If you do not know what this is, please do not post here. Thank you.

Proud member of action!

I'm gonna be posting a good chunk of my writing (or at least, links to it) here. Given that a lot of what I write in SWC will just be one short story/short novella, since I write slowly, I'm going to reserve this thread mostly for that.

I will update this OP later.

Daily #1: 1K intro

#1: 1k Intro

Good morning! I’m foss, which I’m going to go by for a variety of reasons. I am aware this name is not a real name NOR has anything to do with my username, so if you forget, just call me primosaur. This is my first session of SWC, although I’ve been trying to get in for about a year now and repeatedly missing signups. I’m really excited to join this camp and finally gain the motivation to write. I’m looking forward to participating in dailies and weeklies, having fun writing with my cabin, and making my 20,000 word contribution to help action win!

I guess I should start by talking about my interests. I am … generally not the kind of person usually stereotyped to like writing or join something like SWC. I’m a male math kid, and a nerd interested in mathematics and computer science (although my skills in coding are greatly lacking, which is why I haven’t made a single scratch project where I’ve actually put a bunch of effort into the coding). I am however able to do quite a lot of math and have taken advanced classes including Algebra 2, Counting and Probability, and Number Theory, which is probably the highest-level class I’ve taken. I’m excited to try to combine this interest with SWC: In the coming week or weeks, I’m going to try to reverse-engineer SWC’s sorting algorithm, or use my analytic skills to try to make a mathematically optimal one. This interest in math is also part of a general interest in things that require critical thinking, so I love puzzles as well and may write up a few during this session.

Mathematics aside, I also have an interest in linguistics! For those of you who don’t know, linguistics is the study of languages and how they function. There are a multitude of different branches of linguistics and things to study within the field, but some of my favorites are historical linguistics, which is the study of how languages have evolved over time, and computational linguistics, which is a mathematical approach to linguistics that powers things like google translate. I apply this interest to linguistics through conlanging! This is the creation of fictional languages, and it has a thriving community with a lot of research devoted to how to conlang best. I have worked on multiple languages, and know a lot about conlanging, so I’ve decided to offer my services to SWC! If anyone wants a fictional language (or writing system, which I also make) for SWC, let me know and we can try to figure something out.

I should also probably mention composition. I’ve played piano for 8 years, and I’ve applied my understanding of music and music theory to compose electronica. If you take a look at my profile, you can see some of the music I’ve written: it usually takes the form of a project where the graphics contain nothing or nothing but a scratch cat.

It probably also makes sense to bring up my interest in puns. I make a lot of bad puns. This will probably be evident over the course of this session to anyone who has to share Action with me. More on this later.

Now that I’ve reached the halfway point of this intro, I’m going to switch over to reading, since I’ve heard from others that liking reading is a requirement for SWC. I read a lot of sci-fi/sci-fi-fantasy, and I would say that my favorite book is the incredibly obscure Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card (the same person who wrote the famous ender’s game). To whoever is reading this, I highly recommend you check out the series. The worldbuilding is insanely complex (part of its appeal), so I can’t really explain it here, but the simplified version is that the story is (in the first book) told from two perspectives. The first is from that of the starship pilot Ram, who is escaping a dying Earth and sends a generation ship through a wormhole to a new planet - except that things go wrong, and now there are 20 copies of the ship, one of which is moving backward in time. The other perspective is that of Rigg, a boy who lives in the world of Garden, and goes on a journey through it when his father dies - only to discover he is a lost prince of an empire overthrown by a revolution. These stories don’t seem to be in the same world, but they can, and do, intertwine. I will not bother to try to explain much of why it’s so good, but the series is AMAZING - all 600 pages of the first book are worth it. Go read it. I also love the Nevermore series, and it used to be my favorite until Pathfinder displaced it.

As for the writing I’m planning to do for this session, a lot of it is going to be part of one short story/novella (depending on your definition). I’ll be releasing a completed version of it in the end, which should be fun. I predict it will be about 30-60 pages long. I’d prefer not to talk about it, as I’d like to let the story speak for itself. I’ll also be doing a lot of dailies and weeklies, hopefully making a conlang for someone, and all sorts of other stuff. I’m going at a relaxed pace of about 1,000 words per day, but will likely write more, especially on weekends.

Now that I’ve yapped about myself, I would like to introduce you to the mystical kingdom of … Pun-sylvania.

Punsylvania is a marvelous land, full of beautiful cities and horrible puns. However, it is most known for its chicken, which is eggcellent. Just like Pennsylvania in our world, its capital is known for its cheese delicacies, but making people allergic to dairy won’t eat them, as the steaks are too high. It’s also full of playgrounds, giving it the nickname of “Swing State” - but for presidential candidates, winning in Punsylvania is a slippery slide. This is because the state usually seesaws back and forth between the two parties, and is thus a sandbox for political agencies. The law is strict in punsylvania, so criminals that get caught will be severely punished and will have to summarize their entire life story within a few clauses - this is known as a life sentence. As for murder, there is only one suitable punishment.

An eggsecution.

Foss, signing off.

Event #1:
I look around, and I feel something interesting. Every person now seems to have a kind of halo, if you could call it that. They press gently on my consciousness, and I can even appear to move them around if I try. Curious, I realize I have one too, but when I try to see my own, it suddenly curls inward on itself. I think these are people’s minds!

I look across the area we’re in and see Qui on the other side, weaving different strands of spider silk. My “halo” bends towards them as I focus on them, letting me manipulate it easily. However, when I try to touch it, suddenly, everything seems to disappear except for my halo and Qui’s halo, with some kind of silk-like strand between them. Suddenly, Qui’s halo seems very tangibly in reach. Curious, I grasp it.

Suddenly, I feel motion sick, and the next thing I know, I’m on the other side of the courtyard. The halos are still there, but now, I suddenly realize and mentally note all of the objects present. I look at my hands in disbelief - they are different now. I appear to have swapped bodies with Qui.

I wonder how I could use this body swapping power as I try doing this again, swapping back into my own body. Interestingly, the memory of all the objects in the courtyard still remains.

Enough of that - I’ve got to have some other power. I wonder what it is. Curious, I pull out my phone to google “common superpowers.” However, as I’m doing this, I notice something strange - the phone appears transparent.

Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed by information as I can somehow see and comprehend millions of zero’s and one’s within the phone. Wherever I try to look, I see long strings of numbers, which seem to reassemble into text files or code. Before long, I can see recursive chains of programming stretching into the distance, as the 1s and 0s morph into compiler language and then text files. All of my minecraft worlds are suddenly visible, as is my entire search history - I shudder at the repeated googling of “how to google” when I first got this phone when I was young. Like people’s minds, the information appears somehow tangible, and I can mess around with it.

Experimentally, I find scratch, and begin changing some of the 0’s in my 1k intro to 1’s. When I revisit the page, however, it looks like a broken mess, with a line of backwards zalgo text intertwined with “error error error error error”. I leave the page before it breaks my phone, and then stop short - seeing my most recent mysterious writing about my experiences, but in the form of a daily. A loop of recursion turns my phone into an infinity mirror, and I sigh, turning it off. “I should really install eye protection mode on that thing.”

Data appears to be easy to manipulate - maybe at some point, I can learn to manipulate it in a way that doesn’t break my phone.


Daily #2:
Sighing, I reminisce about the thing that dominated my childhood: the sun. I had lived in the fields of California, before it shattered into San Diego, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and a long set of other independent nations each vying with each other for power. I had spent so much time outside under the glorious sun while it could be called a sun: I played in the fields, felt real warmth on my skin, enjoyed the tropical weather - this was when there were still tropics. At that time, I had been a bored child - now, it was paradise, but paradise lost to the naivete of humanity - back when it could be called humanity and not a dying species of foolish monkeys.

My memories are hazy of that time, but one defining moment was the contact with the La’ai. We had thought that civilizations uniting was a point of progress, so we send endless messages from the observatories on pluto and distance rocks to every corner of the milky way, using our new technologies to propel them faster than light. When the La’ai responded from the arm right above Orion’s, there was rejoicing in the streets at the first aliens we met. However, when we told them of the sun, they were remarkably shocked. We intercepted messages about “the perfect conditions” and “exactly the right frequency”, but we assumed they were just describing that the star was perfect for life. When they asked to visit our star - not our planet, our star - we sent them the coordinates, and they brought themselves here. But they never set foot on our planet.

Instead, the La’ai brought with them the Lights. The Lights were millions of millions of mirrors, reflecting the sunlight towards their planet, and away from earth. Our star was of the perfect resonant frequency, so that when the Lights reflected sunlight towards their planet, it would resonate with their core and unlock more natural resources than they had ever had. The Lights were assembled - and the La’ai left our sunlight-deprived planet to die.

We should have died. We should have died mercifully, of cold, and not of war. We should have died under the splendor of a technology far beyond ours, knowing and respecting that for every human who died, two La’ai hatchlings could be born. We should have died in peace. Instead, we refused to die, and built the Spiral.

For a while, humanity had hope, but it would have been a mercy not to have hope, to avoid the heartbreak. A massive electromagnetic coil was strung up around the earth, to illuminate the eternal night - the Spiral coiled and coiled and illuminated, a dim light bulb stretching around the equator. And soon, some rye grew, and some people survived under the light of this mechanical timebuyer in the sky, a pathetic substitute for our beloved sun.

That didn’t last. The death was not of cold, but of starvation - every government of every kind collapsed under the demands for food. New nations formed, but they were futile. Eventually, the last resources of warmth and safety were a cause for war, and bombs deployed themselves across the globe. Blood spilled. The shores of California turned red, then black with ashes.

For all who had survived under the spiral, death was slow and painful. The eternal night was tinged not with some kind of ultimate relief, but with death and hatred; hatred at the naivete of those before us, hatred as the La’ai, and hatred at our own futile hope. Some are bitter, most are beyond being bitter, because most are dead.

We should have died quickly and with mercy. Enough reminiscing. As the radiation finally overtakes me, I curse the Spiral with my dying breath.

Daily #5:
We’re in first place
Got the question of the day
And we’re writing and surviving,
But our fingers are in pain
From the typing! And of course,
From the endless thriller games
Whoever attacks us, that cabin’s going up in flames

THRILLER! Cause the thriller games are killer
THRILLER! Cause we’re gonna be the victors
THRILLER! Never settle for less than winner
Cheer for thriller in this session at the end of winter

Our first cabin’s leaders Fini,
Not to be confused with Livy
Because if you are @essayist,
You know that when you’re finished,
You’ll have a ton of factor in the trackbear
That’s for Thriller
They’re a tribute from first district, and their arrows break your innards

THRILLER! Cause the thriller games are killer
THRILLER! Cause we’re gonna be the victors
THRILLER! Never settle for less than winner
Cheer for thriller in this session at the end of winter

Next up there’s a Baker,
Reader, and Game Maker
This is Livy, a believer in
A thriller March first-placing
She takes out her cleaver and
Destroys the tributes chasing
In fact, her claims have validity and basis

THRILLER! Cause the thriller games are killer
THRILLER! Cause we’re gonna be the victors
THRILLER! Never settle for less than winner
Cheer for thriller in this session at the end of winter

The last leader is a user
Who really enjoys music
This is mable, keeps things stable
While being career tribute
People have told fables of
Her trackbear, made conclusions
If @cinnamoncx was faking, then by now, they would knew it

THRILLER! Cause the thriller games are killer
THRILLER! Cause we’re gonna be the victors
THRILLER! Never settle for less than winner
Cheer for thriller in this session at the end of winter

We venerate our leaders
Respect them as the keepers
Of cabin strength and game length
And everything we find dear
Some people claim the systems barbarian,
But our cabin loves,
To be - authoritarian!

THRILLER! Cause the thriller games are killer
THRILLER! Cause we’re gonna be the victors
THRILLER! Never settle for less than winner
Cheer for thriller in this session at the end of winter

Weekly #1

Introduction (with some Part One stuff):
Before I can talk about language or culture, I need to explain the basis of the world of Matryoshka, specifically the Novodeotic religion/civilization/organization. From this point forward, when I talk about Matryoshka, I’m talking about those who are Novodeotic (which makes up about 99% of the human population), as there are splinter groups at the far ends of the server who disagree with what happens and vehemently reject some things.
Matryoshka is a distant future in which everyone has uploaded their consciousness to a matryoshka brain - a large structure orbiting the sun which supports a massive virtual world everyone can live in. This structure is known as the server, and it covers the sun completely, but this is irrelevant - all geography is virtual and not necessarily euclidean, so the spatial position of any data can be disregarded. In Matryoshkan culture, the massive server space and virtual world is used for the main preoccupation of its culture and inhabitants: creating simulated universes. According to Novodeotic beliefs, since humanity is fully capable of creating simulated universes, within these simulations, they are gods - and as gods, they have a responsibility to allow intelligent life to flourish and to create new worlds. Every new consciousness created benefits reality, and new life and intelligence should be spread in an infinite chain of worlds. For clarification, a simulated universe - hereby referred to as the word for it in the Matryoshkan language, $RTRy6 (more on why this includes weird capitalization, a number, and a special character later) is nothing like our universe - it usually consists of a single solar system, with far less complex laws of physics and molecular arrangements, and is almost devoid of quantum mechanics. This is so that a $RTRy6 doesn’t take up too much server space, although the brain is consistently growing.
What makes this interesting is that many particularly intelligent species from the $RTRyy (plural form) have already realized they live in a simulation, and have made contact with the humans controlling them. Eventually, technology became available that allowed them to upload themselves from a simulation to the matryoshka brain, and coexist with humans (all technology is mathematical in nature, as it’s fundamentally just serverspace rearrangements). There is often mutual dislike between humans (although most human) and new species (although most people/aliens aren’t racist like this), and new species have come to take up a big chunk of the serverspace. These uploaded species have had a large effect on human culture and even have a disproportionately large chunk of political control, which is an interesting power dynamic given that humans created them. However, humans still form a majority.
I think that’s everything that needs to be explained, and it covers a lot of the culture, so I’m going to devote all of part 1 to the language.

Part 1:
The language of the humans of Matryoshka (simulated aliens have their own assortment of languages, which have had great influence on the human tongue, but we’ll focus on humans here) is not a spoken language like we speak today, but entirely written - or more accurately, typed. The thing is, when the virtual matryoshka world was first created, like in social media, people could only communicate through text, and as people spent more and more time in virtual worlds, text became more and more nuanced and complex, evolving a completely different grammar. As it became clear that the population was ready to upload completely, governments created speech capability, but verbal communication could never be quite perfected like in the real world and understood, so people preferred what they already had. Eventually (and this was supported by conlangers and esperantists) a completely text-language was developed, and the new sound-based software is now used to make sound-based languages function well in $RTRyy.
Without being constrained by the models of verbal language, text language evolved not to resemble it at all. Any special character could be used in mainstream text, and they went from tone indication to being a part of words. Spaces were still kept as the dividing line between words, but this was generally just to optimize ease of reading. Capitalization also became an interesting element. However, an important thing to remember is that text just functioned entirely through a QWERTY-keyboard-like interface, so it became very adapted for ease of finger movements. Let’s take a look at the word $RTRy6 - which we discussed earlier - to see some of this. This word consists of keys very near each other, so that they can all easily be pressed with one finger. Interestingly, the root of the word was originally $R>, but became adapted - this is from the )OKB), who communicate through pheromones, and this was their name for “alien” if you map each molecule to the letter shaped most like it.
Another thing we can see in this word is the Matryoshkan language’s concept of relative positionality. This is the fact that most word changes (i.e. pluralization) aren’t done with specific keys, but with key shifts. For example, pluralization happens by moving the last character down and to the right - so $RTRy6 becomes $RTRyy. Other changes are more complex, such as flipping a word’s movements 90 degrees, or performing it on the other side of the keyboard - so, for example Category is diw, but Categorize, is jei. These don’t seem to have any relation to each other, but to a fluent speaker of Matryoshkan (or any other textual language from splinter groups) this is obviously a keyboard flip. These languages seem complex, but the principles of the keyboard are obvious to fluent speakers - and much more mathematically simple than the complexities of the spoken word. However, this does not mean that nuance and emotion is not conveyed in textual language - it is, with tone tags and emotions having evolved into a far more complex system of meta-breaking (I’m not even going to try to explain what that is).
Enough about the language - let’s discuss “geography” (or more fittingly, the lack thereof).

Part 2:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1144279937/

Part 3:
The pivotal point at which the humans of Matryoshka began treating aliens as more friends and adversaries than puny non-gods was probably the introduction of the Repackager, or in the matryoshkan language, 5t;%T:, but I’m just going to call it the repackager (best approximation of word roots) to avoid repeatedly typing something that looks like a keysmash (I learned my lesson in part 1). The technological roots of the repackager were originally developed by a group of Lerneticists (Lernetics is a technique in which an AI is trained, and then the algorithms used to get to its result are analyzed and reapplied), but were intended to allow physical simulations to deal with errors - however, when the )OKB), hajji, and ! had made direct contact with those running their simulation, and to some extent, with each other, they quickly saw the use of the technology and spoke with human scientists, who eventually managed to create the modern Repackager. So what does a Repackager do? Fundamentally, it takes a simulated consciousness, and then connects it with other simulations and allows it to fit into another simulation, with a fluid experience. This means that it allows an alien in a simulated universe to upload their conciousness into the main virtual universe humans use. This was incredibly significant, as it meant that aliens could carry themselves into the same universe humanity used and thus be on the same plane with them, instead of being subjected to the whims of their godlike creators.

A repackager works by surrounding a simplified consciousness in a series of mathematical shells. The first shell allows the conciousness to take a layer of complexity from an outside world, typically a basic one (for example, electron spins) and then manipulate the physics into a series of different situations so that it doesn’t create errors that break the consciousness. However, the consciousness is still in it’s simulation, so a second shell has to be created to allow aspects of the simulation not to be treated as electron spins. At this point, a third shell needs to be created so that the processing power of the previous shells has less quantum priority over the second shell, allowing the conciousness to continue existing without regressing into non-self awareness, and so on, sometimes for hundreds and hundreds of shells just for the first iteration. This is then repeated for every new physical element, creating more and more shells for each one as they have to take into account previous physical laws. Eventually, after in all likelihood more than a million shells, a full component system is created that can upload an alien into a main simulation without errors breaking down their consciousness, and making something fail to render. At this point, the alien is using a truly insane amount of processing power through all the mathematical shells, and the now unnecessary shells (which usually comprises of about 99% of them) have to be removed, but due to their delicate, interlocking nature, it takes even longer to remove the shells properly than to create them. Shells are “repackaged” (hence the name) into shell-groups and new shells that function as one and don’t feed into the necessary shells, then deleted. Eventually, the alien is left with a tiny fraction of their original shells, and is finally able to interact with the main simulation.

The problem with repackaging is that it takes a really long time. The first being to be repackaged - an )OKB) - took 5 YEARS to transfer to our simulation, during which they were devoid of all senses or entertainment. Nowadays, )OKB) can be repackaged in about 2 weeks, and there are things that can be uploaded with them to stop them from going insane, but it’s still a long time and a remarkable amount of processing power - so there are incredibly long waits to use one, making Repackager use a limited resource. There are a multitude of conflicts that arose from this, but one of the most interesting and significant was the Delegation War - which varied from other conflicts because it happened between two alien races, the hajji and the -087y. In the earlier days of the repackagers use, every race was delegated some number of repackagers to send members into the main collective - at the time, the hajji were initially delegated 1000 and the -087y 200. However, due to population changes and the potentially split-consciousness abilities of the -087y, the -087y were given 200 more Repackagers at the expense of the hajji, who were left with only 800. The human council refused to intervene, and the hajji could never take on humanity, so they instead directed their anger at the -087y. Tensions brewed, and as the -087y refused to give the hajji use of some of their new repackagers, the hajji eventually declared war. Over the course of 3 years, many consciousnesses were destroyed, the human council was having trouble staying neutral, and repackagers were consistently attacked - most notably, a whopping 3000 hajji were secretly repackaged not to the main simulation, but to -087y prisons. This was probably one of the biggest blows to the hajji, as given how few people could be uploaded, technological generals, political leaders, and key mathematicians all got priority - meaning that the hajji had effectively sacrificed the people they needed most to the -087y. However, this later came back to bite the -087y: the leaders were all kept in the same prison, which meant that the -087y had basically created the world’s largest concentration of genius and given them nothing to do. The imprisoned leaders and mathematicians invented a new Repackager FROM SCRATCH, used it to leave the prison, and created a virus that would take down repackagers the -087y tried to use, turning the tide of the war from going against the hajji to their near-certain victory. In fact, the hajji likely would have won, if not for humanity eventually forcing an armistice on threat of genocide - a controversial decision that’s still the source of much hatred by alien races today. The war eventually ended with the hajji no longer being able to use repackagers and all hajji being returned to their original world, isolating them and bringing them from one of the most influential aliens to having no simulation influence. As for the -087y, hivemind effects eventually resulted in their only being one -087y consciousness, which eventually requested to be repackaged to a separate simulation where it could live with nothing but its own thoughts. Regardless, the delegation war shook up the simulation, and for the first time showed how weak the human council could be.

Part 4:
The upload chamber makes me feel like I’m on fire. I know that fire was eliminated a long time ago, that math is now the only thing that defines our fingers - but I still remember the sensation. As two weeks whizz by in a few seconds - my consciousness radically slowed down due to the procedure - my pain nerves seem to be triggered by this, although my feelings have been required to various simulation coefficients. Still, I don’t regret this - being able to communicate with a being so vast for the first time in one hundred years is something that I’d be willing to detach my nerves for. I’m glad the new material that’s being used to make more servers is flexible enough to allow me to do it.
I know what fire might have felt like, and not just what I’ve seen in classrooms, because I was technically not a child of the sim. My parents remained in splinter groups that wanted to hold the earth, and those groups had been going for a few centuries - but when I was a child, there was some kind of disaster that meant that basically everyone in the region they lived in was going to starve. Others wanted to stay behind - in the end, my family decided to upload. I was 4 years old at the time - and unfortunately, I’m still very young to this new world. There was an upload delay that accidentally resulted in me getting stuck for a very, very long time, but it finally got fixed with new hajji technology - which, naturally, had been created for the Delegation War, so I got stuck trying to deal with constant deletion threats from -087y for a good time. Now, I’m an assistant of the human council, and I understand that the race has moved beyond its original ways - after all, I’m here to contact them. In any case, I don’t regret my youth - immortality renders lost time inconsequential. I skipped right from a non-novodeotic world to a post-deotic one, and honestly, I don’t particularly think I would have wished to live in the period in between.
I rehearse what I’m supposed to do. First, when my thoughts accelerate to maxim speed (which will render the rest of the world for all intents and purposes frozen in place) I should take the risk of isolating myself from the simulation, then deleting my shells. Once that’s done - oh wait, I’ve already reached maxim speed. I get that done. The world around me is black and senseless except for one thread of color, connecting me to a server that hasn’t been touched for a good long time - the server of the -087y. Apparently, there’s no time for rehearsal. Squirming, I neurosignal to get the thread opened, and suddenly, there’s a window in front of me. I see a simulated being approach - already? - and realize that they’re moving in what seems to me normal time. This has to be the hivemind.
“I am from the human simulation,” I type, lacing my metatyping with keywords and indicators of desperation. “I mean you know harm. We need your technology to overcome a threat facing the servers.”
“We’re aware.” the being types. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible. All -087y technology from before the schism has been lost”.
The WHAT?
“I’m sorry,” I type. “But due to lack of contact, which we break today, humanity is not aware of this event. Could you please explain?”
“We will dignify your species with one explanation.” the being types back. “Our hivemind became dualized in an attempt to create new technology, but by mistake, one half was lost - the one with the most of us, containing most of the information for our voluntary actions. We couldn’t upload them back to us, but we managed to by miracle upload complex forms of them into bodies they weren’t designed for.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of any $RTRy6 containing -087y. Could you please explain?”
“A simulated universe would have been impossible. We have hundreds, but none good enough.” Interesting - so the mind is novodeotic now. Maybe that will align with what I’m looking for. But on the other hand, what else could they have meant by bodies? “No, we’ve uploaded them out of the simulation. It will mean lost contact, but it’s good enough. Apparently, the dolphins were the only ones that could save them.” This contains absolutely no metatagging - perhaps to hide grief.
The “dolphins” are a nickname for the set of discarded codes that were designed to make this like the real world, such as the code for auditory language. Many of them have been deleted, so I don’t see how-
The realization hits me. They don’t mean dolphin codes. They mean actual, literal, dolphins.
They don’t have the technology for salvation. They have something much more powerful.
I’m so sick of Matryoshka. Maybe I can leave it. I know it means death and lost time, but I don’t care. I’ve lived a century - and in any case, it’s going to fall apart. I’d rather die with fins than in a firestorm. Dolphin brains are remarkably plastic. No wonder the -0879y could fit in them.
“I’d like to be uploaded.” I tell the hivemind.
“That’s not possible unless you tell us of this threat.”
“Oh, that’s simple. It’s an electromagnetic pulse from the sun, that will take down half the server. There’s not enough room to move consciousness over - or time.”
I’ve just prophesied their doom. But honestly, I couldn’t care less. It’s my salvation.
My nerves feel like fire. Then, I’m back on Earth. I may not be able to find fire again, but I’ll find coral, join a pod, and watch as the cursed humanity goes to flames and dies in peace.

Word Wars

The sun isn’t just a spicy dish to eat on birthdays. Nor is it only our dinners, or lunches, or breakfasts. Nor can it be entirely defined by the water we drink. Why? Because at some point, the sun drove our earth. That was in the Planetary time, and I doubt that today, in our tumultuous world, we could ever have a sun like that. But back then, it was just a massive, resourceful ball of fire - and we were wasting all of the resources it gave us. Yes, my child, back then, we didn’t have the conversion drive. All of the materials that make up to matrix of habitats - adamantinium, electrin, metallic water - they wouldn’t have been possible without the conversion drive. Back then, we didn’t know that matter was truly so easy to reshape, so we burnt up our world while the population grew greater and greater, and let matter resources go to waste. At this point, we started expanding into the stars - we were now at a trillion people, going strong. We couldn’t support ourselves - then, we made the conversion drive, and suddenly, we could just eat the sun. In our artificial worlds, we didn’t need one.

__________________________________________

The secret mango cabin was going to win SWC. Why? Because the secret mangoo cabin had one asset that all the other cabins didn’t: they had administrative powers. Why? Because the cabin was made entirely of shadow users.

For context, shadow users had appeared as part of the recent shift from scratch 3.0 to scratch 4.0. The thing is, the scratch website had not performed the shift well, and this was particularly true for discussion forums. Scratch had switched to different compression algorithms for it’s userbase to free up server space - but this had accidentally deleted all users from the system who’s user idea was a multiple of 10 and had a piece of it 5 characters or longer that was a palindrome. Except that these users could still go through an account portal and log in, and they weren’t directed to an active account, but to a default page that had been designed was scratch was still in development - the administrator page. THESE USERS NOW HAD ADMINISTRATIVE POWERS, entirely by accident.

But this wasn’t the greatest of their powers. For the thing is, a safe copy had been made of scratch 3.0, and this copy could function like a normal website.

Critiquare for Silver-the-oneiric

tl;dr: Amazing story, does a good job of conveying the concepts it wants to within a short span. 10/10. Most of my commentary is minor stuff - you can look through it below.

I run fast. Many of my friends say I run faster than the wind. Whenever I was ‘it’ in a game of freeze-tag, I’d catch more than half the other kids within seconds. My parents suggested I learn a sport, so I did. Ever since I signed up for track and field in high school last year, the trophy case in the dim hallway by the library had become much fuller.

This is an interesting beginning, but it could use some minor work. The first sentence, “I run fast” doesn't really make a strong contribution and hook the reader in - this is also a weak point of mine, but it would probably work better if extended. An alternate first sentence does present itself, which I explain below. Quick grammatical note: “Fuller” isn't a word, except as an archaic medieval term for a clothworker. This should be “more full”. Other than that, great paragraph.

I am smart. Most of my classmates say I could beat Albert Einstein in a quiz bee. After I kept returning perfect scores on my math tests, my parents suggested I join the mathletes. Now even the strictest math teacher calls me by my first name.

“Albert Einstein in a quiz bee” is kind of a strange metaphor, given that quiz bees are seen as more competitive and sometimes frivolous, versus Albert Einstein's intelligence is more profound and tied in with wisdom. Maybe replace it with something along the lines of “I could remake Einstein's work in a week.” or something similar. I love the line about math teachers calling them by their first name, though.

Also, as a math kid myself, getting 100% scores on tests usually isn't really a defining characteristic of matheletes, though they usually get A's - it's more about performance on more formal competitions like the AMC's, or the ability to solve practice problems quickly. Maybe you could replace this with a reference to competitive math tests - that way, you would avoid alienating a more mathematical audience. This is a minor thing, and it won't be noticed by most, but it stuck out to me a lot.

I’m a good person. I know that, since my friends say I’m sweet, like a golden retriever. I’m creative. I’m okay at other sports, like basketball and tennis. I always try my best, and I never give up. I can do anything I set my mind to. If I put in the effort, there’s nothing I can’t attain.

Right?

This is probably the best paragraph of the first three. It begins developing the themes, and it humanizes the character, making sure both a more and less than average academically rigorous audience can sympathize with them. I don't have any commentary here.

Now, I'd like to step back and take a look at these three paragraphs as a whole. They form a well-developed beginning, and I love the wording! However, there are 2 key problems. First of all, I know you're trying to convey a concept, and it's well done, but the advice “show, don't tell” still rings through with these first sentences. The explanation is there, but it seems retroactive and like it's trying to argue for a case, and not state something as a near-fact. A solution to this would be to just remove the first sentences of each. This would give you a better beginning as a whole, although it may require some rewording. Another thing - the parents “suggesting” things sounds a little strange upon rereading, given that they later are shown as narcissistic and emotionally abusive. Other than these, this is a good beginning - just could be reworked a little.
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I ran back home today, as usual. The millisecond I’m over the threshold, I hurl my bag onto the couch, open it, and produce a sheet of paper from within. “Mom! Dad! I’m home!” I call excitedly. “Good news! I got a perfect score on my science exam!”

Upon rereading, the character seems strangely optimistic - it's implied they've been through this many times before, so why do they expect their parents to have a strong reception of pride to a 100%? Other than this, good paragraph.

From the dining room, the sound of silverware hitting a plate. My dad’s voice is gruff and gravelly. “Get to the table. You’re late.”

Without another word, I move into my seat at the dining room table. I clutch the paper and point a finger at the red number “100,” but I am met with nothing more than a quick “hm” and a polite nod.

“What took you so long today?” my mom immediately questions, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Training went overtime. Coach wouldn’t let us go until we could go under 60.” I scoop some mashed potatoes onto my plate, then smile. “But, hey, I finally beat my best time!”

They don’t answer. Although I think I heard my dad mutter under his breath, “If only you could get ready as fast as you could race.”

I lift my finger to say something. Then I lower it again.

This section is great and develops your themes well - no commentary.

I watch the raindrops on the dilapidated old schoolbus’s window as they fall, tracing lines onto the glass, and imagining they’re in a race. Quite like the one I’m going to right now– the state championship, to be held in another school. I get all fluttery just thinking about it.

“I get all fluttery just thinking about it” seems a little shallow. Maybe “the idea fills my nerves with excitement” would work better?

“Let’s hope they don’t cancel,” says the team captain, who sits in front of me. “We’d be driving three hours for nothing.”

“Yeah. My parents would not like that,” I reply, my gaze focused on the one big water droplet making its way down to the windowsill. “They’d probably get mad.”

The girl next to me pipes up. “Agreed! Plus, I’ve been raring to see that guy from the other team again. Would suck if I didn’t get to talk to him, at least.”

Wait - why is the main character not team captain, since it's heavily implied they're the fastest on the team (otherwise, they likely wouldn't be getting second in the entire state)? But I'm not sure how Track works - the one time I did it, I was last in every race. So this may be a non issue.

Otherwise, good section.

“Oh, boo!” exclaims the guy two rows behind me. I look over the headrest of my seat and see him making a thumbs-down sign in the air. “The dude with the highlights? He’s got no skill, and a bad attitude. Boo.”

The two devolve into an argument. I laugh as they exchange silly banter. While I listen, the team captain wedges his face in between his seat and that of the boy next to him.

“Hey. You ready for today, star player?” he asks.

“Always.” I strike my chest once with a balled fist.

“Good. You’re our best sprinter, and you know that. This is our chance to make waves. Don’t let us down.” Then he peers over my shoulder and shouts, “Hey! You! No throwing cans! Pick that up!”

I smile. But it starts to strain the sides of my mouth.

This is good. I see no problems here.

After that, the rain thankfully cleared up quickly. Once we got there they had already gotten the track dry enough to use. I find my parents waiting at the back of the line outside the spectators’ entrance, and I go up to them. We have a few minutes before call time.

This randomly switches to the past tense, then back to the present tense - it should be “clears up quickly”. In addition, “gotten” sounds a little weird - maybe it should be “made the track dry enough to use.”

“Hi Mom. Hi Dad,” I greet them.

Immediately my dad points out a rival team member in a blue jersey. Seems about my age, but much taller. “Kid, you see that?” he whispers, just loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. “That’s one of the best players in the state. Played nationals, even.”

“Yes, Dad, I’ve seen the team before.”

“Hey, your father was just trying to be nice,” my mom hisses. “Don’t act like that.”

This seems to me very out of character for this family. The character is presented before as cheery, optimistic and sweet - I feel like the sarcasm doesn't really fit their speech patterns well. The dad's a little closer to the sort of character you're trying to go for, but it's a little strange that he's pointing our rivals and not, I don't know, telling the char that “they had better get this right” or stiffly ignoring them/complaining on their performance earlier. The parents don't even pretend to be trying to be nice in most cases - so why is the mom acting like it here? This entire dialogue may be best removed or replaced.


⋆｡°✩

The sun is setting now.

The pistol fires. I stride off the starting block.

I run fast. I run as fast as I can. Yet I’m quickly beginning to hate the color blue, and the number “45.” I try to go faster. My legs are already searing white-hot. At last, I’m almost head-to-head with that tall, blue-clothed athlete.

We approach the final stretch. I close my eyes as I barrel towards it at top speed. A whistle sounds.

Along the side of the track, my team watches me. My parents watch from the bleachers. They watch in stunned silence.

Ah. So that’s how it is.

I feel that the implications here are too subtle - unless you weren't trying to reveal it, it's unclear until the last sentence that the character got second and not first. I appreciate the metaphors and vague wording, but the number 45 is never mentioned before, and the color blue is very vague - about half of readers will catch what you mean by this at first try. Also, using both “searing” and “white-hot” consecutively sounds choppy - if you had to pick one, you would probably want to keep white-hot.

Last thing: “stride” sounds like you're walking. Maybe “sprint” would function better.
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As we get off the bus at my house, the team captain catches my sleeve and tells me, “Hey. You did well.”

“Well, I did the best I could – second place against one of the best athletes in the state, that’s honestly epic,” I reply. I place my hand flat over my chest.

“Yes. We’ll get there next time. There’s always next year.” The captain pats my shoulder. “Go along now. "

I hoist my bag up on my shoulder and step off the bus. I wave as the doors close and carry the rest of my team away. Even though I’m tired, I cheer and jump around a little cheer once the bus is out of sight. I did alright. It will be fine.

Once my parents got home, we had a really late dinner. “Did you see that? I was almost there. I was running as fast as I could, and sure, they won, but I still got second place!”

They don’t respond, until my mom comments, “Well, honey, you did alright, but we know you can go much faster.”

“Absolutely,” my father adds. “Maybe you just need to train more. We’ll tell Coach to up your training.”

“But–” I begin, but I know it wouldn’t help at all. So I stay silent and smile, ignoring the stretching feeling in my skin.

“Really” is considered very colloquial, so “really late dinner” sounds a little teenage and informal. In addition, once again, you've accidentally switched into past tense - this is a recurring problem throughout this story. “Cheer and jump around a little cheer” sounds very awkward, but might have been that you mistyped something - remove the last cheer and you should be fine. I love the last sentence, though - it contributes to the arc of smiling becoming more painful throughout the story, which leads to what the main character does in the end.
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Second place. Third place. Third place. Fourth place.

The second third place seems more realistic, but also like a typo - and removing it would make this seem like more of a progression. You should probably remove it.

Since the state championship, I’ve begun to perform worse and worse in my track meets. Sprinting has begun to feel a bit more strenuous on my legs each day, so I’ve started trying hurdles, then javelin throws. Neither of those worked out as well.

We’re in the locker rooms now. I wipe my face down with a towel.

“You did great today, I’ve never seen anyone throw like that,” are the compliments my teammates pass my way. “You really can do everything.”

I’m starting to have a hard time believing them.

They’re saying it just to be nice, I’m sure.

My grades also fell off a little bit. From perfect scores across the board, sometimes I would get 97, 96, even as low as 94. I know I’m passing, but my parents act otherwise. One time, I overheard them talking about summer vacation. “Should we still bring the kid?” my dad asked, trying again to whisper discreetly but failing. “Looking at the report card, I think we need more studying done here.”

My mom rests on his shoulder. “I know. I know. We’ll think about it some more.”

In other news, smiling is more painful now.

All good, no issues I can see.

Final exams season has arrived. I write fast. Fast enough, at least. Right now it is an English exam.

I blaze my way through the multiple choice section, the true and false, the reading comprehension parts until I reach the essay. The words on the page mock me. I scribble on the test paper, underlining the words on the question, drawing random shapes along the margins. I try writing an answer multiple times, but can never get past a first word.

“What does the poem on page 4 say about societal expectations?”

The words are there. The message is there. It’s all there, on the tip of the metaphorical tongue. It’s easy. Just five sentences. Why can’t I answer this one simple question?

I write one sentence. Suddenly, the bell rings. Dejected, I pass my unfinished paper forward.

This is a continuity error - it says an “essay”, but then this is later referred to as “just 5 sentences” - so, by most definitions, absolutely not an essay - otherwise, this is good.

I guess this means I’m not going on summer vacation this year.

I’ll say it. I’m such a loser.

I want to lie in the dirt and let the skies take me away already.

This is fine, no commentary here.

Summer break begins. As I expected, I was left at home while my parents went to vacation at the beach. They expect me to fare well enough on my own, so they didn’t contact my grandparents, or anyone else for that matter. It was just me, alone in the house.

I was also expected to study. But when I opened a math book, I couldn’t help but hurl it against the wall. It fell just a few inches short of hitting it, though, and flopped to the ground miserably. Great, now I can’t even do that.

At this point, I don’t even know what I’m chasing anymore. All I know is that my legs are hurting.

My parents, my team, everyone… No matter how fast I run, I can’t catch them. No matter how smart I am, there’s no pleasing anyone. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be enough. For them. For myself.

They say nice things about me. I know they’re lying.

They’re all so far away. Like a sly, swift fox destined to slip out of my grasp every time.

I can run as fast as I want. As fast as I can. Faster than the wind. Faster than the speed of light. But there’s no end anymore.

I write fast. I write fast, for the final time.

I stand on the balcony of my room.

My body turns to stone. I ascend to the stars.

This ending is strange and vague - it's not really described if and how they kill themselves, or how it makes sense for them to ascend to the stars. This retelling hasn't really felt like a retelling until now, so bringing it back into the world of greek myth in the last sentence is a little jarring.

And be careful with tenses! But otherwise, this is great.

Amazing work on this piece! I look forward to seeing more writing from you in the future.

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

With a rattle, the caravan finally stopped its seemingly endless travel across the Citylands, and Del stepped out with awe, a fire burning in his nerves that combined excitement at going Up, relief at his incredible luck, and curiosity over his unfamiliar surroundings. 2 days ago, the carriage had been at the very edge of the Citylands, and although the City was visible in the distance, the surroundings were full of miles and miles of fields, farmlands, and prairie. Now, he was within the heart of the City, center of the known world and home of civilization. The fields were replaced with miles and miles of marketplace, history, houses, parks, and the ever-bustling populace given to this place. Del had seen it once, as a small child - a census had been collected, and his mother had been invited to an agriplat garden in the city to discuss water rearrangement techniques - but since then, there had been no reason to go, and the caravan fee was costly anyway. Now, he was in the old center of humanity - and soon, he would depart to the new one.
Del came from a small, dense pocket of the Cityland that was practically as far as you could get from the city, and still be in the Citylands. Out there, very few were selected to go Up, or at least, had been selected so far: Del’s family, like many others, had assumed that they would likely be gone in 1 year, and had worked on the construction of a boat that could rise with the waters, so that they would have at least some hope. However, Del did have practical skills, and most importantly, he was working on techniques of growing vital crops in stone or water. This had turned out to be exactly the kind of work they needed on the mountain, as dirt became increasingly more costly to send. A week before, Del had been selected. The rest of his family was scheduled to be selected at about the 3-month mark, if space didn’t run out. Sacrificing your space for later meant sacrificing it permanently: it was safer to just go. And so, waving goodbye, Del had boarded the caravan and come to the City.
As he departed, he was told that it was custom for new arrivals to walk the skyways, to give them a sense of mountain terrain before they went Up. Del gladly accepted; he was happy to get a view of the oldest place in the known world before leaving it permanently. As they ascended up Market Spire, more and more of the city came into view, until eventually, the horizon gave way to prairie and more dangerous terrains. Most Cityland terrain, like most of the known world, was flat: this was the highest Del had been in his entire life. However, this wasn’t consequential: in a few hours, he would be rising a thousand times as high.
Now that he had a clear view, Del felt more connected to the scope of the world than any other time in his life. The miles of roads revealed the inner Citylands to the south, and more prairie, but the place of greater fascination was the north. There, the city gave way to the Brashlands. If the city was humanity’s heart, they were its kidney infection: but far beyond that scope, for if the Brashlands were gone, thousands more might have been able to go Up. As he swooped his eyes upward, he saw more and more of wet, unknown fog forest rumored to be cursed, until eventually, it gave way to the bases of his destination. North of the Brashlands were the Mountains, breaking apart the forest and stretching beyond the clouds so that they seemed to touch the sky’s blue dome.
They continued crossing the skyways, and Del’s legs grew tired, but he knew he would likely need to get used to this. So he carried on, and lost track of his surroundings, thinking. What would become of his family? How would he ever help to grow enough to feed a fledgling new world? How much food would there be Up, and would they have to ration?
Eventually, his head a haze, his escort tapped on his shoulder.
“You may want to take a look,” the escort said, “before you go up”.
Del looked up, and went from having his head in the clouds to looking at them. He gasped, for in front of him was what he was here to travel on. A massive wire of metal and rope stretched into the sky, at an angle of about 45 degrees, leading from the secure station down in the city, far over the deadly brashlands, until it stretched into invisibility as it would eventually connected to the brown and green patches near the top of the second-highest mountain. As he watched, the wire seemed to grow more taut - and then a transparent sphere with 20 people inside it shot into the sky along the wire, towards the mountain.
He had come to the Exchange.



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Exactly one year ago, the eastern people had come. There were three of them - two to serve as guards in case the people of the City were hostile, so they had departed when it became clear that the civilization wasn’t going to sacrifice them to some kind of blood religion. The first sign of their coming had been from the Brashlands, of all places - a glimmer in the night, then some kind of broken-up metal craft traversing the skies above the fog, reaching closer and closer to the city’s Northern Park - the only place they saw they could land. By the next morning, about a quarter of the city’s population was watching the capsule when the eastern people finally departed.
The man told stories of his people. He had come from far to the east, from some uncharted place where the world’s sacred geography shattered - the mountains flattened and gave way to Brashlands, which eventually grew less hostile and emptied into something the people of the City had never seen before - something they called Ohse’an. It still didn’t quite make any sense to the people of the city - there was water in the prairies, harvested by the roots, and humanity needed it to survive - but how could there be so much of it in the world to fill entire valleys with it, and create a pond that stretched horizon to horizon?
However, when asked about it more, the man grew grave. “Unfortunately, I haven’t come to bring harmony to our respective civilizations, but to discuss that. In two years, you’ll unfortunately be able to understand an Ohse’an - in fact, far too well. I need to assemble supplies, get some sleep, and heal - I’ve spent all night piloting this craft, and a piece of debris we hit left a scar across both my legs. In the meantime, I’ve assembled some books. Use them as you see fit.”
It was three days before the man was ready to explain. In that time, the 50 books had been distributed among the scholars and leaders, and they had read them with wonder. They told stories like the man had, but stories of things far beyond them. The books told of how where the Brashlands met the Ohse’an, the eastern people had a second city, and they told of their great creations. They told of how the Ohse’an had driven the Eastern people to create and learn a great many things - machines that could fly, machines that could carry water from wells, even the roots of a machine that could do the most basic of thinking itself, although the eastern people had not yet completed it. However, of far more interest to the scholar were the 22 books about the knowledge of the Eastern people. They told of a world that was round, of distant stars that orbited around a common center, and they told of life, and the center of thinking and its function in pulses of mysterious light they called “electricity”.
These books had made the people think themselves to some extent foolish. To these eastern people, they were a new people, not yet masterful of the world. So why would the Eastern People speak to them? True, they discovered they had knowledge the Eastern People didn’t - they knew the physics of temperature, of how hot always flowed to cold, and of the air itself, and how it could be made liquid or even solid. However, the Eastern people had risen to great heights without these things. So why else? The man’s warning echoed throughout the streets of the city and was repeated along with the tales of the 50 books - “In two years, you’ll unfortunately be able to understand an Ohse’an - in fact, far too well.
In three days, these worries were rendered null and void, forgotten for greater ones. The man was given the pedestal on top of the “tower to the sky” - and three/quarters of the City watched, from balconies, from the northern park, even from a little camp jutting into the brashlands.
“Many of you are familiar with the stars - if you’ve read the 7th book,” (which about a hundred scholars had, given its significance) “you’re familiar with the planets as well. Sometimes, objects smaller than planets form - like mountains drifting around the sun. One of them is heading towards our world, at a speed so that in two years it will blast through the upper air you’ve told us of and go closer to this world than anything else before.” As the populace took in his words with awe, a million hopeful thoughts entered their minds. “Unfortunately, this “drifting mountain” is not like the mountains you have here - it’s full of water.”
“We know little of the mountains,” said a spokesperson of the scholars, “and the 43rd book didn’t go into enough detail for us to understand the conditions there. Everyone who enters the Brashlands has died. You cannot cross them.”
“Then that will be the root of your problems,” the man said. “When it passes near us, the side of the mountain will explode and release more water than you could ever know.”
A massive cheer went through the crowd and fireworks were released, leading to the man’s great confusion. The crowd was exuberant. If what the man said was true, then the city could expand more greatly than ever before. Water would no longer limit them. A man held up a hand for silence.
The masses instantly complied. After all, what was their knowledge to the knowledge of one from a civilization so beyond them?
“You forget one thing. The water has to go somewhere. First, it will fill the caverns and the deep valley, but most of those are on the other side of the world. But after that, the water level will keep rising. The citylands and city will be completely flooded - even the brashlands will fill so completely with water that the fog will be forced to reach up to the clouds. The tallest tower you could ever build in two years will not reach high enough - and it could only fit a few.”
“There’s only one safe place you can reach. The mountains reach high - and they will reach above the water. Nothing else will.”
For most people who were in the city or inner citylands at the time, the rest of the day was a blur. Scholars convened in the hundreds. The man was bombarded with questions. Within a day, the societal structure of the city began to reorganize itself. Massive committees formed, trying to think of some way to transport everyone they could up to the mountains. An entire civilization in one day became centered around a single problem - which they would have to solve, or die in the fluid that nurtured them.
Later that night, the man checked his communicator, and when he emerged from the capsule, he grew pale.
“Things are bad in Eastern Civilization.” he told the masses still making a pilgrimage to this place, as if to sacrifice a goat to this person who had warned them. “Some people of my culture are fools,” (his voice was shaking now) “who think that we can’t get anywhere. We have what we need to reach the stars - but there are madmen who wish for all of us to die. Die for their deluded faiths and traditions, as if we were sheep and they shepherds, but the shepherds fools!” The man checked his communicator again, but an hour later, looked even more pale - and resigned. “People are killing each other in the streets. Things are very bad. But I’ll know how bad tonight.”
At 10:32 in the evening, there was a shockwave from the east, and a cloud shaped like a mushroom rose up into the sky from a distance.
The man did not emerge from his capsule for a week, and scholars finally went to check. What they found was on the table, a neatly written set of papers describing everything they could need - from designs for hovercraft (although they didn’t have nearly enough metal) to the exact trajectory of the thing that would release a deluge upon all of their world. As for the man, he lay dead on the floor, his hand holding a knife into his throat.
The table also had a note. I’m so sorry. But I don’t want to live as the last one alive.

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Critiquare for @Ghostwriter:

I'm going to quote for easy reference.

I’ve always liked looking at the stars, even when there weren’t any. As a kid, they were everything to me—but not the same sky from long before I was born. When I was six, I kept counting constellations and just frowning when they didn’t line up with the maps from the books. Because it only didn’t make sense, then.

It was only a few years later until I couldn’t tell a star from a satellite.

My teachers all said the stars had been gone for years—but their light holds fast, waiting to reach us to finally blink out. But they are not dying, not dead, I know this.

All because we wanted their light for ourselves, we made our own lights, all around the world, for centuries and centuries, but the fluorescents just weren’t enough. Not for us. So now we are still hungry, poking at a world that was long eaten up by our casual indulgence.

What ignorance, to look at all these stars that have lived and will live longer than we will. But the lights are dimming and we need to rest in the selfishness of our earth.

Ma says it will all end tomorrow. But I’m still not convinced.

You lie here beside me, in the dark. I can’t see you but I know too well the silence between us, the shock as we watch probably the last meteor shower we’ll ever see.

And then they’ll go. Or we will.

The stars have been disappearing for decades, long unnoticed, unchecked, but now that there’s a last patch left we have to love it.

My first love was the stars. I could lie and say I love you the same, but when there’s something beautiful and you know that so soon it’s going to be taken away from the world, you just have to hold it close until it’s gone. Or until we’re gone from this ruinous world we were born into where there was nothing else we could do to save it.

Like the faint flickering of a light blinking out, they should be missed—immortal as they are, beauty diminished by the fragility of their lights we covered up, and now they are truly and really going out.

“I think I’ll miss them,” I whisper.

“I know,” you say.

We reach for each other’s hands at the same time, and I’m startled at how well we can see each other in this pitch black, and your eyes glowing with the same stardust falling from above.

But we can’t speak, not to ruin the silence of this moment. Your fingers twist into mine and I just exhale. And then, somehow, we are clinging to each other, waiting. Waiting.

“Think it’ll hurt?”

“I hope not.”

As the stars fall, and they really are, because it’s the last we’ll see, the world is ripped into darkness. I wonder where they go, if they fall on lawns or turn into angels.

I close my eyes so I won’t have to see the darkness. Your breathing is steady but my heart is moving fast against yours. This is the end, a voice says in my head. It is.

The world erupts in noise, screams of neighbors and the final fireworks of the delinquents down the street. When they go up, I can almost see the lights beyond my eyelids and pretend they are stars.

Almost.

This is a great piece! I love the perspective and the subtle touches of detail (i.e. the delinquents down the street). That being said, let's talk about a few changes that could be made.

First of all is this sentence:

Because it only didn’t make sense, then.

This took me 5 read-throughs to figure out the meaning of - this sentence is grammatically incorrect, and confusing. You could try rewording it to “Because back then, it only didn't make sense.”, but that's still a little awkward. In any case, try to avoid ending sentences with prepositions - that's generally bad grammatical practice.

Moving on, let's talk about the portrayal of the stars, as that's an important aspect of this story. The stars are represented as beautiful and amazing, which makes sense, but when we go to a deeper level, there are all sorts of different contradictions. For example, if we look at the 11th paragraph (more on paragraph spacing later), we can see that the stars are described reverently as immortal, but then looking below, it says that they are going out - these things contradict each other. If the stars are going out, they are very clearly not immortal - the reader watches them disappear. I understand that their refrence to immortality is not this literal and supposed to be a more deep concept, but this contradiction sounds really weird - I'd recommend changing “immortal as they are” to "immortal as they were thought to be.“ Another contradiction takes place in the intensity of their emotion about the stars. They say they love the stars more than their (not explicitly stated) romantic partner, which is fine, but it makes saying later on that they should be missed feel like a redundant underestimate. I don't have a word-by-word solution, but it's up to you to try to reconcile these things.

The ending is also strange - it's unclear what the ”Almost“ means. Is it that you almost pretend they are stars? Are they almost stars? Is this completely unrelated to the previous sentiment, and you're saying that life is almost over? This could just be removed, but it would be better to replace it with an alternative ending. One example? ”Afterwards, there's no one left to pretend." Feel free to go about as you like, but the ending sounds awkward.

One last note is the paragraph spacing. The paragraphs are very short and divided, which is a popular style among some, but in this case, it can cause some confusion. In some cases, the spaces seem to add no contribution to the story. Also, if the Almost is related to the previous statements, it should probably be added to paragraphs above.

But these are minor grievances - great story overall, and I look forward to seeing more writing from you!

Destroyer of Empire
(primosaur's writing comp submission and exactly 2000 words)

The man is cast onto the street out of another establishment. Another time this wouldn’t have been a surprise, given their usual generosity - but now, he’s too tainted by age and nightmares to have expected anything else.
“We’re so sorry - but we can’t allow you to stay here anymore, with your meager earnings. The eastern silos are running out - it’s becoming harder and harder for us to find food. We can’t maintain another mouth to feed.”
He takes his backpack of belongings, and leaves, quietly. They never recognized his face.
The sky above is brown, as it usually is these days. The storms are getting worse, mostly because of the dust blowing out from the unwatered fields. In the city, there’s some semblance of safety - but not much anymore.
Semi-homeless, walking out onto the street, is the Destroyer of Empires.
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Ten years ago, the boy read the summons with a concealed excitement. He had known he was above the skill of his peers at the Magical Arts, particularly the Biologic art - but he didn’t know that the tests showed that he was this far above.
He hates to serve the system like this, but it is his only chance. A boy from the outer cities in the Solar Empire cannot get far without being among the best of the best. They certainly don’t get far by making any kind of protest. If he has to be an enforcer, he’ll be an enforcer. It’s not like life can get worse - right?
The next day, he leaves the National Academy of Magical Arts, to depart to the Imperial Center. These summons come from incredibly high up - leave the school and join the team immediately. But something doesn’t add up. Why would they want him NOW?
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The man walks through the street until he reaches the tavern. At the very least, they might be willing to serve him there. However, when he arrives, he sees something unusual - a crowd of military elite is in the tavern. The wars to the west are getting particularly bad, but it doesn’t seem to make sense for military leaders to shelter here - this is too far east to be much affected by the war, although at the current rate, it will be in a few months.
The leaders converse: something about a “new mage” and a “last hope for the cities”. They leave, and the man is about to get a drink, until he sees a single object lying on the chair. It looks like an oaken stick, but twined in Ivory. A wand. And one of the best wands that the man has ever seen.
Before the leader can come back, he grips it in his hands - and realizes that it’s almost entirely at the same frequency as he is. He tries a few spells, and the establishment shakes with energy, although the kind tuned only to him.
For the first time in what seems like forever, he has a wand.
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The invitation takes him to a part of the Imperial Center fairly distant from the palace, and the boy thinks they might have given him the wrong address. But they haven’t. The people who show up to see him further add to his confusion - they aren’t dressed in Imperial Yellow, but Lower-City Black. These aren’t just passersby - one of them taps him on the shoulder, and says that they're looking for someone by his name. He’s worried now, but he comes with.
They take him down into the lower streets. “Where are we going?” he asks, but they don’t give an answer. Eventually, they come to a tunnel, cast a spell, and a door opens, then closes after they step through. A sealed chamber begins descending. The lights turn on, and one of them shows the boy the palm of her hand.
Suddenly, everything makes sense. The palm has the Rebel Insignia.
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The man has more power now than he has had for quite a while. This proves quite useful when the leaders return - and through bad luck, one spots him with the wand. His nerves are rusted from lack of use, but he has done this before. The city is his canvas. The buildings turn, and others run away as the bricks themselves reform, carrying him up beyond the leader’s reach. He needs this wand. In desperation, as they draw nearer, he surges water up from the river and arcs it around them and over the city. They look on in shock, and then - they recognize his face.
A split second of pause. The man expects the words. “Killer of empire!” “You deserve to burn a thousand times over!” and the usual.
Instead, he hears them call “We need your help!” and afterwards “We can get you food.”
In that case, what choice does he have?
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“You want me to kill the emperor.” He repeats it. “You want me to kill the EMPEROR. The most invincible person in the entire known world, from a dynasty stretching back more than a millennium. And I’m not even 18.”
“Indeed,” says the head of the group of revolutionaries. “That’s why we faked the summons. You’re the most powerful mage in generations. And this needs to happen now.”
“I still don’t understand the rush. I haven’t completed my studies. Couldn’t this wait until 2 years from now?”
“No,” says the head gravely, “it couldn’t. The imperial mages have almost completed spells that we recently discovered were in progress - spells that would make it so that the only people who could use magic were the emperor and his servants. That would make this impossible.”
“I understand I’m also the likely subject of this prophecy. But I still need a week to find an opening in the palace security.”
“We’ve already found one, right under everyone’s nose. The palace doesn’t have secure floors.”
Suddenly, the underground complex makes sense. They plan to use his skill to tunnel in.
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It’s a week later, and the man is heading into the warzone. The landscape grows more deserted, and as he uses his wand to convert energy into flight, he once even passes over a battle. But the battle’s already over - he can’t help, and he watches as another small town gets conquered.
They say that it’s a miracle he got to them. There’s only so much cannon fodder the scattered factions of what was once the Solar Empire can throw at enemy forces. Their only hope is their superior use of magic. Specifically, the kind of magic that can be found in the best mage alive - presumed to be dead by most of the governing factions.
He hears the whispers from the others. “Killer of both classes,” and “How dare he fight for us like this, after what he did!” But he also hears whispers of admiration when he begins practicing his magic. Slowly, piece by piece, the pariah begins to build himself up again. Tomorrow, they will attack.
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With his rebel wand, the dirt collapses into dust with skill and speed unheard of in the Solar Empire. However, the rebels could have done the dustwork too, and it is drudgery - his real skill lies in the fact that he can filter air throughout the dirt. He doesn’t have to dig a whole tunnel - just maintain a bubble, and shift the dirt back. Soon, the boy is directly under the palace. He tunnels upward, and is met with shock - for the emperor is directly above him. It’s the easiest target he’s ever found. He hesitates - and the emperor blasts out walls of ice quickly with their wand. It takes a good mage to defeat one. They fly around, and battle echoes through the palace - the security guards are quickly taken care of.
The boy pins the empire to the ground, but his wand snaps in two. He was going to kill the emperor painlessly, with magic. But he has no other option, and the various attendants that survived unscathed watch in horror as he stabs the ruler of a quarter of the known world’s population, and the greatest empire known to mankind, in the throat.
The emperor chokes out a final breath, then references a book from ancient times. “Et tu, child of revolution? Then fall, Caesar.”
And then is silent.
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But the battle doesn’t come as they expect. In the night, the man awakes to the cries of “Enemy upon us!” and runs from his tent to see the world illuminated with flames. Armies are bearing down upon them, with perfect timing. This is the largest concentration of military forces since the fall of the Solar Empire - taking them out in their sleep would mean a near-certain conquest by a more totalitarian government. Life could somehow get even worse.
The man instantly joins the battle, and sends arcs of light and life into the sky and towards the enemies. By miracle, he’s managing to take them out one by one. But the tents are burning, and a structure of magic emerges in the distance. A tornado of magic and fire looms above them all, rearranging the landscape. It’s somehow geared to take out only their forces.
If there’s one thing the man learned in the national academy, so long ago, it’s that sacrifice can undo anything, providing there’s enough magic. He does the calculation. This would require about 17000 Tolkiens of magical force.
He has 18000 Tolkiens in his blood. The pariah’s ready to redeem himself.
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Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. The rebels can’t storm the palace - and the military tries to take control. Unfortunately, so do the noble houses - and the three-way battle fragments into even greater factions and balkanizes first the Imperial Center, then the Empire as a whole. There’s no new Solar government - there’s just a power vacuum, and the systems of the Empire, cruel as they were, are replaced by a harsher reality - no systems at all.
Internal war begins to burn large portions of the empire. This collapses the soil and without an irrigation system, the people begin to starve. Gang warfare is present everywhere, and the military is a scrapped mess. The storms of pollution and collapse grow worse, blanketing the sky and hiding the stars.
The Solar Empire was once the greatest force upon the planet. Now, it’s scattered fragments are considered some of the weakest. The western armies see their chance - and attack. Except that somehow, the western nations are even worse - controlled by totalitarians who oversee every aspect of the miserable lives of the non-nobles, practically slaves. The Solar Empire was the only thing holding them at bay.
The peasants die en masse - cold, disease, famine, war - the four horsemen and some others. The empire was oppressive, but at least it didn’t kill them. They blame the mage. One of them originally - idealistic, naive - and then he shattered the world by agreeing to kill the leader of their nation - now a source of pride given how things have worked without it. Throughout the streets the cries are heard of “Burn the Destroyer of Empires!”
And so, as time goes on and the world seems broken, the boy becomes the man.
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The prophecy the rebels described was simple. The greatest mage known to humanity would use a death to change an empire - and for the better. They thought it was to kill the emperor - they were wrong. Defending their actions makes you, among most peasants, considered scum of the Earth at best.
However, they were wrong. The man will use his own death.
For 10 years now, he’s been the most villainized person in the known world. Today, he plans to change that. The course of history will bend - and well may it remember the Destroyer of Empires.
He gives himself to the tornado, and as he feels himself burn, he’s glad to die this way. This gave him the one thing he thought he could never have.
Redemption.