Just asking for opinions

Mirai · Jan 6, 2008

I'm not posting this in the Creative Corner right now because, more than likely, I'll get bored with it and never work on it again. If a mod or admin disagrees, then please, suki-ni shi-te-kudasai (do as you please)

For fun, I like writing stories. Unfortunately, due to my incredibly minuscule attention span, I can never finish one past at most chapter 2. This time may be different, so, before I put this in the Creative Corner, I need opinions, to see if this perks anyone's interest. Please tell me your opinion of my writing skills.

The name of the story is "The Al Chronicles: Total Existence Failure." Originally, it was meant to be a series of short stories, but I decided to give it one story. Maybe two, if it goes well.

To tell the truth, many of the concepts and stuff are based on the Ed Stories.

So, here's Chapter 1 of the most-likely-never-to-be-finished-novel:

The Al Chronicles
Total Existence Failure

Chapter I

The C.O.S.

Playing the new Play Station game, I heard a loud explosion from the basement. I'm still surprised that the entire neighborhood didn't hear it. Even though I heard no voice, I immediately knew what it was: Al.

"Al, what did you do this time?" I yelled down to the basement. I heard footsteps coming from the basement. The steps were slow, like a tired animal. I got up to see what was going on and walked towards the secret basement hatch. Before I could open the hatch, it sprang open with such force that I bolted backwards, nearly breaking my grandmother's vase.

Standing on the ladder to the basement was Al, short and bespectacled as always and with a smile as though he won the lottery and a pant that sounded as though he ran in the Olympics. "Al, what the he-," "-I finished it, Joe! I can't explain to you how, but I finished it!"

I was confused. I already knew that he was working on something big, since, for the last three months, he locked himself in the basement. But, in my mind, I thought it would be something along the lines of a giant laser cannon, a gravitational tractor-beam designed to throw the Earth into the sun, something to turn off the sun, or even a clone of himself. You know; things that he didn't want the government to know about.

You see, Al is a genius. A few years ago, we found a secret underground lab, and he touched a button and has been a genius ever since. Me? I'm just a regular, though brainy astrophysics student in Stanford University. My name, Joe Avery Edgecombe, is descriptive.

"Okay, can you tell me what you finished?" I asked him. He smirked and gestured towards the basement. "C'mon. Trust me; you'll be amazed," he replied. I took him up on his offer and proceeded carefully down the flimsy ladder.

The staircase to the basement is long and goes deep into the Earth, so it took a little while to get down. Halfway down, Al finally spoke normally. "Remember that time I ripped open a layer of existence?" he asked. "Yeah. You said that existence, err, the 'cosmic space,' as you called it, is made of layers," I replied. "Correct. Well, I found something very useful about these layers," Al said.

"What's useful about it?" I asked Al. "Well, I'm not sure how, but each layer has its own constants. Like here, the constant for the speed-of-light is about 300,000,000 meters per second. While, in another layer, it could be over sextillion kilometers per second," he explained. "So, how can you use that?" I asked him. "You'll see. It'll make history if I release it to the public. Which I won't," he said.

Al has never shown his inventions and discoveries to anyone other than me. Though the government has been monitoring his activities for quite some time. I'm pretty sure he doesn't show anyone because he likes to keep the other scientists, the ones that haven't seen synthetic black-holes or superstrings, guessing. "I have an unfair advantage: I'm some kind of super genius," he always says to me.

We finally made it to the bottom of the staircase when Al spoke again. "What you're about to see is something out of the ordinary. Well, you've known me long enough to know that nothing about me is 'ordinary.'" This was true. A five foot, bespectacled genius living in a college dorm room with a secret entrance to a basement leading to a giant laboratory is not something you see everyday.

Our basement is big. And, by big, I mean that there are several large rooms for Al's experiments and storage. Al told me that it was this way since he came here. We went through the rooms and chambers, looking at all of Al's inventions. The worm-hole generator (however, any thing that goes through it would be shredded to its superstrings), the half-finished time-machine (Al said that the risk was too great to finish it. Something about time paradoxes ripping holes in the cosmos and ceasing all existence), and, of course, my all-time favorite, the light-saber (though, you have to wear protective clothing when using it and it weighs a ton).

We finally got to a very large room with dim lighting and white walls. In the middle of the room was a large saucer shaped object about twenty feet in diameter with a white sheet covering it.

"Wait a minute, Al. Did you-" "-Leave your questions for later, Joe." His hand grabbed the sheet covering the saucer. "Ya' ready, Joe?" he asked. "Sure, go ahead. Amaze me," I replied.

He pulled the sheet of the saucer, revealing what looked like the classic flying saucer. Sleek body, round shape, standing on three legs, a bulb shape on the top and bottom, etcetera. I stared at it in awe. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Though, I knew that I should believe it. After-all, Al is a super genius.

"I give youâ€¦" he hesitated for dramatic effect. During this pause, I thought of the corniest names: The Speedster, The Cosmic Traveler, The Al Rox, and etcetera. "â€¦The C.O.S.! Cosmic Overdrive Ship! Capable of traveling to the Andromeda galaxy in less than three days!"

Only half of that sentence made sense. The name? Actually, well done. I like it. The ability? Not in this universe! Intergalactic travel in less than a century? Preposterous!

"Hold it! How is that even possible? The speed of light is only about three million meters per second! And you can't even go that fast without increasing your mass to the size of the universe itself!"

Al smirked. "I expected you to ask that and be doubtful, so I thought that I'd show you." He said. He walked over to the C.O.S. and placed his hand on a panel. Al's next words were like a computer language. "Start of line. Object=door. Function=open. End of line." A split second after he said the last word, the door on the ship opened.

"Wait, Al! You mean to tell me that weâ€™re going to use this thing?" I asked him, with a surprised look on my face. "Of course! This will be the perfect first test drive!" he answered with a smirk. "Wait a minuteâ€¦ First test drive!? You mean to say that you've never flown this thing!?" "Don't worry, Joe. It's perfectly safe. As long as the layer we're going to allows for chemical reactions," he answered.

It was about this time, that I was thinking, Oh, man. This isn't going to end well.
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Just asking for opinions

Mirai King's Apprentice