The exercise:
It's the return of the Random Book Prompt!
Go grab a book off your shelf or coffee table or wherever and use its first line as your own. Then, after giving credit where it's due as always, take it from there!
Side note: today is my birthday. That probably explains why, when I was typing in the post title, I very nearly typed Thursday October 26th, 1978.
Thankfully I did not, as that would have caused some confusion...
2 comments:
Happy Birthday! I hope you're having fun :)
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
A blue snow was falling on the roof of the embarkation lounge, where it melted and snaked across the glass in inky rivulets. Last week the snow had been yellow, polluted with sulphur from erupting volcanoes in the Ring of Fire. The continental governments had managed to stop bickering for a half-hour to agree to turn the atmospheric scrubbers on. This time the pollution was from an eco-organisation that traced its roots back to both Greenpeace and Marine Le Pen and appeared to be defeating the scrubbers.
Jacques scratched his head and pretended not to see the shower of dandruff that scattered around him. The embarkation lounge was quiet; it wasn't yet 5am so there were only a few travellers waiting for the runcible. Give it another four hours and it would start to fill up with families and holiday-makers and galactic tourists and the business-class hub would open up to allow the business-travellers to avoid them. The seats were long benches of cushioned, divisioned foam and some of the early travellers were lying along them, sleeping. Jacques was too tense to sleep, his fingers drummed restlessly on his knee and he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs. He was sure that the automated systems were watching him, and that just made his throat dry. He thought about getting water from the vending machines but then he worried that he might miss the gate-call.
"Jacques Petradie." The voice was inhuman and harsh. It sounded loud to him, but only he heard it; field-technology allowed for even tighter localisation that this. He jumped, planting both feet on the floor and gripping the foam cushion. "Your transit is ready."
Oh. Of course.
He stood up and walked across the embarkation lounge to the metal doors, which irised open as he approached. It was dark on the other side, too dark to see what was there which annoyed him, but there was no going back now. He stepped through, feeling his temper rise and preparing to shout at someone for not having the lights turned on, and as his feet should have touched down on the far side there was a sensation like a hot flush rushing through his body and for a moment the world was just a brilliant sphere of white lights that moved, arcing and streaming around him. He tried to follow them but they all converged, directly onto, into him, and then his feet touched the floor and he was stood in the Disembarkation Lounge on Paris-Neu.
Hands took his, leading him aside. Three men were standing there and one of them looked like he was wearing a uniform.
"That was not a runcible gate," said Jacques. His words sounded strange to his ears and his brain took two seconds to realise that he was speaking Catalonian, the common language of the Romantic worlds.
"No," said the shortest of the men. "But it was a success."
Greg - thanks! It was a pretty good one :)
That is a wonderful opening line and you carried on with it in fine fashion. Really enjoyed the details here and the tension you've created. That ending is rather intriguing as well!
Nicely done :)
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