Your story is very an interesting one (Since I have great interest in literary about AI ;P)!
The ending is right to the point of leaving great room for reader to imagine what will happen while being very humorous,It really makes me laugh! I just keep imagine the awkward feeling it might have for Herman!
I'm happy about your first submitting, it's a good start for you! It also means you're trying a new step to make your story a better one. Personally, I want to give you one humble suggestion, which hopefully could be useful in helping you into creating better stories.
Regarding the front part of the third paragraph,
"So far, 10 percent of the total Virtell (short for Virtual Intelligence) Corp server farm resources were dedicated solely to the new HRMS system, taking up hundreds of processor cores distributed over dozens of racks of pizza box sized servers. That would eventually double, assuming all went according to plan. It was a very expensive investment"
You've explained about the importance of HRMS system in Virtell company(with all due respect, I assume that you're expert in computer science or HR system?).The explanation might be easy for you to understand.However,readers might not think so. Many people might not know what hundreds of processor core over a dozen server actually means.
Therefore, I suggest that you can describe it more vividly, for instace, using metaphor. It's a good way to lead the readers into your story instead of letting them stop for chewing the meaning, or stop for searching the terms at the very begining.
As for the title, since I'm not a good title manager(even my own works) therefore I am not able to give any constructive ideas about this. Sorry!!
All in all, it's a very impressive piece of story! I like it! I can see you've carefully chosen your wording and the story progresses smoothly. I was thinking the ending might be talking about unplugging the whole system, or killing, any sort of conspiracy. But all of a sudden, 'you're fired!'. That's very wise!!
Hi, Nathan!
I love your story! Truly!! Don't know if I get the meaning right but the idea--'disguised happiness' somehow haunts my mind. Reading through your story, I can feel the smooth mind flow and the grotesuqe dream- like mood successfully immersed into the story by your vivid and pircturesque description of the man's words , actions and appearance, and with all these you intricate the feeling of sadness, making the story all the more fascinating. Another important part is, the words spoken by the character are very natural, this does require some kind of skill to manage.
Such an arresting story can be made better by refinement of some of your sentences. I've noticed that many sentences are short ones, and several of them a little too bulky.
You can try to elaborate the structure of them. Especially for the paragraph that describe his appearance. Normally, reader might find it hard if they know they're going to read such a long paragraph, therefore it's necessary to express your thoughts not only in a detailed way but also a more effecitve way.
For example: 'He was wearing a black top hat with a red band around it. Written, in red shakily, on the front of the hat was the word happiness.' In my humble opinoins, it can be refined this way: 'The red written word 'happiness' stroke hastily on front of the hat that has a red band around it.' This is to expIain,instead of starting each sentence with 'He' or 'His', you can make the description in a more
dynamic way. :)
As for the plot: Maybe you meant for a short story, and it, for me, is a reminicent of ' stream of consciousness'. But I think it worthwhile to be made a longer one. The ending seemed a little bit rush to me because I'm longing to see how the story could undold.
Such a damanding reader!! You might think.
That's because I really love this story!
Hi Nathan!
Not until the last sentence did the line of the story totally clears up for me. And the ending is very intriguing! The sadness, and the feeling of there's nothing you can do, really hurts me when it comes to the end. Save one and let the other die is just a very hard choice if put in anywhere else in the world. Compared to the unfortunate, it's always much more harder for those who remain alive to feel relief. Therefore you did a very good job to display this strong contrast through out the story by their words and their own sights.
I also quite appreciate your subtle wording in some sentences, such as: 'wraith-like arm' 'Frank... his flesh was ashes" "Hotter than the Satan's breath" "all he had left was...this lonely climb" to indicate the truth of Frank's death.
However, in my opinion, you can make the contrast even more consistent and more powerful with the grip of sorrow. Let's head back to the paragrph ' Despite skies of blue and clouds of white...' and the two following, and transfer them into color:
Grey:'Despite skies of blue and clouds of white...' this paragraph mainly depicts how Frank's dream is shattered.
Colorful:'Vista','Rainbow'.'Waterfall'.'Peaks' this paragraph mainly depicts the scenery.
Black:'A cairn of stones stood...' this paragraph mainly depicts the day of the accident.
From the aforementioned color, it seems like the color tunes change a little bit too fast and a little bit inconsistent.
From the whole storyline and your wordings I guess that you want to strip the core step by step towards readers, and you want to give us the emotion impact by showing us the dramastic change of the whole scene. And the paragraph that can be refined towards your way of meaning is the 'Colorful' one. The depict of the scence seems a little bit loosen your grip of the sorrow tune of your story.
Therefore, my suggestion is you can consider modifying the 'Colorful'paragraph to tighten and solidate the tune of the whole story.
But overall, I'm very impressed with this story. Keep going! Nathan! I believe you can do it better!
Hi Sparky. Soaked in the very sense of sadness, the story attracts me in the way you narrative surroundings and penetrate
characters background into the story. Especially how you introduce the little boy adds to a creepy feeling(that's how i think) to the story.
Not until the second read through did I understand what it tries to convey. Probably because I'm not a native english speaker.
If you don't mind taking time to answer, I have a simple question about a sentence, What does 'black hides hot and shiny' means?
Your writing this dream is absolutely a presence of your vivid imagination and abundance of vocabulary. Through all the words, the story is drenched in mysterious atmosphere, almost takes my breath away. Well done!
There's a tip I want to give in my reading through the story.
Description seems to be stretched a little bit too much. For example I feel a little bit overwhelmed when reading the forth paragraph. To express your horror when you're approaching the door, you focus lots of description in your psychology and the surrounding, adversely affect the feeling you want to convey. But sometimes, lesser words can do better effect.
Simple words with profound essence of life. Your short story gives me a little shock because I thought Granny would've gone to school and cried for help, and it really gives me the feeling of hearing a story right from an old man near a fireplace in winter!
I don't have tips for improvement, because I think your simple words best fit with the story.
I don't know if this is meant to be a part of a story, but the description is very vivid! Especially the beginning impresses me with the feeling of a movie scene.
Since there're only three paragraphs, I don't know how to give a proper review to them without much context. But I think you can give
some more description to Hellmont's appearance if this fighting is going to be a main part of a chapter.
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