Whiteout - A short story

I'm not going to pretend I'm pleased with this one. Knocked out in a couple of hours this is yet another example of a missed opportunity; something could have been produced that I was actually happy with had I spent more than one evening on it. I felt it was rushed and the concept, contrived.

However, this latest assignment for my creative writing course scored me a respectable 77/100 (62/80 for main piece, 15/20 for the reflective commentary). A score that underlines how much more I could have accomplished if I had taken more time.

The brief was to write a short story for submission to a magazine. The magazine had to be researched to make sure the piece was suitable and within their submission specifications. Anyway... I decided to go Sci-Fi and pick the magazine Interzone.

My story is called Whiteout.

And here it is... followed by my own commentary and then my tutors comments at the end. Quite wordy, attention and commitment levels may vary. Congratulations in advance if you make it to the end, and thanks too.

Whiteout

The air cooled and the sky turned crimson in the span of a gunshot. The midday August sun. An orange shield, held aloft by the bloody, cloudless heavens, high and searing in its intensity, could, for just a moment, be viewed comfortably with the naked eye. Mollusc had his camera ready for just this event. He aimed for the heart of the solar system and snapped the shutter. The photographer smiled as he viewed the image on the cameras VDU. A direct hit, and just in time, too. Mollusc fumbled the camera back into his satchel and reapplied his white gloves with mere seconds to spare before the sun returned to its fierce, white-hot, all-consuming job of cleansing planet Earth of life. With a minor adjustment of his heavy white hood, Mollusc started the long descent of the sandy, bone riddled hill in France, to his burrow deep in the dry English Channel.

Mollusc knew he was being watched as he traversed the many kilometres of parched sea bed. A white speck on a silent, ghastly landscape, his hip flask catching the sun and glinting with every step, like a lighthouse's unseeing, blinking eye, enduring its duty, ignorant of the drought. Mollusc was always being watched.

The figure who contemplated the photographer as he walked was dressed in the same manner as his object of interest. Hooded white long coat, sandy coloured boots and official looking, thin white gloves. But the watchers’ face was obscured completely by a black veil that hung loose from the brim of the hood and fastened tightly over his face to the topmost button of the long coat. Facial features could barely be identified from anything further than a distance of inches. But this man clearly had a thick beard and moustache below a nose that threatened the black mesh. He had a walking cane, waist high, attached to his wrist with a strap. It was with this cane that the tall man tested the unstable ground before taking a small step closer to Mollusc.

“Can he possibly last another day?” the unheard question was delivered with a voice as dry as the bluff the figure was stood on. Chalk hills were all that remained of England’s greatest monument of defence. The rate of erosion had multiplied tenfold during the Great Storm and little of the white cliffs were left. Broken obelisks, shards the height of twenty men, fell in their dozens into the dehydrated channel and there they towered; a formidable yet easily breached row of monoliths; tombstones at the foot of the white hills of Dover.

The strip lights flickered on and the small room strobed into view as Mollusc shuffled his sandy boots across the dirty floor. The narrow, low ceilinged passage was lined on either side with white worktops below rows of lockers, from each a heavy padlock hung. The counter-tops were bare and clean. The floor where Mollusc stood as he rooted in his bag, removing his camera, a note book, pencils and a telescope, was dusty, but only where he had shuffled his boots off. The rest of the floor, made by Mollusc from smooth rock, laid like crazy paving, shined and reflected a halogen runway from the strip-lights above.

Items were removed from the satchel and laid carefully, symmetrically, on the space of work-top closest to Mollusc; the empty shoulder bag placed in a cupboard near his feet. The white gloves, once removed, belonged in a bucket which, once his socks were in too, was sprinkled with powder from an unmarked bottle, then sealed with a bespoke lid. Barefoot but still wearing his white coat, Mollusc took a few steps forward toward a wall mounted telephone. It had a round dial and looked very ordinary but for the handset, which had been modified to appear like something a soldier might use on a battlefield; rough, durable black rubber handgrip with wires of blue and red protruding to an earpiece and microphone on either end; a six inch long aerial poked from the top. It looked very alien and invasive sat on its 1970’s, lime green cradle. Mollusc picked it up and pinched it between his shoulder and clean shaven cheek, whirring and clicking broke the silence as a familiar number was quickly dialled. Mollusc pulled back his sleeve and observed his wristwatch as he listened to a series of beeps and whistles. Seemingly satisfied, the receiver was replaced and Mollusc shrugged back his hood, ran fingers through cropped, dark hair, took off his white coat and carried it to a wall hook where he carefully hung it. His attire was a functional, immaculate, grey jumpsuit, running half the length of each leg were rows of pockets from knee to waist, further up, pencils poked from breast pockets and, splitting the outfit in half, a brown canvas belt; adorned with compass, sheathed army knife and an assortment of yet more pockets apparently bulging with useful items. There was a badge stitched onto his right breast, an eagle, full spread, clutching a rifle with one foot and a spanner with the other. Behind the majestic emblem were the two flags of The New Alliance; the colours of red, white and blue had weathered the great storm about as well as the monuments the alliance was forged to protect and were a barely recognisable pink, purple blur. But it still meant something to Mollusc and he often, unconsciously touched the worn badge, pressing it firmly between his chest and fingers, finding reassurance in its presence.

The bunker had two rooms, Mollusc quietly padded to a door that occupied the wall at the other end of the room and laid his hand on the shiny, cold chrome of the handle. He got half way through its opening turn when the sterile air split with the shrill ringing sound of the hybrid telephone. Mollusc turned on his heel and picked up the receiver. His expression was fixed and he uttered no greeting as he held the device to his ear. Minutes passed as Mollusc listened intently to the disembodied voice. The exchange was entirely one way until Mollusc, expressionless, sighed and replaced the receiver.

A panel on the clean worktop was pressed and a computer keyboard with blank keys slid outwards from a narrow hatch at waist height, there was no chair in this room. This computer was positioned to be used briefly whilst standing, not to be used excessively and unnecessarily which is what a chair would, no doubt, promote. On the wall Mollusc was facing, a small screen about the size of a packet of cigarettes and in a steel frame of dents and rivets silently came to life when he depressed a key. He deftly tapped his way through a series of menus until he rested on a splash screen with an official looking crest filling the display. Mollusc stared at the eagle for a few seconds, his finger hovering over the ‘enter’ key.

“Let me in,” the voice crackled from a speaker by the entrance and made Mollusc start, “come on, Mollusc. It’s freezing out here.” The male voice chuckled and a rhythm was beaten on the door from the outside. Mollusc recognised the beat as that of an old pop song. He pushed the keyboard back in to its housing and walked barefoot to the door.

“What do you want?”

“A cup of sugar,” the voice crackled back, “you’re kidding, right? Open the door.” Mollusc turned a key and sliding metal on metal and clicks were heard from within the thick door as it unlocked. The visitor pushed and Mollusc had to take a step back to avoid being knocked from his feet. The visitor was tall, and had to stoop as he entered the bunker. He threw his white hood back pulled the black mesh mask down around his neck. He was blonde, with a ruddy complexion and clean shaven, “You’re not ready?” the visitor looked Mollusc up and down, “you’re not even wearing shoes. Come on, there’s still time. Gotta be quick though.” The visitor pushed past Mollusc, boots making dusty prints on the clean floor.

“I’m not going.” Mollusc stood and watched his friend open cupboards and push food and drink quickly into his shoulder bag.

“Sure you are,” the blonde man did not look up, “get some shoes on.”

“Did you sleep all day? Did you not see the sky?”

“Yeah, sure, I see the sky all the time. It’s white and it hurts,” he stood in front of Mollusc and grabbed his shoulders, “and we’re leaving because I’m all out of factor 4 million and the closest chemist is,” he paused and looked at the ceiling, mocking a calculation, “about a billion miles away.” He thrust the satchel into Molluscs arms, “now, get your shit together because the clock’s ticking.”

“It turned red today” Mollusc let the bag drop to the floor. His friend stopped rattling cupboards and stared at the dark haired man before him.

“Bull.”

“I can show you.”

Planet Earth was dying. Billions considered it to be dead already. A spinning corpse, cluttering up the solar system. Each resource carefully and expertly grazed into nothing by the human cattle who populated her. Oil, coal, trees and wildlife had all been used up. If humans were given a chance, they would have drained the earth of water too but that responsibility was taken from them by the sky itself. A depleted ozone layer saw to it that the sun that life on earth depended on turned against the careless inhabitants. Evacuations took decades to organise and accomplish and the program had outlived many who were looking forward to a new life aboard one of the hundreds of space stations in orbit. There was a plan. The super powers of the richest continents built an army of scientists who thought that they could fix the earth. Between them, these teams of scientists spent a lot of money and accomplished very little and, at first one at a time but soon after they left earth in their tens and twenties until there were precious few left. The passionate few. Like Mollusc and his tall, eager to leave, assistant. Who were, at that moment, huddled around the tiny screen in the tiny bunker in on the bed of the English Channel. The visitor spoke first, “were you seen?”

“Yes.” Replied Mollusc as he pulled out the keyboard and connected his camera to the beaten screen, “I’m sure it was Haydock.”

“Show me the sky.” The wall mounted VDU was small, mere inches across, but when the screen turned crimson it was so momentous that it filled their view completely. It was all they could see. The result of years of research, sacrifice and hard work. It would take many more years. The two men would be old, they may not even see the process to completion.

“It works,”      

Commentary

The magazine I decided to write a short story for is a bi-monthly publication called Interzone. A science fiction magazine that has been popular since 1982. It is a general interest sci fi magazine that features reviews and features as well as regularly publishing short stories from unknown authors as well as established ones. Many best selling writers of recent years werefirst published in interzone and they credit the magazine as a strong influence. The stories they generally accept are substantially longer than mine. They accept submissions of anything up to 10,000 words. In the issues I read through, however, that word count was rarely reached by any author except for the most established (I read a Michael Moorcock story that got close to 8000 words, but for the most part, submissions from first time authors tended to peak at 5000 and some even less). My story would have had to have been considerable fleshed out if I were to submit it. I chose Interzone not only because of my love of science fiction but also because of the high profile of the magazine. It is regularly read by film production companies and many of the stories or merely the concepts have been purchased from the author with a view to produce a movie or television serial in the future. This brings me to another advantage of Interzone; once submitted, the authors story still and concept still belongs entirely to the author.

A submission requirement is for the author to include a covering letter detailing any relevant credits but is really an excuse for the author to informally introduce him or herself. They are especially interested to hear if you have been published before because Interzone has built its history and its fan base on discovering new talent, so glossing over the truth or trying to pad out non-existent credentials would possibly only hurt a new author.

The kind of story or theme I was hoping to achieve was a kind of 2001 Space Odyssey environment. Lots of sterility and very little dialogue. I tried to give a sense of what my characters were about by the way they acted or by the kind of environments they occupied.  The Arthur C Clark influence only stretched to the way I described environments and the way my characters interacted with them, when it came to the dialogue, I found myself slipping into old habits of writing casual conversations that were not fitting of the characters or the situation they were in.

I think it’s obvious that I wrote a lot more that the 2000 word limit and the story and rhythm suffered greatly as a result of my clumsy editing. Despite doing the exercises in the work book I found it very difficult to trim effectively and instead found myself chopping out whole paragraphs that were there to support or flesh out a recently introduced character.

This was a bad writing experience for me and the lessons I learned from it were that I should not be so attached to a character description (the bearded man) that I include it at the expense of more valuable paragraphs . That character of Haydock should have been cut completely and the space he left would have been better filled with more history of the two remaining characters and more back story to flesh out the whole reason they wereleft on earth in the first place.

Tutors comments

"One couldn't fault either the donnee (basic good idea) of the story or its targeting towards Interzone: those are positives to return to. However, the balance of the story's narrative doesn't yet seem right. I use the term 'yet' deliberately since I am pretty confident that this could have worked out well with more authorial time and space. As the story stands, though, which is what we naturally have to focus on, it does seem to suffer from two sorts of 'excess' - one in the presence of the 'Third Man' Haydock and the other in extended mise en scene for the cave. Note that this judgement isn't incompatible with saying that both are rather well-written stylistically: but at times that rather crude instrument the blue pencil needs to be used in the service of the whole rather than perhaps dispensable parts.

"Better to have hinted at the existence of Mollusc's assistant earlier on (whether through him being the watcher  or as a figure in Mollusc's self-communings) and then to have left more space for the implications of the final conversation to be fully explored even if we end with a stand-off (which is not a rproblem per se). Moving to the micro-level, there are also proof-reading errors which do matter when we are considering something for publication in a prestigious magazine. This is not just a fictional requirement for TMA05 but does represent how things are in the real world too. if one imagines the editor wading through large piles of material and then coming to something both fresh and convincing from a new author AND not needing any extended correspondence  about its 'finish' one can see how little things can adversely  tip the balance on publication. One might well get a friendly and supportive letter suggesting a further rewrite, which would of course by no means be the worst of reactions to receive. Still, it would be frustrating to feel that, with another weeks work, you could have 'hit the bullseye'.

"But I spoke of returning to the positives, and I do think this shows a genuine understanding of the demands of the genre. You take a familiar theme and then give it tremendously vivid new detailing, so that we really do feel rather than just think about a dessicated earth. Both the characterization of the stubborn Mollusc and the lively dialogue keep up the good stylistic standard. If this does suffer from having something of the form of a short story and something of the opening chapter of a novel (things that look potentially  interesting but could only get taken up effectively in a longer format), that is also to say that one feels you might be capable of writing either well. Your commentary is crisp and focused on the targeting issue and forthright about the problems that arose, though I would critique the commentary a little for being over-hard (a slightly unusual 'failing'!) on your editing etc. You make it sound as if you botched it seriously, whereas the more sober truth is that you produced a slightly off-balance, loose-ended version of what has the makings of a powerful story, and still provide much to intrigue the reader. Overall, a serious and mature response to the demands of TMA05"