counter. On the left end of the counter an Infection Scanner was mounted; Then, continuing right was a sink and tap. Under the counter there were cupboards and a small dishwasher.
He left his personal effects on the counter and hung his coat on a hook in the wall opposite the counter. Sitting on his bed he removed his shoes and then laid back against the wall sidling his bed; He rifled through the unmade covers to find the remote that controlled the TV, mounted in the wall opposite the bed.
He flipped through crude sitcoms, over ambitious drama and the daily news reports: The new threat of underground terrorism, steps being taken to ensure the health and safety of the city state, the usual address by the Governor of California.
He decided against the mundaneness of television and tossed his remote to the floor. He turned and laid fully on the bed, reaching upward to a button to deactivate the apartment's lighting. Thoughts of his encounter with Laura that day filled his memory before he fell to sleep.
robotbebop on
Do not feel trapped by the need to achieve anything, this way you achieve everything.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
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You are trying to give us too much information too fast with the starting sentence. It could be improved; it sounds too forced at the moment.
Personally, I think it is a bit superfluous too. Many of the adverbs you don't really need.
Oh, and...
This would sound better if you started with the subject or topic (her sloping curves), and then moved onto the actual curves - her chest and hips.
You're also using passive voice in places. One example:
Should be; "He took a box of pencils from a shelf to his left and exited the supply room." Or something similar.
Another example where you've done this:
You also have a habit of capitalizing the word directly after your colons and semicolons.
I noticed a few other punctuation errors in the piece as well. Nothing too drastic, and nothing that can't be fixed with a quick run over.
I quite like the story
I had originally written that but I didn't like it at first. I was also starting to get sleepy when I was writing this.
I have a finished manuscript version available.
Coming soon: Chapter two?
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
And yeah I know what you mean about not liking something like that. With me I know it's wrong, but it's just so -- nice, like that. lol.
Oh well, look forward to the next chapter.
I may be stupid saying this but: I don't know if I'm comfortable posting more chapters here because I intend to submit this novellette/short story to a number of Sci-fi mags for serialization. I dunno if they'd bite knowing that the story was freely available online but then again I don't know much about how that whole process works.
With that aside, here is the second chapter of Disease Control. As previously, I strongly suggest reading the manuscript version.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
The premise needs some explaination. The population of the world (and America, most likely sooner) is expected to level off in around 50 years. People are moving to cities, and the trend is in cities people have less children. Eventually it's expected that people will on average only be replacing themselves.
Overpopulation is unlikely. City metropolitan areas only constitute 8% of the total land area of the US, and hold the the majority of the population. There is still way to much room left.
The situation seems far more likely in developing economies; nations undergoing a shift from an agricultural based economy to a production phase. That's where you see a massive amount of people moving from the country to the city, and cities usually cannot keep up. You want very poor living conditions with high population density. The larger the network of interacting persons from various places the better. New strands are typically diseases that eventually evolve and are carried over from animals, so a dense poor urban population that lives around and with livestock seems like a strong idea. Someplace in India or China maybe.
Also, you would have to explain how city states replace states in authority. The constitution was designed to marginalize the political influence of cities and the possiblity of "mob rule." The founding fathers tolerated cities and a few like Jefferson saw them as economic necessities, but these people were from the towns and countryside. They were fearful of what urban society could eventually mean.
City States would require a revolution of government. The nation would most likely have a different name, and democracy as we understand it would be compromised. As it is cities ultimately under the authority of their states, even to the point of determining growth. If the authority was given to individual city governments with no higher authority other than maybe a federal government, places like the east coast and california would probably turn into political warzones of cities in border desputes. Maybe. I don't know. Thats how it used to work. The anti-plague solution seems to be organized by some higher governmental force. If there is a higher force, I don't know if they'd technically be city states, as they would all essentially be a nation state sundivided in hundreds of smaller districts.
Epidemics that are highly contagious and fatal usually run their course very quickly. They actually become less harmful over time, as the most dangerous variants kill their hosts faster than their hosts can spread it. You would need to explain why these diseases, if so dangerous, are around long enough to have the sort of infrastructure to counter it that you describe. The balance will be tough. Most diseases can be kept from spreading pretty easily. You also only have so many people, and diseases released on completely new populations which have no immunity (example: Cortez's smallpox vs the Aztecs), usually result in an upward of a 90% deathrate.
They would have to be partially immune, but somehow not immune enough to warrant the people to accept that kind of government solution. You seem to be riding a thin line between the population being completely decimated and another kind of sickness like aids, which doesn't spread very easily. The easiest solution is obviously also the most cliche: the plague being a bio engineered government conspiracy, held in equillibrium somehow by just the right about of vaccines being produced. Perhaps bioterrorism is another option.
I haven't come back to this piece in a while though. It has been falling apart, mostly because of the reasons you specified.
My root concept was a society that was so contained from external sources that our immune system atrophied to a point where any basic infection ensured death. However the more I thought and continue to think about the concept makes it harder to get to that concept believably.
The fictional society in North America suffered major losses by a pandemic of Influenza. And thinking about a situation like that and placed into our culture of reactionism and fear-mongering it seemed natural to me that an outbreak of an aggressive Influenza virus would only aggravate our culture further.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
This idea can be done, and done well. It would require some more research into diseases. You could have a genetic explaination perhaps, having certain ethnic backgrounds being more or less susceptible. If the plagues were engineered then the disease control centers could be seen as a form of national defense. Also, if they were engineered the creators could be releasing new strands about as quickly as scientists cure the old ones. Ethnic cleansing maybe? I'm sure if the mechanics of viruses vs the body were explored more, you could come up with a variety of options to support what you find as a compelling message. The diseases could somehow target certain economic classes, people of certain occupations, people with certain behaviors. The terrorists could be motivated on moral grounds.
Placing the story in a country like India or China, and doing it well, would provide a ton of reader interest. The main charactor could still be American, it'd be easier to write that way. I haven't read any future based fiction that predicts what these rapidly changing societies will be like in the coming decades.
These are just ideas though. I've noticed that most creative ideas go through a series of evolutions before they find their mark. If the inspiration is still there, I'd encourage you to work out the weaknesses and go kick out the jams.
As for a suggestion with dealing with believability...
I'm not sure how important all the technical details (specifically the time) of the background are to the story you have in mind, but you could change the time of the setting to a period a lot further along than the 21st century. This would allow more than 50 years of growth and government alteration to the city-states.
But seriously, whatever you do I think it'd work. I know I'm itching to read something already even though this is just an outline!
That's not specifically a fantasy setting
And now the new Time Odyssey series starts in the same world (sort of) but goes at a "right angle" to the original Space Odyssey series. Arthur C. Clarke has called it an "Orthequel"
Anyway, I'm digressing.
I'm glad that you guys are enjoying what I've written and it's been a huge confidence (and ego) boost.
I'll give you guys a quick synopsis of the actual story so you have an idea of where I'm heading: [spoiler:fa4c953793]Erik Lloyd becomes the first man in XX years to develop proper anti-bodies to fight off a major disease. A rebel group finds out and takes an entire city block hostage and claims that they have a vial that contains a deadly strain of the Ebola virus. They demand that Erik be released to them so that they can make their own vaccine and distribute it to the populace believing that the government will not do the same. It gets to the point where the government plans to simply firebomb the city block where the rebel threat is originating from. Erik realizes that hundreds upon thousands of people will die regardless of the conflict's outcome and burns himself alive. Anything that was in his body that could've been used for medical purposes is utterly destroyed.[/spoiler:fa4c953793]
PS: I strongly suggest that anybody who likes classic sci-fi to read the first book in the Time Odyssey series Time's Eye
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Re: your earlier concern about publication, yes, you'll need to take this offline when you submit it.
Your synopsis seems alright. I'm more interested in getting invested in the characters right now.
Good luck!
Chapter #1
Chapter #2
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
How about describing what erik felt when he tried to call laura from his cellphone? what did he think when she didn't asnwer? was he pissed, hurt, worried? what?
Don't make Erik an automaton, make him human.
As the story, it is quite interesting, and I'd like to find out what is going to happen.
edit =
crap. I read the spoiler.
"Eric arrived at his office and sat at his desk" or "Eric let himself into his apartment" - lines like this don't add anything. Start the scene as close as possible to the reason why the scene exists.
For example, an author doesn't have to tell us that jack picked up the phone, he just needs to tell us that jack is shouting into his phone and people will assume that at some point he picked it up. Picking up the phone is fatty information.
If you need that kind of transition, use the line to show us something else that gives insight into what's happening. You don't have to tell us he's distraught, have him fumble with his keys and be too shakey to fit his key into the door.
Telling us what's happening is plain, but also a poor way to utilize the potential drama in your scenes. Most situations can communicate several things about what's going on at once. More information in less lines is a no brainer, and there's some room here for improvement. If you give the reader the right angles, they can make sense of any situation themselves, and their imagination will be way more vivid than your writing trying to do it for them.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Chapter #1
Chapter #2
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
good job, robotbebop. you dressed up your story and she's looking pretty.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
You have many of the building blocks for good writing. You seem to have a good vocabulary, for instance.
On the other hand, I don't think that you are taking writing as seriously as you might. When I read something that I've just written, I always read it back to myself, and pretend that I've just spent twenty-eight dollars on the published copy: if I'm pissed, I need to rewrite it.
From the above quote, I can glean all of the information I need about the scene, and a lot of it really gets me going. For instance, the red cross, combined with the complete inhumanity of the officers is a nice touch. I like the contrast.
On the other hand (and let me say that I am not trying to be mean, I am simply trying to get a point across) I feel a little bit like I am reading a past tense transcript of a table-top RPG.
The images are good. However, the reader can not see what you can see in your head; and more importantly, what Erik can see. The only way to make the reader see that, is to rub his/her face in Erik's world. It is not enough to simply describe the objects as they exist. For instance: "The Officers were wearing protective gear: shiny black plastic under the dull matte of their flak jackets; their faces covered by sealed masks." I think that the Officers look like the police from "Half Life 2." What does Erik think? What does he notice about them? From the narative, I am led to believe that his first observation is that one of them is the leader, then he takes note of their armor.
In this situation, I don't know how important it is to give a detailed physical description of the Officers. I would probably worry more about a single, telling detail, which serves as a trigger for the emotions which will carry Erik through this scene. Erik, as the protagonist of what seems to be a personal story, is the most important aspect in any scene.
Aditionally, make sure that when you do state a character's emotions, they are properly worded. At the end of the scene, I don't think that I would say that Erik had 'an odd sense of fear' I think that the situation warrents a completely normal sense of fear.
Just some things to bear in mind as you continue onward: Good fiction writing is almost always based on either the human aspect, or prose. I personally have very little interest in reading informative fiction. This may just be my bias, but now you have my opinion.