Young Writers Society

This is the start of my trilogy, and it was probably the most fun I've ever had in writing. It took a lot of guts to post it here to be critiqued, so even if you absolutely hate it, try not to be TOO harsh.

Anyways, a few things to say:

1) It takes place on a planet called SaurTech, a world populated by intelligent prehistoric animals with hyper-advanced technology.

2) It may look like a sci-fi, but it's actually closer to fantasy, especially in the later novels, where there's ghosts and undead gods as well as robots and lasers. There's no Earth whatsoever, so it's technically fantasy.

3) I figured not many people would take talking, technology-using dinosaurs too seriously, so I gave it a humorous tone. It's not a comedy, but it is slightly funnier than your average fantasy.

All right, here we go!

MEGAZOIC

-One-

Suchus never had a problem with heights, and considering he stood three miles above the ground, that was a good thing.

No, he focused his attention more on trying to survive walking to the educational facility after taking a really bad detour through the most confusing and labyrinth-like part of the city and probably getting creamed by the teacher for his tardiness. He had to go thirty-seven blocks in eight minutes. Dinosaurs could walk pretty fast sometimes, but not that fast.

Suchus’s dark emerald, orange-striped scales identified him as a Sinraptor. Mistakenly referred to as a dromaeosaur, or a “raptor“, as its name suggests, Suchus’s species fit in the family that included Allosaurs. A typical dinosaur carnivore with short arms, strong jaws, and a long, stiff tail to keep balance, they differed from other theropods because of their egg-shaped jaws, rounder than those of other dinosaurs.

Suchus ran along the bridge-like sidewalks of Carnotis, his home city. The massive metropolis held mainly towers. Big towers. Towers about five miles high. A dinosaur could spend his whole life in the city without even touching the ground, for metal bridges connected all the towers. Sidewalks encircled the edges of the buildings, easily large and strong enough to accommodate all types of creatures.

Unfortunately, the stoplight for the sidewalks up ahead blazed red. And these lights had an infamous reputation for never working. Suchus would sit here for at least three minutes, guaranteed.

He didn’t have that time. Looking at a clock on the walls of the buildings, he sighed. He only had five minutes left. And he still had at least twenty-four blocks to go.

After thinking for a few seconds, an idea struck him. Reaching into his backpack, he grabbed a helmet, goggles, and a small, metal sphere. He put the helmet and goggles on easily; the sphere proved more difficult. But a little force, and Suchus pressed the on button successfully. Soon, the sphere dropped onto the ground and became a hovering board.

His skibx (the Zoiccian word for “skyboard“) always made Suchus feel warm and fuzzy inside, especially when everyone stared at him enviously as he rode it. Chrome antimarium hoverers, crystallium thrusters and silver encrusted on the sides made it one of the more expensive types of skibxes. Today, he would need it more than anything else.

Bracing himself for his leap of faith, Suchus breathed heavily, strapped the skibx onto his feet magnetically, and jumped off the bridge-like sidewalk. While in midair, he activated the skibx, and zoomed upwards, through the perpetual barrage of traffic. He had approximately ninety seconds to get to the educational facility, and due to the constant rushing of transport vessels between the buildings, he couldn’t afford to go any faster.

Eventually, he saw the school nearby. Five miles high, it was painted a chrome color that made it gleam in the sunlight. The top spire of the building alone stood over half a mile high.

In dinosaur education, they taught many different classes. In addition to the basics like geography and algebra, other classes included genetic design, crytax programming, and piloting classes, as well as many others. Depending on the number of educational programs completed, you had a certain level. Suchus currently rested at Level 6, and he had to reach Level 10 before he could graduate.

Suchus looked at the clock nearby. His shoulders slumped. Five minutes late. His fifth tardy in a row. He could already picture his teacher‘s scornful look as the Sinraptor walked into class.

Groaning inwardly about his late showing, he walked on until he noticed two of his best pals, Albert Carno, an Albertosaurus, and Hoverhead, a type of robot called a Zokkor, standing outside of the facility. Classified as relatives of T.rex, Albertosaurs stood merely half the height of their larger cousins. In addition, an Albertosaur’s bones made him much more lightly built. He had teal scales, with dark blue spots on his sides.

A Zokkor, such as Hoverhead, proved an interesting bit of machinery. Built entirely by antimarium, a metal that, if used, allowed something to simply defy gravity, Zokkors could basically fly without the need of wings or any type of engine. They had a half-circle shaped head, with two long, mechanical arms and exaggerated hands coming out of the sides. They had no legs or torso, for they were not needed. They were the standard home maintenance or companionship robot, so pretty much everyone had one.

“Yo, Suchus!” Albert shouted, waving his tiny hand. “Over here.”

Suchus ran towards the two companions, and the three of them walked into the facility. It had several elevators and teleportation platforms to transport students. Special super-intelligent robots called eduukes taught the classes. They knew more than any creature on the planet, which made them perfect for their role. Outside, the city of Carnotis showed through the crystal-clear windows that covered the building. This made a really cool view--various transport barges flying to and fro, random dinosaurs skipping school and skibxing around the building--but all this distracted students easily.

“So, I’ve bought another set of holographic disguises,” Albert said proudly.

“Another one?” Suchus asked.

“Yep!” Albert said with glee. “I know I’ve said this a thousand times, but this’ll be a thousand and one. I want more holographic disguises to add to my enormous collection. You know I can‘t get enough of those things!”

“I see,” Suchus replied, even though he really didn’t. “So, how many exactly do you have so far?”

“Well, I’ve got over five hundred last time I checked. I’ve got it all. I can disguise myself as a saber-toothed cat, a Dimetrodon, an orthocone, a coelacanth, and a real cute Maiasaura chick, among many others.”

Hoverhead, who floated behind the two theropod dinosaurs, nodded at them and raised his left arm. “I helped,” he said.

Zokkors, like Hoverhead, had a rather complex vocabulary, usually of over five million words. They could also translate almost every language on the planet. However, they usually stayed silent. They only talked when dialogue is needed.

“Yes, you did, Hov,” Albert replied, smiling. “He picked out half of the ones in my collection, particularly the robot ones.”

Now, the trio had reached where all the commotion huddled inside the facility. Three eduukes stood in front of a large object that seemed to capture every student’s attention. Hundreds of creatures surrounded the object, but the eduukes made sure no one touched it.

Suchus pushed through the crowd, until he got to an eduuke. The tall, thin robot best described as a slightly thicker version of a mechanical stickman with a tyrannosaur-like head and a tiny tail turned towards the Sinraptor.

“What’s going on?” Suchus asked.

“Stay back!” the eduuke ordered. “This object may be very dangerous!”

Suchus shrugged. The Sinraptor looked behind the eduuke. The object was immense, over two hundred feet long. Up close, it was hard to tell exactly what it was, but it looked like a mechanical piece used to build something much larger. It had colored, flashing wires and laser-protective force fields all around it, making it rather spooky. The eduukes didn’t need to tell everyone not to touch it, for everyone was afraid of it anyways.

“We found this at the edge of the state of Cranos,” another eduuke said. “It’s about three hundred miles away from the strange energy sources we keep getting.”

Suchus shuddered. He remembered those energy sources.

A few days ago, he had gotten the news through his crytax that explained where the energy sources came from, and what they were. The strange, powerful waves of energy originated near the Thernos Mountains, which ran down the western side of Luarasai. Unknown to technology and science, the energy waves occasionally brought power loss to the cities around them. Their source was unclear.

“I advise everyone to stay away,” an eduuke ordered. “Whenever the signals come here, this object seems to gain more energy. It’s making everyone nervous.”

“No kidding,” Albert said from behind the crowd.

“Everyone, get to your classes,” another eduuke said. “You can look at this later.”

Suchus looked towards his Albertosaurus friend, then waved towards the main classes of Level 6. “C’mon, Al, let’s go.”

Albert nodded, and the two buddies quickly walked towards their class. Their first class was genetic engineering, and their assignment today was to make sure the experiments they created last week still lived.

Suchus walked to his sitting pod, and then flew towards his experiment. The cute little guy, which Suchus called a scruffle, was a little mammal that had a mouse-like face and four tiny limbs. A flap of skin connected the front and back limbs, which allowed it to glide, although it took a little while for the gliding to work properly.

Albert’s creature was a small marsupial that he called a mikomal, based off of something he had seen in a tele-crytax show once where genetic engineers created a mammalian dinosaur. Albert’s mikomal was a smaller version of that creature, and a cuter version, too.

“How’s my little mikomal?” Albert asked in a baby voice. “Yes, you are! Are you my little mikomal?”

“Yes, I’m a mikomal. Mikomal. Mikomal. M-I-K-O-M-A-L. Are you happy now?” the mikomal asked.

“I knew I shouldn’t have put that speech gene into it,” Albert muttered.

As the day went by, Suchus thought of the weird object they had seen. It had driven him crazy thinking about it. Even through the crytax-game testing class, his favorite subject, he couldn’t help but think about it. Perhaps it meant something big was going to happen.

Or maybe it was all just a load of crap.

With a shrug, he walked away, towards the eduuke of the crytax-game tester class. He nodded at the stick-dino robot, preparing to tell him what he had planned.

“Um, excuse me, Mr. Eduuke?” Suchus asked. The eduuke turned towards the Sinraptor, nodding.

“Yes, Suchus?”

Suchus sighed, bracing himself for what he was about to say. “Well, I was thinking, and this is purely for homework purposes. . .”

“Oh, I’m sure that‘s true,” the eduuke said sarcastically. “Coming from you, after all.”

Suchus growled inwardly, but continued on. “Well, seeing as that object seems to have technology beyond our own, maybe I could, you know, study it for a bit, and-”

“NO!” the eduuke roared, sending a massive surge of shock through Suchus. He didn’t expect the eduuke to be so loud. The stickman robot shook his head, cleared his mechanical throat, and then turned toward Suchus.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I feel that if anyone touches that object, they will die and it will be on my head!”

“I’m not going to touch the object,” Suchus said. “I just want to look at it.”

“If you look at it, you’ll want to look at it more! And then you’ll want to touch it! And then you’ll want to hug it, smell it, touch all over it! Argh!” the eduuke screamed, something that made Suchus slowly back away.

“Okay, fine, I won’t look at it,” he muttered, his voice still shaking. “I’ll just continue my lessons.”

“That’s good,” the eduuke said. “That’s what you should be doing.”

After the lessons ended, Suchus and Albert walked out of the building and to the laser park next door. Hoverhead followed them, meeting them after school. Inside stood one of Carnotis’s many laser fields. Here, a dinosaur could do a variety of laser activities, from simple shield bouncing to mirror throwing and crytax holo-battles. Suchus and Albert sat down on one of the bench pods that hovered at the edges of the laser tunnels. The lasers kept changing colors at a constant rate, causing a weird rainbow of light.

“Just wondering something,” Suchus began, trying to start a conversation.

“Yeah?” Albert asked.

Suchus was about to explain, but then he stared at another bench pod, where a group of female dinosaurs from his class sat, talking about that cute Aucasaurus that walked past them the other day, or using their own Zokkors to listen to music.

“Ummm, yeah?” Albert asked, staring at Suchus, waiting for him to finish. “You were wondering. . .what?”

“Huh?” Suchus asked, blinking out of the trance he was in. “Oh, right.”

Curious, Albert turned around to where Suchus was previously looking. Noticing the group of female dinosaurs, he turned around, a sly smile across his Albertosaurus face.

“Now, I’m no expert on gawking or anything, but I believe you were focused on those ladies back there?” he asked.

“No I wasn’t!” Suchus said.

“Right,” Albert said. “Listen, if you don’t want to embarrass yourself, go over there and talk to them.”

“No!” Suchus shouted.

“Buddy, it’s what you want. Go on, I’ll be right behind ya. Go over there and knock yourself out.”

“Well, since you seem like the expert, you go over there and knock yourself out,” Suchus said.

“Nah, I’ll pass,” Albert sighed. “Anyways, what were you wondering?”

It took Suchus a few seconds to remember. “Right. What I was wondering, don’t you think the teachers are getting harsh?”

“Teachers are teachers, my friend.”

“I mean, harsher than usual? I asked an eduuke if I could study the object, and it repelled the decision immediately.”

“It’s a dangerous object,” Albert said. “Besides, who knows what would happen if someone touched it? It might blow up or something.”

“This is coming from someone who has experience in the world of robotics,” Hoverhead said. “Pieces like that don’t just blow up. But I personally think that it’s from some secret organization or something.”

Suchus shrugged. “Maybe. You have fun, Hov, okay?”

Hoverhead nodded, before he realized something. “Does that translate to, ‘Leave so you and Albert can talk by yourselves’?”

“Basically, yeah. Go back to my place.”

Hoverhead nodded, and then flew toward Suchus's home, which thankfully wasn’t far. Suchus turned towards Albert, and then continued his conversation.

“I know it was a dangerous object, but still, usually they let students look at and study things that they find. Remember last year, when they found a carcass of a robotic Diplodocus and put it on display here? Dinosaurs were all over it and the eduukes didn’t care.”

“The robotic Diplodocus?” Albert asked. “Wasn’t that the time when there was that big power outage and all robots were deactivated? Of course they didn’t care.”

Suchus sighed. “I dunno, you may be on to something, but it’s been bugging me lately.”

Albert shrugged. “Whatever. I’m gonna go get me a slodax. Want one?”

Suchus nodded, which prompted Albert to leave the laser field and get two slodaxes. Suchus loved those drinks. Carbonated, caffeine-filled fruit juices made his day any day.

Albert soon came back with two slodaxes. He had gotten himself a gingko slodax, and he had gotten Suchus a vitus one. Gingkoes were stinky fruits from a type of deciduous tree called a gingko tree, which were common throughout the upper states of Luarasai. Vituses were orange grapes that came from low bushes in the southern states of the northern mammalian lands.

Once they had drank their slodaxes, Albert nodded at Suchus, showing he was ready for their daily shield bouncing race. The laser field stretched through two miles of the educational facility, so the race would be long, fast, and furious.

Suchus went through his backpack until he found his shield generator. Albert did the same. Once both of their force fields had been activated, they gave each other a thumbs-up, jumped off their bench pod, and fell down towards the laser fields.

As soon as the shield and the lasers made contact, a violent ripple of energy caused the shield and the dinosaur inside it to bounce away furiously. Many creatures took advantage of this and turned it into a game. Suchus and Albert were doing just that.

Suchus looked up ahead at his Albertosaurus companion. After bouncing off a few laserwalls, he knew he already had a head start on his opponent. So, once he hit the base of the laser field, he pushed himself outwards, giving him a great lead against Albert.

“Hey, no fair!” Albert hollered.

Suchus didn’t listen. He kept focusing on the task before him. He normally lost these races. Shield-bouncing wasn’t his cup of slodax, not like skibxing. But coming in last behind Albert ninety-nine percent of the time made him determined to win this one, for if he failed, he would probably stop shield-bouncing altogether. Sure, it wasn’t about winning, it was about having fun, but was it really fun to get last place?

Albert soon took the lead. Suchus kept bouncing outwards to try and keep the Albertosaurus behind him, but his Sinraptor legs weren’t made for jumping. Mind you, neither were Albert’s, but he had more force with his leaps than Suchus did, which sent him out farther.

Eventually, the two reached a power generator, with glowing wires wrapping around columns like a horde of snakes. One thing that made it dangerous was its complete and utter lack of lasers, so Suchus and Albert had nothing to bounce off of. This was the toughest part of the race. They had to bounce over it, otherwise they would lose instantly. Suchus concentrated all of the force in his legs, sending him over the power generator.

His Albertosaurus companion wasn’t so lucky. His shield had suddenly turned off, thus he had fallen down towards the power generator. He crashed onto the roof of it, thankfully not on any wires.

Suchus laughed, but quickly lost his joy when he realized his shield had been deactivated, too. None of the lasers worked, revealing a long, dark tunnel, instead of the bright, colorful hallway. Suchus tried desperately to stop himself, but all he could do was move his arms and legs around in the air helplessly as he barreled towards the ground.

The Sinraptor crashed onto the floor of the tunnel, although he quickly got himself back up. He tried to turn his shield generator back on, but it refused to activate. Same with Albert’s.

“The power’s out!” Albert shouted.

“Thanks for the information, Urbanoid Obvious,” Suchus said, rolling his eyes.

“But why?” Albert demanded.

That thought hadn’t come across Suchus's mind. Why did the power go out? The energy generators across the planet of SaurTech never went out, and the power they created always flowed through the cities and countries with ease. Only a few times in the last thousand years had the power gone out anywhere. Except. . .

“Albert!” Suchus yelled. “Those energy waves! They’re here!”

“What?” Albert asked, shocked. “How? The sources are thousands of miles away!”

“Whatever happened, they’re spreading,” Suchus said. “Someone’s gotta do something. Although the Legions will probably take care of it.”

“How?” Albert demanded. Suchus had walked onto the power generator where Albert stood so they could talk without shouting at each other. “Most, if not all, of the Legions’ weapons and gadgets come from energetic power! There is no way they’ll be able to solve this power outage unless they figured out when the power would go out.”

“The Legions are smart,” Suchus reminded Albert. “They’ll figure something out. For our sake, let’s hope it’s soon.”

The two dinosaurs quickly got out of the laser field and back to their homes. It wasn’t easy. While Suchus's home was only two horizontal and one vertical blocks from the educational facility, Albert’s home was a few miles away, and, without any power, none of the transportation systems worked. Suchus knew he was going to be bored to death once he got home.

However, soon, the emergency power generators came on, and they would stay on until the energy waves went away. So, when Suchus got home, he got onto his crytax and checked to see if the news had anything on it.

A message came onto his crytax screen. It was the news report. It read, “The energy waves have spread through almost the entire country of Luarasai. The sources are now being investigated by the Legions, and soon they’ll find out what on SaurTech is going on. It’ll soon be fixed, and if it’s anything serious, the Legions will release a report on it immediately.”

Well?