Published December 10, 2010
Ezekiel made his move. The ivory piece floated through the air for a few moments, kept upright by his gravity manipulator before coming to rest between the Rook and the Bishop ahead of the black Queen.
“KNIGHTTAKESQUEEN/STEV-YOURKINGISISOLATEDFROMRESTOFPIECES/CHECKMATE” intoned Ezekiel. Steve gave an almost imperceptible wince; Ezekiel had the unfortunate habit of sounding like he was shouting regardless of his set amplitude. Another aspect of this accursed robot he had to fix.
“QUIREY/ANOTHERGAMESTEVE”
He shook his head, stood up and went for the door.
“QUIREYREPEATED”
Steve turned around, confused, an inquiring look upon his face. Suddenly he realized his mistake; “Non-verbal communication” he sighed and before Ezekiel’s primitive, hand built, circuits blew themselves deciding whether or not this was a response he stated “No thank you Ezekiel, I’m going to see Chaal, you can power down.” Ezekiel didn’t need prompting a second time and his power connection light winked out. Steven turned his back on the machine he had built. He was tired of its primitive speech capabilities, tired of the lack of human company.
Most of all, he was tired of it beating him at Chess.
He had been stuck on his ship now for almost two standard Earth months now. He was camped out, waiting for the Pollize Solaris to comb through the Solar system and give up their chase. With the ship’s systems on the barest minimum (i.e. Life Support, enough to keep Abigail online in case the Pollize came a little too close and Ezekiel functioning) there was precious little to do other than to speak to Chaal (which normally equated to a heated argument followed by passionate sex, not something one could keep up with on an hourly basis, he often remarked) and play chess with Ezekiel, he had built him a year ago out of spare parts and rubbish and he was honestly surprised that the little machine had survived this long. He used it mainly for basic computing, algebra, mind games, etcetera. He had installed a self-replicating revised analysis algorithm, what the techies commonly referred to as a ‘learning curve’ to allow it to devise new chess strategies several months back and it appeared to be working a little too well. As he put on the hazardous environments suit and exited the airlock, he made a mental note to graft on a ‘rithm limiter when he had a spare moment.
He has failed to notice the extra data nodes I have placed on my body. I knew this outcome was certain, that man is the less observant of the two. Plan Ω can begin in earnest.
Seven hundred and fifty two million miles away, two cones the size of a small house emerge from the millions of tiny moons and particulates of dust that make up Saturn’s rings, they shine a brilliant, dazzling silver as their edges catch the Sun’s rays. As they near Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons, they engage their scanners and start their search.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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Firstly thank you very much for the advice on punctuation with Steve's dialouge, it's really helpful.
I purposely missed puncutated Ezekiel's dialouge, (No spaces etc.) because I wanted him to sound like someone who couldn't speak very well, not just English, but talking all together, with broken syntax and no need to pause for breath, in the way a current voice simulator 'speaks.' Perhaps I didn't let it come across very well.
I'm always particularly fond of science fictions with robots that contain specific technical terms, and not just senseless writing without research, thus good job on that so far! The only things I wonder about are the ends of some dialogues, 'cause normally I'd end them with a comma or a full stop depending on whether the sentence is ending. For example,
In this case, there's a comma since you're continuing outside the dialogue. Same goes for Ezekiel's dialogues, such as the absence of full stops for his second and third lines in the story. It looks like they're just hanging there without an end to it - unless it's on purpose, but grammar-wise, I'd think punctuations are needed.
Meanwhile, I hope there's more explained on why Steve is on the run. You've got a nice start, I look forward to more. : )
oh and I for got to put a full stop at the end of 'he stated'
Thanks for the advice Ben and good luck with 'Jack returns to France"
Hullo Sam. Here's my review I promised you old boy.
Nitpicks:
Keep the tense consistent. Changing to present tense like you did makes the sentence sound like it's too long and effect is lost. It's a simple action, so keep the description fairly simple too.
The pink shows the length of your sentence. I think you need to break it into two or something because it doesn't flow at this length. Also, I hate the word "suddenly" - (Mrs Jones' fault!).
Again, the sentences are a little bit long!
Content:
I like the start of this. Scenes, characters and genre is set and are all easy to familiarise with to an extent. However, there isn't much thinking behind the character: little development occurs. It is as though this part is only setting up the scene for us, rather than beginning the story. I do like the italics part at the end though, because this makes me question and gives us some development. I'd suggest a good old revision of sentence length and grammar, an elaboration in terms of the protagonist and maybe Ezekiel too and I'd also suggest you re-word things to avoid use of brackets, but that's up to you.
Hope this helped,
Ben
don't worry, I will be posting more and thanks for the typo flag
This leaves me wanting more. Is there any?
Very amusing.