Hi there,

I saw your story amongst the entries to the Lodestar competition and thought I would share my thoughts.

The review consists mostly of notes of my reactions/reader impressions in chronological order, so you can see how I experienced the story as I read it. There will be a few comments on the story as whole at the end. Right, let's get started.

”The thought of sitting in a cold, drafty spaceship with nothing but curmudgeonly commentaries to pore through was even more anxiety-inducing than the prospect of freeze-dried space food” – The opening is perhaps a bit loaded with information for my liking, but on the other hand, I do like how much we know about the protagonist and his wife already. I especially like that you manage to show contradictions within the MC, showing them both to be an avid reader and a devout Christian, but at the same time he loathes having to read Christian study books. It all helps to make him a more well-rounded character.

“We've met the requirements,” Carrie responded. “You're exactly the rising lawyer The Firm needs, and I can teach English to the children…” – The dialogue didn’t quite work for me. It seems to there only to deliver information to the readers and not because it’s something the characters would realistically say to one another. What Carrie is saying here, for example, is all something I would expect both of them to know already, so why should she say it other than for the benefit of the reader. To me, that makes the dialogue feel flat.

“The AI they worship is a tool to keep them in line.” – Uh. Again, I wish this hadn’t been expressed in dialogue that is mostly an infodump, but it is a really interesting premise. I can definitely see how this puts the MC and Carrie in danger.

“Right now I'm praying we arrive safely.” – Nice little bit of snarky humor.

“The Sun was a cool, dull red, owing to our greater distance from it. The atmosphere was artificially modified with additional carbon dioxide to maintain an adequate and steady climate.” – I really like how you balance the level of scientific detail in the world building here. Just a tiny bit to make the new world feel different but also plausible, but not enough to bog the story down.

“Settling into our apartment, we realized Ultima was designed to discourage human interaction.” – There’s a lot of detail to the world building, and I especially like how sinister you have made the AI controlling Ultima. However, the information isn’t always delivered in the most engaging way. I know there’s only so much information that can be crammed into a short story, and not every have to be “shown” instead of “told”. However, there has been a lot of “telling” so far, like here, where the MC states directly that “Ultima was designed to discourage human interaction”.
Personally, I think it would be much more interesting to read if we observed the world ourselves through the MC, and made the realization along with him. Or, at least that he observed the world first and then gradually had these kind of realizations.

“We can't stick up posters in the streets. They'll say we're littering.” – Yes. And also, wasn’t their evangelizing illegal in itself?

“Ultimans were only allowed one visit to a park per week. Neighborhood parks were assigned according to wealth and family status. The park Carrie and I were allowed to visit was more dilapidated than tranquil.” – Again, these are nice details, but I think it would have been even better if we were shown them through some descriptions with sensory details and the MC’s reaction weaved in rather than being told straight out that this is what it was like.

“The city was clean, quiet, safe… And soulless. […] I sensed algorithms whirring, calculating actions to take against our anomalous presence.” – I like this bit a lot. Here we get some of the MC’s reaction to Ultima which ads some tone to the narrative as well.

“background casually cluttered as if attending a zoom meeting” – This threw me off a bit. This is presumably far into the future, and while much of the technology would presumably be recognizable, having the exact same IT systems as we use now, that seemed off to me.


Overall
To me, it felt like you had a good premise for the story. The MC and Carrie have a clear cut goal, and there are also clear stakes for the two of them given how their evangelizing will likely be seen by the AI ruler. And generally, the plot did work, though the ending felt a bit unearned to me.
It came too easy to the MC and Carrie and was pure coincidence. I know it will require making the story longer, but for the plot to really work for me, I would have liked to see the characters struggle more, get into trouble, and them somehow work it all out in the end.
There was also a lot of nice world building here, and again, the two characters, as outsider to Ultima, can serve really well in showing both the wonders and horrors of this strange world.
My main issue with the story, though, was how this information was brought across to the reader. As mentioned above, we get a lot of very direct statements from the MC, a lot of “tell” instead of “show”. It’s clear that Ultima is meant to be disturbing, but it never doesn’t feel that way to me, because we don’t get to experience it; we are just told by the narrator.
Again, there’s a really good stuff here: the premise, the characters (especially the MC’s humor and not-so-strong belief in the cause), but there is also room for improvement, in my opinion.

Anyway, that was my thoughts. Whatever you chose to do with them, I hope my input was useful to you in some way.


My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .