“What are we going to do now?” Amy groaned. “These people are powerful. They even know our names.”
“Shhh,” Wayne said. “Give me a moment to think this through… This shouldn’t be possible—not if Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is included…”
“You know quantum theory?” Lucy nearly shrieked. “That is so insane!”
“This is the superposition theory…” Wayne murmured. He sat down heavily and closed his eyes. “Theoretically, a particle will always exist in all possible places at once until it is proven that it cannot, and teleportation does work—but only with subatomic particles. Okay, so he uses a quantum computer. But how did he know how to do that—I mean—it’s not as if you can…”
Wayne’s fingers traced shapes in the dust, his eyelids flickered, his lips moved continuously through scientific concepts including the EPR paradox, Copenhagen interpretation, and I was sure I heard something about a “Schrödinger’s cat”. Finally he sat up and met our anxious faces.
“I really need to talk to this Verne guy,” he said. “I think that this thing is all about quantum entanglement. But it still doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be possible.”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t understand a word of that quantum stuff, but I guess we ought to pay Hubert Verne a visit. I mean, we could do that after we’ve escaped from this inescapable prison, gotten rid of possibly thousands of evil minions of that Bouvier woman and somehow snatched the decoder out of her manicured hands.”
“Yeah,” Lucy grinned. “What’s the plan, eh? Make a siege weapon out of the light bulb, strangle ‘em with our bra straps, and—what?” She broke off when she saw my expression. It had been a long time since I had gotten to run and I was wrestling with the impulse to scream.
“We are not going to escape,” I said dully. “We are going to die here and it’s all my fault. I showed you the decoder—I stole it, too—I dumped you in that damn book, The Black Phantom—and now I got you all stuck in here with me.”
“Oh yes,” Lucy breathed. “Talking about The Black Phantom, where is Nathalie? What could have happened that she was left behind? Wayne, any ideas?”
“I wasn’t,” came a soft voice from behind me. “I thought that you knew I can become invisible.”
We turned as one. Nathalie was sitting cross-legged in the far corner, glowing white and playing with a small bangle.
“It seems that the asbestos was not duplicated, according to your wishes,” she smiled, tossing it aside. “So, what’s the plan?”
“This is a miracle!” Lucy grinned.
“Well, I am an angel, you know,” Nathalie replied. “I think that I can get you out, but we have to know where we are, or at least something of the layout of the place. We need it fast, too. Leon still has my original body. He could kill me. We need to get the decoder back, too. That won’t be easy.”
I felt an immediate lightening of my mood. This was still an adventure story bordering on the sci-fi, but at least we were steering well clear of the horror and thriller spectrum.
“People,” I grinned, “I think we’re back in the game."
End of chapter
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140,788 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Okay, here I am for my review on CHAPTER EIGHT! So, yeah, I do think you're doing a good job so far, and yeah, I do think you should try to do some work on editing and drafting this piece! It's totally worth it to me! In many ways.
Okay! Nice chapter, the entrance of Nathalie was really awesome, and your action/ dialogue/ description (maybe a bit more for the character's), were all really nicely done! But there are problems, a fair number of them. I'll cover what I can! The prospectivity in your plot (shown in the previous chapter) is dying now, your character's actions still are, at times, rather sadly unrealistic, and your pacing is beginning to show signs of butting into the way!
So, let's begin to cover these problems, shall we! First off, the thing with the pacing. Well, your story is moving too fast. These past six chapters can't have happened in anything over three hours (you skipped her sleeping, obviously), and while that isn't a bad thing, things are going to fast to be easily comprehensible. Your plot is losing part of it's prospectivity, but I'm beginning to understand the first few chapter's a bit better now . . . and this is having an effect on your pacing. Slow down. Explain what's going on. Why. Give some time for description, getting to know the characters . . . all that!
Next I'll go to the problem that I suggest in your plot! As I said, your previous chapters about the werewolves and Nathalie are beginning to make sense (these people are going to be helping her, right?). But I had the feeling earlier that you were going to have a tragic, painful plan (following what the bad-lady had said), and then you twist it all around like this. . . . Okay. Truthfully speaking this is no real problem, it's just something that kind of confused and annoyed me. I just thought you'd like to know!
Again, watch those fast reactions. And also, watch your technical details, I don't know exactly how much you know about theoretical and quantum physics, but I'm not sure you know enough to carry on an understandable discussion on the topic. And make some minimal sense. Put too much detail in and you'll just boggle your readers, shove them off, and make them stop reading! Now, mind, you haven't done this yet, but you're heading that way!
A quick random suggestion! I advise you to try to keep tragic in your style, keep an eye on your character's actions, be very careful with your pacing and description, be sure to make your readers LOVE your characters. P.s. If a major character suddenly falls over and dies, but your reader hasn't 'been' with them, known their emotion enough, then they'll just go “sucks to be them!”. But if you've spent a few dozen chapters 'living' with those character's, when those main character's die the readers really end up 'FEELING' something for them. Be careful to develop your character's, using emotional scenes, dialogue, description, and action!
Also, something I don't really understand.
Why would they suddenly be assuming that these 'people' are powerful? I assume that it's not because they know their names? That's a really nonsensical to me. A: You can explain, or B: you can get rid of it, however I'm getting a feeling that you just put it in for the sake of 'theatricality'! Be careful when you're doing that. If you do it wrong then you'll end up with a miserable mess >> Do things for reasons!
Okay, so this review is getting to be larger than your work (something I like to avoid) so I'll be winding down here! I really hope it helps you! You're doing great so far, and I still do think that you should try to do some work on your book. Edit. Develop. Plan. Draft! You CAN improve. Just keep writing! Writer's advance through practicing their craft. Don't expect to get better without practice. I promise you, you won't!
~Black~
Hello barefootrunner. jordin here with a review for you (Also a fellow knight.) and fellow at arms, anyway I really hope this is of some help to you.
First off you really need to make the writing larger than this.
Okay you made sense in this but why didn't Leon come with them when they decoded to another place?
Overall great job except for the smallness of the writing.
Grammar: Your grammar was pretty good as usual.
Spelling: Was awesome.
Punctuation: You may have had to mane periods.
Keep writing and good luck.
~Jon~