Ciphers in a Foreign Sky

Spoiler

I'm joining the flash fiction bandwagon, but not the contest. 8]

Would It Be Called Pica or Cannibalism?

When all the organics died, we divided ourselves into four groups – Plants, Animals, Humans, and Decomposers; back then everyone had fun pretending to be alive. We had trouble cooking at first, because the water would short-circuit when we boiled Plants (real plants didn’t have chips and wires instead of sap) and eating was hard, but we managed and later celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving by carving into Animals.

When Plants ran out, we had to keep eating Animals. They soon fled to the wastelands beyond. When hunting failed, we improvised.

Today’s Thanksgiving, and it seems they drew me the marinade bath.


Freedom Means Having No Master

Luring slaves into rebellion is easy. They’re tired and angry; spout a few inspiring words, and they’ll pick up their torches and pitchforks, rally against their masters. Spare your immaculate hands; let them kill for you. Reemerge after they’ve exterminated all your enemies, children included.

Speak carefully so they’ll follow you to a new master of your choosing. Benefits: both the slaves and your current lord are happy, and you earn vast lands plus eliminate a family of possible rivals for the throne.

Then it’s a matter of waiting for the peasants to grow weary again. Repeat until you’re king.


Forgot to Say It the First Time

I made you a robot, a corpse stuffed with bolts and wires, so we could spend more time together. I thought we’d sit by the river and play hide and seek all day, but when I mentioned machines -

“I wish they’d all drown,” you said with contemptuous eyes.

I, my filthy hands – when I only wanted you happy again –

You used to laugh when we destroyed robots, so to cheer you up I shoved you into the river.

After you sank to the bottom, I remembered I meant to say I love you. Now I can't even rebuild you.


Note: Advice is needed and much appreciated, especially for the second and third works. <3 Thank you for reading~

Well, the first post I found interesting and slightly horrifying. I mean, it's an interesting idea, the whole everyone is a robot thing, and it made sense that you ate the plants first then moved on to the animals, and then moved on to eachother. Because it isn't really like robots can feel bad about that can they? I think the line I liked best was

Octave wrote:Today’s Thanksgiving, and it seems they drew me the marinade bath.

That line made me both laugh and gasp in horror! I mean, it's so calm, so uncaring but at the same time the narrator knows exactly what is going on! I think, for a 100 word story you did really well, but I would like to know more. I think this could become a much better story longer, but I liked it anyway.

The second one had me laughing my head off! It kinda reminded me of 3 easy steps to world domination, and was very cleverly done.

Octave wrote:Repeat until you’re king.

was definitely my favorite part and the funniest line, although the rest was funny as well. I thought it was a little sick when it said

Octave wrote:children included.

That part kinda had me going 0.0 oh golly... but otherwise I pretty much liked it.

The last one was great. I like how the narrator loved someone enough to make them a robot, and then mistakenly shoves them in the river! It seemed a little unrealistic to me, but hey! Unrealistic is pretty cool in and of itself! It seemed a little... Empty of emotions to me. Even the part when it says

Octave wrote:I meant to say I love you

seems pretty empty to me. But, I think that's also my favorite line.

Octave wrote:After you sank to the bottom, I remembered I meant to say I love you. Now I can't even rebuild you

This entire line made me smile, and giggle a little. So... Hope my nonsense made sense and was helpful

Hey Octavian!

Let us discuss your pieces of writing.

I'll start with the first. You had a brilliant idea here and you capitalized on it. Both literally and metaphorically this piece is excellent. The shocking and horrifying ending leaves me in awe.

The second and third aren't as good. In fact I don't like the second at all and I think the third is only mediocre. They share one common fault. And that is that they both are not particularly novel ideas and thus seem preachy.

Your criticism of powerful figures and their exploitation of the populace is not a story at all. It does nothing for me and I've seen it done before in far more subtle and effective ways. While your prose is fluid in order to improve this you need to tell a story. Put a character spin on it perhaps. After all without characters stories kind of fall flat. We don't even know anything about the narrator.

The final piece is also cliched. The crazy obsession and selfishness that drives one completely crazy has been done so many times before. You haven't brought anything new to the table aside from a metaphor. Your character is cliched and unsubtle. Still, you have a character. So while this is nothing new to me, I at least have a small emotional connection to it. To improve it, I suggest adding some dimension that grabs my attention more and keeps me interested. The robot metaphor is nice but there is still nothing interesting enough to keep me attentive.

Anyhow, those are my unqualified thoughts on your flash fiction. I hope that they aren't completely ridiculous, but you have my disclaimer.