Robinski

Yes. Also, I imagine they would still have transport planners in this day and age, so whoever gave this job to a programmer doesn't really know their own job, imho. Maybe the story is a buddy movie. A and B are unlikely partners, thrown together to solve a seemingly insurmountable threat to the city. The programmer and the transport planner don't get on at first, there's friction, tension and swearing until finally they develop a grudging respect for each other, and manage to crack the problem in the nick of time!!

Comments. Chapter 9 First line is confusing. M is pushing? No, she’s striding? I love the local ‘colour’ that you generate here with the festival, the world-building that you achieve, subtly. Good tension, excellent interaction, clearer examination of the issues and conflicts. I’m happy. Chapter 10 “One more piece of kindling and the town will alight” – I feel like this means the town will climb down from a train when it stops at the station. “passed through the village at a tense canter, slow enough to watch” – to me, a canter is a run, so the word ‘slow’ doesn’t sit well with it. ‘trot’, I think, would be better; hurrying, but not running, as such. “a lot of questions to answer” “Is there an amulet around here?” – I don’t really understand this reference, because I think they first encountered the amulet on the glacier before? 15 years-old “soundless on it’s its rusting hinges” – I still do it too sometimes. “Whatever she’s asking you to work on, get that mess cleaned up first, S” – I can’t quite get the context of this statement. Yes, I liked this slice of S’s daily life, and the exchange about surgical ‘adjustment’ is helpful to answer some of the questions that I remember having when reading from the beginning. It does come fairly late in the story, if this is where it will be located, but I think I could deal with that, due to the other interludes you’ve already submitted. Good job. Keep it coming. <R>

Yes, I should have said, this was well done; the interweaving of personal aspects with the main thread of the story. Yes, I did have this concern too at the start, then kind of got wrapped up in the technical aspects. My professional interest, and the well done personal relationship carried me through the story, but the stakes were remote, not very personal, because I don't think the fear of being fired stood up. Yes, absolutely and most definitely. The amount of data available to transport planners is very advanced and getting more so. For pedestrians, we can get bluetooth data that tracks travel patterns through a shopping mall (for example). Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is used to automatically track vehicle patterns from location to location, thereby determining routing of traffic. This is also used for automatic tolling and congestion charging (vehicles pay to enter city centres or cross other artificial cordons.

So, eh, brace yourself... Ha-ha, well now. I am a transport planner by profession and have been for 30 years, so I should know all about this, right? Ahem, well not really in the area that I work in, but I should be able to at least make educated comments, right, right? We’ll see… The opening is a bit dry. If this is just going to be about autonomous vehicles (this is the phrase I have heard most often), then it’s going to sound a bit like a lecture, or an essay. I hope it has character and plot. If so, I'd prefer to get those first. Does she actually need a console at all? The answer is, that depends. I'm interested in how much research you did on the existing technology. There is an industry-accepted scale of driving autonomy which is based on vary (decreasing) degrees of human intervention or oversight being required. The SAE scale ranges from ‘Level 0’ (no driving autonomy, so basically what we have at the moment with cruise control) to Level 1 (driver assistance, which I think includes self-parking, which we have now), up to Level 5 (full automation). I won’t prattle on – need to read and see what you’ve got in here!). “she’d be one day be programming a city” Still kind of dry. I still want plot, character and mystery/adventure/something exciting from stories that I read. “dad still lived in the suburban home” “Or Dad’s new wife moved in” – okay some family drama at least. Why does the car drop into first anyway? Does it not have some kind of ‘modern’ continuous transmission for reasons of passenger comfort? “her own car completely shrugged to a halt” – awkward phrasing. To me, it’s more dramatic if it shrugs to a complete halt. “good old- fashioned Chicago rush hour traffic jam” – there’s some confusion here. You say jams are rare, and that’s reasonable with autonomous vehicles, up to a point. However, you then show that she’s familiar with the jams, and that they seem to be regular, because things never change. The reality is that autonomous vehicles will most likely either be limited to certain geographical areas (i.e. no conventional cars allowed) or will need to be able to cope completely with a phased implementation over time, and therefore mixing with regular vehicles, in the way that electric vehicles (PEV and PHEV) are now and have been in recent years. The greatest challenge to AVs is their interaction with existing roads and existing vehicles. Personally, in terms of reactions, judgement, knowledge and perception, I do not think there can ever be an AV that is as good as a human driver, but whatever the case, the key is AI. I like that you recognise that the interaction between AI and manual drivers is a source of problems. The existence of jams due to accidents is reasonable, but I would expect that smart roads would be in place to prevent such things happening (the ‘mainframe’ seems a rather archaic term to use, not least because it’s software that does all the hard work, the computer’s just a big adding machine). Also, I’m surprised there are still this number of vehicles on the road. The number of years (decades) it will (could) take to get to full AVs is such that I would expect mass transit systems to be a good deal more sophisticated, with expanded networks to take the load of highways. Smart highways themselves however can be expected to make much more effective use of the space they have, such as with high-occupancy vehicles lanes. This could be in the form of mass transit buses, but also personalised transport vehicles carrying multiple passengers. Smart highways will be able to detect when multiple persons are present, and might also close lanes to single occupancy vehicles, with the intention of forcing lone drivers to change modes or car pool. I would doubt very much that vehicles would be permitted to travel at 60mph in an urban area in the future, and I include urban freeways, unless under automated control. Although, traffic capacity increases with speed, especially if reduced vehicle separation can be achieved in the future because of AVs. Even now, smart motorways in the UK, or just plain old matrix signs on existing motorways have or will be used to regulate vehicle speeds, reducing speed limits during peaks times to reduce accident risk and improve flow. “Less speed, less fewer chances of…” “just as dangerous behind a Walmart shopping cart as they are behind the wheel” – but clearly not true because of the relative weight (mass) of the vehicles being driver. “Rapid lane changes and cutting someone off can produce just as many accidents” – nope, far, far more. Speed affects the severity of a collision (Have you seen the movie Hot Fuzz? They’re not called accidents anymore, but collisions), but the collision happens because someone else changes their direction of travel or their position. This doesn’t mean it’s the someone else’s fault, but for speed to be the cause of a vehicle-vehicle collision, someone would need to drive straight into someone else. That does happen of course, but because the speed isn’t paying attention to what’s happening in front. So again, it’s not really speed that causes the collision. “most gridlock is caused by irregular breaking braking and acceleration anyway” – meh. That certainly is the main symptom, but the cause, usually, is simply the capacity of the road or junction being exceeded. the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) defined a series of Levels of Service (LoS) ranging from A to F, where A represents free flow and F represents total flow breakdown. If you think about it, why is the person at the front braking? Search and replace ‘braking’ for ‘breaking’. ‘Beau’ is use to describe a male admirer. Female would be ‘belle’, presumably. “more spotless than she had ever saw seen it”, I think, and the same for the next instance. “probably had something to do with the pizza she was carrying” – lol. Works for me! I don’t think she can turn away a pizza she brought, more like one that was offered to here by someone else. “she opened hoped the box” – also, why does she need more than one plate? He asks her how work is twice. Big issues: (1) I cannot be convinced that, at the level of tech we’re talking about, individual data is held on individual solid pieces of stuff for each driver. They wouldn’t even do this now, or ten years ago. This all would be centralised collected by the vehicle manufacturers, or the highway authority, or at a national government level. (2) Data protection. How in the heck does some retired bloke end up with a bunch of personal data in his garage!! Now way, that has to be totally illegal. The current data protection laws in the UK would not permit this. I don’t know what the US is like. Hmm, okay, I see you’ve explained this. I'm still a bit dubious that this is not illegal practice for him to retain the cubes. (3) This is the same as (1), just the existence of these cubes at all, environmentally, cost-wise, makes no sense to me. It feels like VHS. Gridlock is not a cause, it’s a result. Also, just because one system works in one location, doesn’t mean it should somewhere else. Any system can be expected to have limits, and demand for travel; available routes; infrastructure capacity; control systems; numbers of Origins and Destinations (complexity highway of the network); alternative modes of travel and their capacities and coverage; population spread and density; availability of local facilities in communities; and on and on; there are so many factors that affect the operation of a highway network. How successful the system is totally dependent how these any many more variables are dealt with in the control software that the mainframe is running, or the preparation of data that is fed into it. I like her dad having a line to the mayor. I’m sort of doubtful about it being portrayed as new technology. Urban Traffic Management Control systems (UTMC) or UTC sometimes, has been in existence for decades. Any system that she is working with will, I think, just be the latest iteration (or equivalent, more modern replacement) of some system or type of system that we have now. More often now these things are referred to as ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). At first, I don’t know who Mickey is; then I think it’s a nickname for the mayor; then I think that’s presumptuous; then I realise it’s probably an auto-spell-correction thing. I like the tablet having a projection feature. Those are the tiny little details that really can make your story feel futuristic. You certainly don’t need to explain how it’s done, although if you can drop in a morsel of background that makes it look like you know how it would be done, that will make you sound like an expert!! I don’t think you can have enough of these little futuristic details in an ‘idea’ story. “if drivers would consent to total automation within fifty miles of high congestion areas” – I think you're on the right track here, but there is some contradiction, I think, in the presentation of the central idea/conflict as to what is the cause and what they are trying to eradicate. ‘pre-programmed visitor option” – the cost of implementing AV usage of existing roads, as far as I can tell, is all around the development of AI and the AV themselves being able to operate without external equipment, but purely on existing, unmodified roads. That being the case, it’s entirely possible that there would be no (or limited) cost to an individual city, other than in reacting to the effects of AVs coming into use on their roads. My point being, I could see how the link to local facilities would not necessarily be in place at the beginning of AV roll-out. Then again, the endless commercialisation of… everything, tends to suggest it would be, and that such a gap in the market is unlikely. Dunno. “If automation presents drivers with a means of bypassing that” – Hmm. My experience of toll roads is that there usually is an alternative existing route, so you are not holding drivers to ransom, which would be bad politically. Maybe future Chicago is different, but the point of the toll road being that you can either use the existing congested route, or pay to use the alternative toll route and avoid delays and have a free-flowing, quicker route – at a reasonable cost, so that enough people will choose to pay for the alternative such that it can be maintained in a cost-neutral way. This said, I could see a future, certainly in the USA, where they apply the same model to highways as is applied to health care, i.e. total (?) commercialisation. In other words, you pay for your highway not through general taxation, but at the point of delivery, i.e. you pay for the amount of driving that you do, not through any blanket entry tax on the price of the vehicle, or an annual charge like the UK’s Road Fund License. This is perhaps a more likely scenario consideration that fuel is much cheaper in this future, and therefore governments ability to raise money for highway improvements through fuel taxes would (presumably) be hugely reduced. “Cities that have implemented these programs have seen huge increases in employment” – Not sure about this. I’m not convinced to what extent employers care about transport of their staff. If you set up a new business your first concern is serving your customers. Okay, that relies on transport, but if you are hiring staff, it’s up to them to get to work on time. You might not employ someone who lives an hour away, or 2 hours away (UK anyway), because they are unlikely to stay with you in the long term due to the cost of commuting, but it’s their cost. Employers (generally) don’t pay for their staff to get to work – maybe in the future though… I think where you would see an increase in employment is when a new mass transit system was implemented, but in reality, these things are planned in advance. That’s pretty much what my profession is all about (more on this in conclusion). I did not think our M/C came across as particular stubborn, and it’s hard to sell her being dogged in a short story. She’s had this project for less than a day, and their debate here took about 5 minutes, I reckon. I don’t think she’s earned the stubbornness ‘badge of honour’. “Dodge Tumbler” – lol. “She worked with enough programmers to know the greasy, deep-fried scent of the snack” – I don’t think you need to explain this. I think we’ve all seen/smelt an onion ring. “Alice projected into the next developer meeting” – I stumbled over this line a couple of times before I got it. I think the term ‘projected’ is archaic. Even now we use phrases like ‘dialled in’, ‘video conference’, etc. Also, 3D projection chat would surely have a slick acronym or nickname. “Drivers would still retain control of steering and signaling, but acceleration and braking would be…” – Ah, need to refer you to my earlier comment about it not being acceleration and braking that are the root cause, although in themselves are symptoms that could be treated by speed regulation. The problem is, to prevent accidents, you really need to take all control away from the driver, since it’s direction change and weaving (between lanes), merging (entry to the highway) and diverging (exit from the highway) where capacity and safety issues arise. “used intentionally for from hitting…” – this feels like new information late in the story. Again, on Page 12, I think we hit the crux of the story, which is taking ‘rights’ away from the driver. Cars still run on fuel, don’t they? I mean, what is the definition of fuel? Is electricity not still fuel? Even then, there is the question of where the electricity comes from, which is the next challenge. It’s fine having electric cars, but if the electricity comes from fossil fuel generation, then you’re no further forward, and have used additional energy for the power transmission, possibly. ‘Too rooted to be fixed’ struck me as odd, since ‘fixed’ can mean rooted in place as well as repaired. “Vinyl records were well out of fashion by the time she was a teenager” – this may be the case in your future world, of course, but there has been a massive resurgence in vinyl since it dipped in the 90’s with the advent of CDs. Also, collectors never go away, and there has been always been a roaring trade in collectables, vintage, rarities – and always will be, I hope. I can attest to this from my work in a charity record store (in my spare time – lol) for these past 10 years, and the almost 500 vinyl records in my collection “her impending termination” – as an employer of 30 people, I don’t buy this. You don’t fire good people just because they can’t deal with one issue. And she’s not even a transport planner, she’s a programmer; I would argue it’s not even her job to solve this, but the job of an engineer. But I appreciate she’s been assigned the problem. “her father thumped on the record player” – Sweet Baby J, no!!! This man is not a record collector. I like the moment of discovery that she has. I like how you portrayed that. Don’t know what it is yet, but the moment of realisation was very convincing. “There are two seasons in Illinois, Alice thought, construction and winter” – rofl, and by no means confined to Illinois. Have you been to Canada, and the UK, and… (etc.) “her route took her through the best parts of downtown Chicago” – yeah, I think some clarification is required as to what the fix is. So, essentially, she directs the traffic back into the city, which is where the freeway was intended to take all the traffic out of. This then bringing back vibrancy to areas that died or stagnated when all the activity was re-routed away? Wait, what? Where did all this stuff about tyre scanners come from? I’ll say again, the solution here doesn’t address the actual causes of congestion, only the results. The cause of congestion is too many people going to the same place at the same time using the same mode of travel. That’s why trains are full, roads are backed up, flights over-booked, etc. Largely, congestion results from the demand for travel, and the solutions are either provide more capacity, more modes of travel (trains, buses – i.e. more capacity on the same route), or by changing people’s need to travel by flexible working, work-from-home, etc. I like your reveal when she catches on to her father’s behaviour; that was very nicely done; surprising yet inevitable. That’s a nice way to make her look competent and a good way to bring us into the home stretch. Also, the connection between habits being in Dad’s bones as well as the city’s. I think that idea resonates nicely, and deservedly is the title of the story. I think you’ve got a good story here, the trouble is that the basic facts are wrong, I’m afraid - in my professional opinion, as any transport planner or engineer with experience of transport / highways issues would say - I think. This does not mean abandon the story of course, but it really underlines big style the need to write what you know, or put in the hard hours researching the topic to a considerable degree. Not perhaps what you wanted to hear; sorry, but you are in my house here, as they say. <R>

Ha-ha, lol, yes, I do this all the time, but... (a) your MC can be permitted to have a better memory than you!!; (b) you forgetting your coffee is not a matter of life and death, whereas his meeting seems to be close to it; (c) your primary purpose in the morning is to get to work, not remember your coffee. MC's main purpose is to sit at the right table - so it's his main task, not a secondary one. I take your point about forgetfulness; it really is because it's the main thing he has to do. I understand being offended by smugness. It would maybe have struck me less odd if he'd thought how he'd like to dump her on her c h u l l, wipe the smug smile off her face. Yeah, but he doesn't really seem to consider any other reasons why a person might drink. Self-loathing totally is one, completely accept that, but grief, guilt, boredom or just because you like the taste - or are addicted, all valid reasons to be hunched over a glass. I may have overplayed this a bit. I should have said that we do not of course need to feel sympathy with a character right away, although it can be a bit risky to go that route. I would have felt much more connection with R if he was acting to the best of his ability, maybe knew he was taking a risk working for W, but still had to do it because it was his only option, he had no choice, all other avenues were closed; no family to help him; no resources to fall back on. So, he doesn't look naive, but 'just' desperate. Yeah, I didn't really get that, because the priest seemed to totally know W was guilty. So, the priest was guilty too? It's that I want him to earn it somehow, not just be special at random. Peter Parker gets bitten by a spider. Iron Man gets blown up. The Fantastic Four get irradiated with cosmic energy. It's why I never liked Superman, and I think it's why all those other people who don't like Superman don't like him. He's just naturally super - it's really, really boring. If there's something weird about him, I'd like a trail of tiny tell-tales right through before he starts transforming. How you tune those to not make them too obvious, but make the reader go 'Darn, I thought there was something strange going on...' is all part of the joy of writing. You dropped one with the old blind man looking at him, I presume? I almost commented on that being done before. You could make it a blind young child instead, for example; or a blind dog. Anyway, those little clues... maybe there were others I didn't spot. I would totally read this again after it's had a make-over.

Great to read some more of your writing. I look back and see that the last time was February. Good to have you back! “Candrian Road” – as a name, this should be capitalised. I like the opening, I think it’s well done. I get a strong sense of disconnection from the world. I get something of a visual image of the character too, and a good sense of the local setting. "she was beautiful” – This is an opportunity for some writing craft, to show the reader a picture of her. This is really a bit lame. Everyone’s beautiful in some way, and to someone. Why is/was she beautiful to him. “But at the end he would have his life back” – I feel there’s a gap here. Did he lose his life because he danced with the woman? We don’t know why he lost his life. We know bad things happened to her, but I'd be more invested in his fate knowing why he is in hiding. “pulled by large clydesdales” – some people might not know these are horses, maybe? Also, this kind of places your story in another Earth. Also, Clydesdale is the name of a bread, and should be capitalised. I think you mean ‘ruckus’ in the street? I don’t know what ‘rouacus’ is. I feel like there are a lot of commas missing at the natural pauses, but I’m not going to mark them. E.g. though, “As Rowan approached, the man looked up.” Some might say it’s a style thing, but to me, if you omit the comma, you read “As Rowan approach the man…” and expect the pause there, but you don’t get it, so you get this kind of flat automatic-sounding sentence, without intonation. Maybe it’s just me. “giving the man a wide berth” His forgetting the table number makes me lose a lot of sympathy for him. His whole future depends on it and he can’t remember a one digit number? It makes the character look really incompetent, which makes him harder to sympathise with, I think. If you’re going to stick with that, I think you need a good reason for him to have forgotten this. Like maybe he got badly beaten just after he received the information. Something reason for him forgetting beyond incompetence. Just about every fantasy book ever has a bar scene. Filling your tavern with ne’er-do-wells is kind of underlining the cliché, but I think you can kind of carry that by not drawing particular attention to it. A man walks into a bar… deal with it. “Me too.” – Good line, made me smile, but doesn’t do anything to increase my sympathy after R’s incompetence. I’m pretty much at the point that I want the story to be about the lady in the purple cloak. R’s reaction towards violence seems naïve. This person is his saviour. Also, when he says ”You know nothing about me” I’m forced to agree. I don’t feel I know enough to identify or have sympathy for him. Not sure how he sees the rune when she’s just shoved the thing in his hand. I could have done with an image of the woman earlier. I had assumed neutral and faceless, which is then wrong when we get the details later. I would say you need to italicise his thoughts, otherwise they are not differentiated from narrative, and it’s harder to read them as being different. The liquid in his cup is amber now – it was brown before. Not the same. “Of all the possessions he'd lost in the last few years, his sketch pad was all the was left” – typo. Also, the pad is not in the group of things he has lost, so the phrasing is off here. Again, not knowing enough about R, his hankering after two swords seems out of context. For one thing, I've got this incompetent picture of him, so it comes across a bit as elitism or forlorn dreaming. As far as I know, he’s as useless with a sword as he is at remembering a number between one and five. Just because someone drowns his sorrows in beer doesn’t mean he hates himself. He equally well or more likely hates someone else, or something bad that happened to him. Might just be depressed by life. R’s inclination to think what he does of the man does him no credit, imho. “eyes widened at the sight of a priest who entered.” – Phrasing off here. I think ‘the priest who entered’ would be okay, or ‘a priest entering’, but ‘a’ is generic whereas ‘who’ is specific. I think these two words contradict, hence the suggestion of going wholly generic or wholly specific. “couldn’t even attempt a straight line” – I would have thought this is one of the hardest things he could attempt to draw, not the easiest, which the statement implies. The action was welcome when it came, and it felt realistic, which often it is not in these situations. As we get more information about what is going on, which comes across naturally enough in the questioning, there’s nothing to place R in a better light. He’s been totally duped and seems to have been too desperate to have any suspicions. It’s hard to feel sympathy, because I don’t know anything about W and how trustworthy or otherwise he might have seemed. How did R know him? Why would R expect W to help him? Lots of questions come to mind the more information I get, so the realisation doesn’t really punch as hard as it could. How is the priest helping W? I don’t understand the logic of the statement. Surely the authorities were out to catch W, which is why he had R stand in. So how can the priest be working with W as an asset? This doesn’t make sense to me. There no firm background to the setting and not all that much world-building, which leaves me a bit puzzled. There’s mention of a ‘totem’ here (Native American), swords after the style of Japan, horses from Scotland, and there are names that are Scandinavian. “I need you to die and shut up” – presumably the second is kind of moot after the first! I think this would read better the other way around. “Through the flame he saw the man…” – This is a nice touch. Plus, typo. I think the notion that the only people who would go to see a burning were depraved is rather simplistic. Was this the case of people who went hangings in westerns, or to the arenas in Rome? I think not. People tend to act as society dictates, herd mentality in this situation, I think. I don’t believe for a moment all these people are depraved. R’s transformation comes out of nowhere. There’s been not the slightest suggestion of anything special about him, so I feel unconvinced. For one thing, I'm not invested in him as a character, and was not rooting for him, so I didn’t especially care one way or another. The sudden appearance of the swordsman makes me interested in him. He has agency, prowess and bravery, none of which have we seen from R. I must say I was not bowled over by this as the opening to a story, and it’s entirely down to the main character, who I feel nothing for at all. I think you might consider the WE podcasts on the 3 character sliders. I suppose you do show R having competence at drawing, but his judgement, assumptions about people, naivety and gullibility do nothing to make him engaging. I also felt that there were no clues to him being special, so his transformation (if that’s what it is) comes from nowhere. Is it because of the amulet? Surely, they could have taken that away from him? If not, I think you need to show that it’s still there as he burns. If it’s not the amulet then holy divine intervention from the writer because of plot things, Batman! I hope these comments are useful. Sorry not to be more positive. I see no reason that the story could not work with some changes, but there are issue that are hurting it at the moment, especially the main character, I think. <R>

Agreed - could be really interested, and potentially a 'yes, but...' moment I love the idea that he has to create some kinetic energy to harvest, but it just seemed a bit roundabout, since he was using some of his own energy anyway. I guess maybe the point is it's a permanent investment, so he would rather use his chemical energy, which he can replace with food, to humph the crate up the stairs, rather than his permanent symphony. I think if that were shown a tad, I would have got it quicker. It's going to be a great story though. I do like it.

Always a pleasure to be back in the Dissolutionverse. “at least until he figured out how to get his second father” - ? or ‘that he should get his…’ I just felt like there was something missing from the phrasing as is. “it is not as limiting as hearing the music defining” – I think? “transfer it somat else” – in English dialect (I forget which region, I'm afraid), ‘somat’ or possibly ‘somit’, means ‘something’. Hence, this sounds off to my ear, as I can’t associate it with ‘somewhere’. “pulling it back and forth between his hands” – I'm not entirely sure what’s happening here. I guess he is moving the pen using the symphony, but I'm not getting a ‘wow’. Okay, it’s easy and everyday for him, but I should still get some ‘wow’, I think. “threw the pen down and thumped the table” – I was seeing him as, not exactly timid, but quietly assertive, intellectually authoritative. This felt a bit brash to me. “We have a rodent problem” – Nice was to cap the section. Unexpected, but satisfyingly appropriate for a ‘first job’, and a test at the same time. It’s bringing to mind thoughts of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice / Harry Potter: Year 1. A sort of YA scale and tone which is very enjoyable. “hadn’t even known the HoP had a cellar” – lol. “The normally austere corridors turned utilitarian” – Hmm. I guess these are different, but they sound kind of similar too, like this would not be the greatest degree of change. “water, light, and motive forces” – How do you supply motive forces? Is there a big hand at the end of the pipe that pushes anything you place in front of it? I’m sort of stuck puzzling over how you transmit momentum through a pipe, or rather more how to apply it at the other end. It’s probably just a Civil Engineer being dense over mechanical things. Please feel free to tut several times, then talk down to me as you explain what a numpty I'm being “The transfer of measures” – My first thought was of actions, processes, etc. rather than portions, quanta, units, etc. “yer celler” “layered over themselves until the result was nearly a block of notes” – something off in the phrasing, I feel, compared to ‘layered over themselves. The result was a block…’. At best, seems imprecise. “The head was fastened to the pipe in some way, and R poked at the thing with on finger” – why are these part of the same sentence? “didn’t think he was that simple” – is it ‘simple’? Is this not more on the scale of weakness/strength? “if I don’t do sommat else” – See, here’s ‘sommat’ used as ‘something’, not ‘somewhere’. I kind of lost track of some of the description of the symphonic systems. “He pushed the crate back down off the top step” -? “The create fell two steps, then one more, then stopped, only a pace away from where Rey had imparted a hearty shove” – Typo, but also, I'm confused how it’s only a pace away. He can’t have shoved it very hard. Surely, he could have obtained more energy. Also, by carrying the crate up the stairs, he’s converted his chemical energy to potential in the crate, which he then harvests again by pushing the crate off the stair, and takes the energy back in. So, he can’t convert his own potential energy stored chemically in his body directly? “suitable enough to shock that little furry critter” – I'm doubtful you can have degrees of suitability in this phasing. Either it’s suitable to shock the creature, or it’s not. “Should have stayed” – I think he reaches this point of ‘giving up’ too soon. Pack it all in and go home because of one failed attempt? “It shared the a long snout and scales with of the scurries” – imho. “around his parent’s parents’ garden” – I believe. “Shew, then, yer bugger” – is it not ‘shoo’? “flapped it with his hands” – sounds like he slapped it. Flapped at it? “but yer havta go. on” – Have to go. As in ‘Your time’s up’? “notes disappeared with the phrase” – but isn’t the phrase made of the notes. Is this two versions of the same thing? “He backed up just a little” “It was the part of the base beat of the Symphony that faltered” – I think. “Well, now he know knew, he could affect it” “can find a taste tasty melody somewhere else” “Maybe he’s he’d make a” parent’s vs parents’ again I enjoyed this story a good deal, but I felt that payoff was a bit too easy, and lacked s sense of ‘wow’. Also, it seemed to me that he changed the nature of what the machine was doing. Surely, that would have other effects, or could even be detrimental to how the energy was used at the other end, where presumably there is machinery that is expecting and therefore designed to cope with material supplied in one key, which now will arrive in another. So, my verdict would be that there is some revision and tightening required to deal with these issues, but otherwise, I enjoyed being in R’s company and seeing him interact with his master. Excellent fun, just a bit more punch and pizzazz, maybe. <R>

A dearly departed son of Caledonia. Sorely missed, and a great loss not just to SF, but to literature. If he had lived during the Golden Age, I believe he would have been lauded among its giants. Even now, I'm not sure he is appreciated as much as his work deserves.

Well done, I think!

Ooh, more interludes, nice! Age 11 “trained in on one of the king’s farms” – I think. What’s a “scutum”? “Fine, fine.” “But the night before, she escaped, and she went onto the glacier” – As in the night before the culling, not the night before she escaped. Age 13 I enjoyed this one for the same reason as I enjoyed ‘Age 11’ – seeing relationships that we’ve only really been told about, certainly in the early stages, of TWD proper. Age 14 “None were was older than fifteen” – I know, I know, you probably don’t want grammar, but still. And yes, I liked the third one for the same reason again. I think these are important on two levels; the reveal of these early, key relationships, but also giving the reader a better understanding of S that is much clearer to pick up on than the first parts of the story without these interludes. Excellent work. Thank you! <R>

Hey Matt, glad to see another submission. Let’s crack on with the comments! The title “Training”, kind of fills me with dread. The training section of any story about a young person is a real cliché now, I think. In fact, it’s mandatory in YA or Middle Grade now, is it not? I’m not saying don’t have it, but that coming right out a calling chapter that is kind of inviting the reader to roll their eyes. “half a falling man’s cry” – took me a couple of goes to get the intended meaning of this. “a smith’s hammer” – possessive. “And Uncle Land’s laughter” – here’s me advocating capitalisation, lol, but it is the title of a particular uncle. “Easy lad.” – without a comma, this read as a lad who is easy. There are a few instances of missing commas, I reckon. These are in places where I would say there are natural pauses. I think you would pick these if you read the piece out loud. For e.g. “For a moment, Land said nothing” “he’d yet to develop his man’s strength” – seems simplistic in phrasing, like it’s missing ‘adult’ or ‘mature’ – a more adult and mature phrasing, indeed. I know it’s his voice, but it makes him seem younger than I thought he was. “a Holy Knight and intermediary between the people, the Empire and the army” – there’s no mention of the bishop here. Isn’t he the intermediary between the bishop and something? “He’d seen no one make his uncle sweat” – something about the phrasing seems off. ‘No sparring partner had even made his uncle sweat.’ - ? “nodded his chin” – doesn’t he nod his head? This sounds like his chin moves independently. “His uncle attacked with so much speed and force that most strikes, even blocked would leave Pet bruised” – Indirect phrasing can take the punch out of the action; like this, compared to something like ‘His uncle attacked so quickly and forcefully…’ – Maybe just personal preference. I'm finding the description of the fighting a bit disjointed. I’m not really feeling excitement or energy. It’s quite analytical. “Did someone sent word?” – typo. “at the 7th gatehouse” – if this is the name, I would capitalise ‘Gatehouse’. But otherwise, I would say it has to be ‘seventh’. Personally, I think it’s okay to use numerals for complex or large number in SF, but in fantasy, or in any genre for small numbers, I think it’s a no-no. Would say, “Yes, he’s over there, 3rd soldier from the left.” ? “tracker on ‘em by now” – it’s a contraction. I think you have to have the inverted comma. What’s a ‘contub’? For that matter, what’s a ‘contubernium’? I’m finding the naming a bit confusing. M/C’s name is P e t e o r, but his uncle calls him Petro, which seems like a different name. Is it meant to be a contraction of P e t e o r? There is a typo in there too, where it’s in as Peter. “At the giants knuckle” – consistency. Name needs capitals, and it’s Giant’s (possessive). “Land watched Pet run” – there’s a pretty jarring POV shift to Land at this point. “This changes things” – Some of the dialogue hits my ear as a bit clunky. This sounds maid-and-butler. I don’t think that Land would need to say this to another soldier, and he explains that it changes things, so this seems redundant to me, anyway. “At least 3 wielding swords” – No, really, this just ain’t right. Go to any book you’ve read and find me an example of a numeral being used in this context. “but there might be one or two that the farmer counted twice” – What does this line do, by which I mean what does it bring to the story? You’ll hear the WE folks say how important it is for sentences to do double or triple (treble?) duty, to add to plot, character, setting, whatever. If a line is not contributing anything, I believe it has to go or be changed until it does. I think is better, but can be better yet. I like that the training episode is short. I reckon it would add to the tension and make the section more active, if the rider interrupts the training, instead of his arrival being conveniently timed with when they’ve just finished. Anything that can be done to bring things into the present will make them more active, I think. For example, when Pet is thinking ‘that could have gone better’, he could be thinking this could be going better. I think the rider’s arrival worked pretty well for tension building, but it tends to lapse into detail about weapons. I know it’s important, but it could be punched up to concentrate on the threat, and less on design of the weapons. Don’t ever be disheartened. Any piece of writing is going to go through a bunch of edits before it gets nearer where it needs to be. I bet you could sub Neuromancer on here and we’d try to rip it to shreds Glad to see this again. <R>

It's a small world, Part MMXVII. @Mandamon, just chatting to a couple of brothers from South Carolina who flew out from Raleigh yesterday!

No new member requests as yet, so it's @rdpulfer, @kais and @TKWade for Monday (p.s. - I will be critiquing last weeks subs! Sorry for the delay.)

Always - eh! Yeah, the background emerged after I'd written the story. I'm back in to drop some of that background from the start, which hopefully will frame the whole thing much better. Highly likely, as I think the back round development and through line are more likely to come from Char than M/C. Me too Ok, yeah, will review. Not exactly, clarification required. Thank you for your ever excellent comments, to the point, as always

Hey Gustaf, thanks so much for reading. I'm glad that this worked for you on some level. Completely agree with the tightening point, and I have a fair bit go over from all of the excellent comments. The ending, certainly, is something that needs tightening. You've struck on a point that I don't think anyone else mentioned, which is the fate of the master wand - of course @kais quite rightly asked for confirmation of its nature, which is unclear too. I'm going to have another go at this story in a few weeks. Thanks again

Cape Tribulation, isn't that near Rejection Inlet? Been there... You've got me on distance, but I did once go from Glasgow to London Heathrow to Minneapolis to Spokane to San Francisco to Kona (Hawai'i) to Kahului (Maui) to Molokai to Kona to Seattle to Boston to London to Glasgow in three weeks I hope you have an absolutely brilliant time - sounds amazing.

Silk's getting out just before my travel ban comes into effect <cough> Seriously thought, it's my pleasure and my honour to lend a helping hand. I will try and keep the numbers of mobs incited to a minimum.

Said the professional scientist... What now?!

Hey @Yuoaman, thank you for your comments. Greatly appreciated. I've taken notes from your answers to the points. Very helpful. I think I will be doing this. Certainly, I need a bit more framing information up front. I will try and fit it before the punch. Err, nope, but it is a bit of a niche word... skirl (noun) - a shrill, wailing sound, especially that of bagpipes. - "we heard a skirl of the pipes" Yeah, I swithered over this line and had various versions. I agree your suggestion is a bit easier to pick up. The thing I like about mine is that it evokes a trip they made to Ironbrook, making them sound travelled. The other version makes the bard sound travelled. I might sacrifice the meaning for the increased legibility. I'll consider that. Paragraphs are a thing that I don't always pay that close attention to. Thanks. Agreed - I will address this. Agreed - good call. Agreed - I'll fix this. Thanks again!

Hey, TK, great to hear from you. Thank you so much of reading. I cannot ask for any more than that. I appreciate your concerns, and it's very helpful to have that confirmation that various of these things are mainline issues that everyone is picking. It makes it that much easier to address them in an edit. Uh-huh, this is most likely going to go, it started as a throwaway line and I did not see it for what it was, so it's still there in this draft when I should have weeded it out. The retrospective background that I circulated separately by email should help with these glaring inconsistencies. It is very, very pleasing to know that those things worked. Given I now have a background for the story, you can expect a few more, no doubt. Ha, well now. I set this up as a short, but it seems the characters have resonated with people, to greater or lesser extent. I start to ask myself if I should consider a longer form, but I'm so keen to write some shorts that I'm concerned I might have defeated my own purpose. What to do... make the characters less engaging? Never!! I might consider a series of short stories showing the progress of these characters. That might be a very interesting challenge - which I need about as much as another hole in the head (currently being in possession of the regulation number of head holes for an adult human). Thank you so much for the encouraging comments - so much to think about!! Much appreciated. <R>

Hey, ID - many thanks for reading. I will now tiptoe, slightly fearfully, into reading your comments in detail Yeah - there will be wholesale upgrades in the through-line of the story. Excellent - that's my cornerstone. To answer the point about the dialect... I'll quote myself!!! (Oh, there's got to be a law against that.) This was not my intention, but I can see how you got there. I'll consider this in great detail on the re-write. Okay. I felt like there were other references that conveyed there was more to it, but I'll re-evaluate that on the edit. There's no problem with this. I have no set limit here. The inconsistencies has everything to do with me writing it in a day-and-a-half Awesome - I'm loving the positive vibe this is getting. I'm not sure I really have the M/C down - which is not helping, but I'm enthused to give it another go. You might expect to see this again in a month or so. Thanks so much, ID. Always a pleasure

Thank you as ever, @Mandamon, for those most excellent comments. I think we can all agree by this point that the ending and the through line need work, and are inconsistent with other sections/development. I'm going to oblige everyone looking for more background to the group, as that is going to be necessary to be able to land the ending and the through line, I feel certain. Yes, perhaps a bit too blasé, to the point it gets lost. Fair comment. I'll accept (and address) that. I refer to Pen as squirrelly ands was hoping to parle that into a nickname of sorts. Seems to need more work Will do. Yeah, I was trying to make him unreliable - more work again! Hmm, okay. I'm on the second Harry Dresden book, having just discovered them (I knew of them, just hadn't ever read one). I feel like he does this alllll the time. That don't make it right, I suppose. Thanks again - lots of good edits to get my teeth into

Hey @Wisps of Aether, thank you for reading and commenting, much appreciated. Yeah, male. Some issues to fix there, per iDragon's comments, but I'll come to that! He now has a name too, J e h l a n. That's great. I tend to be a bit sweary in practice (but I promise I'll be on my best behaviour at ReCON!!), and writing Moth has only reinforced that (...cough... so much fun ...cough...) - so, it's good to know that my approach here seems to be proportionate. Okay, fair comment, and I see you are not alone in that. I will tackle those again in the next draft. Okay, as noted above, there's particular word limit on this one, other than I don't want it to become bloated and read like a couple of chapters from a novel. Still, there's plenty I can do to flesh out K and P and bit. Ha-ha, okay, this seems to be a running theme. Perhaps it's down to me watching the excellent BBC adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark novels, set firmly in Cornwall. 'ee can be considered a contraction of 'he' or 'thee', depending on need. Other than that, it's 'em and ain't - which I presume on their own are not difficult. I'll look at his dialogue again; I don't want to exclude anyone from the story through something so simple. You can expect I'll simplify/clarify that. Excellent, I'm very pleased. I will tweak it to try and tackle the concern that RDP had, but the form will not change drastically, I think. Perhaps just be a bit more informed by the 'new' background. Definitely, thanks. I'm more than happy to drop in some more brief touches from the Brush of Description (for the old stagers around here, this was carved from the same Ancient Tree Language as the Grammar Stick - youngsters, see signature below ). Have a great day yourself, Wisps, whenever that might start! <R>

Thank you for those comments, @rdpulfer, straight to the point, as ever! Hmm; my thinking is that Pen entered the inn surreptitiously, certainly unnoticed by protag (now called J e l h a n), maybe even by a rear/kitchen entrance. He's small and sneaky, which I hope comes out from the story, so this type of evasion would not be difficult for him. Yeah - to be fixed in a later version. See emailed background. As per above - to be fixed through application of new background. Agreed - to be fixed. Awesome, thanks, RD - it will get better due to all these great comments. To jump ahead a bit and answer a point by @industrialistDragon, there is no particular word limit on this. It sailed past 1,500 - now sitting at 3,000+. The writing prompt I am loosely working to specs 4,000 words, but I won't be tied by that either. <R>